Rhoda's Rantings

I have been super busy today and only now, at 11;30 PM, did I remember that I need to make an entry here. I've been busy with housecleaning in the AM and then we went to a birthday party and dinner in the afternoon. When I got home, I went straight to my sewing table to get some work done on the quilt--and I finished the quilting! Yippee! I even got the binding sewn on. Tomorrow, I'll concentrate on handstitching the binding and IT WILL BE FINISHED!

So, that's it. I'm tired and need to get some sleep. Changing the clocks tomorrow doesn't help at all when I'm staying up until midnight.

Fabulous Friday Fabrics

This was in the sale bolts at the LQS I stopped at the other day and I got about 4 yards of it. I was thinking of placemats and napkins, but now I'm thinking apron as well. I don't normally go for orange but this is such a nice combination of yellows and reds in the flowers that it really looks nice. There's also a very narrow gold line outlining the stems and leaves and swirling thorough the design--just a hint of glitter. I'm thinking this could be what I use to make the apron for Jo's host mother.

Jo called me today from Austin TX where's she's visiting some college friends who moved there from Milwaukee, and she's having a ball. She flew to Tyler to visit some rellies for a week, and then took an 8 or 9 hour ride on the Greyhound to Austin. She's never ridden a bus before and she says she wouldn't do it again except it only cost her $33 compared to almost $200 if she'd flown, so that's not so bad. I bit my lip but I was thinking, "Get used to it, girl. You're going to a 3rd world country in a couple of weeks. You'll be riding the busses there with chickens and goats as well as people."

She'll be home on Tuesday and then she starts packing up her stuff--some to stay here and the rest to go on the plane with her.

Can I be real honest here? I'm so scared for her to be going. There, I've said it. I don't want her to go. I think it's great for her to have this experience and I think she's going to do a great job over there, but my mother's heart is dreading putting her on that plane. Of course, I'm not saying any of this to her, but that's how I feel. Jo and I had a terrible time while she was a teenager--she stopped talking to me in 6trh grade and didn't begin again until she was about 20. (I'm exaggerating only a bit) We clashed something terrible and it's only recently that she and I can communicate again. And now she's leavng. Nuts! But, I love her dearly and have to let her go. I'm sure that both of us will be just fine.

I was working on finishing that darn Irish Chain quilt tonight and I stopped to take a break and make this entry. Time to go back and get it done.

Another dreary day, but no rain. We had about 24 hours of rain and there is very little snow in the front yard. Still hills of snow in the back though. I may have to go out and check the flower beds this weekend and see if there's anything poking it's head up--wishful thinking, I know.

The Folk Art Emporium is on Face Book now! If you want to learn about our new cooperative, check it out. I joined FaceBook last night with my daughter sitting beside me and after I got my account all set up, I asked, "Now what do I do?" and she couldn't tell me. I just had to laugh--All I hear is that Face Book is so great, you have to go on Face Book, etc. so now I'm on and have no idea what I'm supposed to do. I'll play with it a little when I get home and just try to figure it out.

I completed the stitching on the other long side of the quilt last night and will keep plugging away at it again tonight. I'm sick of writing about it and I'm sure you're sick of me writing about it too.

Rain, Rain, (Don't) Go Away

We have rain! It's so good to see the rain coming down instead of flakes. It started yesterday on my way home from work and as soon as I picked up Lily, she asked if she could play out side with her unbrella. (Kids can be so simple. All she asked from Santa last Christmas was an umbrella!) So she got it out and went stomping around the yard with her unbrella. What a treat for her!

While she was stomping around, I was able to get some stitching done and by bedtime, I'd completed the quilting on one long border on the quilt. Tonight, Tessa will be home and I expect to be able to go great guns on the thing then. Yesterday I had a gruelling 3 hour interview with a client and after I was finished, I stopped by the LQS to relax a bit. I don't know about you, but when I'm real stressed, I find that touching the fabrics and seeing the colors to be very soothing. Anyway, I got some batik fat quarters in pretty pastel colors to make a table runner and I found some yardage in the sale room that I'll use for place mats and napkins that I may offer for sale in the new co-op shop. So I have plenty on my quilting plate waiting for me to finish this darn Irish Chain.

Last night I also finished proof reading the co-op minutes and got them sent off to the other members. We're planning to have an open-to-the-public meeting on March 27th to explain our ideas, gather input from the public as to what they want from this co-op and, of course, accept new memberships. I'm just flabergasted that this concept is actually getting off the ground! Just 2 months ago, it was an idea floating around in our heads, and now--it's really happening! I'm in charge of getting ideas and bids for a sign on the outside of the store and am excited to see what the graphic designers come up with.

House of Drama--and Comedy

I spent last night typing--and typing-- and more typing! My fingers were so worn out that they couldn't quilt! I did get up a little early and got the first repeat of the border design quilted this morning before work, so that's one step closer to the end of this quilt. Wendy sent me a pix of her finished quilt and it looks pretty good for a novice. It's just 6" squares of batik and some of the seams are a little off but she said that was ok, she can live with it. This was her first try at FMQ--just an all-over meander--and it came out not too bad. She has a lot of potential as a quilter and she said she wants to have a quilting weekend with me once a month--next time at her house, which is fine with me. She can do the cooking the next time!

Last night was drama at my house. I had Lily by myself and after supper, she went upstairs to get cleaned up and put her pajamas on while I started on the typing. We had her reading time and went upstairs to tuck her in when I noticed the bathroom door was closed--that's strange. So I just reached out to open the door and realized, Lily had locked the door! Now no one could get in the bathroom! Not such a big problem since we have a second bathroom but we keep the cats' food and water in the upstairs bath and they were getting hungry! When they started whining and howling, that's when the drama began!

I tried to open it with a bobby pin as I've seen Don do many times, but it didn't work. I called his cell and, as usual, he'd turned it off. Left a message for him to call me asap. (He called at 6:30 this morning and I gave him a tongue lashing--what if there had been a crisis and his phone was turned off? why are we paying for a phone when he keeps it turned off all the time? etc.) I was okay with using the second bathroom to get ready for work in the morning until I realized--I don't have a toothbrush in that bath so I'd have to go to bed and to work without brushing my teeth. Yuck!

That's when I called Wendy and spoke with Steve. He told me how to unlock the door--it has just a little hole in the doorknob--and Wendy told me to use a small knitting needle--worked like a charm. For any who want to know, size 2 knitting needle is the tool to keep handy.

So, drama resolved, typing finished, and border quilting begun. Not too bad if I do say so.

Week 2 of my blog challenge begins here cloudy and overcast with a bit of a misty rain--just enough to smear the glass when I turned on the wipers on my way to work. Hey, rain is better than snow at this time of the year! I'll take it.

Yesterday's co-op meeting went very well, I'm pleased to say. The person who had been so agressive a few days ago really curbed it in and we got the by-laws written without major conflict. Only a few minor disagreements, but I can live with that. So, things continue to move along at a rapid pace. As secretary, I'm having a hard time keeping up with all the minutes I have to type--I love that kind of dilemma!

Quilt-wise, I did very little yesterday. I was exhausted by the time I got home from the meeting yesterday afternoon, had dinner (thank goodness for crock pots), typed up the minutes of the meeting and went to bed. Tonight---I challenge myself to get the stitching done on the final, wide border of the Irish Chain.

Tessa was exhausted last night as well--it's a good thing Lily has energy :) I've been telling her for months to get her thyroid checked and she finally looked up the symptoms of hypothyroidism and thinks she may have some of them. She said she would call the doc today. She also has to schedule Lily's surgery today as well. Poor Lily has huge adenoids and tonsils and has to have them out. When she gets a cold, her ears block up and she loses most of her hearing. It's hard to sound loving when you have to shout at her in order for her to hear. It's hard to see a child go through surgery, but the alternative of repeatedly losing her hearing is not good, and she'll have to have them out sooner or later anyway, I suppose. Jo had her tonsils out when she was about 20 and she had a difficult recovery, but I expect Lily will have a much easier time of it.

That's it for this morning. I have home calls to make and have to get ready to hit the road.

One week down!

I can't believe it's been a complete week into my personal challenge of posting an entry every day this month. So far so good.

Yesterday, Wendy and I did quite a bit of quilting. She finished the top for the lap throw she was working on and it is gorgeous. There wasn't enough space to work on my quilt, so I started piecing together 2" squares of scraps to make Jo's little travel bag. She wants a small quilted bag she can wear across her chest to carry her wallet and a lip gloss while she's away.

I don't know if I explained this but if I did, just skip this part. :) My youngest child, Jo, applied for and was accepted into the Peace Corps and she's been assigned to the Kyrgyz Republic as a health educator. Kyrgyzstan is a former member of the Soviet Union and is located south of Russia, north of India and shares it's eastern border with China. On the internet, it looks like a beautiful country--very mountainous--but it's also desperately poor country. I think Jo will be very challenged going there, but she has a great personality and her laughter will win the hearts of the people. She's leaving home on March 26 for Philadelphia, arriving in Bishkek, the capital city, on the 29th and will be there until May, 2012. Don and I plan on visiting her in the spring of 2011. Part of me is so happy that she's been offered this opportunity and part of me is worried to death at the thought of my "baby" going so far from home. I guess that's what being a parent is all about.

This afternoon I have another meeting of the cooperative and I certainly hope it goes better than the one on Wednesday. I plan on saying a few things about proper behavior in this group--isn't it sad that this even has to be brought up to a group of really competent women? If we are going to get this project up and running, we have to all work together better than we did on Wednesday. I'll let you know how it goes.

One of the reasons Wenday and I didn't do more sewing yesterday is, we--Tessa and Lily also-- took a break at midday to go to the Empty Bowls lunch in Menomonie. We had our soup lunch served in hand made pottery bowls that we brought home with us. This is an annual fundraiser for the local food shelf and the soup was sooooo good--win-win all around, I think. Here are the bowls we brought home:

Another gorgeous day!

Saturday and the sun is shining in a brilliant blue sky! I love early spring. I can see the driveway from my window and it's filled with puddles of melted snow.

My niece, Wendy, came over last night for a sewing retreat and we have 2 tables set up on the living/dining room. She's working on a batik lap quilt

made out of these fabrics. It's been several years since she's done any sewing so I'm kind of coaching her a bit as she goes along. I'm continuing to work on the Irish Chain. Please let me get it done this weekend--I'm so sick and tired of working on it!

Sick child

I've been up since before 5 am with Lily who has a bad cold and another ear infection. Tessa works this morning and when she gets home, I'll go to work for the afternoon. This is about the 3rd ear infection this winter and she's had at least 6 colds--one right after the other. The ENT doc says she needs to have her tonsils and adenoids out soon, so maybe Tessa will get that set up this afternoon.

I got a pair of these living room tables about 25 years ago. Now they are in the garage airing out a little before I bring them inside. The products used on them are pretty stinky!

I hope to get some work done on the quilt borders this morning since I'm home with Lily. Then I have to make a pouch for Jo to carry her small electronics in while she's in the Kyrgyz Republic and also have to make an apron as a gift for her host mother.

BTW, that carrot salad I made the other night was a hit! Everyone loved it--definitely a keeper recipe.

Sheep/Lamb Applque pattern request

I got no quilting done last night. I was at a meeting of the Folk Arts Coooperative from 5:30 until 9:00, and I was exhausted when I got home! We got a tremendous amount of work done and set the store opening date for April 5 or sooner if we can. So excited to actually see the place open up!

Unfortunately, one of the members of the group (a person who joined at a later date) has a quite abrasive manner to her speech and tone of voice that just grates on me. She also is quite agressive in her speech, both of which leave me extremely tense and stressed out. I have developed a plan to use with her to hopefully diminish some of these behaviors, but frankly, I don't know how much more of her I can take.

Tonight I have Spanish class and won't get home before 8:30 but maybe I can get some stitching done before going to bed. Don took off this morning for his golf trip in S Carolina and will be gone for over a week--should be nice and quiet in the house.

I'm always glad when he gets home, though.

Another day of brilliant sun--is this the calm before the big March blizzard that we always get right around high school tournament time? Yikes!

This Week

I have been training this week, driving 1 1/2 hours both ways. At least they said they'll give us mileage, whew!!!

I'll post some pics of the lovely snow we had this week. We've had some unusual weather this winter. Alabama doesn't get snow and when we do it's just 1/2 inch or dusting. We had some nice snows recently.

We had the most glorious early spring day ever! Brilliant blue skies, birds singing in the trees, and temps above 40 degrees. Snow melting all over! Even with the snow melt we've been having the past few days, we still have at least a foot left on the ground so it'll be a while before the spring flowers start poking up. But we have hope that Spring will come soon.

Yesterday was quite busy. I was home with Lily last night and after supper and her reading time, she and I went into the hot tub. What bliss! We both got straight into our jammies afterwards, watched an episode of "Kipper" on Sprout tv and then Lily went right to sleep, freeing me up to work on my quilting.

I got the camera out and have a picture of the medallion quilting I've done on the Irish Chain quilt. I'm pleased with how it looks.

As I said in a previous post, I stitched the center design and then went back and added another design to fill the unstitched corners. I think the two designs work well together. Last night I was able to mark some of the design for the narrow first border and got 2 sides stitched.

I also made a carrot salad using a Bobby Flay recipe I found on-line. There's a meeting the the board of directors for the new co-operative and we'll begin with a pot luck supper so I thought this might work:

This is partially cooked carrots with a dressing of lemon juice, fresh minced garlic, cumin, cayenne pepper and salt, whisked together with olive oil. Heavenly! I'll sprinkle some chopped parsley on it before I present it to the group.

We will be working on a schedule of things that have to happen prior to opening the doors of the shop. We are now the official renters of the store and I think we should open the doors to customers as soon as we can since we're paying rent, but there is so much to do first. I know we'll get it all done--we are WOMEN, after all. If we can give birth to our babies and raise them, we certainly can open up and run a store, right?

Pin Cushion

This morning, I made my 6 month visit to the dentist. Not such a bad thing, I guess. As usual, I need to floss more--such a chore! But both the hygenist and the doc complimented me on how well I'm doing since I've had the braces on for about 10 months now. Only 14 more to go! Whoo Hoo!

I went to a quilt guild meeting last night. This is the second meeting of this group that I've gone to and I can't decide if I want to join. They seem like a nice enough bunch of women, but I don't know if I want more quilting obligations in my life right now. I'll probably shell out my $15 and join but will have to monitor how much I get involved with them.

Since I went to the meeting, I did nothing on the Irish Chain last night except look at it and admire it. ;-) This morning, I had time before the dentist to calculate how I'm going to fit the pattern onto the borders--how to evenly space the pattern around the quilt. For once, it will fit pretty easily with no difficult math calculations to do. That's a first!

No pix yet--I'm spending the evening at home tonight with Lily (5 y/o grandaughter who lives with us) and should be able to get the camera out.

Happy March 1!

This is the first day of my March challenge to add an entry every day. Why didn't I decide to do this in February, the shortest month? Oh well.

My weekend was pretty busy with quilting things. Went to a class on Sat AM on "story book" quilting. This was how to take a theme of some kind and create a quilt using blocks that had some connection to the theme. I chose one of my favorite songs, "All My LIfe's a Circle" for my theme and designed a quilt using blocks that had circles and curves in them. Turned out pretty good, if I do say so. We had pot luck for lunch and I brought a casserole and, as usual, left the pan in the fridge. Now I have to find someone with a key who can let me into the building to get the pan out before it turns green and fuzzy.

I squeezed in some quilting on all three evenings and am so pleased with the progress I'm making on that Irish Chain quilt. I finished all the medallions that go in the large white blocks and then decided I needed to add more to them, so I finished them with little squiggly designs in the empty white spaces around the medallions. I'll take pix tonight and will post tomorrow so you can see. Then last night I found a pattern to use in the narrow first border and I think I've decided on one for the second larger border. I'd hoped to have the quilting finished on this one by the end of the weekend, but not so. Maybe next weekend--it has to be ready for St. Patrick's Day!

New Missions

Well, I got two new projects to show everyone. The numbers four patch is a gift to a family friend who is expecting. The other is just a completed top I made with prints that I had purchased because I liked them. To the left you can see Blake starting to run across it.

I am very excited about a few things happening in my sewing life. I have (possibly foolishly) decided to go on a fabric famine, no purchases for as long as I can possibly hold out. I have limited storage space, and feel I should really use more of what I have before I get more (unless I can find a better place to hide it....)

The other thing is that I have been wanting to do something with some of the quilts I have and will make. I don't always have someone to give them to, but now I have found out about Project Linus, an organization that accepts quilts for children who need them. They go the kids that are ill, have had a tramatic event or just in need. I started to read about them, and cried when I read some of the stories from families that got the quilts. It could just be that being a mother makes me want to help other kids, especially kids who need help. Very excited to start :)

Making progress!

Yay! I finished the straight stitching/cross hatching through the green squares on my Irish Chain! Now it's on to the decorative quilting in the white blocks. I marked the quilt top before I pinned it and I used a mechanical pen marker from Fons and Porter. But now it looks as though most of the markings have rubbed off already. There's only a faint line left that I'm not sure I'll be able to see well enough. I may have to go back to using the Golden Threads paper that I've been happy with in the past. (But which is pretty expensive so I like to "save" it. For what, I don't know.

)

At any rate, it's on to the fun part! Tomorrow I'm going to a quilting workshop--Storybook quilting. I'm not real sure what that is, but we have to bring pencils, compasses, protractors, grid paper, etc, so I think we're going to be designing blocks or something. Should be intersting at least!

I'm on a roll

A March Challenge

Last night, I got the idea

to post an entry onto this blog every day in March. Can I do it? YES, but I may miss a day or two somewhere in the month.

I'm challenging my fellows on MQB to join me in this challenge--can we each post an entry every day? Of course, why not, absolutely! I'm sure we all read the blogs every day. Our lives should be interesting enough to have something to say every day, even if it's only slightly quilting related. And if my life isn't as interesting as I'd like it to be, I can do something to make sure it is!

Come on, everyone--A Blog A Day In March! That's ABADIM! Wow!

Let's just do it!!!!!!