Well, half the weekend gone and it's been interesting....sorta.

I'm almost done with Orange Crush part 2. A bit tedious all that chain sewing, but I try to zone out and get on with it with the TV or music on. Nothing much of real interest on TV. The Tramp is looking for an Apple Airport thingy so I can listen to iTunes on the stereo in my sewing room.

This morning I've been listening to the WGBH radio show, Sound & Spirit, online. It plays through iTunes and I would love to have it on while I'm sewing. I'd kind of forgotten about it since we moved and was so happy to find it online. This week's show is all about gardens. I love her choice of music. I'm bored with my playlists in iTunes and this is a nice way to find new music to spice up my days. :-)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=nitgmAInI18

Yesterday we went up into Raleigh to the State Fairgrounds to the Azalea sale. Lots of choice but I'm not ready to buy yet. Next year! There is always so much going on there, the place is huge. The Flea Market is ongoing. And this weekend there is a Turkish festival, Lebanese festival, Martial Arts festival, Azalea sale, Pipe & Cigar Expo, and Carolina Roller Derby - Bout 2. My goodness!

After that we drove over to the State Farmer's Market. That's a cool place too! Unfortunately we didn't get to enjoy the whole thing. I started to feel really sick from a migraine so we cut it short. But I'll go back soon.



Dummy me should have remembered to bring the camera along. Oh well.

Paperwork...UGH!

Well....it's 1:30 pm and I'm still in my PJs. I hate that! But this morning I was determined to get out from under the piles of paper in my study. We decided to try something new so bought TurboTax and did our own taxes last weekend. So those papers were in stacks. Other stacks were created by trying to find those papers. Then there were my usual stacks...sigh. The Tramp puts up with it because he doesn't want to do any of the paperwork! LOL

Anyway....here is the before. I get hives just looking at it! In fact I really need my shower now because of all of the dust. :-P


But the after makes me feel good. :-)


Last night I worked on part 2 of Orange Crush. I got to cut a bazillion triangles while watching a movie. Thank goodness for the Easy Angle ruler! And we bought it this week at Joann's for 50% off. Very cool.


I finally had to concede defeat and my new Bernina is in the shop. There was no point wrestling with it anymore. So the church paraments are on hold again and the Featherweight is out. It's great for piecing, though I've still got a bunch more to cut! The 142 large triangles are done, and the 142 dark squares. I'm still plugging away with the 284 small triangles. But at least my cutting table is now clear of papers so I can cut more strips!

This is a photo of a large photo we just had framed. It doesn't have a home on the wall yet since we don't have a living room yet (grumble, grumble). One of The Tramp's friends in New Zealand is a glider pilot. He had a photographer stand on the side of the mountain and take pictures as he flew at him. It's a spectacular photo. He was even able to tell us the exact latitude and longitude! The light spot is from my flash and it also washed out the colors a bit, to say nothing of all the reflections. But if I hadn't used the flash you would be able to see my reflection in the glass too, pajamas and all! Not pretty. :-)

Happy Birthday Dad....and other stuff

This weekend was my dad's 86th birthday! He won't mind my telling you, he's very proud of the fact. :-) We gave him an Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station and the other Air-Thingy piece to attach to his stereo, so he can wirelessly play the classical radio stations in iTunes through his living room stereo. I think the gift was a hit!

The card says "A long, long time ago...." "you were born!" and plays the theme from Star Wars. We had a good chuckle over it.


This is from the previous weekend. Great-grandfather and great-grandson. Clearly they are charming each other!


I finished my rabbits last month for Lynette's Noah's Ark Block of the Month. I love these little stitcheries, they take almost no time to do.


This month is the dove. Ugh...poor choice of thread, it's way to light! Since I took this photo I've ripped it out and done it over. It's much better now.


All my Gardening-In-North-Carolina-Books say that tulips don't grow properly here. It doesn't get cold enough during the winter for the bulbs to set new flowers. I'm here to say that apparently this isn't always true. Look what surprises came up in my garden! Woohoo!



Today I fought with my sewing machine big time. (I shoulda been outside with the tulips instead.) I've been going to the Bernina master classes the last few Wednesdays and we kind of figured out at the last class that the presser foot pressure regulator might need adjusting. Today I came to the conclusion that it definitely does need adjusting! Arrrrrggggghhhh. Lots of bad words today...sigh. I'm working on church paraments and wrestling mightily with the piping. The machine beeps and refuses to go when anything even remotely thick is under the presser foot, so piping is a no-no (grrrrrr). Other than that I have no complaints so far. I guess this Wednesday I'll have to leave the machine behind after class. :-( It's an hour drive to the store in Fayetteville so I'll probably leave it there until the next Wednesday. Sob! Good thing I have a couple of old Singers around to pull out at times like this. The next Orange Crush clue should come out this week and I'll be upset if I can't work on it. And of course! *smack* I can always just hop down the road and use one of Mom's machines. :-)

Uhhh...what else did I do today. Oh yeah....went to the dentist. No joy there. Oh...but I did get my order of thread in the mail! *happy dance* I've got the Bargello Bowl quilt all ready to go on the frame, it was just a matter of waiting for and auditioning the thread.


I spent a chunk of time recently raising and leveling the frame and making new leaders out of ticking. The ones it came with were so flimsy. Ugh. I even sewed on measuring tapes. I also got new Featherlight clamps. Good thing, since my backing should be wider. I watched how-to videos on Youtube and squared my backing properly. The measuring tapes and stripes made it so easy to load on the frame. Whew! I've been practicing designs on my whiteboard and as soon as I get the paraments done tomorrow I'll be ready to boogey. This is one LOUD quilt. The backing is pieced from hot air balloon fabrics. As my dad would say...it'll be so loud I won't be able to get to sleep! *hee hee* I can't wait to finish it and send it off to it's new owner.

Hope for Our World

Today I was privileged to join several members of my quilting bee on an excursion to Duke Chapel in Durham, to see Hope for Our World, a display of textile art on themes of social justice by Hollis Chatelain. Wow. The wow is both for the display and for the chapel. Both are mighty impressive. You can see all the displayed quilts at this link.

First of all the building.... This photo is from the website. The second one was my attempt to get a neat photo through the flowering trees. Would have been much better had the sun been out!


My interior photos are a bit fuzzy because of the lighting. The place is big. They have FIVE organs. An organ class was going on when we arrived. The students were crowded around up there in the organ loft (under the pipes). We met an absolutely charming housekeeping staffer who gave us a bit of a tour of "his" chapel and filled us with information. He said he needed four ladies from Raleigh to adopt him so he could retire and go fishing all day, so figured it wouldn't hurt to be nice to us! LOL


One (or two?) of the organs is being refurbished and they were up above the chancel working hard to finish it by Thursday. There were big crates of parts stacked around. On Friday there's going to be a celebration of 75 years of weddings in the chapel. We were told there are up to four weddings every Saturday!


I was also quite taken by the colorful windows (77 of them). Despite the overcast day, the colors were so bright. They reminded me that I have a couple of books on making quilts inspired by rose windows in cathedrals. You didn't hear that! *smack* Dammit! I'm not, *smack* not, *smack* not going to start another project!!! Sheesh.


Anyway, the reason for the trip was to see the quilts. They were hung under the arches on each side of the nave



This is the quilt that won Best of Show at the 2007 International Quilt Festival in Houston. This website has descriptions of all the quilts we saw. One of them has over 200 colors of threads in it!


One of the staffers in the chapel suggested we walk next door to the Divinity School to the Refectory Cafe. Everywhere we walked there was art and impressive things to see.

This is the "new" chapel (much bigger than I could take a picture of), where they were also working on the organ.


This was over a stairway.


And these were on the wall outside the chapel. They're about 4-5 feet tall. We weren't sure, but I believe they are etchings on the glass. The glass looked "frosted". It almost looked like cut paper. The first one is Psalm 42 and the other one is Psalm 43.




Then we peeked down the stairs and saw this quilt! Gorgeous.


Our last stop was at the Refectory Cafe. It featured organic food, much of it vegan. Very good! We had "student special" lunches. LOL They said in there everyone's a student. :-) I had creamy tomato soup and half a salmon wrap. Yum.


And lest anyone think I haven't been sewing, yesterday I started making pillowcases for my grandson. When they visited this weekend DIL requested a small pillow for him. So we stopped in Hancock's for some fabric. I have some John Deere fabrics too.


And a little cuteness..... The two smallest check each other out.

Part 1 is done!

This evening I finished my 150 4-patches for the Orange Crush mystery quilt. It was kind of fun just chain piecing with the TV going. Relaxing really. I enjoyed watching the pile in front of my sewing table grow!




I thought I was going to have trouble doing stuff today as I took a real pratfall yesterday and my arm hurts. It stiffened up overnight but it turned out to be ok for a bit of sewing and ironing today.

The tree men finally finished and the tree is down.

The Tramp now has a massive woodpile to play with! LOL And today he comes home from work and tells me about more wood someone is offering him! Do you really think we need more??? I guess as long as I don't have to chop it or stack it I might as well let him play.

It was pretty nerve wracking watching the guy swinging from the tree and hearing the Bobcat and chainsaws, and the branches and logs dropping to the ground. Some of them shook the house! They were very skillful, but my lack of control over the situation was getting to me by day three so I didn't stay home to watch the final felling.


Large portions of the yard are now moonscape, caused by the Bobcat...sigh.


And there are nasty holes in the lawn from the big pieces hitting the ground. That's why I fell. I went out to start cleaning up after the men left and almost immediately tripped on one of the holes and fell on my face. Now I'm well aware I'm a klutz but sheesh! So I spent the next hour or so filling the holes. Not pretty, but better than the alternative.


The yard looks a little naked to me now without the tree but I'm already having fun in the garden. :-) I figured it would be nice to keep the stump. Now I have to decide what to do with it.


And grandbaby is coming for the weekend! Yippee. DIL sent me this photo the other day of his first visit to the beach. Love That Hat! :-)

I knew it! LOL

Woot! Bonnie has posted part 1 of Orange Crush. I just knew it would be hundreds of little pieces! Ah well. It just makes the mystery mysteriouser. Hard to tell where the design is going.

Back to the machines!

Rainy Weekend

Rain! Always good after a year of drought. Not so good for men up in trees though. We were having the big pecan tree taken down on Saturday but they had to quit when the rain started. Weather Underground says the only non rainy day this week is Wednesday so I guess I'll plan on them coming back then. They have to! LOL We have all their equipment!

So we have half a tree. You can see why we don't like it looming over the house. It's big.


The indoor project of the weekend was altering my sewing table so the machine will sit flush. It's an old old Ikea desk so we figured the worst that could happen is I'd need a shiny new sewing table!


And it worked! The Tramp was was in power tool heaven. LOL Mom treated me to the Horn of America insert.


The tricky part was leveling the shelf underneath. Of course I painted it purple.


It also makes a great shelf for bobbin boxes, scissors and stuff. :-) Very cool. *happy sigh*


Look at that! So clean and neat!


Not for long. Pretty soon it'll match the rest of the room! Darn....I think I better take an hour or so today to clean up.


I made new leaders for the frame and installed a Grace Sure Stitch (stitch regulator) I bought used. Now I have even more wires to contend with! But I put the quilt for mom back on the frame and I hope to finish it today.



I have all my fabrics chosen and waiting to start the Orange Crush mystery quilt. There are now 1500 people in the Yahoo Group waiting somewhat impatiently to start. I wonder if Bonnie had any clue what she was getting into! LOL Fame is an amazing thing.


And my dog photo of the day. Beats me how she can possibly be comfortable, but she'll hang out like that, by The Tramp's desk for hours in the evening. Nutty dog.