Delight

January has gone by very fast.  The Sailor Son is currently training at Camp Lejeune.  We are hoping he can drive up to see us next weekend.  I'll be delighted to hear all about it.

The Viking keeps us amused.  A year ago (at least), to keep him busy while Mom and I were fabric shopping, Papa took him off to the wood craft section in JoAnn's and showed him the ampersands.  The Viking was intrigued and just loves to tell everyone about ampersands.  We are now required to go visit them in the store.  He was delighted last week when Papa treated him to his very own ampersands!

The weather has been kind and we've had some delightful outdoor time.  "I'm a knight!  With my knight hat and my sword and my thing!"  (a Frisbee shield)  :-)

We treated the dogs to some new beds.  I'm not sure they are exactly delighted.  They don't seem to mind sharing though.  Silly animals.

I have a new vegetarian cookbook and The Tramp was delighted with my attempt at a vegetable curry.  It was even spicy enough!  The house smelled of it for several days too.  The gift that keeps on giving.  :-P

We had some wild and rainy weather a week ago.  During the days right after, we were treated to sunny blue skies filled with fluffy dirty looking clouds along the horizon.  Very odd looking and quite spectacular.  Of course the best views were on the road where it wasn't wise to be using a camera, so these are the best I could get at stoplights.

Springlike weather comes and goes.  The dogs and I had a delightful sit on the deck on Wednesday.

 Then Thursday treated us to a fast moving deluge.

 Last week I scratched my organizing itch by figuring out a better way to store my embroidery floss.  The boxes are fine, but now I have so much floss I have to spread out five open boxes to find what I want.  So I browsed around on the web, fiddled around with The Sandbox furniture, had a bit of think and came up with a solution.  I bought another small white cabinet at Michaels and spent a couple of days cutting up and fitting foam board in the drawers.

I'm delighted with the results.  Better yet, there is room for more floss!  ;-)

I celebrated by stitching up a biscornu for Mom for her birthday.  Cute!

Thursday was also the 4th birthday for Cary Quilting Company.  The store sponsored a Fairy Hair event.  I made an appointment for myself and since The Viking was with me he got some Fairy Hair too.  He chose blue.  Just call him Oberon.  :-)

He had his rubber shark with him (named Shark) and much to their delight and amusement explained to everyone that sharks eat leaves and flowers.  No, I didn't know that either.  He also declared it was Shark's birthday.  I had to make a stop at Walmart so I treated Shark to a large pink artificial flower.

We also picked up a small rainbow birthday cake.  Did you know Shark was nine years old?  Me neither.  I found that out when we dug in the drawer for birthday candles.  Much delight in singing happy birthday and blowing out the candle.

It was also a very breezy day.  The Viking did his best to control the weather.  "I NEED YOUR ATTENTION WIND.  STOP WIND ANYWAY!"

Border fabrics for the En Provence mystery quilt arrived.  Yummmm.

But before I get back to that I needed to finish up a few things.  A new hip pack/belt bag/fanny pack.  My first time sewing ripstop nylon.  I was a little nervous about it, but it came out ok....and it's delightfully purple.  So it's a win all around.  :-)

And I needed to make the January blocks for Molli Sparkles' Honey Pot Bee.  

I've been hoarding these 12 fat quarters ever since the delightful "Dye a Rainbow" class in the summer.  This project seemed to be the perfect one to use them for.  Looking forward to seeing what is on for February.

 And lastly.... I give you Batman.  Never a boring moment with The Viking around. :-)

Warm fuzzies

On the first warm mornings after the ice and snow melted we had some lovely scenes of mist (warm fuzzies?) rising from the pond.

The Viking surprised me with his reaction to seeing the mystery quilt all together for the first time.  After a double-take, he sat down suddenly on the floor and exclaimed "WOW!  You made the biggest quilt I ever seen!  Lots of pieces.  It has so many different kinds of shapes!"   Awwww.  Warm fuzzy feelings.  :-D

We enjoyed the warmth outdoors.  Sandbox time and dog walks.

And even a little work.

I also spent an afternoon baking.  I made gluten-free brownies and gluten-free vegan brownies as a warm fuzzy gift for The Tramp to take to work on the last day of his current job.  He starts a new position at the university tomorrow.  :-)  I also made some banana bread.  I searched around for a recipe that didn't include sugar, and found a good one.  Though when I turned it out of the pan quite a bit stayed in the bottom of the pan.  Oh well.  I stuck the crumbs together with butter and ate them all up.  Yum!  I left the loaf upside down on the board and the rest of it sliced up just fine.  I'm going to have to try again as we all liked it very much.

I've moved on to the borders of the En Provence mystery quilt.  After I finished all four of these border strips I realized my mistake.  There should only be two neutral four patches between the star point blocks.  Sigh.  Rip, rip, rip.  No warm fuzzies here.

The Viking slept over at our house both Friday night and Saturday night while his parents went to two nights of a Led Zeppelin tribute band show.  A little warm fuzzy TV quieted the Energizer Bunny down so I could cook dinner.

Part of the excitement of sleeping over at Nini and Grumpy's house is bathtime with a different set of bath toys.  His favorites are the sharks....which he also insisted on taking to bed.  Warm?  No.  Fuzzy? Not at all.  Weird kid.

He started singing Riders on the Storm in the bath so afterwards we were treated to an impromptu towel dance.  :-D

Luna Lapin has form now.  I think she will look more comfortable clothed though.  Warmer anyway.

Sniff.  I listed the Bernina 530 on Craigslist today.  I'm in love with the new 720, as well as my other machines, but.....sniff.....it's still hard to let one go.  Sigh.

Speaking of other machines, I decided to bring out the 201-2 for a small project today.  It's the first time I've used it since I polished and lubed it up and The Tramp rewired the potted motor.  I gave it some oil, inserted a needle and ran it without thread to get the oil moving.  I heard a tick, tick, tick noise.  Hmmmmm.  Never heard that before.  After much listening and looking I took out the needle and the machine ran silently.  Well dang!  What did I do wrong when I put back together??  I already knew the tension assembly wasn't quite right so I started by finding my tutorial and taking it apart and putting it back together again.  I found the step I had missed in the tutorial so the tension is perfect now.  The machine was still ticking and it wouldn't take up the bobbin thread and stitch.  So I dug up the tutorials on taking the bobbin case apart and reassembling it.  Oh my.  I definitely did that wrong too.  It took lots of grumbling and a few tries, but now the machine is humming wonderfully.  Yay!  Send a warm fuzzy sympathy card to The Tramp.  ;-)

I had just a small project in mind today and it was wonderful to finally start sewing.  I made the name tag for myself a while ago from this tutorial.  A friend recently mentioned needing a new name tag.  I know she has a Bernina Nova which has a special place in her heart so I decided to try it.  What fun!  And it looks ok.  I'm not fussed if she wears it or not, the fun was in the making, and there are sure to be warm fuzzies in the giving.

Now I think I'll go put on my warm fuzzy socks and slip the hot water bottle in the bed.  Sweet dreams!

Free!!!!

Freedom from the house.  Finally.  Except for a short jaunt yesterday afternoon for a few groceries we hadn't been out of the house since Friday afternoon.  Can you say cabin fever?  The weather has turned spring-like.  The university was back to normal this morning so The Tramp went off to work.  Much to her disgust, ED's office was still closed so she and The Viking came up to town today and we amused ourselves by going out for lunch and a bit of shopping, and a visit to Nanny and Papa.

By last night I had the center of my En Provence quilt put together.  Now I'm working on the borders.  Decisions will need to be made soon as I want to make it larger to fit my bed.  I have an idea in my head, but I've no idea if it's executable.  Other ideas are percolating as well.

Well dang!  I just this moment looked across the room at the quilt top and spotted a mistake.  Easy to fix thank goodness.  I hopped up to put a safety pin in the place to mark it.  In a day or so I should turn it over so I can see the bottom rows clearly and maybe I'll spot something else.  Hmmmmmm.  Better yet.  I should just show it to my dad and he'll spot my mistakes right away.  No excuses with Dad around!  :-D

For Christmas, The Tramp gifted me this book which was on my wish list.  My Luna Lapin is in progress.  I'm very pleased with her head and am auditioning buttons for the eyes.  The inner ear and footpads on the Luna in the book are lovely Liberty prints.  She has blue coat and tweed skirt with lace knickers.  My Luna is going to be less demure and more mod.  In theory at least. :-)

Tomorrow The Viking and I will be out stretching our legs at the fitness club.  He loves the dance, gymnastics and yoga classes in the Kids Academy and I will go upstairs and sweat it out with the exercise equipment.  Tomorrow afternoon will be all about baking.  Yes, it will involve chocolate.  ;-)  So I'd better sweat a lot!!  lol