Hodge Podge

I should be putting the finishing touches on my Hoffman Challenge, but I'm not. Here it sits, waiting for me to give it the attention it needs and deserves.

It's lazy hot here, not so hot as elsewhere, but hot enough to want to stay indoors.

It's hot and dry enough to wash another quilt, which I did yesterday. Or was it the day before?

This morning I zipped out to a yard sale that proclaimed, "If we don't have it, you don't need it!" Well, how could I resist? I couldn't. I came home with this piece of pottery. The bottom says "Nautilus made in USA C 40 N 4." I have no idea what that means, but "made in USA" made me want to bring it home...So did the $1.50 price tag. It has a couple of incidental chips.

It works well in my pool bathroom where I've got a beach theme going.

I did the cross-stitched shells long ago (1984), before I became a serious quilter. The shadow box is filled with shells collected by my mother. The painting was done by a New Zealander who was a relative of my grandfather's. When he was in his 70's, he traveled to New Zealand to look for relatives who had immigrated there. He had come over here from Germany in 1929, they'd left around the same time, and headed south. Obviously he found them, and they gave him this painting as a remembrance. I love the colors, and dream of going to New Zealand myself some day.

Last week I picked up this embroidered cottage garden for $5. I have no idea what I'm going to do with it, but I know I wouldn't make it for $5. I hated to see it out there, abandoned and unloved.

I've been reading blog entries of people making charity quilts. I usually make a number for our guild during the year, but this year I've fallen far behind. Today I started cutting and sewing. The fabric is supplied by the guild. The resultant quilts are put into police cars and given to children who are picked up in distress.

I finished one quilt, it took much longer than I'd planned. oh well. At least it's done. I've got a few bundles of fabric left, and at least 2 or 3 quilts more to make. Once I finish my Hoffman, I'll kick it up a notch.


And there you go. I have no valid excuses for lack of posting, other than I haven't done much of anything worthy of note. Maybe next week? Hopefully sooner!!

Taking Things Apart...

This week seems to be a good week for dismantling.

Son Adam started it a couple of days ago, as he took apart a non-functioning laptop. Sorry about the flip, Blogger did it.

Once he got it apart, he found something that said this is "not recommended, unless done by an Electrical Engineer with a lot of time" on his hands. That would be my boy. He's got an internship this summer, but he's also got some free time. yay!!

I jumped on the dismantling bandwagon, when son Andrew requested a few chairs for his new place. I'll send him a couple of unmatched chairs, and replace them with my grandfather's chairs. I've had these chairs for 15 years, always wanting to refinish the wood and recover the seats.

Today I decided that it will be years before I refinish the chairs. I bought the fabric for the seats 6 months ago, it's high time to take action.

Today, instead of beading during the World Cup, I attacked the chairs.

There are four chairs (for some reason I thought there were five, but I can't find #5). It took a while to pull out the old staples and clean them up again.

And here we've got the finished project. okay, so it's not really finished, since I didn't do the refinishing part...

Another thing I did today was wash a quilt. I guess that's one good thing about HOT, dry weather. It was dry within a couple of hours. After I took the picture, I covered the quilt with a sheet, to prevent fading.

This quilt was made from blocks of the month that I won at guild in 1991. How long before it's considered an antique? heh heh, probably not as long as I'd like to think!!!

Congratulations, Netherlands!!

I got up this morning, completely oblivious to the fact that the World Cup competition had resumed. Luckily it was an early morning wake-up (5:45am), so that by the time I realized what day it was, I'd only missed 3 minutes of the Brazil/Netherlands game.

Brazil started out strong, but eventually disintegrated. Yay, Netherlands, for holding it together.

And yay, World Cup, for giving me an excuse to do handwork at 7am!!

I haven't finished with the beads, but I was ready to try adding shells.

Shells have frustrated me for too long. I can't get a needle through them, and Nymo is too flimsy to push through on its own. What is the answer? It's "fire wire." I bought it yesterday, at a Lapidary store. (Fancy name for a rock & bead shop.)

It's a slow process, but one that I find to be very rewarding. I use a needle to get the fire wire (a transparent fishing line that will hold up to abrasion) through the fabric, then I take the needle off and manually string the shell, then put the needle back on and work it through the fabric, and then repeat. I can fit about 27 shells along one side of the binding. Twenty seven have been applied, only 81 left to go. Big smile.

One of these days I'll have more than a peek for you, but that day is still a few weeks away.

Lovely Ladies, Lovely Quilts

This evening I went to a Quilt Exhibit at the Tulare Historical Museum. It was the Artists' Reception for the opening of the new gallery display. The work of my friends Ann Hinman and Debbie VanFossen hung around the room drawing oohs and aahs from all in attendance.

Debbie is on the left, Ann is on the right, both are standing in front of their own work. Between these two, most of the winners of the Best of Show ribbons from the past decade of the Tulare County Fair were here for us to examine.

Their work complements each other's quite nicely. Ann leans towards a more traditional style, Debbie tweaks it with color and glitz. Every wall was filled with eye candy. yum.

I was impressed by the crowd, and thought you might enjoy seeing how full the room was.

It was the cause for flashbacks. This museum was where Best of the Valley was born, back in 1995. We filled this room to capacity, along with a second room in the museum and a room in the library. It was all new and exciting, and I had no idea where we would be 15 years later.

wow. Thanks for the memories, and congratulations Ann & Debbie!!

Too Much Fun...

Call me crazy, but I absolutely LOVE this!!!

Admit it. I'm making you jealous, right?

Who would have thought that sewing beads onto fabric would be something I'd actually WANT to be doing? Not me. Not in a million years. I can't believe how many years I denied myself the pleasure.

No denials today, I'm going to be spending more time with my sparkly little pretties...

A Recipe for Happiness

Three hours a day of this:

Plus a quilt, needle and thread eventually leads to this:

Another hour brings us to this:

And by the end of the day we have this:

All of the quilting is done, it is bound and ready for beadwork. I do hope that it turns out the way I envision it, because if it does, I will love this project even more.

Is that even possible?

How Hot Is It?

It is SO HOT, the flowers are melting!!!

Little Bit o' Quilting

I don't know if you ever click on the comments and read them, but Kay's comment yesterday, about the "peep" at the Hoffman had me laughing out loud. hahahahahaha! I didn't catch it as I wrote it, which made it even funnier.

As I was at the computer, I was thinking "peep, peep? As in... oh! Peeping Tom!!" and then I saw this:

If you can't see him, here he is with the flash...

In between watching World Cup games and working on my Hoffman, I knocked out a couple of cards. This one was for my husband, for Father's Day. I gave him the unembellished card last week, this morning I added the pine needles and bear in the upper left corner.
I put this card together yesterday, for a friend whose birthday I thought was earlier this month. I put it in the envelope and when I looked up her address, I discovered that her birthday is actually today. I guess it will be belated, since it's going out in today's mail...

And now I'll sign off. USA vs. Ghana begins in 11 minutes. Go USA!!! Give the Black Star all you've got!!! :)

peep peep peep

By now you all know Charlie. If he were to have a nickname, it would be something like Charlie the Lethargic or Charlie-Sleeps-a-lot or The King of Z's. The only things he excels at are sleeping and eating.

The only things he's ever caught have been a lizard's tail and june bugs (lying on their backs, wiggling their feet in the air.)

Charlie can be relied upon to do nothing involving an expenditure of energy...until this week.

On Tuesday, he came running into the backyard with a "pom pom" in his mouth. When I asked him what it was, he meowed, and the pom pom unfolded into a duckling that ran away as fast as his little webbed feet could carry him.

He ran around the side of the house and under the fence.

By the time Charlie made it over the fence and I made it through the house to the front, the duckling was nowhere to be seen. Charlie was panting. Seriously. Have you ever seen a cat pant? He was whooped.

I could hear the duckling, and spotted it across the street at the neighbor's house. It then ran across the other street, to another neighbor's house. I felt it was safer there than here, so I brought Charlie into the house and marveled at his lack of killer instinct. Lucky duck!!

Last night, as we were eating dinner, Charlie appeared at the sliding door. Again, he had a "pom pom" in his mouth. This time, when he released it, I caught it.

There was no way I was going to let that cat eat this little duck.

The duck slept in the bathroom overnight, and this morning I took him across town to the SPCA. They have someone who picks up waterfowl for relocation quite frequently. Good. Lucky Duck's chances just increased 100-fold, since Charlie seems to know where he lives.

When I returned from my duck-saving excursion I walked into my Studio and saw my Hoffman sitting on the sewing table. I love the way the lack of lighting highlights the quilting. I wasn't going to show you the quilt until it was finished, but now I can't help myself.

This is one quarter of the quilt, which measures approximately 30" square. I have about 5 more hours of quilting to do, then binding. When that's done, "Let the beading commence!"

This n That

Our youngest son came home for the summer, bearing gifts. cough, cough. He's been sick for weeks (months?), but hasn't had the time to get to the doctor. It's been a bit of a concern, but he's been going to work (internship), and seems to be plugging along.

Apparently he's contagious. cough, cough.

Guess who caught it? cough, choke. Time to lie low and finish my Hoffman.

I've finished much of this quilting...

And have moved along to this quilting:

Funny thing, I hadn't planned to quilt this part, so the quilting is taking longer than anticipated. Or maybe I'm just dragging a bit.

To break things up, I can look outside at our happy new front yard.

You may remember the massive overhaul we did during the winter, since I blogged about it here. (There were a few other posts as well. For an overview click the "front yard redo" label on the sidebar.) Now that Spring has sprung and so has summer, there's something to see. Our neighbors are VERY happy with the transformation...(click on the picture for a close-up).

Have You Ever Noticed

how brothers can spend all their waking hours together and yet turn out so differently?

Cats are no different. In my last post, I showed you one of Edgar's favorite daytime activities. He was up in the tree, pretending no one could see him. In contrast, here is Charlie.

Ohh!! I found a new bed, and it's all mine!!!

He stayed in the sleeping bag as long as possible.

You might be wondering why the bag was in the living room? Why the better for sleeping, my dear... Our middle son came in during the wee hours Sunday morning, to surprise his dad for Father's Day.


Here is our collection of boys, from left to right they are ages 25, 20 and 23. All that are missing are our daughter and her husband. Maybe next year, eh?

And now that it's Monday, I'm back to spending my mornings watching the World Cup and working on my Hoffman Challenge. Each day brings me that much closer to finished. I can hardly wait to share it with you...

Peekaboo

I see you!!!
I heard a commotion outside yesterday and spotted Edgar 10' up the redwood. He eventually came down empty-handed.

I visited another Estate Sale this morning and plunked down $5 for this lovely piece of Wedgwood.

It's quite small, just the right size to add a bit of batting...

And voila! I am ready for beading.

Now all I need to do is finish quilting so I can get to the beads!