Thanksgiving

Ostensibly this blog is about quilting. But how can you write about quilting when you haven’t set foot inside your studio for three weeks? (Okay I snuck in there yesterday for a black licorice and some Mike and Ikes.)

Hit a couple of local quilt shops yesterday with my friend Deb. We hit Needleworks in the north. Allison has a great new store. I can’t wait until she finishes hanging all those quilts and unpacks all those new fabrics. Then, we hit My Sewing Room in the south. Anne has a great staff and a huge selection of fabric. Can you believe I didn’t buy anything? Not even a coffee. I hate being on a tight budget, but until my machine is up and running again disposable income is nil.

On the plus side of having one’s machine down is that you get to spend more time outside in the lovely fall air. It’s been warm here. Hot enough for shorts and a sleeveless top. I’ve got a TAN. Yup its true. I have a lovely tan now, and I didn’t have even a hint of one all year. Gotta love Indian Summer. (Or whatever those of you who are politically correct call it now.) And, the fencing is getting close to completion.

It is Thanksgiving Weekend here in Canada. Spent last night at home with hubby. Tonight the girls come over with their men. For those of you who don’t know I have 23 year old twin daughters. Tomorrow is drinks with friends and Monday is Thanksgiving dinner. We’re going to be radical this year and not have turkey. Yup, I said it. NO TURKEY! Superstore has prime rib on sale. So, Dave shall barbeque a prime rib roast. Mmmmm. I’m drooling already.

I have to tell you I am indeed thankful this year. I have a great life, a wonderful family, a terrific extended family, and am happy and healthy. To the universe I say "thanks for all you have given me."

Don't forget to visit my website and check out my patterns. Sign up for my website mailing list and recieve two entries to the Fall into Fall Blog Hop prize draw. http://www.pinefreckleforest.com/

QUESTION OF THE DAY: What are you thankful for?

Still need pickets, headers and
footers on our side.



The hideous slope in our back yard.
It drops about six feet in about 30 feet.




The final two sections are still to
be finished, but we are almost
done. All the pickets are on this part.
Just headers and footers left.



Fall into Fall

So the blog hop continues. It is great to have you all popping in, and wonderful to hear from new visitors and from old subscribers alike.

Check out the last two postings for September for details on how to enter to win! Fat quarter bundles, patterns and …

Love those fall colors.

Fish Creek Park

Hubby and I try to walk in the local park a couple times every week. I love the fall. I find the pretty colors, the crunching of leaves and the rustle of dry tree branches very peaceful. I’m busy blanket stitching a fall table runner. It is fairly small, but then my coffee table is small. And, I don’t want anything too large on the kitchen table as that just encourages the cats to sleep there.

I finally heard from APQS. The computer boards from my longarm are finally back in the mail. It is only two weeks late. I guess there was some trouble with the servicing of them. But I am glad they are coming back. I’ve got stacks of customer quilts to get finished. The Christmas quilting rush is due to start any day and I want to fit in the projects I finished while the machine was down. I might be putting in some long days in the studio. But, that’s okay. I love my work. It is time consuming, occasionally frustrating, the pay isn’t all that I would like it to be, but I love it. It allows me to be creative, to set my own hours. I can work early or late as I choose. Really, it doesn’t get much better than this.

Tonight I shall hit the studio (after a day of fence building) and work on my fall table runner.

QUESTION OF THE DAY: Do you like applique? What is your favorite technique? Hand? Machine? What is your favorite edge stitch method? If you had to choose a season, what season would you choose and what types of things would you applique onto a table runner to celebrate that time of year?

Late Summer Flowers and Fencing

Wow. I cannot believe the great suggestions for organizing my studio. Jars, plastic bins, shoe-boxes, hangars to hold partially completed quilts and fabric. They are all such wonderful ideas. I love that so many of you have the dedication to clean every day, or after every project. I don’t even clean my house that often. Is it bad that I bought a new mop and it took me four months to get around to using it. I was using the dirty dish-rag, dropping it on the floor and ‘foot scrubbing’. This in is part because I have a lot of irons in the fire and keep pretty busy, but mostly its because I’m lazy. You will be pleased to know that I’m back in the groove and scrubbing about once a week. There’s only my hubby and I living here, and we generally can clean up after ourselves.
The fencing continues. It rained yesterday, so I baked a birthday cake for hubby. I’ll ice it today. Dinner with the kids tonight. Gonna paint some more pickets in the garage, as it is still raining this morning. With luck, it will dry out soon and we can get back at it. We don’t dare take too much time off from the fence building, as one of the pitfalls of living in the north is that snow often comes early. We would like to get this infernal fence finished before the snow flies. That could be days, hours or weeks.

I love winter. It’s the perfect season for my favorite sport. Quilting! I can spend as much time at it as I want and the only yard work worry is an occasional shoveling of the sidewalks. I would be inclined to skip that if I could, but the snow police would give me a ticket and my clients might slip when they stop by to pick up their quilts.

 

Look at this last little flower of summer. Found this ‘volunteer’ pansy growing along side the garage in a crack in the sidewalk. Doesn’t it look like a wee little face?

QUESTION OF THE DAY: What is your favorite winter ‘sport’? And, why do you love it?

Quilting Weakness

Fall into Fall Blog Hop Continues. Wecome all you new readers. Good to have you with me.

My weakness is quilting. I love it, I live for it and I can’t live without it. A day doesn’t go by without me stitching away at something. A couple of years ago I even burned the potatoes on Christmas day. The family was busy playing games and I was puttering away in the kitchen. I decided that I had a few minutes while I waited for the spuds to start boiling. So, I snuck into my studio. My studio door is beside the kitchen as my studio is the old formal living and dining rooms of our house. I popped into my room and resumed stitching on my current project. I was sewing away, listening to the ruckus sounds of everyone playing and before I knew it I could smell something hot. A flew back into the kitchen and darned if the potatoes hadn’t boiled dry. I caught them in time that they were usable, but it was a real close call.

I love when I get lost in my work like that. Time flies away and I’m having nothing but fun. And really, is there a better sound than your family having fun and playing together? I’ve learned to be more disciplined now, and don’t allow myself to sneak into the studio while I am cooking. Well, unless the timer is set anyway.
Even over the past few days I’ve found time for a bit of hand-work. We’re building a fence between us and the neighbors. We’ve had a fence on two sides ever since we moved in eight years ago. The final piece of fence had never been built. But, as the neighbors (three different ones) didn’t really care, we didn’t either. Our new neighbors are great, but they have two wee little dogs. They don’t like chasing them to keep them in their yard, and we don’t like the puppy presents they leave behind. As much as we like the dogs, the compromise seemed to be a new fence.


Our fence is much more complicted
than this one. But, I'm too lazy
to haul out the camera. I'll
post pictures when it
is finished.

 This fence is the most complicated fence in the universe. Holes and grooves, pickets, cross stringers, headers, caps, pickets and more. We wanted to match the existing fence, but underestimated how complicated it is. It took a full day to build the first section. We’re faster now and hope to have all but two sections finished today. These sections will require some engineering as we have to go around a transformer and a window box.

Back to the point of this. Hand stitching. I love it! I’ve managed to slip in a few minutes of work each evening after it is too dark to fence. I am working on a hand applique wall hanging. Its about 36 inches square and all Baltimore album style blocks. I’m hand stitching the appliques onto the borders now. It’s slow work, but relaxing. It relaxes me and helps me unwind. I think I might even hand quilt this one.

QUESTION OF THE DAY: What is your favorite type of quilting?
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See my September 30th posting for details on how to enter the draws.