Basket Winner!

I went over last week to our new quilt shop, The Quilt Loft, in Upland CA.  I just happened to be in the area.  (big grin)

I didn't realize it was during the time of the quilter's run, and there were gift baskets to be given away.

Well, never one to pass up a chance to win, I signed up for the drawing.  I made the comment that I never win anything when I dropped my name in the hat!  Guess what?  I won one of the baskets!

Keri McClung, the owner, called me with the good news.  I stopped by yesterday to pick it up.  The basket is filled with everything to make a small quilt.  The pattern is "Basket Lattice" by Sheri Pape Designs.  Theres's a Bali Pop, the black background, and even the backing and binding for the quilt!  Penny likes the goodies!  I think she was looking for a treat!

Keri also included in the basket a market bag from Andover Fabrics.  It's large and roomy.  I love these types of bag!

If anyone is in the area, The Quilter Loft is located at 300 N. Mountain in Upland.  Their phone number is 909/949-0444.  Such a cute shop!!

Blurry Pictures

I don't know what I did to the settings on my camera.  I must have hit something and now I can't figure out how to get it back to normal.  Seems like the story of my life!

Anyway, excuse the blurry pictures.

I had to run an errand today, so I decided to stop by the Quilt Loft, the new quilt shop in Upland/Montclair.  I don't know which city it's in because the town borders are all jumbled up there.  Sheesh, I'm a bundle of confusion these days, and I can't even blame it on drugs!

Anyway ....

I got to visit with a couple of friends there, and I did manage to leave a little bit of money behind.  It's been forever and a day since I've been in a quilt shop.  It was fun looking around the new shop.

This new Creative Grids Pineapple Trim Tool caught my eye.  They had a display with the step-by-step sewing process.

It sure looked easy enough.  I'll give this a whirl when I get the new machine set up in the new table so I can finally sew.  I was thinking driving home that this would look great in the old Robyn Pandolph fabrics -- you know, back when she was with Moda.  I'll probably choose a blue for the centers and then go from there.  Lord knows I have enough RP fabrics to quilt the world!

The cutest little Sandy Gervais pattern, "Peak Color," using her Posh Pumpkins line.  I love her little patterns.  I've made several of them but none are quilted yet.  At least I don't think any are quilted.  Need to definitely get going on remedying that!



And I couldn't resist "All A  Flutter," a Cotton Way pattern by Bonnie Olaveson.  I absolutely adore Bonnie and Camille's patterns. 

I had fun for the hour I was there.  I need to do that more often!!

Home Again

Well, I don't know about "home," but I'm back in SoCal.

I had a wonderful trip, but it was hot and wet!  Even when it wasn't raining, it was wet!  I'll sure need to get used to that again.  I now fully understand when people talk about dry heat!

Pretty much stayed in the air conditioning.  The one time I went outside with the neck brace on, I was steaming! 

I didn't take many pictures, but here are a few.

I am captivated by Resurrection fern.  It grows on all the oak trees down there.  When it doesn't rain, the fern is brown like in this picture.

Immediately when it started to rain, the fern greened up!  It would stay green for a day or two and then turn brown again.

It did that a few times while I was there.  I loved watching it!

Also I was so sad that I missed the azaleas.  While walking around the yard, I found a bloom -- one bloom -- but that was enough!

And there was a turtle in the pool one morning!  (S)he was rescued, but was fun to watch for a while.  Those suckers swim fast!  When we would go near the pool, it would dive down to the bottom and tuck in the shell.

 

 

I ate lots of shrimp, fish, and attended a crawfish and crab boil.  It was so hot there that day that I ate very little.  The next day my family made crawfish etoufee out of the leftovers, so I was a happy camper!

 

Penny is waiting to be picked up, so I must get a move-on!  I miss that little snot!  

 

Greetings

Greetings from Louisiana!

Another post without pictures.  No camera cord.  (sigh)

This trip was very hastily planned as I wasn't cleared to fly until Saturday, June 1st, when the doctor called me with test results.  I flew out on Tuesday.  The trip about did me in.  It took two days to recover, but I can report that all is better now.

I was awakened this morning by rumbling thunder.  O-M-G, it's raining so hard outside!  If this much rain hit Southern California, we'd be sliding off into the Pacific.  I tried standing on the porch to watch the rain, but the lightning scared me.  So I'm snuggled up on the sofa with a cup of coffee listening to it really coming down hard.  I love this kind of weather, but, of course, I'm not a farmer and I don't have to drive on the freeways today, so that's easy for me to say!

So far I haven't done much here except trips to Lowe's, Walmart and Winn-Dixie!  I was going to do some exploring today, but I guess that's out with the rain.  I sure hope I can get some boiled crawfish while I'm here.  My brother and sister-in-law had a commitment this weekend, so I was on my own.  I was invited to meet friends at a restaurant to get crawfish last night, but I had no clue how to get there, so thought it best I not get lost on dark country roads.  I'm sure Search & Rescue have more important things to do than go looking for a lost Left Coast gal!

Speaking of that, I'm reminded again and again that I'm a "foreigner" in this part of the country.  It's really funny because hardly a day goes by in California without someone asking me where I'm from - the accent, you know.  Well, two or three times this past week someone here asked me the same question.  Sheesh...

I might try to embroider a bit today.  I've had no luck thus far because of the weakness of my left hand, but I keep trying. 

I'll see if I can't pick up a camera cord this week and post some pictures.

Gosh, I'm happy as a pig in mud being here.  Too bad I've used up every bit of leave and vacation for these surgeries.  It will be a long while before I'm able to come home again.

Poking Buttons

I figured if I can't sew right now, I might as well poke some buttons!

Market pictures were reviewed and there were one or two things that caught my eye.  Just one or two.  Yes, I do have a fever now, so maybe that will change, but for now I'm being a good girl.  I haven't been doing much window shopping lately, so some of these might have been shown before Market, but they're new to me.

The first thing that caught my eye, and took my breath away, was Moda Collections for a Cause Clamshell kit.  Wow!  I saw an antique clamshell many years ago, and it has always been in the back of my mind.  I'm definitely going to make this one, and maybe enlarge it to fit my bed.  I think it will be heavy but that's okay since there are usually two quilts on my bed in the wintertime.  Not sure I like the border on it, so might see how it looks without the border.  Isn't it wonderful?!!

The next one is this Primrose & Poppies pattern by It's Sew Emma.  I think I'm going to stash dive for this one.  '30s?  Thimble Blossom brights?  The possibilities are endless.  I belong to the It's Sew Emma pattern club, so I didn't have to poke this button.  Another It's Sew Emma pattern I love is William's Crossing.  It's simple and would also be a good stash buster, but I love that fabric there.  Uh oh, I feel another poke coming on!

And, of course, no button-poking diva would be true to herself without ordering the Bunnyhill Design BOM, A Woodland Christmas.  Another beauty by Anne Sutton.  I have so many of her BOMs in various stages.  Need to pick one and finish it!  They're irresistible to me!

Of course, some things are just sitting out there teasing me:

Minick & Simpson's new line, Midwinter Reds
Bunny Hill 's new line, Celebration
French General's new line, Josephine
Bonnie & Camille's new line, Scrumptious

I guess no packages will be arriving since almost everything is in "Coming Soon."  (sigh)  That, however, may be a good thing!!

Nothing Going On

There is absolutely nothing going on in the LA Quilter household.  Seriously, nothing!

You know it's pretty bad when the only thing you have to take a picture of is the stupid crock pot.

I have a tri tip roast in there and it sure is smelling good.  A couple of more hours to go.  Penny keeps going in the kitchen and looking at the stove with her nose twitching. 

I've taken to organizing small projects.  A couple of days ago it was a drawer in my bedroom.  This morning it was the drawer in the kitchen that has the Ziploc bags, etc.  Tomorrow will be filing paperwork and making some new files.  A task a day will eventually get the job done.

The Kindle has gotten quite the work-out this week.  Four books.  Admittedly a couple of them were little more than long short stories, but it feels good to be reading again after months of not being able to do so.  I can read for about an hour and then my neck starts hurting.  So I take an hour or so break and go back to it.  TV is totally boring.  I mean, there is hardly anything on worth watching other than the History Channel and the Cooking Channel, etc.  I've watched every DVD I have - and there's a lot of them - sometimes more than once.  Time to go DVD shopping again!

This morning I was looking through some pictures that I downloaded off my camera back in February.  We had a really hard hail storm one day.  The next morning when I took Penny out, the hail was still stuck in the flower beds where the sun doesn't shine very much.  This picture was taken on 2/8/13.  It looks like snow.  A really unusual sight seeings as how I live in basically an irrigated desert.

Penny started to walk on it and then quickly crawfished back onto the sidewalk.  What a weenie!  It was funny, though, because she had never seen anything icy on the ground.

I've kind of been watching the Spring Markets reports from Portland, but not as avidly as I usually do.  I've seen a few patterns that I'd like to have, and a couple of Moda lines that look interesting.  I must have the blahs .......

That's it from here.  Thought I'd best post something because friends are emailing and calling to check up on me.

An Errand a Day

My new mantra, "An errand a day keeps boredom away."  Well, it works for me.

Yesterday was my day to mail packages.  Sorry to all of you who have been waiting, but I had to wait until Thursday so the maid service could help me get them in the car.  I went to a mailing place that I knew would unload them for me.  So they're off.  Marilyn, yours is still here because I ran out of boxes.  I bought a box and I hope to get those off to you this weekend.

I stopped by a preview opening of a new quilt shop here.  The shop is adorable.  It kind of reminds me of the layout at Temecula Quilt Company except there are no Civil War fabrics in there, or at least none that I could see.  It's bright and open.  I hope she does well.

Going through the scraps was quite the experience.  I couldn't imagine why in the world I had some of those scraps, but then I would remember this or that quilt. 

You know how quilters say their scraps seem to multiply?  I figured it out.

All of those scraps were compressed into this folding laundry bag that had been sitting next to my cutting table for years.  I set it next to the 750 for perspective.

Well, the scraps in that bag filled up two and a half plastic tubs like that picture in my last post.  I laughed out loud because I remembered when I was a  youngster, Daddy telling me about digging a hole and filling it back up, and how the stage of the moon affects how much of that dirt will fit back into the hole.  We actually did some experiments on this.  That was such fun for a six- or seven-year-old.

But I digress.

I've solved the scrap riddle.  It's fluffing them up that makes it seem like more!  Quite scientific, right?!!!!!  I'm sure that explains the dirt thing, too!

Anyway, those scraps are gone.  All that's left in the bottom of the scrap bag are a few plastic Ziplocs with scraps I want to keep.  I've made a couple of quilts for children, and I hesitate to toss the larger scrap pieces.  You know, repairs and such.  Might forward those on to their mamas to hang onto.  Yeah, that's what I'll do!

The 750 problem is solved. I ordered a new table that would accommodate her.  It'll be about a month before it arrives.  Horn is located somewhere in Canada, and they're in the process of moving their factory to Kansas.  So production will be delayed a bit.  That's okay.  This weekend I'm going to unbox the 350 and get it set up on my SewEzi table.  I remembered to order the new insert for that, so I'm good to go.  I have a quilt needing a binding.  It might take me a while to get it machined on, though, as I can't sit for very long, but I want to do some hand stitching so I can see how weak my left thumb is to discuss with the doctor on my next visit.  I tried applique a couple of weeks ago and I couldn't get a grip on it.  I'm thinking maybe a binding won't be so hard to hold because of the help from the binding clips.  More experiments here.

I lead SUCH an exciting life these days!