suitcase, new living room chairs, new kitchen table & chairs

Michael left early on Tuesday (2/25) for his chiro appointment and then headed to AAA to start to plan our trip to visit Marc & Kate in June.  I ran around like a crazy person, doing laundry, dishes, and starting to pack my crafts (packing clothes is easy and quick, packing crafts to last me a week takes thought and time!) 

crafts finally packed...with a little room left over for clothes!

 

I got ingredients out of the freezer to make lasagna, but had to wait for it to thaw and for Michael to bring me home one of the cheeses to get started.  I got a 9” by 13” pan of lasagna made before Stitch & Chat and Michael ran it over to Jan.  Our chairs arrived just before I left:

action shot of one being delivered!

in place

they look rather nice, but need quilts on the back to perk
up the color!

I don't care about the color, seems soft enough to me!

I left S&C a bit early to hit the grocery store (I ran out of cottage cheese for the second lasagna) and ran home to put together a 10” by 10” pan for Michael.  Our table arrived while I was gone:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our chairs and our table look gorgeous, but will take some getting used to.  The chairs in the living room are 3 - 4 inches higher than our old ones...I feel like I'm sitting on a throne!  The kitchen table looks HUGE...probably because it is a rectangle, not an oval, the wood is darker and the backs of the chairs are much higher than our old ones.

Anyway, I made the one pot pasta for dinner, and then Michael left for the movies.  I got my clothes packed in about 10 minutes…giving me ample time to dip oreos to fill Michael’s cookie jar and to host Joanne and Jan, both of whom stopped down to see the new stuff.  I was beat by the time Michael got home from the movie and we went to bed a bit early.

Elsie & Cookie a trois

We got up rather late on Sunday (2/23) after our late night Saturday night and by the time we finished with breakfast and read the paper it was about time to get cleaned up and go to WHAT IS SUSAN”S SECRET…a play at the Lake House starring our neighbor Ann Mary.  What a VERY cute play with quite a few laughs…we also got to ‘meet & greet’ lots of people that we don’t see on a regular basis, so that was fun as well.  Michael made halushki’s for dinner, but instead of using egg noodles which he has always used in the past, he used gnocchi, which is what his grandmother used…dinner was delicious.  We both watched TV separately for most of the evening and I got the strata sewn for another set of tumbling blocks.

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Monday morning (2/24) Michael left early for golf at Chester, and it was all about paperwork for all of the morning and early afternoon for me.  I did have company downstairs while I was working on the computer:

notice how they're sleeping on MY blanket!

 

I finally got my health care spending account set up and got some doctor’s bills paid, printed and filled out forms to make withdrawals from our annuities and finalized the paperwork for the music scholarship Michael and I are setting up at my old high school, in memory of our parents (WHOO HOO!!).  I also spent a good bit of time pulling out fabric to make a bunch of pillow cases while I am in Connecticut.  My local quilt group meets at a church, and members of the church are doing a ‘mission trip’ to another town to work on people’s houses and yards.  They like to give each person in the house a pillowcase as a remembrance, and I figured those would be easy for me to work on while I’m visiting.  Finally at 2 PM I got to start working on my blocks.  Michael came home around 3 (with  a score of 90…he said his drives were incredible, but his short game fell apart L) and we got to talk for a bit before Phil picked him up for the SCCL association meeting.  I watched a movie and knit while he was gone and we both watched a bit of TV after he got home.

bread, Elsie & Cookie a trois, hair ?!, tumbling block #3

Michael spent Saturday (2/22) morning golfing (when he came home, he said it was just a slog through the mud...we had another huge rainstorm Friday morning), while I got to sew on my tumbling blocks and watch more Olympics.  I did put together bread dough first thing before heading to the studio since we had NONE in the house.  And just as an aside….it is really weird to walk into the kitchen and have no table and chairs!!!  I use my SILPAT whenever I am making dough.  After I’m done, I wipe it off and drape it over a chair to dry completely before I put it away..…WHAT???  no chair  L.  When I’m in the studio, it is always colder than the upstairs…so again…I come upstairs to shape the dough into loaves…I take off my jacket because now I’m hot and try to hang it on a chair…..you guessed it…still no chair.  I am relating it to the times the electricity goes out during a winter’s day.  I’m sitting there reading a book and I think ‘WOW – I would love some hot chocolate’ so I get up and head to the kitchen…brain wakes up…oh yeah….no electricity…..read some more…begin to think ‘I would really like to get some sewing in today’ stand up, walk over to top of stairs…brain wakes up again ‘no electricity’.  I don’t understand how my brain keeps phasing out like that…..NEVER MIND…..don’t all shout at once….I already KNOW I’m getting old  J.

Ya know…I was thinking about something while I was sewing, and I think my friend Mary Jo has to get some credit for these tumbling blocks.  I had been quilting for awhile, making quilts with ‘modern’ colors & fabrics, but still doing traditional blocks.  Mary Jo was the first one to do a ‘strips and curves quilt’…and she kept telling me if she could do it, I could do it.  At that time, Mary Jo did not consider herself an advanced quilter.  But if she was not (and I think that’s a big if) she more than made up for it with her artistic sense.  Because of her encouraging me on the strips and curves, I have made several and they are hanging in my living room.  And that was just the beginning….I’ve really gotten into more modern quilt patterns and I LOVE them.  So…if you really like my tumbling blocks…Mary Jo definitely deserves some of the credit J.

My bread was baking around 1:30 when Paula stopped down to borrow my strap turning tool…so I asked her if she wanted to chat for 15 minutes and by then the bread was done and she took home 1/2 a loaf: 

 

She told me she has become more anal and it’s all my fault!  She was making meatballs the other day, and got out her scale to weigh them to make sure each one weighed the same….I was laughing while she was telling me this story J. 

I sewed on and off through the afternoon (mostly with company):

 

stopping for a shower and to set my hair (I know this is silly, but I think my hair turned out particularly well and asked Michael to take a picture….why does it always look better in the back than in the front?):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We ate dinner (leftovers for me) and I made pot stickers for Michael, but I still managed to have this by the time we left at 6:30:

 

 

We headed to Ballentyne and hopped in Lisa & Dean’s car to go into Charlotte for BROADWAY ROCKS, the symphony pops concert at the Knight Theatre.  OMgoodness…it was a fabulous concert…maybe my favorite of this entire season…..they sang/played so many good songs from Phantom, Hair, Wicked and more.  When we left the theatre, Dean suggested we stop for a little dessert and let the crowd get out of the garage.  No only was the dessert fabulous (tiramisu and banana cream pie) but the orchestra, soloists and conductor all came to the restaurant for a nosh….so we got a chance to tell them how great the performnace was.  We were finally home at 11:45 and of course, we had to wait for the electric blanket to heat up…so we finally crawled into bed at 1:15 AM…..WAY too old for this  J.

 

I'll leave you with this final image......

thanks Mary Jo!!!

 

amaryllis second bloom, empty kitchen, empty living room

Again, Friday (2/21) seemed to go by in a flash.  Matt (computer repair guy) was in and out to take Michael’s computer (YAY that could be fixed) and to recycle my printer (which could not be fixed L ).  With BG’s help I ordered a new printer, which hopefully will come while I am visiting in CT.  ROCKY"S ELECTRIC came to finish up the whole house surge protector.  Michael got to paint a bit in the afternoon and I finally got all of my cutting done so that I could start to sew the final pieces on the triangles for tumbling block #3.  Around 4 PM things finally started to slow down…I began to set out tables and chairs for our first driveway party of the year, while Michael made 2 big batches of popcorn.  We invited many of the neighbors, as well as Carole & Roger that we met while golf carting around the other day.  We had a big crowd and I think everyone had a good time.  Carole & Roger wanted to tour our model and really liked everything.  Everyone was gone by 6:30 PM and Michael and I collapsed.  I watched FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL (one of my favorite movies…I borrowed it from the library), while Michael watched many of his shows upstairs.  We were both exhausted and fell into bed around 11.

So…you remember the amaryllis that my friend Paula gave us?  One stock bloomed previously and I posted pictures.  A second and much shorter stalk had just split at the top to show a bit of color from the bloom, when we came home one day and the stalk had totally bent and collapsed in the middle.  As hard as it is to believe, even though the stalk withered and got yellow, that bloom continued to emerge:

 

Isn’t that incredible?  As long as Michael was taking pictures, here’s one of our empty kitchen (can’t wait to get our new table on Tuesday):

And our rather empty living room (our reading chairs come on Tuesday as well):

Loree tumbling blocks, Argen's Sterling School quilt

Thursday (2/20) seemed to go by in a FLASH!  I went to quilting, and Loree brought her finished tumbling blocks top:

She and I are going to do a second one, and we’re going to do the same one…but she has to wait for me to finish my first one, so she has quite a while to gather her fabric!  We also had show and tell of one of the charity quilts that are being made for local school children.  I’m not sure this picture does it justice…I just loved it.  The print is a bunch of racing cars, and Argen picked up the colors of the cars and did snowball blocks in primary colors.  Where the corners come together, they create a secondary block:

I didn’t get home from quilting until 2 PM, which was rather late.  Michael got whole house surge protection scheduled in the afternoon and I took a quick trip to the library with Jan.  Michael and I left at 5 and picked up dinner at Bo Jangles before finding the perfect crème brulee serving dishes at BB&B, and then headed for the movies to see AUGUST:OSAGE COUNTY.  We read a review that said they put some funny bits in the movie that weren’t in the play….don’t you believe it…it was just as depressing as the play, but we had seen our friend Polly in the lead and wanted to see Meryl Streep do it.  When we got home, we watched a couple of sitcoms to cheer up before heading to bed.

Cookie in her favorite spot

As we walked back to the bedroom Tuesday morning (2/18) to make the bed, this is what greeted us:

If we waited for her to get down...the bed would NEVER get made! 

Michael and Phil managed to get in 9 holes of golf, while I spent the morning on 2 fruitless paperwork tasks.  I say fruitless because nothing got finally resolved and I still have 10 other things on my list of yucky tasks that I have to do L.  Michael came home from golf before NOON and we rushed out to re-look at a table we had seen on Monday.  The table was on sale Monday, but the salesperson said if we came right away, they would still give us the deal…so off we went…our new table comes next Tuesday.  Our new living room chairs come next Tuesday.  The bad news is, our old living room chairs, and kitchen table and chairs leave on Thursday.  So, we called Joanne and Larry (who we had invited to dinner on Friday) and rescinded our Friday night dinner invitation.  Actually, I said we weren’t rescinding it…just postponing it until we got a place to sit and eat.  On the way home, Michael dropped me off at Stitch & Chat and the day started looking up J.  Michael headed to the movies after dinner and I watched the Olympics and continued to knit on a baby sweater.

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I had to drag myself out of bed on Wednesday morning (2/19).  We had the loudest thunderstorm I’ve ever heard in my life Tuesday night…I think if I could have fit UNDER the bed…I would’ve!  After the storm was over, I still just tossed and turned and tossed and turned.  Anyway, I finally got up and was amazed to find out that Michael was still going golfing???  He’s going to slog around the course regardless of its condition (can you say quagmire??)…these golfers are CRAZY J.  We had a bit of bad news due to the storm…Michael’s computer isn’t working…and my printer is KAPUT L.  I went upstairs and Michael said ‘something leaked in the fridge’….well, it was actually 1/2 of a half gallon of milk….gone bad and EXPLODED in the fridge….YUCK!  That was a 2hour clean up…and not a pleasant one either…and by the way…WHERE DO ALL OF THOSE CRUMBS IN THE FRIDGE COME FROM!?!?!??!  Every time I clean it (which is certainly not very often lest you think differently) there are a TON of crumbs in the bottom and in the ‘drawers’ on the shelves…I can never figure out where they come from ~sigh~  Anyway, I started the clean up before Janice called at 9 AM…. then took a quick shower and headed out the door at 10 for a hair appointment, then a few errands, then finished up the cleaning in the early afternoon.  Michael came home from golf around 2 and we decided to tour around in the golf cart, since the temps got into the low 70’s and it was a beautiful day.  We met a really nice couple up in Turkey Point and hope to have a driveway party Friday (if the weather holds) and invite them.  We had leftovers for dinner and I watched (you guessed it) Olympics in the evening and got my strip sets done for tumbling block #3.

2 tumbling blocks together

Michael left the house early for a blood work appointment on Monday (2/17) since most of the golf courses were still too wet to play, while I headed off to the first Volunteer meeting of the year.  I was very nervous (after 6 years of saying I didn’t want to be president…here I am), but it seemed to go ok and there was a lot of enthusiasm from the group.  Michael and I met up again at 11:30 and went furniture shopping…still looking for a new kitchen table…..we didn’t get home until almost 3 and I was POOPED!!!  I honestly don’t know HOW people go window shopping all the time…I would be exhausted.  The furniture people probably think I’m a pain, but I know what we’re looking for and it really only takes me 15 - 20 minutes to walk through the entire store and say NO to every table they have.  You’d think they’d appreciate someone who can make a decision quickly J.  We saw a couple of possibilities…will have to mull them over and then go back out again.  Michael amazed me by having enough energy to go to the driving range and then even play 4 holes of golf!  I stayed home and read/napped.  We didn’t really have dinner, as we had lunch out before we came home…and I kept trying to get a second wind, but it didn’t happen until 9 PM.  Finally headed downstairs to watch the Olympics and finished sewing multiple block number 2’s into its right and left sides and putting one sample up on the wall:

 

 

I also got 1/2 of the fabric ironed for block number 3, before heading off to bed.

tumbling block #2

We had a leisurely breakfast on Sunday (2/16), after which Jan and granddaughter Amy came over to get their golf cart serviced.  Jan and Amy got a chance to see my new block while they were here:

 

I spent the afternoon sewing the new blocks together into the 2 halves that will make up the block, except for an hour long Volunteer meeting on the food drive which starts in March.  I have been HOT to bake some brownies recently, but Michael (good doobie that he is) still had 2 pieces of his birthday cake left.  I don’t like to have a lot things around the house going stale, but since I had to bake up the rest of the pizza dough into sandwich rolls, I decided to put brownies in at the same time.  I ran some down to Joanne (my chocolate buddy  J) while they were still warm  and immediately when they were cool I boxed them up so that I didn’t eat all of them.  We had leftover Chinese for dinner, then Michael watched TV for the most of the evening while I read one of my new library books.

Michael, tumbling blocks triangles for #2

Michael ran to the grocery store for me Saturday morning (2/15) and got all of the sale items on my list and used all of my coupons.  He spent $32 and saved $40…WHOO HOO!!!!  I love it when that happens, but usually don’t like to send him because it is such a hassle (I HATE it when the stores have B1G1, but when you get there it is only on certain flavors of an item…so you have to be really careful not to drift an inch to the right or left…or you’ll pick up the wrong, not on sale, flavor!!)  Anyway, he did a top notch job and also scored leftover- 50% off DARK chocolate V-day candy….WHOO HOO!!  For me it was back to cutting strips….now that I have seen what one block looks like, all of those picky little steps seem SO worthwhile!  I can’t wait to get the next one done.  I’m really going to try to work on this project…and only this project for sewing until it is done…..but we’ll see J.  I spent the entire afternoon working on strips (with company who is often doing this while I’m sewing):

and by dinnertime I had 2/3 of my triangles done and was just pooped.  We had take-out Chinese for dinner and I just sat on the couch and watched TV from 7 – 9 PM.  Finally at 9 I told myself that I really wasn’t that tired (why doesn’t that work when I tell myself that I’m really not that hungry???) and I got up and finished the last 2 triangles:

By then it was almost 11 and I was just too tired to figure out the layout, so Michael and I fell into bed…pictures of new block tomorrow!

By the way…the woman who made our hand-dyed fabric asked to see my quilt when it was done…well…I wrote and sent her the first block…check it out….I feel famous J:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ruby-Mountain-Dye-Works/193108204037670

portable ironing board, pizza

OMgoodness!!!!!  I signed onto the blog this AM and there were 7 comments….SEVEN!!!!!  You people have made my day….I will be smiling all day  J.

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The sun came up…the temperature went up…and our driveway became a lake!  Michael went out every hour on Valentine’s Day and chopped at the ice/snow to clear off our walk…but the driveway was a lake with no place for the water to go.  This certainly was the worst weather we have seen since we moved down here….4 days were everything was shut down including paper and mail delivery.    So…it was back to the studio for me and smack into a problem.  It is definitely time to replace my ironing board cover.  It’s ok for pressing small seams…but I am ironing half yard pieces of fabric for cutting my strips and the board is NOT working.  I always resist replacing the cover, because it is a pain-in-the-a—job that also takes too much time.  I was getting really irritated on Friday, but then came up with a perfect solution J.  Remember those portable ironing boards that Joanne’s husband Larry made for me?  Viola:

 

it is working PERFECTLY set atop my ironing board…I may never replace my cover again J.  I spent another several hours in my sewing room, cutting strips for my next tumbling block.  Made a smurfy pizza for dinner (1/2 mushrooms & spinach, ½ carmelized onions)

 

and Michael and I watched WAITING FOR GUFFMAN in the evening.

Cookie & Elsie, finished triangles, first tumbling block

Taking the dog out on Thursday morning (2/13) was certainly a treacherous endeavor!!  It kept sleeting overnight and everything looked like a sheet of glass.  Michael went out with the hair dryer to make sure our furnace pipe wasn’t frozen and we had breakfast in the living room in front of the fire.  By 11:30 I was ready to face my sewing machine again…so back to the studio I went J…along with Michael on his computer and our furry kids sleeping (well, not really sleeping...like big sisters everywhere Cookie is saying 'MOM - why can't she leave me alone'!):

 

Finally, by 3 PM I had all of the green outside/blue inside triangles done….and I laid out a block:  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AWESOME!  I love it!  and they’re so BIG!  I continued working and got the triangles sewed together in rows before dinner.  We had Italian Wedding Soup and biscuits for dinner and watched CHARADE in the evening.

beginning of tumbling blocks

The dog got me up early on Wednesday (2/12) and I was at my sewing machine by 8:30 AM.  Other than my almost hour long phone call with Janice at 9, and a smurfy lunch that my honey fixed me at 1, and the dinner I had at 6…I was bent over the sewing machine…the iron, or the cutting table, working on my tumbling blocks.  Why oh why did I pick this pattern???  Because I am crazy??  Because I always do this?  The first quilt I ever made in my life was STORM AT SEA…an advanced pattern.  I had never quilted before…hadn’t taken any classes….don’t think I even knew any quilters…..just read the magazine and went for it.  I still have that quilt and someday I will post a picture of it.  I was so conservative, and match-y/match-y that you don’t even really see the pattern.  I made templates out of cardboard and cut each one of the over thousand pieces of fabric by hand with scissors…didn’t know about rotary cutters.  Didn’t know about borders…didn’t know about anything!!!  Then let’s talk about my weaving adventure….know nothing about weaving except that I wanted to do it and that my friend loaned me a 4 shaft floor loom.  I read a book and got started.  Of course I started with lace weight yarn…LACE WEIGHT!!!!  About the diameter of a human hair….it took 16 hours to warp that loom….SIXTEEN HOURS!!!!!  When that shawl was finished, I decided it needed a little something extra and proceeded to put over 200 teeny, tiny beads along the fringe.  Now here I am with this tumbling blocks pattern….could I pick something like Loree…something that looks so terrific that it jumps off of the page….heavens no!  Michael and I picked out the pattern we loved the best…and ordered 18 - 1/2 yard pieces of hand dyed fabric.  I spent hours and hours slaving away yesterday…and don’t even have one block completed (of course my CT friends know that that is because I am doing the anal Debbie method and not the BG/Mary Jo method J).  Anyway, by 8:30 in the evening, I was 1/3 of the way done with my first set of blocks.  There are a lot of steps and I tried to document most of them:

my strips were all cut several weeks ago.  I should be able
to make green blocks with blue centers (those are the only
ones I'm working on now) and blue blocks with green centers

first thing was to sew 3 strata, The strata have a large light blue,
medium blue and dark blue in the center, with small green strips
(also in light medium & dark) on the outside

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

each strata is cut into these 60 degree diamonds

each diamond (shown top) is cut into 2 trangles, with a small
slice left over

then each triangle has a second small strip put down
the other side.  It will take 6 of these triangles to
make one block....WHAT was I thinking?!?!?!

 

So, as of 8:30 only 1 strata had been totally tranformed into the triangles I need to do the blocks. 

I crawled upstairs and relaxed on the sofa and knit on a new baby sweater while watching TV with my honey for the rest of the night. 

And by the way….it snowed and snowed and sleeted all day and night and our complex is a sheet of ice everywhere and no one is going anywhere…probably until Saturday at the earliest.

Loree's tumbling blocks, bunnies for S&C

So….one thing I didn’t tell you about Michael’s sweater…..3 weeks ago, it had NO sleeves, and the body was only done 1/2 way up the armhole…..I put in a ton of (secret) knitting over the last 3 weeks…and am very pleased with the result!

Anyway, it started snowing Tuesday morning (2/11) before we even got up and continued to snow all day.  Michael and I relaxed in front of the fire with our breakfasts (after his quick trip to the chiropractor’s) and then headed to the studio…me to work on bunny embroideries and him to get caught up on his emails.  At lunch time Joanne and I decided not to brave the cold and go to Stitch & Chat…but she did come over for a piece of chocolate cake for lunch J. Willa called me to ask me to send out an email cancelling quilting for Thursday, since it is supposed to rain and sleet all day Wednesday as well.  I was going to pick up my tumbling blocks book and rulers from Loree on Thursday, but since I wouldn’t see her, I made a quick trip to her house while the weather was not that bad.  I was glad I got to go, because I got to take a picture of HER tumbling blocks:

 

only 3 simple colors (and all from her stash no less!), but boy…what an impact…they practically LEAP off of the wall...I love them!  

I was home by 4 and continued with the bunnies (with time out for dinner) and by 8:30 PM this is what I had:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I can’t wait to see them in the ‘spring’ Stitch & Chat window…I think they’ll add a nice touch.  Michael wanted to watch ‘his’ shows in the evening, so I stayed in the studio and worked on some mending until bedtime.