I have a friend named June who lives in Aberdeen Scotland. We have never met, but we have corresponded and shared gifts. She has overwhelmed me with her generosity in the past, with lovely gifts that show her Scottish heritage.
June and I share a passion for quilting. We’ve swapped fabric and pictures of our projects. She sent me two exquisitely done shadow quilted pillow shams. They are elegant and perfect for the guest room in my home. They took a lot of time to create, and I was bowled over when I opened the package and saw what she sent.
However, she has topped herself in gift giving! In November she sent me a quilt! I’d admired the pattern on one of the quilts she’d made for her daughter. I asked if she would make a quilt top for me. Now, you need to know that I’m not brazen enough to ask a friend to make a quilt top for me without intending to reimburse her. June was raising funds for a poly-house her daughter needed to extend their growing season. I thought buying a top that June had made so that she could donate to the fund was a win-win situation.
So, imagine my surprise when I opened this package and found a completed quilt. This is the very first time (I think) that I have ever received a quilt from someone. My mother made quilts for all the women in my family, but we ran out of time before she could make one for me…..so this quilt is very special to me.
Here’s a picture (forgive my amateurish photography, please):
I LOVE the colors! I LOVE the prints that June used. She and I are as different as night and day in our choices of patterns and fabrics, and for that very reason, I treasure this quilt. I hope one day I’ll get to meet June, and she can take me shopping for vibrant fabrics like the ones she has used in this quilt.
June…..thank you from the bottom of my heart!
The Close of January
How can it be that we are already at the close of January? I’ve been busy all month, as I am sure you have, and I’m satisfied with what I have accomplished, but there’s a lot left to do. Scraps on a Mission is coming along nicely, and I’ve got the tax planners for our personal taxes, and Mother’s final tax return. We plan to shop for carpeting for the hallway, and for the living room, which is long past needing to be replaced. We’re ready to face February and see what our shortest month will bring.
I was talking with Dear Husband about the need to clean out the basement. Our basement is truly a disgrace. I don’t trust my knees on the stairs, so I go downstairs very infrequently. I think I’m going to need to live in the basement during February, because so much needs to be done.
We need to destroy documents from our company dating back to 1986. We need to destroy personal documents that we no longer need. I need to gather all my Mother’s things into one section of the basement, so that my family will be able to see them, and decide what we will do with them. I need to store all the Christmas decorations in their bins, and throw away a collection of boxes that we probably no longer need. AND, I should go through a collection of ancient electronic stuff, to determine what needs to be given to the recycling center. All of February, right? Maybe I need to put up a bed down there, and add a hot plate and refrigerator! lol
I’m looking forward to Spring, and warmer weather, but not until this mess has been sorted out. I’ll take my cell phone with me, in case anyone needs me. *G*
Spam
Could you PLEASE explain to me why someone in a third world country feels it’s appropriate to spam my blog? It’s not like I have a gazillion readers, and by now you’d think they would have figured out that most comments have to be approved, and I’m just dumping them in the trash.
Please, you turkeys, go find someplace else to roost!
(Now, watch, it will take me hours to clean out all the comments. Sheesh!)
Scraps on a Mission
Scraps on a Mission is the name of a group of ladies who are taking donated cotton fabrics and making quilts for those in need. It grew out of my friendship with a woman who is a member of the Empty Nester group at church, and is quietly taking over my life.
Two of my friends have donated hundreds of yards of fabric. They got to clear their stashes of fabric they were never going to use, and we got the basic material we need to make the quilts. I sorted through the fabrics and divided them up by color. I washed the very large pieces that will be used for backing, measured them, and stowed them away.
Today I spent a good part of the day cutting blue, gold and brown fabric into strips, the first step toward creating kits for inexperienced quilters to assemble. I have some more sub-cutting to do before I can bag the pieces. Many of the ladies who are working with us do not have any experience using a rotary cutter and mat, so I’m donating my time on this until I can teach them how to cut their own patchwork.
I believe that I have enough fabric sliced up to make at the very least six quilt tops! When I get a little further along in my preparations, I’ll take pictures for the blog.
January
January is an organizing month. I started by clearing off the long table in my studio so that I’d have plenty of working space. Then, I moved the bin that I use to collect personal receipts and bills into the studio, and began sorting them. I was surprised at how comparatively little time it took me to get papers and reciepts and bills organized. I also found two portable CD players I had ordered!
Of course, the purpose for that organization is two-fold. I now have papers I need to be able to fill in a tax planner, and the bin has been cleaned out for this year’s collection of “stuff.”
Once the table had been cleared off, I was able to use the space for stacks of fabric. I have been using a Swedish shelving system for close to 20 years for my fabrics and quilting projects. Unfortunately, when I bought the system, I didn’t buy enough shelves, so each time I want a piece of fabric, I have to lift fifteen pounds of fabric to get to it. On my Christmas wish list, I provided the information on where to find the shelves and my step-daugher bought me two. What a wonderful gift!
With Dear Husband’s assistance, I got those two shelves in right away, and knew that I was going to have to add at least four more. That was the project this past weekend. Because of the weight of fabric on the units, and lack of space for all the fabric involved, it wasn’t wise to empty off all the shelves that were to be moved at one time. I shifted the fabric for one third of it to start, moved their shelves and got the fabric settled into place before starting the center section of the job.
That section didn’t go smoothly. I had to loosen rods on both the left and right units to be able to move the existing shelving. I dropped the allen wrenches behind the unit, as well as one of the screw-caps that holds a rod in place. I got a wooden shelf stuck at an improbable angle.
I walked away from it for the day.
When I returned to it the next day, things went better, and I had the good sense to call for DH’s help when I got stuck again. He makes things seem so easy.
All the fabric is in place now, and I’m reassessing batting storage, to see if I can free up more shelves. I’m at the point now where I can’t buy more fabric until I use more up in quilts! I wonder if that might be called “critical mass?”
So, my next project is to start scanning family pictures. We have a family member who is willing to work on collecting pictures to disk, so I need to scan what I have and e-mail it to him.
No doubt there will be more work coming my way, but it’s wonderful to have accomplished two major projects that will smooth the way for things I need to do later this year. Yea, January!!!
The Mouse and Me
I was cleaning the kitchen Sunday and discovered that “something” had taken bites out of a plum tomato on my kitchen counter! I had just two tomatoes and had put them in the fruit bowl to make more room on the counter.
I showed the tomato to Dear Husband, as evidence of at least one BRAZEN mouse in the house. I set the other tomato back in the bowl, and used bleach on the counter.
Monday……the top of the tomato was chewed away.
I need a cat.
January 3, 2011
It’s time to practice 2011, 2011, 2011!
And it’s time to leave the weeks of celebration behind and get back to our usual lives. Well, almost! lol
My quilting bee meets the first Friday of the month. That would be this coming Friday. I leave my Christmas decorations up until they have visited, and then everything comes down. I really enjoy the wreaths and swags and decorations. I love the red bows and strings of lights. I’m glad to have them for just a week more, especially since they didn’t go up until mid-December.
Most of us are back to our regular schedules now. This morning I filled in for my exercise guru, and I’ll get to do that again on Wednesday and Friday. Wednesday’s class will be smaller, as many of the class will be on a trip to see “The Mikado,” in Chicago. Today, one of the class clowns, someone who must be nearing 80, turned the lights out while we were in the middle of a cardio exercise. I get that he doesn’t want to be there, but I wish he would find less dangerous ways to express himself.
I’m working on several small quilts for our charity quilting group. I’ve found blocks from previous projects, “orphans,” that have made a great basis for several small quilts. It’s wonderful to find homes for these pieces and know that nothing is going to go to waste!
I’m going to make apple bread this afternoon, which will be the last of the tea bread for a while. I made five loaves of pumpkin/walnut bread, two loaves of banana nut bread, and I’ll make two loaves of apple bread. Dear Husband has an early morning sweet tooth, and he takes a slice with him on his way to work. All the bread, with the exception of one banana-nut loaf is in the freezer. I won’t have to bake for a while. DH will make these loaves last!
And…..bills. I have bills to pay today. I wonder how many times I will print 2010 rather than 2011??? Onward and upward!
Happy New Year!
To all our friends who visit here, Dear Husband and I wish you health and good fortune in the coming year. We’ve come through several trying years, and it’s our hope that all our lives will begin to see some improvement. So, we raise our cups and bid you…
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
Mother Nature’s Confused
We had a beautiful White Christmas. Not too much snow, just enough to give a good cover and make everything look lacy and pristine. IT looked traditional, old-fashioned, even, and I really enjoyed it.
Yesterday, though, it started to RAIN! Who ever heard of rain in December in Illinois!? It was a light rain, but between the rain and the fact that it was in the forties, the snow was a gonner. Well, almost a gonner. We still have a light patch here and there, and the mounds that were plowed to the side of the drive are hanging on, but I doubt they will make it through the night.
We could have really used this rain in October and November. It’s hard on the perennials and trees to go into winter without adequate moisture, and it’s tough on perennials to have to get through the winter without the insulation of snow cover, and the resulting drink they get from the spring thaw. This evening our temperatures are supposed to drop back down well below freezing, into the twenties. Plants will shiver and party-goers will need to be careful on icy streets on their way home.
Catching Up
I suspect that we are all doing the same thing right about now. We’ve spent so much time working on Christmas in the past month that we need to play catch up during this last week of the year.
I have not had a chance to be in my studio for about two weeks. Two of my quilting friends have donated close to 500 yards of fabric to Scraps on a Mission, which makes quilts for people at our local hospitals. One of the Empty Nesters wanted to get a project like this started, and I offered my assistance. Now I spend my time cutting out kits for ladies to assemble this summer, and I am the keeper of all that fabric! I’ve organized it into six boxes, plus a box of kits, and that seems fairly manageable. I’ve washed part of it, and now I need to press some of the fabric that I want to cut. My goal is to get the cutting table cleared off, and two projects set up for cutting in the future.
AND….I have a quilt on my design board that needs to be sewn together. I have plenty to do in the quilt section of my life.
Do you still iron? For the most part I’ve found clothing that doesn’t need a lot of pressing, but I have a FULL to overflowing ironing basket at the moment. The napkins from Thanksgiving, white antique pillowcases with the crocheted or embroidered trims, a couple of small table cloths, my Mother’s Christmas apron, and an immense stack of quarter-yard pieces of quilting fabric all need to be done. I may set the board up in the living room and iron after dinner until I get it done!
I’ve been crocheting squares for Share A Square 2010. If you’re not familiar with this group, please click on the link to the right for more information. I’ve encouraged the members of my exercise group to make six-inch granny squares, and so far we have created 98 squares. I find that I can make one square while I watch (or listen to) a one-hour T.V. show. Over the past 45 days I’ve made about 30 squares. If I can make the time, I’d like to make two more before I send off my current mailing, so that I can say we have made an even one hundred! And, of course, this is on-going.
One of the reasons I need to clear off the table in the studio is to make a sorting area for personal papers. I hope this is a project that won’t take more than a day or two, and the sooner I get it done, the better. DH says I keep EVERYTHING. He’s almost right. There are a few insignificant things I throw away during the year. Which means, that before I do our taxes, I need to sort through all this stuff to determine if there is anything which needs to be kept for taxes. DH and I will need to be meeting in the basement on a nightly basis in the future to destroy documents. He gets to work on things for the company, and I will need to work on our personal papers. I doubt we need to keep the gas and electric and phone bills from 20 years ago. Besides, I want to reuse some of the binders to hold my cooking magazines!
I also need to file the papers I’ve been collecting on my Mother’s behalf. I’m pretty sure that I can get things down to several three ring binders, and I’ll check with the CPA to determine how long those will need to be kept.
I might see the top of the desk again, soon! What a pleasant and amazing thought that is! lol
So, I assume that most of you go through this same procedure, of catching up with your lives following Christmas. I wish you smooth sailing and great success as we move toward 2011.