it's too late...

... to be using a rotary cutter ... way, way, way too late ... i was working on mr. husker's homestead most of the day ... it's too late to use the camera, too ... i have had to undo too many mistakes to try any more piecing tonight ... i did get two pine trees and a plain old deciduous tree put together this afternoon ... and the garden ... and i discovered that i made the bands of cows and calves two inches too small ... snip snip snip .... rip rip rip ... zip zip zip ... then clean up the snippets and brush off my clothes and swiffer the floor and try again ... and again ... and yet again ...... so i decided to read some blogs ... Mama Spark is having a 400th post giveaway - she has a beautiful collection of Robyn Pandolph christmas fat quarters ... Kim is having another giveaway, too - i think the shelves in her sweatshop should be pretty doggone bare ... Viridian is having a giveaway - including some awesome poison green fabric ... Kellie is having a giveaway - her Lilly Pilly quilt - i have always (well ... maybe not always ... since i have no idea if there really is such a thing) wanted a lilly pilly tree (sigh) ... and the Fat Quarter Shop is having a giveaway - it's a $100 gift certificate - that would be a great start for the new Thimbleberries Village Green BOM ...... Dawn has twenty deep thoughts brought on by some pinot sumpin sumpin ... and Shannon has a link to Quilts with Love and the story of how Vivian was dazzled by the eight quilters who interpreted the Twilight saga into a fabric work of art which she made even more wonderful with her longarm quilting - it is stunning and awesome and really, really, really cool!!!

and now i'm gonna do what LuLu does when it's too late...sleep tight!

please note: the actual link to the Fat Quarter shop giveaway is here ... but if you enter and post about it on your blog you need to use the link listed above for it to count as extra entries ... so do it!

stuck in the middle

it has been months since i posted about mr. husker's homestead ... i was stuck ... i put some trees together and then decided that it needed a lake (since there is a lake - well, midwesterners would call it a little pond, but it is a lake here in the foothills - near the real life homestead ... and since mr. husker likes to fish - not in the lake by his home because i think all it has in it are carp and a few minnows - at Lake McConaughy) ... but i couldn't figure out how to stretch a lake all the way across the quilt without it looking dorky ... i searched for landscape quilts with lakes and rivers and saw that most of them had water framed with trees ...... more trees ...... hmmm ...... i found this cool site with free patterns and printed out some paper-pieced willows ... after piecing the willow trees, i taped them up on the magic shop's door (which was serving as a design wall) and stood back to look at them ...... hmmm ...... just didn't look like trees to me ... so i put all of it away and didn't think about it anymore since i was so far behind on everything else and i don't really need mr. husker's quilt till the end of march ...... but this morning i was gifted with three blissfully unplanned hours ...what to do? what to do? pull weeds and water ... after about 30 minutes of that nonsense, i came inside and took another look at those willow trees ... and i decided that they didn't look too bad after all ... so i cut some strips of the water batik and started putting the next band of the homestead together...i think that sun is pretty doggone cool - kinda looks like colorado's flag ... but opposite

...when the unplanned hours ran out, i did what i had to do ...... and then i finished adding the background fence in front of the lake ... the green rectangles in the water are gonna have fish quilted onto them ...... the bottom part of the quilt is still in bits and pieces ... i have to make a flagpole and another tree or two or ten ... and figure out the garden ... and a whole bunch of other stuff ... but i'm not stuck in the middle anymore

round 'em up

i made some progress on the wintergraphix 2 quilt (using the world famous Kim's famous Fireworks! pattern) during the past week...

note to self - pieced borders are just as much work as the center of the quilt
...the pieced border uses eight of the half star sections and two of each of the quarter star mirror image sections ...... time to audition fabrics for the inner border...
Auntia likes the gold... i like the blue snowflakes...and i like the gold ... so i decided to not decide ...... Auntia took some time away from reading the Twilight series and finished piecing her inner star, but i didn't get a picture of it before she folded it up and wandered off to read some more...
note to self - do not get any more bright ideas about making 6 blocks each month for a year with no more than the vaguest plan of using two colors
i am caught up on the pink and orange BOMS and the required BOM for the first saturday of the month sampler and...
whose bright idea was it to quilt fireworks on each of those blocks?!?
...i finally finished quilting the fireworks on the red, white, blue and pooh quilt that has been on the quilting frame since may ... it is from the same Bonnie mystery that Auntia followed to make the mermaid quilt ... this is gonna be her fourth of july quilt someday ... i still have to do the stitch in the ditch quilting (groan) and then figure out something for the borders ... but i am happy to have it off of the frame and not glaring at me with its Pooh and Tigger eyes...

grrr ... who put those triangle in the wrong place ... and double grrr ... who stretched those bias edges?!?
and i made the Saturday Sampler 3 for the second saturday BOM block ... twice ... i took the first attempt apart and fixed the misplaced pieces ... and then i made it all over again because i didn't like how the bias edges stretched ... but i whacked too close to one of the points on the second attempt and it will be impossible to meet ... i dunno if i am up to trying it a third time since it seems that i keep making it worse...

Gumdrop's first day of first grade and NoJo's first day of third grade
Gumdrop and NoJo started school last week ... LuLu went in for her 4 month checkup and the shots that go with it...

her two month bandaids and her four month bandaids ... poor little baby girl
...poor Mrs. Moth ... LuLu doesn't let her mother get very much sleep ... she has reflux and it is making her miserable ... but the doctor said that her development is phenomenal ... of course, we already knew that LuLu is a PHENOMENAL BABY!!!

jolly good penguin

have you ever wondered why there are no dead penguins on the ice in Antarctica? where do they go?

it is a well-known fact that the penguin is a very ritualistic bird, living an extremely ordered and complex life ... the penguin is very committed to its family and mates for life, as well as maintaining a form of compassionate contact with its offspring throughout its life ... when a penguin is found dead on the ice surface, members of its family and social circle have been known to dig a hole in the ice, using their vestigial wings and beaks, until the hole is deep enough for the dead bird to be placed for burial ... the male penguins then gather in a circle around the freshly dug grave and sing:
"freeze a jolly good fellow"
and then they kick him in the ice hole

this post was brought to you by one of my odd email buddies

michael myson

today is my youngest son's birthday ... and by the time i post this, he will be EXACTLY 27 years old...

Michael Myson and his little niece, LuLu
..when Michael was Mikey, he waited till i was busy in the basement with laundry ... he picked up his new baby sister ... he dropped his new baby sister ... on the floor ... on her head ... twice ... he was very short at the time and so the fall was minimal ... ahem ... the new baby sister grew up to be the lovely, sweet Auntia and she is practically perfect in every way ... but he has never shown any interest in holding a brand new baby since ... so this picture of him holding LuLu is a keeper...

happy birthday, baby boy!

jammies and fireworks and tutus, oh my!

saturday was a good day ... i cleaned house for a little bit (groan) and then i took a shower (sniff) and put on some clean jammies (love those jimmiejams) and started piecing the wintergraphix 2 fabric using Kim's Fireworks ... Auntia worked with her sheri berry fabric and Kim's pattern, too ... i had to stop piecing to work on some peekaboobies ( nursing covers) that i promised Mrs. Moth i would have finished by next friday ... and Auntia wandered off to read...

i like it ...i love it ... i want some more of it
...but i did manage to finish up the center this afternoon after we came back from singing happy birthday to Princess Itty Bitty of the TwoTwo...

princess itty bitty of the twotwo and her birthday balloon
...she did a little dance when we sang to her ... at least she recognized it as music......Little Nonnie was able to escape the care center and soak up some shade ... i feasted on cherry chip cupcakes with cherry frosting and little princess tiara stickums ...... Mr. Husker has been stockpiling hay and it was very sneezy Near Lyons ... i came back looking like Aloysius Snuffleupagus ...... the fields between here and there and back again are just about ready for harvest ...... today was a good day

desperate?!?

while we were shop hopping last saturday, i looked and looked and looked for wintergraphix 2 ... all of the shops had lovely christmas fabric, but my heart was set on the new wintergraphix ...... Auntia and i both loved last year's wintergraphix and bought kits for each other (when they went on sale) that were put together by The Quilter's Studio ... the kits are still in their party bags and are likely to stay there a while ...... i was sure that out of eight different shops, at least one of them would have the new fabric ... TQS had some of this year's fabric, but not the pieces that i was looking for ... the people in other shops had a deer in the headlights look when i asked for wintergraphix 2 ... anywho ... i came home empty-handed except for the other stuff that i bought wah wah wah ... Auntia was looking for have a sheri berry holiday and it was pretty much the same story - TQS had some of the pieces but not all of them - and she came home without buying any of her choices, either ... so she searched the internet and found yardage of both of the lines that we were looking for at Desperate Quilters ... i have made purchases from Desperate Quilters before and i absolutely love them ... they carry complete lines of fabric at reasonable prices ... their customer service is beyond belief - the one time that i had a problem with an order it was corrected within 24 hours with an apology and no excuses ... they never over-charge on shipping and there is always a free goodie in the package when it is delivered ... and i love the name ... desperate quilters, indeed ... so we ordered our fabric on sunday (before i went into batik panic) and it arrived on wednesday ... it is washed and pressed and ready for the magic to happen ...... we were supposed to work on Buggy Barn blocks (if the hat fits for me and crazy flakes for Auntia) while Kim is teaching her Buggy Barn class today ... but i don't have everything that i need for my blocks, so we are gonna do fireworks instead...pretty, innit?!?

p.s. - Gran is hosting a giveaway of 30's fabrics ... go check out her blog! she has recipes and stories and embroidery and a lovely, sweet attitude!