i said, she said

Melissa hasn't posted in a month of sundays, so when she told me that she was gonna post about our strawberry jam challenge, i just KNEW that she was gonna tell HER side and so i would have to tell MY side...

King Soopers had a sale on strawberries - $.99 per pound

woo hootie hoo!!!

so i left Melissa to pick out some berries whilst i chose a couple of lemons and limes...

when i met up with her, she had four big packs of juicy red goodness 

and i was totally okay with that many strawberries...

till we got back home and i realized that we were gonna hafta do something with them soon, or they would make both of us crazy with watery eyes and itchy noses...

so we decided to make strawberry jam - but i didn't want to use pectin, and she did... 

i cleaned the berries, quartered them, carried the hulls out to the backyard and tossed them for compost, 

and told Thumps* to enjoy himself with the scraps, but to get the h-e-double-hockey-sticks outta the garden, and take his girlfriend with him... 

then i divided the berries into two bowls - half for me and half for Melissa - and started my jam...

which took for freakin' ever!!!

the stupid jam never did get to 220° - it topped out at 207° and refused to get any hotter - grrr!!!

in the meantime, Melissa took a shower and fluffed her hair and put on her makeup and got dressed and put on an apron

 and waited

 and waited

 and waited for me to vacate the stove...

when i finally gave up on the concoction EVER getting hot enough, i ladled the jam syrup into four pint-sized jars

floating fruit and lottsa foam

and started cleaning up my mess...

and before i had the red splatters wiped away, 

Melissa was ladling HER jam into jars - pointing out that HER jam was already getting thick 

and was a lovely color of red

no floating fruit, no foam, no fair

and tasted oh so DELICIOUS

it does, i'm not arguing that fact

and, look!!! there's no FOAM ... and the fruit isn't floating to the top!!!

 she ended up with three pint-sized jars of gorgeous, sweet, thick strawberry jam...

and i would be ever so jealous 

if i didn't know that my strawberry syrup will taste really, really good on ice cream and angel food cake and pancakes...

*i was not opposed to Thumps the Rabbit munching away - as long as he stayed away from the garden and the strawberry plants...

well...

last year i noticed that the strawberry plants had pretty much disappeared from the backyard, so i ordered $100 worth of Stark Brothers strawberries, and Melissa helped me plant them...

we planted twice as many as i thought we'd really need - half for us and half for the Wild Things...

the new plants were thriving...

till they weren't...

gone...

disappeared...

and not just the berries - entire plants disappeared

no berries, no leaves, no roots...

it was a mystery till i spotted Thumps munching strawberry leaves 
and chased his little cottontail outta the yard...

so, yeah, i may have given Thumps mixed signals when i took the strawberry hulls out for compost - i don't care if he eats them all and poops out strawberry seeds ... but he really needs to stay outta the garden...

i'm just sayin'...

If you ever find yourself in a jam, just take a moment to sit and think; calculate things, look at every angle, and then wonder where all that jam came from.

Melanie Kay Taylor

boney maroney

massdrop is a very, very bad habit to get into - it's not like i don't have enough trouble with impulse buying - it is so very easy to hit the commit button and then forget about it till i get the package and wonder what the h-e-double-hockey-sticks i was thinking?!?
and that is exactly what happened when a fat quarter bundle for Chillingsworth's Bicycle Race was offered...
this one is for Traveling Man...

i can see right through you

the pattern is adapted from Grand Stand by Mountain Peak Creations 
and the quilting (old bicycles - so cool) is by Liz Bowman in Milan, Michigan

there was a bunch of fabric leftover from the bundle that i knew i would never, never, EVER use, so i pieced all of it together for the backing...

all yall are outta here

and i'll be happy to see HIM leave the premises...

Boney Maroney and Peggy Sue

got the rockin' pneumonia

got the boogie woogie flu, hey

James Taylor - Suite for 20G

blink

and summer break is gone...

i didn't manage to post even once ... it's a little late, but i'm gonna tell you how i spent my summer vacation...

we painted... 
for two stinking weeks... 
the living room and the dining room and the hallway upstairs are done... 

no more green walls... 

there's more to that story, but it can wait...

i did lottsa yard work...

it was hot...

stinking hot...

we DID manage to have some fun...

 where have you taken me?!?

he followed me home ... can i keep him?!?

 crosscut dinosaur track - what big feet you have!!!

 dinosaur tracks across the seabed

up close and personal - with a little help from Auntia

discovering dinosaur tracks on a nearby mountainside that used to be an ocean floor - which is a little hard to wrap my head around cuz now the seabed is a high desert...

and then going to see Jurassic World a couple of times...

meet Rexie - my half-birthday present from Auntia - and her hamster ball/gyrosphere ... chompity chomp chomp

sans the littles because it is waaaay too intense for little kids...

and seeing more dinosaurs at the Colorado Railroad Museum... 

finding fossils

someone needs his toenails clipped

LuLu  cracking geodes

i hafta wear these?!? seriously?!?

Hulk smash!!!

riding the rails

all aboard the dinosaur train!!!

it would be so cool to have a miniature garden railway in my backyard!!!

we went to the Mythic Creatures exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science...

 

no flash photography ... sigh

and escaped without spending any extra money, even thought the exit from the exhibit was a gift shop filled with all kinds of dragons and mermaids and unicorns that were very, very tempting...

we did some Row By Row shop hopping...

 

when she was a little girl i had Auntia convinced that the M on the mountain is for MELISSA ... but i don't think she believes me anymore 

what am i gonna do with all those license plates?!?
and some Rocky Mountain Quilt Fever shop hopping... 
we went on Row By Row quilt shop excursions a couple of times each week, spread out over the summer...
but the 10 RMQFSH shops - over 400 miles on the car's odometer - in one weekend just because there is a "exclusive free" pin at the end was about 200 miles too many for me...

we went to the Lafayette Peach Festival and ate peach cobbler and peach pie and peach pizza... 
it was just peachy... 

and we celebrated my baby boys' birthdays...

 

Samanardo and Leonardo

 

Michael Myson and Samuel Mygrandboy ... 33 and 3, respectively

the only piecing i was able to accomplish was...

 2 times 32

plus one

sixty-four pink roses and one rosebud ... they were sewn into a BIG flimsy that is on its way to Michigan so Liz can work her long arm majick ... and when they come back i'll tell their story...

anywho, summer break is over...

pooped out

which is okay cuz all that fun wore me out, too...

 today it is hot...

stinking hot...

but i know that Winter Is Coming...

impulse buying

my nonna died when i was five or maybe six ... my parents had to borrow the money to pay for her funeral and burial ... they decided that would not happen to their own family, and bought a funeral and burial plan ... my mother would buy a money order every month and send it off to Olinger to prepay for their eventual demise...  

i know that i was just a little kid, but i remember thinking

what an unselfish thing to do for the people who love you...

fast forward to this time last year... 

i had a couple of life-threatening experiences that some of you already know about and realized that i had never taken care of my own Final Arrangements; but i wasn't well enough to do anything about it at the time...

and by the time my health crises were beaten to submission resolved, i was too weary to act...

fast forward to now...

i have noticed that my children are attending a LOT of funerals for their friends' parents...

 and that those parents are my own peers...

and i made an appointment to Take Care of Business...

it was not fun...

but it was enlightening...

it turns out that there is a LOT of UPSELLING in the funeral business...

i went into the meeting determined to NOT opt for anything other than basic cremation - no urn, no catering, no memorial, no viewing, no service, no flowers, no creative financing that includes a life insurance policy should i decide to keel over before the Plan is paid for, no, no, no, thank you...

it took a while to convince the salesperson that

 no, i do NOT want fries with that...

i took out my credit card so i could get the Rewards points, and prepaid for making an Ash of Myself...

and when i was finished with all of that, Auntia and i went to Woodley's Fine Furniture to order a dresser for her room... 

it was NOT an impulse buy - she has been planning her purchase since last year's 45% off sale, and knew exactly what she wanted...

and we did what we always do when we walk into a furniture store - we sat in every comfortable-looking chair and sat on every comfortable-looking couch and played Lightbrownielocks and Silverlocks... 

this one is too high 

this one is too low

this one is too soft 

this one is too hard

this one's arms are too wide

this one's seat is too deep

this one is butt ugly

this one is too fancy

this one is too scratchy

this one is too slick

this one isn't made for stitching

this one isn't made for reading

this one is just about right

this one is too ... wait ... what?!?

what?!?

what you said...

try this one - it isn't ugly and it isn't fancy and it's the right height for both of us and the arms are just right for stitching or reading and it's leather so it will wipe clean and it isn't scratchy or slick and your feet reach the floor and my knees aren't up around my chin and it's just the right amount of firm...

but it's red...

yes, it IS red. but it comes in these other colors...

Cara the Chair is red...

an old picture of Cara the Chair - named after Cara the Mord Sith from Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series of books

Cara the Chair was an impulse buy and nothing goes with her...

but this couch would go with her...

and we were gonna wait till the little ones are all in school before we buy a couch...

that's Three. More. Years.

three years of arguing with them about what is okay and what isn't...

and we will teach them what is and isn't acceptable...

but it's red...

our sunflower pillows would look awesome on it...

but it's red...

it's 45% off...

still, it's a LOT of money...

and Awesome!!! would look awesome on it...

Awesome!!! WOULD look awesome on it ... maybe it's time to rethink the living room...

let's go home so we can bring back the sunflower pillow and an autumn quilt and see how they look...

still ... it's a lot of money...

and so we did...

the quilt looked awesome...

the sunflower pillow looked awesome...

but i still wasn't convinced...

Clifford was gonna be a HUGE investment, even with 45% off...

and i'd just spent all that money on the prepaid cremation...

and that got me to thinking which is always kinda scary...

thinking about things like Life being Short...

and Uncertain...

and the fact that there was no Comfortable Place to Rest in the Here and Now...

and the fact that my body isn't gonna have a Comfortable Place to Rest in the After because i'd opted for the No Frills Package...

and Comfort being Under-Rated...

and Jumping In With Both Feet being kinda fun...

and that is how buying a Big Red Couch can be an Impulse Buy...

To be always intending to make a new and better life but never to find time to set about it is as ... to put off eating and drinking and sleeping from one day to the next until you're dead.

Og Mandino

drumroll, please

introducing...

Clifford ... the Big Red Couch

i dragged the duct-taped-cushionless-stained-ripped-and-torn Queen Anne chair that i bought at a neighbor's garage sale for $25 eighteen years ago to the curb yesterday... 

and the OldManLeatherChair donated by a neighbor who didn't want to pay extra for the trash guy to haul it away will be moving on to shaggier carpet in a few days... 

we haven't owned a couch in a gazillion years... 

and for the first time in her Life, Auntia sat upon a brand spanking new piece of furniture... 

woo hootie hoo!!!

So, I'm lying on the couch and Laura walks in and I say

 "Free at last" 

and she says,

 'You're free all right, you're free to do the dishes' 

So I say,"You're talking to the former President, baby' 

and she says,

'Consider this your new domestic policy agenda'

George W. Bush

snack attack

i have been collecting food fabric for a loooooong time ... and i've always wanted to actually use some of it in a quilt instead of just feeding my fabric addiction ... but i was never inspired enough by a pattern to actually cut into any of it...

i was surfing blogs a few weeks ago and read that Sio at Scraps and Threadtales was distracted by a challenge using linen tea towels as a center medallion...

oooo!!! linen tea towels!!! 

something of which i have absolutely not even one

a medallion quilt!!!

something i have not even one clue of how to make

and of course i went looking for the blog that presented the challenge ... and tripped over it on Mama Spark's blog list ... 15 minutes play

and i thought

hmmm...

and then i spent the better part of an evening or two ... or five searching the Internet for linen tea towels ... there are a LOT out there, lemmetellya ... and it was impossible to decide on just one... 

so i decided to narrow the search by looking for linen tea towels that are also calendars...

specifically calendars for the years my children were born... 

yeah... 

cuz i don't have enough quilt ideas running around inside my head

 and committed to graphite and paper

 and scribbled with crayons on grocery receipts

 anywho, while stumbling around looking for a calendar dated 1982, i found one that said 

Shields Tavern

it was NOT dated 1982 

it was weird colors

and it was not at all what i had decided on in my head

but it DID say Shields... 

and so i bid on it...

and won

and it came in the mail

and when i opened the package i KNEW...

yep...

this is gonna be perfect for Michael Myson whose surname is actually Shields in real life

and then i put it away for a couple of days because i had not one single clue of what i could possibly do with those colors that was gonna be something that i thought he would want

mull ... mull ... mull

taverns have food and drink ... i have food fabric 

there's a black and white checkerboard on the towel ... the food fabric has black backgrounds 

Mike loves beer ... i know i can find beer fabric

okay ... maybe a checkerboard of food surrounding the tea towel ... so i took out the towel and found some fabrics for inner borders to stabilize it a bit ... and then i gulped down some air and cut into the food fabric... 

gulp!!!

 cut cut cut

sew sew sew

press press press

i'm thinking that it is kinda cool!!!

i got this far when i realized that just 14 different foods was not gonna be enough ... so another seven fat quarters are on their way ... nachos and goldfish crackers and pizza bagels and corn dogs and onion rings and buffalo wings and waffles...

i'm hungry...

big spender

my garden gloves weren't doing what they're supposed to do ... thistles and thorns were getting through - making me bleed and swear ... i went to squash bugs or slugs and found that their nasty little bodies crunched and oozed their way onto my hands ... and forget about crumpling a dried clod of manure mud - all over the inside and not the outside ...... time to buy a new pair...

my trusty old friends in all their bug-squashing glory ... and The Replacements

why oh why did they stop making working gloves for less-than-manly-sized hands?!? why?!?

but i couldn't find the same brand anywhere ... i need work gloves, not mamby pamby pretty little knitted cotton fluffy things that can't handle bug-squashing and thorny weed-pulling ... those fancy gloves in the picture were as close as i could find to sturdy leather gloves with an extra patch of leather on the palm that didn't swallow my hands ... Auntia found a pair that she thought would work for her ... and she told me that i can have her pink gloves that have never squashed a bug or pulled a thorny weed and are practically brand new and are just like my old blue pair - woo hoo!!!

 

and suddenly it's hot! too hot to mow ... too hot to clean ... too hot to garden ... and way too hot to cook or bake ...  so we've been slopping together sandwiches or frying an egg or two ... and missing comfort food ... and then we stumbled across a farmers' market that had a little tent canopy over some promising looking bread ... and they were offering free samples...

white chocolate lemon bread ... heaven in a loaf, lemmetellya

oh. my. gawd. i didn't even ask how much - i handed over some money and didn't count the change ... Auntia and i waited till everyone was taking a nap before we cut into the loaf because it is too. good. to. share. 

and this week i went to the same farmers' market and bought two loaves ... and they were worth every doggone one of those 1200 pennies, lemmetellya

and then i started getting complaints (mostly from myself) about the toilet seat ... sigh ... in a moment of wanton, willful and reckless disregard for the state of the economy i bought something that other women my age only dream of owning ... a new toilet seat

what would YOU do?

well ... Mr. Modem seems to have had a change of heart ... and i'm gonna post a picture or two

Auntia said that she wanted a white chocolate raspberry cake for her birthday ... i tried to tell her that raspberries are outta season and if she really wanted a white chocolate (seriously?!? white chocolate?!? why bother?!?) raspberry cake, she should have been born in summer ... anywho ... i had to go to the store to buy the raspberries and cake mix and frosting and white chocolate chips... and that's not counting the eggs and oil and flour and oven time
after a gazillion trips up and down the same aisles looking for things i don't normally buy like white chocolate i realized that it was getting really, really late ... it was dark ... and cold ... and i knew that when i made it back home i still had to bake the lasagna and make a salad before i could start in on the cake ... and there was the FNSI list to consider...
i took a quick walk around the bakery and found this...white chocolate (check) raspberry (check) ... gasp ... already ready
i felt like John Quinones ... what would YOU do? trim a quilt or bake a cake ... trim a quilt or bake a cake ... so i kept the cake ingredients in the cart ... and added the already-made but incredibly expensive cake, too ... then i went home and told the birthday girl who was busy ignoring the sinks full of dirty dishes that i'd decided to splurge and give her a fancy bakery cake instead of a homely, homemade one ...... seriously, what would you do?
trim the quilt and eat the cake!!!

the same ... but different

i wanted this pattern from Crab-apple Hill in the worst way ... so Auntia gave it to me for christmas last year...Over the River and Through the Woods

and i was ever so grateful ... and then i looked at it again and decided that i didn't like the colors which, i am sure, surprises everyone cuz they are neutral shudder and dark double shudder ... so i decided that when i started stitching - it was gonna be brighter and lighter ... and i wanted it to be more autumnal ... and i didn't like the words cuz my grandmother lived in california and it was over the mountains and through the desert ... and i didn't want the sleigh cuz i've never even ridden in a sleigh so why would i want to stitch one ... and 51 x 57 isn't big enough...
so ... brighter autumn colors ... with a different layout ... and not exactly the same stitchery ... and bigger
sigh
i wrote down the fabric requirements and kept the yellow sticky with me till i forgot to take it outta my pocket and washed it with my jeans for months...

when i saw Saltbox Harvest i knew i had found exactly the right fabric to autumn up the quilt ... and when we went shop hopping i looked for a charm pack of Saltbox Harvest so i could do some more planning ... Auntia found the perfect fabric for the embroidery and i took the bolt over to the charm packs and placed those lovely Saltbox Harvest prints on my chosen background ... and i thought

bleck - i don't like it. i don't like it at all. maybe i need a different background? wait ... what is this? Awesome! seriously? isn't this the one with the panel that has a squirrel shudder? i hate squirrels. it can't be the one with the squirrel. oooo! i really like these fabrics! seriously, i really do love these fabrics! this can't be the line that has the squirrel cuz these fabrics are .... well ... Awesome!

Awesome by Sandy Gervais
and so i bought the charm pack ... and i bought enough of the background fabric for the embroidery ... and i took it home and put them with the pattern...doesn't that background look like it was made to go with the charm pack?!?
oh ... wait ... it was made to go with the charm pack!
and then i went to the lqs that is closing its doors forever and found some yardage that was marked down a bit...
oooo! it's even prettier when it's in big pieces!
and i really, really liked it ... but ... why are there stars in the middle of the quilt instead of around the edge? and there are still those troublesome words ... what if i take out the middle embroidery ... and move the other two stitcheries to where the stars are ... and piece leaves for where the stitcheries used to be...ooo! batiks! i knew i would find a reason to buy batiks!
and keep the flying geese ... but make an outer border of stars for the top and bottom ... and i still want to replace the sleigh with a ... uhm ... five window wrap around pickup truck ... Auntia is collecting the supplies for this Crab-apple Hill design and it has a pickup truck that i could use ... and i'm gonna need more fabric...fat quarter bundle - score!!!
so i splurged and bought the fat quarter bundle ... this is the second fat quarter bundle that i've allowed myself to buy and it is ... well ... Awesome!
expensive, but Awesome!
a luxury, but Awesome!
frivolous, but Awesome!
and now i have everything i need to start ... except embroidery thread
and time