Housies

I finished the marigold quilt top and folded it up and added it to the stack of quilt tops. Then I started making house blocks.

These are based on a block from Freddy Moran's book Freddy's House. Freddy Moran is one of my quilting heroes. She took up quilting in her 60s and was at it until she died last year at 94. 

Also 

Also this morning I saw a little, tiny, pebble-sized frog hopping across the front patio. 
 

This Day

I had a lovely quiet birthday at home in my pajamas. I slept late, got a little sewing in, had Chinese takeout for dinner and a cannoli (on a now badly chipped plate that I painted a few years back) instead of birthday cake. 

Dave gave me many lovely presents, including a huge bag full of fabric (solid colors that he picked out himself), which I sorely needed, clearly. 

You know you're getting old when one of your best gifts is a new fangled humidifier. (I swear, middle age--ha!--so far seems to be trying to turn me into a slab of dried out jerky, but I'm fighting it by drinking about a gallon of water a day and sleeping under this thing.)

I had thought about going out for a mountain drive or up to Santa Fe for my birthday, but my sciatica (another sign you're getting old!) had other plans that didn't include hours in the car. Staying home makes it easy to alternate periods of rest with periods of light activity which will (hopefully) help things to settle down sooner. 

Gray Kitty commandeered a stack of quilts (Big Chaotic With Lots of Bones at the top of the heap) and has been napping up there for days. I took his picture because he looked so cute there with his little paws dangling off the edge.

Tea and The Stash

Tea

 

For my birthday this year, my mother brought us tea from a local tea house. She ordered and picked it up and brought it out to our place. When it was all laid out on our plates, it was a lot of very dainty bites--cucumber sandwiches, sugared grapes, bacon wrapped stuffed dates, scones, and so on--that looked like they might not make a very filling lunch. When we were finished though, I was so full that I had to pack up dessert (panna cotta, flourless chocolate cake, mini chess pies) for later and I felt like I needed a long nap. It was all very rich and very tasty. 

 

Nice as it was, it was even nicer to sit and chat with Dave and my mother, even while trying to stave off a carb coma because of course I had to eat two scones slathered with clotted cream and white peach curd. (Now I know why people have to drink tea throughout the meal, it's to try to stay awake through the carb haze.)

 

Though we had our tea today, my birthday isn't actually until Monday. I don't have anything planned, just a quiet day at home or maybe a drive through the mountains. I don't need a birthday cake; I'll probably still have half of the desserts my mother brought today.

 

The Stash 

 

Once upon a time, if I said I had a stash, it would have meant something completely different. But now there is this: 

 

That is my fabric stash--most of it anyway. There is a little more fabric (one shelf worth of flannels, which I use very rarely) in the corner behind the set of plastic drawers (which contains unfinished projects and comic book baking boards) and there is a bit more in one of my sewing machine cases (though I think that's mostly polar fleece, which is use even less often than flannel). 

(I feel compelled to say that I swept up the dust bunnies after taking that photo.) 

Along the bottom of the shelves are some of my quilting books and some bits of canvas and such. Another shelf holds the dies for my AccuQuilt. Four of the shelves have wooden crates on them that house various things including my extra irons, embroidery supplies, patterns, and I forget what else. Along the top are boxes that contain fabric markers, interfacing, and batting. The round bin has interfacing in rolls, Heat 'n' Bond, and some iron-on vinyl. 

Huh. I have a lot of stuff. 

Dinner?

Dave is making another batch of pita now, so maybe we'll repeat last night's dinner (fake egg, fake bacon, avocado pita sandwiches).  

Friday!

 

I got stuck on what to do with my happy pink Dresdens and marigold Dresdens. Being stuck threatened to derail me and I decided that I didn't want to be stuck. Instead,  I decided to move forward and make whatever mistakes I needed to make. So I took the happy pink flower Dresdens, added some skulls and borders and made a lap quilt (top). This photo is from part of the way through that process. I like it, but I don't know when it will get quilted. (When I finished it, I added it to the pile of quilt tops that need quilting, some of them more than a year old.)

 

So that left the marigold Dresden plates to be incorporated into a quilt top. I was going to work on that today, but instead I worked on unpacking the fabric that arrived. UPS brought a heavy box and inside were ninety-plus yards of fabric that had to be folded and put away. It took a few hours, but I somehow managed to find space for everything. (I think. I have a small stack of fabrics that I am working with that will need to be put away somewhere, but I'm thinking I can squeeze them in!) 

 

It's funny. I wouldn't call my fabric stash very big compared to some others I've seen online, but it feels like a lot of fabric to me right now--and there's more yet to come. I have a shipment that I ordered last week that will arrive this week, plus Dave ordered a bunch of fabric (as a birthday gift) for me from a local quilt shop. I don't know where all new stuff that is going to go, but I expect I'll find someplace for it.

 

After I got everything (almost everything) folded and put away, I started looking through a few of my quilt books for some inspiration. After I put together the marigold Dresden quilt, I want to make a quilt using lots of solid colors. (The majority of what arrived today are solid colors.) Gwen Marston is my go-to inspirational quilter for quilts done with solids, so I pulled out the books of hers that I have and looked through them. Her quilts remind me of Amish quilts--if Amish quilters were slightly unhinged. I like her stuff a lot.

 

What else? 

 

We had a quiet day at home. Dave went out for some labs, worked, and made pita (which we had for a very late dinner with some scrambled vegan "eggs" and vegan "bacon.") And I should have spent some time doing some housework as my mother is coming for lunch tomorrow and the whole house is in disarray. But it turns out that fondling fabric is more fun than cleaning, so I'll do some cleaning tomorrow morning instead.

 

What else?

 

There were major thunder and lightning storms last night. There wasn't much rain to go with it, but it looked and sounded very impressive. There were supposed to be more thunderstorms this evening, but they didn't really materialize. Too bad.

 

I unfortunately made the mistake of looking at the news today. Everything is disturbing and frustrating. From now on, I think I'll only open the news pages online to take a quick look at the obituaries--which reminds me of an old Russian story. A man stops by the news agent every day to look at the front page of the newspaper but he doesn't ever buy one. One day the news agent asks the man what he's doing and the man says he's looking for an obituary. The news agent says that the obituaries are not on the front page of the newspaper and the man replies, "The one I'm looking for will be."

 

Funnily enough, that's the same one I'll be looking for.  

Tired, Hilarious

It's been a sucky few days. Saw the PA yesterday for some stomach issues that have been going on for the last week or so. PA thought it might be pancreatitis but all my labs are normal. I suspect a minor intestinal blockage. Those normally clear up on their own, so I'm hoping this will, too. But it's disturbing.

 

Lots of things are stuck apparently. I've hit a roadblock with my marigold quilt and put it aside for the moment. Instead of working on it, I sewed a skirt with an elasticized waistband and an inseam pocket. That took part of the afternoon. 

 

Here are some photographs of my sewing area: 

 

All that stuff sits to my right. It's three spray bottles (one with tap water, one with distilled water, one with starch), my coffee cup, a pair of blue-handled detail scissors, and water bottle. One of my many pincushions, my rulers and smaller cutting mats (all standing up in a holder), and lamp.

That's my sewing machine and iPad. I love the window that looks out onto the back courtyard. It's shaded and there's a hummingbird feeder (there in the upper right) that the hummingbirds visit from time to time.) Normally my iPad is shoved further back, but I pulled it forward since I wasn't actually sewing. Behind the iPad is a stack of orange boxes that house my scraps (one box each for patterned scraps, solid scraps, squares ranging from one inch to five inches, denim scraps, and bits of fabric too small to sew together but which can be glued to greeting cards or journals). You can see the stack of boxes better here:

That stuff sits to my left. The travel iron is a new-ish one, from Oliso. They are wickedly pricey, but very good irons. I use this one 97 percent of the time, but I do have two other large irons and a smaller travel iron. The large irons are hard on my neck and shoulders because quilting requires a lot of ironing and repeatedly lifting the iron is not great. The smaller travel iron is great but it's too light. Its long cord is heavier than the actual iron and tends to cause it to fall over. Every iron I have has a steam function, but I have learned not to actually ever put water in an iron. That's apparently the worst thing you can do to an iron with a steam function. It ruins them. 

The stacks of fabric are why I am stuck on the marigold quilt. My original idea was to alternate marigold blocks with blocks of black and white fabrics, but then I thought that might be too stark and look strange. Now I don't know what to do. Do I just go ahead with that idea or put aside the blocks and work on something else for awhile?

I don't know.

I just got a message from the PA that all my labs are fine (I had already checked the results last night through the patient portal). I sent back a question asking about whether it could, from my other symptoms, be a blockage. We'll see. 

I'm so tired. I'm tired of everything health and medical related.

Sent off a quilt top yesterday to be quilted and bound. I love piecing the tops, and I quilt my own stuff often, but this one was big and unwieldy and I don't really have the space to quilt big, unwieldy tops. It should be a few weeks until I get it back.  I also got an email that my recent huge order had shipped. That's the usual practice, for someone from customer service to email that the order shipped. I ordered from Hancock's of Paducah and this email was signed by someone with the name Hancock. I googled the person and it's the vice president of the company. That's how huge this order was. Hilarious.