Giveaway - just not mine!

Quilting Grandma is having a nice giveaway today.  Check out the books she is offering to a lucky winner.

GO to her blog and see what you need to do to enter.

Design Wall Monday

I love to play with leftover 1/2 square triangles.  This is 100 1.5" squares plus a small inner border.  It is so relaxing to me to see what designs I can come up with and then finish the whole thing in an evening.  This little gem still needs to be bound.  I have many more up my sleeve because the members of my guild have gifted me with baggies FULL of them!!  I doubt I will ever run out of little triangles to arrange and play with.


Hop over to Judy's to see what everyone else is up to.

Addictions

I can't post this week because I have become ADDICTED to Damages

OMG!  I spend every spare hour streaming it from Netflix.  I finished the first season in three days.  I'm afraid to get started on Season two.  My DH has been out of town for a week which is why I could devote so much time to TV but he's coming home tonight.  ACK!  I'll have withdrawals.

I thought quilting was bad.

A Little Getaway

Two weekends ago (I'm a bit behind in my posts) DH and I and some friends headed up to Sonoma County for our annual trip.  Each year we try to do something that pushes our boundaries a little.  I was in charge of the trip this year and that was what pushed my boundaries.  I hate planning trips for other people.  I am always so worried that I'll screw it up or that no one will have fun.  It's pretty nerve-wracking for me.

Well, the trip was great and we had a blast.  Here are a few photos:

 

 We took a balloon ride which really pushed one of the gang who is afraid of heights.

  

We played with a shark!! have you seen the you tube video on these?  They're called Air Swimmers

and they are a blast!  We had fun with it for a very long time.

Some times we just sat out on the deck and watched the Russian River roll by.

No quilting got done but I had a fabulous weekend with good friends.  My plan was a success.

Design Wall Monday

Anticipating having to write this post, I thought I better have something for my design wall.

So I dove into my box of orphan blocks:

There's a lot of them, huh?  Anyway, I thought I might make covers for these notebooks I bought a few weeks ago.

I fiddled around for a little while getting absolutely NO inspiration.  Then it dawned on me, while I do want to make journal covers someday, what was really happening is that I was avoiding this:

 This is all I actually have sewn together so far. I took all the loose blocks down from the wall so I can sew them together into foursies.

I counted and I have 54 'foursies' to sew together before I can sew those into bigger 'foursies' and so on.  Why in the world do we have a King Size bed???


Next weekend I will be working on details of the annual fund-raiser I am chairing for my guild so I really doubt I will have anything more interesting than this on my wall.  I will be very glad to have this top all together so it will finally be off my design wall!!

Hop over to Judy's to see what others are working on today.

FNSI

In one evening this project went from this:

to this:

I got a lot done!!  and it was fun!!

And it's till only about 25% done!!!!!

Do you think she's spoiled?

A few months ago Izzy had some icky-looking things under her chin.  I took her to the vet who diagnosed her with "acne."   WHAT!?  She's a dog! 

It seems dogs can get these breakouts when they drink or eat from plastic bowls.  WELL!  Izzy's almost a horse so we've been watering her in a large plastic bucket.  No more.  We went out and bought an adapter for our faucet that she can lick and get water for herself.

ALL of our previous dogs have used these.  She refuses. She WILL NOT use it.  I WILL NOT put out a bowl out for her. She drinks so much water that I'd be filling and washing it three times a day. 

Here's what I have been reduced to doing to get her to drink enough water:

She loves it.  LOVES IT!  This bathroom is right outside my quilting room.  She will stand just inside the bathroom door and softly whine.  If I don't hear her, she'll come into my sewing room and start yelling at me.  Really, she can yell.  I have to go turn the faucet on for her and let her tank up.  I've been toying with the idea of teaching her how to turn it on but I worry she won't turn it off.  My SIL suggests plumbing a foot pedal like they use in hospital operating scrub rooms so she can step on it and get it to turn on.

 Is this as wrong as I think??

PS.  Don't you want some of that pink and grey tile for yourself?  Can we say 1950 bathroom?  It's the only room in the house we didn't remodel.  I'm thinking we made a mistake.

Here is why I still have UFOs

I could have quilted all weekend and finished up some long-overdue projects.  Instead, I hung out with one of my oldest friends (there must be a better way to describe a friendship you've had since high school).  Julie lives in Arizona but she gets to So Cal as often as she can. 

It just happened that there was a Hollywood fundraiser happening that Hugh Jackman may or may not have been co-chairing.  Julie is an absolute nut about Mr. Jackman and she will do most anything to get to see him perform.  I have been a more-than-willing accomplice to her mania.  We have traveled to NYC to see him on Broadway, we even went to Australia to see him perform (don't judge!).  So, heading up the highway to Culver City wasn't such a big deal.  As it turns out, he had other commitments and couldn't make it this year.  He's co-chaired the event for the six previous years so buying tickets was a pretty good bet.  Sigh. 

BUT, we did get to see a bunch of very cool stars perform some fun songs from old Broadway plays that have also been movies, such as Xanadu, West Side Story, Phantom of the Opera, Tommy, and more.

Catherine Zeta-Jones was the chair

Angela Landsbury was her co-chair

Carol Channing (!!) also performed something from Hello Dolly.  It was fun and worth the trip up there.
In December, we are making another pilgrimage to NYC to see Himself perform on Broadway.  Julie's  already been to San Francisco and Toronto to see the show.  Did I say how nuts she is about him??  The upside of her passion is that she totally gets why I go to quilt shows and why I will go to Houston or Paducah.  We are also going to see a special exhibit of quilts while we are in NYC.  Is she a good friend or what?

Chase down your passion like it's the last bus of the night.  

                                                                      ~Terri Guillemets

Design Wall Monday

Here is what I've been working on all week.

I am still pounding away at the additional 108 1/2 tris I need to make.  I want to finish these before I put all the blocks together so I can have a variety of units in the blocks.

I may also have snuck in one of these:

It's a Jacob's ladder I am making as part of Impera Magna's QAL.  I wasn't going to go with yellow but all the florals really screamed to play with this orangy-yellow fabric.  Surprisingly, since it is not a color I am drawn to, I had enough of it to make all the blocks!  Go figure!

Check out Judy's Blog to see what others have on their design walls.

Are you a No Reply commenter?

If you have ever left me a comment and you did NOT get a reply from me then you can be ABSOLUTELY SURE that you are a No-Reply person.  This makes me very sad because then I have no way to reach you.

Here's how to fix it, if you're so inclined:

1. In blogger.com, click on Dashboard.
2. Select Edit Profile.
3. Check the box for "Show my Email Address."
4. Save changes.
    
   I hope you decide to change your settings.
   

   

We have a winner!

I was too timid to try the random number thing so I put everyone's name in a bowl and....

KELLI is the winner!!

Send me an email with your address and I'll send you your prize!

This has been fun for me.  I hope no one is too disappointed.  LOL.

Design Wall Monday

I can't believe it's Monday already!  Sometimes I really have to scramble to have something blog-worthy on my wall to post.  Here is this week's offering:

I started this in January in a Bonnie Hunter class at Road to California.  Typical for one of Bonnie's patterns it has about a million pieces. See the lone block above the top row?  The quilt needs 224 of those.  Each of those 224 blocks has two half-square triangles and two 4-patches.  If my math is any good that means almost 450 1/2 squares and 450 4-patches.  Yup, that's a lot. 

I thought I had all the smaller units done and I plan to spend a good long time sewing them into 224 blocks.  It has taken me this long because I rarely work on it as my primary quilt.  I've done most of it this year by making it my leader/ender project.  It's been fun to see the project box fill up with completed units.

Tonight I sewed the final 4-patch unit.  I've thought for a LONG time that I already had all the 1/2 squares done but when I began making stacks to sew the blocks together I came the the very sad realization that I've been living under a delusion.  I still need about 100.  SIGH.

Go see what everyone else has on their design walls at Patchwork Times.

Have a fabulous Monday.

Giveaway!

I still can't believe I've written 100 posts.  I don't typically stick to things like this.

To reward myself and anyone else who has stuck with me through this journey I made a mugrug to give away.

  I am also going to throw in a group of  six fat quarters.

Just leave me a comment for a chance to win.
Mention me on your blog for another chance to win, just leave a link back to it in your comment.

I'll be picking Monday night.  I hope you win!

DS1 and Izzy

Poor Boy!  Typically Izzy is CRAZY about DS1.  When he's around the rest of us don't even exist.  For the first year of her life we had to make DS1 greet her in the back yard because she got so excited she would pee.  She licks him, leans on him, follows him everywhere.  She even sleeps with him.

Well.  DS2 had been here for a week and apparently Izzy's affections can be bought because when DS1 came home for the weekend she failed to make any sort of fuss over him at all!  Not any!  Poor Boy!  He was more than a little crestfallen.  Thrown over for the little brother!

 

WOW!  This is my 100th post. 

 

I think I'll come up with a giveaway to celebrate.  Check back tomorrow and see what I've come up with.