Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Penny is in the Hospital

I've seen more than my fair share of vets these past few months, haven't I?

Penny was really sick when I got home last night. Nothing was staying down - or in, if you get my drift. After a night of sitting up with her, I took her with me to work, and got in for an appointment late morning.

They rehydrated her, found the problem, put her on antibiotics, and she'll be fine. When I spoke to the vet at 5:30, he said she was feeling much better. In fact, she was sitting in her kennel making cute faces and they were making her bark. He was laughing so hard about her funny bark. He said, "She sort of has to wind up to it, doesn't she?" See? I told you all that!!

It's quiet here tonight. I stood at the door when I got home with the leash in my hands. Heck, maybe I should have just gone for a walk by myself. Of course, I wouldn't need the leash - I don't think. I heel fairly well at my ripe old age!

I'm going to be having a stash busting give-away here real soon. I just need to get it organized. I'll probably post about it this weekend. Stay tuned!

Edit: Well, that bolt of aged muslin from Kimberly came in! All 15 yards of it! Guess I'd better get organized on that give-away before Sunday's stash report!

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Simply Sophisticated Month 10 Winner

The winner of this month's drawing for the $25 gift certificate from The Fat Quarter Shop is .......

CAROL at CAROLSCRAFTBLOG!

Congratulations, Carol. I'll email you in a few minutes with your gift certificate. Be sure to let us know what you buy!

A huge thank you to Kimberly and Kevin at The Fat Quarter Shop for so generously donating the gift certificates. There are two more months to go - on the BOM! Kimberly and Kevin and Miss Emma have only a week to go before the birth of those baby boy twins! We're all so excited for you two!

Stash Report Week 30

Simply Sophisticated BOM monthly drawing is this evening. Post your finishes HERE!

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Stash report -- what a joke! Same song, third verse. Nothing in, nothing out. I do still have some things to be mailed out, but I haven't calculated yardage yet. Will do that later today or next week.

I'll for sure need to do that by next Sunday - to hopefully nullify the bolt I ordered from Kimberly of aged muslin. This stuff is wonderful. If you haven't checked it out yet, do it now - before I buy it all! LOL

Long Beach quilt show was yesterday. Oh, my, the Convention Center is humongous and chocked full of quilt vendors. I was SO good! Everyone would be proud of me!

I picked up a few patterns that Kimberly didn't have, a book, a couple of Marti Michell templates and rulers, YLI silk thread, found a source for wool floss, and also bought a few antique spindles and bobbins to add to my (dust catching) collection. Oh, and some dishtowels for embroidery. What? No fabric? Nope, none! Not an inch of fabric! Call the paramedics. I must be really sick! :)

The best part of the day was meeting Julie! What an absolutely delightful young lady! She is SO full of energy! Julie has been quilting seven or eight years already! She was wearing the cutest Moda Bake Shop skirt that she made. Jane and I only spent about 30 minutes with her, but we both came away thinking what a remarkable person she is. I see bright years ahead for Julie in quilting!

I have a major project looming on the homefront. I need to lasso all this fabric up and put it away. So I plan on doing some rearranging, some tubbing and boxing up, some purging of quilty stuff ... if you're a quilter, you probably know what I'm talking about. Some of it has to do with the fact that my tastes have changed a little - I'm a bit more focused now (don't laugh)- and a lot of it has to do with the fact that I don't want to live in a quilt shop any more. I want my house back! So we'll see how much I get accomplished over the next couple of months, but I'm going to at least give it the old college try.



Penny is guarding her toys carefully in case I decide HER tastes have changed, too!

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Hot Hot Week

Simply Sophisticated BOM monthly drawing is this Sunday evening. Post your finishes HERE!

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It's SO hot. I was all nice and cozy in the office today, and when I opened the front door to go to lunch I felt like I had been hit with a sledgehammer. I never cooled off all afternoon.

When I got home, Penny ran right out on the patio and laid right on the scorching concrete - and fell asleep! Didn't bother her one bit.

I wanta be a dog!

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Stash Report Week 29



Penny is helping me ponder this whole stash busting thing! She thinks standing in front of the bolts on the staircase is a big help!

My report this week is the same as last week -- nothing in; nothing out. However, I did contemplate a couple of projects this week that I've decided to abandon. Well, not abandon totally; just not finish. I'm going to ship both of those out to others who will finish them or throw them in the garbage can. One is a Heartstrings quilt that I just can't seem to finish assembling. I'm sure someone will finish it up for me. The second is a quilt that I started, and a friend liked the pattern. So I'm going to send her the pattern -- and the unfinished quilt. (hee-hee) Anyway, next week I'll for sure have those two things on my busted list! And two empty UFO tubs!

So once again ...

Year-to-Date Totals:

Busted: 124.75 yards
Purchased: 428.875 yards
Net YTD: <304.125> yards

I can't help adding this picture. I know everyone who reads this is probably totally sick of puppy pictures, but that's about all I've got going right now except for work. I know no one wants to see pictures of that!!

Her new thing is sitting on the first landing of the staircase and barking at me when I talk to her. Her bark is really funny - she has to sort of wind up to it. Kinda like, "errrrrrrrrrrrr, ruff" with a high squeak at the end of the ruff. It's so funny. Sometimes the bark doesn't come out and she has to start over with the "errrrrrrrrrr."

I tried to get a picture of her barking because it's cute. Her front feet come off the ground, her ears fly up, her mouth makes a big "O" and then she drops down on her stomach. I snapped during the process and got this. I've named it "Inside a Bark."



I really need to get a life!

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Simply Sophisticated Block 10



Folks, I see a pattern developing here. I'm posting BOM envelopes instead of blocks. (sigh). Good news - I finished up the hard stuff at work today, so I should be getting back on my usual schedule.

Please post a comment on this blog post and link back to your blog and a picture of your blocks to be entered in the 10th monthly drawing for a $25 gift certificate from The Fat Quarter Shop! If you don't have a blog, you must email me a picture of your blocks to be entered in the drawing.

The drawing will take place on Sunday, July 26th, at around 6:00 p.m. California time.

Good luck to everyone!

And once again, to Kimberly and Kevin and the adorable Miss Emma at the Fat Quarter Shop, thank you!!

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Stash Report Week 28

Zero purchases, zero busts. I have at least two more weeks of no sewing, maybe three. The Long Beach quilt show is coming up at the end of this month, so maybe I'll get some inspiration there. One can only hope!

Year-to-Date Totals:

Busted: 124.75 yards
Purchased: 428.875 yards
Net YTD: <304.125> yards

It's becoming painful to make these reports ........

Of course, it doesn't bother Penny one iota!

Saturday, July 11, 2009

I'm NOT Naming Names ...

But *someone* I know is really FAR behind on her BOMs!

Friday, July 10, 2009

Swamped

I am so totally swamped at work. Haven't done much else when I get home than walk Penny and read a few blogs before I go to bed. I'm such a boring person. I don't even think I've poked any buy buttons at The Fat Quarter Shop. Kimberly is going to think I've fallen off the face of the earth!

Penny is bored, too. It's too much work dragging leaves and sticks into the house. Better just to lay out on the patio and chew them out there.



I've totally given up on trying to block the staircase to keep her from going upstairs. I just closed all the bedroom doors up there. She makes it game to see how fast she can run the stairs, throw herself at my bedroom door, and then dash down two steps at a time. If we could only bottle her energy!

Sunday, July 05, 2009

Stash Report Week 27

Nothing busted again, but I'm planning on serious busts starting Monday. Today will be cooking and doing some cleaning, and I seriously doubt I'll even touch the Bernina.

I did try to work on a BOM block yesterday, but the one attempt at chain piecing some HSTs was a disaster. I hadn't secured the bobbin in and had a bird's nest of thread on the back of the blocks. So those seams were unsewed and there they sit. Maybe today.

I thought I was purchase-free this week, but spotted an unopened box last night. A tower of Shirtings and a pattern. These fabrics will go well with patriotics or in the blue/shirtings quilt AND the basket blocks. So a good purchase. I love getting bundles - or towers, as I call them. Such a neat package of fabrics, but it's a lot of fabric. In this instance, 10 yards. Yikes!

Penny was such a big help to me yesterday while I was sweeping the patio. I swept all the leaves up in a pile and went inside to get a trash bag. Came back out and she was having a ball running through the pile and scattering them everywhere! It was funny ... she's funny ... yes, I had to sweep again. :) While I was on the phone with Jane last night, Penny decided she should play right by me with her talking ball and bark at it. She made us both laugh. :)

Year-to-Date Totals:

Busted: 124.75 yards
Purchased: 428.875 yards
Net YTD: <304.125> yards

Saturday, July 04, 2009

Happy July 4th!

Sorry I don't have something patriotic to post about, but I've been busy this morning.

The Frigidaire freezer was delivered at 9:30 a.m. I got up at 4:30, pulled the QuiltMobile out of the garage and into guest parking, and swept the whole garage out. That took until after 7:00. Then I dashed upstairs to shower and get dressed because my delivery time was between 8 and 10:00.



This is a 16 point something cubic foot. I was afraid it wasn't big enough. Lordy, it's huge! I moved the boxes of steaks out of my side-by-side because they almost filled it completely. I started laughing because the boxes look so tiny in the new freezer!

Then I made breakfast and wanted to take a nap, but I made myself go to the market. First I stopped at Home Depot to buy another barbecue grill. Mine is only about two years old, but it needs to go in the garbage. You see, there are doves who nest in the eaves over my patio, and I left the top up on the grill one night to let it cool and I forgot about it. The next morning it was FULL of you-know-what. I considered cleaning it, but -- uh uh, it needed to be tossed!! Ain't enough disinfectants in the world!! :)

So I have a new Weber (which needs to be assembled) and this time I bought a cover for it. And I will move it into the alcove where the doves can't get to it!

I have to say here that last week I went to Home Depot and I could only find one guy to help me and he wasn't very nice. In fact, he was rude. So I left. Today everyone in the store was super helpful, nice, joking with me. It was a pleasure shopping there.

Now to Albertson's. I actually made a list of ingredients in some recipes I want to try that will freeze well. A BIG list! I started in the produce section. There were two gentlemen restocking produce, and they were so nice. I guess they don't have many ladies come in there asking differences in parsley, and for help identifying fresh herbs. I think they were having a good time explaining things to me. LOL. The meat market there is awesome, and the butchers are really nice about getting what I can't find or cutting things for me. Today was no exception.

Anyway, my basket was so overloaded that I was having trouble pushing it around. Two things I just couldn't find because this store is gigantic, so I gave up. The checkout lady asked me if I found everything, and I told her almost everything. She said she'd be happy to get the items I couldn't find, raisins and lemon juice, and she was back in a jiffy. So nice. Even the kid who loaded up my car for me was a doll.

I was just thinking last Saturday that I must be a magnet for rude people, because everywhere I went that day folks were so nasty to me. Today I take it all back. The folks in both Home Depot and Albertson's were extremely nice and friendly and smiling and helpful!

After unloading the QuiltMobile, I stepped in the bathroom and shrieked when I looked at myself in the mirror. I hadn't blown my hair dry and it was a curly mess. No make-up. Jeans that are huge on me -- Jane, you know the pair! I looked a sight! My mother was turning over in her grave!

Maybe that's why everyone was so nice to me today. They felt sorry for me!!!!! LOL

Now I'm too pooped to do any cooking tonight, but bright and early tomorrow I'm getting started. Don't know what recipes I'll make yet. I'll decide in the morning. I have a ton of meat in the refrigerator, and I need to freeze up what I don't use.

I am SO not Martha Stewart!

Friday, July 03, 2009

Friday -- Hooray!

This has been a l-o-n-g week! I thought it was Wednesday all day yesterday. It wasn't until I got home that I realized it was Thursday. Hellloooooo .... I think someone needs a vacation! We're off on Monday instead of today.

The freezer is being delivered tomorrow. They're to call me today to let me know what time. I hope it's early in the day, but my luck it'll be the last one on the truck! I'm going to be cooking and learning to use the Food Saver that I won on Judy's blog! I'm looking forward to having decent suppers! Mostly I'm looking forward to not wasting half of the food I cook.

So this weekend is cooking, sewing, laundry - and I'm sure vacuuming will be involved, probably twice a day. It's amazing how many leaves one little bitty puppy can find and bring in the house to mommy!

If you are off today, have a wonderful day!