Variety

So we spent a long weekend up at Mom and Dad's. That was nice. We don't get many chances to go away together these days with the man's schedule, because he generally works a few hours even on his day off, but he took a night off and managed not to have anything scheduled for his off days. Yeah! It was nice to spend some time with the family.

We picked a good time to go. Mom and Dad's pond has had a leak in it for quite awhile and they had moved all their koi to a temporary holding tank for the winter. They repaired the pond last week and we had the good luck to be there for the transfer of the fish back to their pond. There were so many of them! We counted them and took some pictures of them and measured the biggest ones. The fish are pleased to be back home and are very happy when you come to see them. They all swim over and beg for food.

My husband loooooves the pond and spent the whole time fawning over it and Dad kept telling me that I'm going to have to let the man build a pond. I say we get a house first and furnish it, then perhaps we can argue about what to do with our money next. Besides, he can live vicariously through Dad. We are still looking for a house and have one we're considering, but as usual, there's a catch.

Anyway, another one of my favorite things about going home is actually being outside and enjoying all the flowers and plants. The lilacs were in bloom and so were the crabapples. Lovely smells everywhere. I checked on my tree peony and it has 7 fat buds on it. That may not sound like much, but its slow to come and well worth the wait for them.

I managed to finangle Mom and my husband into helping me with pinning my blue/green king-sized quilt and have finally started quilting it. I finished the top sometime last summer and have had it riding around in the trunk for ages and am just now getting around to quilting it.

I've also been plugging away at sewing on the yo-yos and am happy to report that I now have 120 attached, 280 to go!

Mother's Day

I got the rare chance to go home with my husband to my parents house so we are making a long weekend of it. Yeah! This was my gift to my Mom.

Plum Smoke Ring from Farafield

and candles & tissue paper flowers from me!

Cause she's a frou frou kinda woman.

More treats for me!

I bought another ring for me. Don't know why, but its apparently a new fascination that I have. This one is from Farafield, and it was the Silver Smoke Ring. My husband thinks it looks like a Jolly Rancher.

Slow Progress

I've been working on my yo-yo quilt and its going rather well, but slowly. I'm up to almost 80 sewn on. 320ish to go!

Yo-Yo Quilt Progress

My walking foot had a small piece break off of it awhile ago and it would droop in the back after awhile and create drag. I would just nudge it up and it would be fine for a little longer. I sat down to quilt up the yo-yo quilt Sunday night and it was terrible. So I gave in and bought another one from this eBay shop where I've purchased several other feet from. It arrived Thursday, which isn't bad. I sat down and quilted up the quilt yesterday.

Today, I remembered while I was showering that I hadn't monogrammed the back. I like to do that for quilts that are for me and I can't for the life of me seem to remember before the quilt is quilted the whole way out to the border. So I ripped out one corder and added a monogram. Then I discovered that I had put it down too far, so I had to spend several hours very carefully pulling out the monogram. ERGH! I monogrammed it again and this time, it was perfect.

Then I fixed the border quilting, sewed on the binding and trimmed it up. I love, love, love the binding. Its so cute! I made it slightly wider than I usually do and I really like it. It also seems to be going much more quickly than normal when I am handstitching it to the back. Not sure why - maybe cause its fatter? Or maybe its just the fabrics. I don't know, but its making me happy! So anyway. I've got to finish the binding and then I will start attaching the yo-yo's. Not quite sure how I'm going to do that yet. It could take forever!

But here's a sneak peek of what I've got so far.

Etsy Purchase

I recently "rewarded" myself with the purchase of the Olivier ring from MaryMusic's etsy shop and it arrived today. I was so happy with it, I thought I ought to share. It came with a lovely little robin's egg blue ring box, a postcard from another shop on etsy, and a pair of earrings. Wow. The ring is even prettier in person and I love it.

Highly recommended.

Lots of nothing to say?

I'm afraid I've taken a bit of blog break because I can't think of much to say. I've been dragging my husband outside for a bit of fun any chance I get. The weather has been so lovely and I can't handle sitting inside staring out my window at budding trees and sunshine. We've tried to take up tennis and we have been exploring the bike paths and parks around the city. I intend to keep it up - I'm in desperate need of exercise and have been packing on the pounds lately! He works an odd schedule and quite a bit of it is outside his regular shift, so he'd much rather stay at home some days, but we both need the exercise and its good to do things together. As much as I sometimes dislike living in the city, there are parts that are great and I intend to become familiar with them all!

We've also been house-hunting and that seems to occupy my thoughts. I'm tired of looking and I hope we find the right one soon. Its hard to know what the best decision is and its hardly as if its a minor one! I understand that you're not buying your dream home the first time around, but I'm not one to move much. I'd very much like to stay put for awhile!

We did go to a local quilt show a couple weekends ago and had a look around. I was a bit disappointed. There were some really well-made quilts there with some really great hand stitching. Unfortunately, most people's color choices don't seem to appeal to me. Why do older ladies pick the ugliest prints and colors? Its too bad that there's not more representation there from younger quilters. This is the one picture that I took. Not that it was terribly novel, but I did like it and it was obviously made by someone with younger tastes than all the other quilts at the show!

I have been doing a lot of hand quilting on this quilt and I've started quilting up the quilt that will become my Yo-Yo quilt. The hand quilting is slow so no point in posting pictures of that and so far, the yo-yo quilt is all white, so no point in posting that either. I'll post pictures later when I have something to show.

Smells like happiness

My husband bought me a bouquet of pink lilies last week and they were all still in bud and more and more open every day. The smell always reminds me of our honeymoon. I love that man.

Finished item # 2

I know, its slow in coming, but I've finished something else. Its a set of monogrammed flour sack towels for Mom. I don't know what's taken me so long, but my real job has been occupying my time lately, so I'm going with that for my excuse to myself. I just love this thread color.

Something finished?!

Well, the top is finished. That counts, right? I ripped off the remaining two sides tonight and put them back on. It looks much better. I'm annoyed with myself, though, since its not quite as "perfect" as I expected. Its not really anything big and once its quilted and washed, it shouldn't be very visible. Oh well. There are a lot of pieces and the wovens are very easy to distort.

Toulouse by Miss Rosie's Quilt Company with 3 Sisters Maison de Noel fabric

P.S. I have a second copy of the Toulouse quilt pattern for sale on Etsy

On Pintucks

No, I still haven't actually finished anything. I tried to finish monogramming the last flour sack towel for Mom this afternoon and ran out of thread.

So I decided to try out my new pintuck foot that just arrived in the mail from eBay. I didn't realize that this was done with a double needle (it could be done with a single needle and no special foot, I understand, if you can sew straight and right on the edge of the folded fabric) and was happy to find that I already have a twin needle and the extra spool needed for it. I hooked it all up and threaded it - easy enough - and started to sew. It didn't work right the first time, but that's when I remembered that you need to change the upper thread tension. I bumped it up to 9 and off I went. Its rather neat! After you sew the first one, you just line up the pintuck in one of the grooves and it guides the next one.

This is what my experimental piece looked like (still can't photograph white for the life of me - I need a lightbox set up).

Summer Love

So here's a welcome picture in my inbox today! I love this look!

Its Brocade Home.

A Whole Lotta Nothin

I would post more often if I can actually finished something.

I thought I had finished up a quilt top last week, but the borders are driving me nuts. There's a pieced border and then a solid border. The pieced one was a bit longer than necessary, so I eased it in when adding it to the top and it was fine. But now I have to adjust when adding the solid border and its waaaaay too wavy. I took two off and tried putting them back on and then I lost track of which ones I had done. Apparently I didn't do them well enough or I would be able to tell, wouldn't I? Ergh.

I was bored a few days ago, so I found a crocheted hat pattern and thought I would try it as a quick distraction. Um. It looks really stupid. My gauge must be off. So I didn't finish it either.

I have a set of flour sack towels to monogram for my Mom and for some reason, I've been putting that off too. I did finally do one today. 2 more to go!

I put off trying to speckle the eggs for Mom until after midnight. My husband turned out to be better at that then I was, but that really could have used some better technique.

Oh well. I think work has been driving me nuts lately and it is cramping my style on the creative stuff. Too many little things taking up too much brain space, I guess! Hopefully this weekend will be better!

Here's a lovely spring picture to make up for the lousy post and lack of accomplishment. Yesterday was 79 degrees and tonight it is snowing. Go figure. This is spring in Pittsburgh.

Spring 2006 at Phipps

Robin's Eggs?

I had mentioned a few days ago about looking for natural looking fake eggs and I've still not had any success. Back in the fall, I found a bunch of white egg cups for super-cheap at Ikea and bought a bunch for my mom & me. I've been keeping hers to give her for her birthday or for Mother's Day or something, but I thought I would find some pretty eggs to put in them as well. So I've given up. I'm too cheap to pay for blown eggs on eBay, even though there are some very pretty ones like these. So today I decided that I was going to blow my own regular eggs and paint them.

I recruited my poor husband to help. He loves when I do this, of course! But I only needed eight eggs and I'd already done a couple myself a few nights ago. I'm running out of time, so I thought we'd just do six more and that wouldn't be that hard. Oh my word - I hate blowing eggs! It hurts my ears. I didn't want to make the holes too large so that they couldn't be covered up, but sheesh. My husband was a lousy egg blower. If you ask me, I think its just that the man can't possibly allow himself to be capable at such a stupid thing as egg-blowing. But I digress. He blew all of one, while I proceeded to blow 5 and break 2 more. So we have lots of eggs in the fridge and I guess we'll have to make omelets or a quiche or something this week.

So then I had to make a quick trip to the stupid WalMart near us and see if they would have the right color paint. Amazing! They actually did! I sponge painted them all and they turned out rather cute. I also got some grayish brown paint to try to speckle them with, but I haven't done that yet. Perhaps tomorrow. For now, I at least have some pretty eggs. To be honest, I'd rather stick them in an apothecary jar with some moss or something, but the egg cups are alright.

A Few of My Favorite Things. . . on Etsy

Otherwise known as things I'm looking at when I really should be working.

From Beadoodles

From DreamsandJewelry

From pdxbeanies - how adorable is this?!? I want to make one.

From marymusic - its so tiny! Isn't it cute?

From starrydesigns

Cake Stands

I was out running errands today and I wanted so see if I couldn't find some fake eggs that weren't neon colors. No luck there. I'm looking for sort of a quail egg look - in either white or blue with brown speckles or maybe both. By the way, did you know there is actually a category for blown eggs on eBay. I discovered that last night - I had no idea. Maybe I can recruit my husband to help me blow a bunch and then paint them. Ugh.

Anyway, I stopped in at JoAnns to see if they would have any and right inside the door were these cute little cake stands 50% off. They were just like a set of cake stands that I bought my Mom several years ago - it was a set of 3 pink cake stands in graduated sizes - only these were cheap. They were only $14.99 and half off, so who cares, right? So I had to have a couple. Never mind that I have no need for more cake stands.

Ferns

One of the places that Mom & I went in the other day was Pottery Barn. I just love all the seashells and natural stuff that they have in there. They had some nests with bird eggs, some lovely faux succulents, lots of white seashells and a lovely nubby table runner that looked fantastic on the dark wood tables. Anyway, I behaved myself and came away with only some faux ferns. I really like them. I've put them up on my mantel for now. I love the touch of green to the wall.

My favorite place to go on vacation is Maine. We've been there a bunch of times, and my husband and I spent our honeymoon up there. I suppose in a way that's what all the seashells make me think of. So I might be stuck in Pittsburgh, but I want to surround myself with things that make me think of the beach. We've been planning another trip to Bar Harbor this fall and I'm already impatient to go.

Spring Flower Show

So my mom came down yesterday and we spent the day shopping, of course. Actually, if we had more time together, I would rather go do other things, but I need Mom to help me shop. So that's what we did. We tried on a bunch of clothes and only bought a few things.

But we did also go to the Spring Flower Show at Phipps Conservatory. It maybe wasn't quite as good as the Christmas show, but it was still pretty and was lovely to be in there when it was pouring down rain outside today. The rooms with the hyacinths in them smelled like, well, spring. Lovely. This was one of my favorites.

Another One Down

I've finished another project! Okay, granted, this one shouldn't have taken that long to begin with, but it is finished. Its a scarf in my favorite color. Unfortunately for me, winter is now officially over and today I am sitting here sweating at my desk. Its warm! Oh well. It is finished, after all, and will not be lying on the floor next to my couch anymore! Hooray!

Now I'm off to play - my mom is finally making a visit!

Back to Crochet

With all the talk of crochet on the various blogs I've been reading, I am finding myself wanting to pick it up again. I learned how when I was rather young and haven't done it much lately. I made a whole bunch of afghans while I was in high school and there was even a picture of me crocheting in one of my yearbooks. Everyone thought it was funny, but it was something to do and could easily be carried around. I spent most of my study halls crocheting or reading.

This afghan is something that I started in college. I was thinking about marriage and wanted to make it for our first home. I had chosen a rather small, lacy stitch and started it out making it as wide as my full-sized bed and planned to make it large enough to cover it. It took forever! I soon discovered that it would take way more yarn than I thought as well and would end up being rather expensive. I got bored with it after awhile. I think that one skein of yarn only ended up producing about 8 rows (only a couple inches tall).

Its been riding around in our car for awhile now. I thought I would work on it on trips. It just hasn't happened. So finally I took it out the other day and quickly used up the last skein of yarn that I know that I have. I tried looking around the house to see if there are any other skeins lurking about and haven't found any yet. It still nowhere near the size of the bed, but its a nice throw size. I think I will call it finished, tie it off, and start cleaning it up. The poor thing needs to be washed now. It has had pop spilled on it at one point and its got some candle wax dripped into it. All of which can be fixed. Its washable wool, so I will have to clean it up and then pop it into the washer. Hopefully it will survive!

Meanwhile, I've dragged out some of my pattern books for crochet and have started thinking about making a lacy ivory baby blanket with a nice brown ribbon weaved on the edges. Oh wait. I'm trying to finish already started projects. Ooops.

I love fluffy white towels

Mom has asked me for a set of towels for her, so I picked some up yesterday and sat down to monogram them this evening. I wouldn't mind some different style monograms, but I haven't found any other fonts that have really struck my fancy yet. I'll have to do some more hunting. But anyway, my husband was quite sure that these ought to have just a single initial monogram on them and Mom was open to anything. So this is what I did. I love the white and slate blue! Its so me! I hope Mom will like them.

Chair Seats

I've been meaning to do this for a little while, but I've just now gotten around to recovering the seat on this chair with my new favorite fabric - the chocolate & ivory damask.

I want to put it everywhere, but for now, I am just planning on recovering an old footstool in it as well. In the meantime, I will be admiring my chair. I love this chair. I picked it up at a garage sale for $5 the year we were first married. I really need to get back out and explore the sales this spring!

50's Housewife?

I bought an apron pattern a little while ago and never got around to trying it. I gave into temptation and bought some Freshcut fabric to try it with. I finally started it on Monday night. I don't know what my problem is, but I never seem to completely understand pattern instructions, but it turned out fine. It just took me more time than I think it should have. It has a sort of v-neck to it with a flounce. Its rather cute, but I may put this on Etsy and see if anyone is interested in it.

The End is Near

Okay, not really. Perhaps the end of yo-yo making for the immediate future. I have just one more fabric to go (the red striped), but I wanted to use it for binding as well, so I hate to start cutting until I know what I need for binding, which means I need to decide how big to make the quilt.

So after badgering my husband to help me count them all, I discovered that I had 365 already done. I am figuring on getting around 35 out of the striped fabric at least, so I can do a 20 x 20 square of yo yos with a nice wide border around the edges.

One every two inches seems to dense and one every 3 inches too sparse. So, one every 2 1/2" it is. I tried spacing one row out and then laying the rest out in a grid just to get the idea of it in my head (must see - I am a visual person). That's tedious, but here it is. Its not the final layout or anything and I didn't make any attempt to make them random. I'll obsess over that later.

So that makes this a 50" square before borders. That seems like an okay size. I don't need anything huge. I just hate making things too small just because I'm too lazy to keep going. It just doesn't seem big enough laying there on the floor. Maybe I'm crazy.

Nothing new

I haven't been doing anything exciting, so I've had nothing in particular to post about. Like I said earlier, my college roommate was here this weekend, and so I had to get caught up on my cleaning and work after she left. I did make a bazillion more yo-yos over the weekend, but there's nothing to look at there, but a growing pile of them.

This morning, I decided to try making the Chocolate Sugar Cookies that were in Martha Stewart Living's March issue. They turned out pretty well. I may bake them a bit less next time, since I didn't make them nearly as large as the recipe called for. But I took a picture and I was all proud of myself how it turned out. I should really get a tripod and practice more.

Hand Towels

My roommate from college is coming to vist tomorrow, so what am I doing? Monogramming new hand towels for myself, of course. What else would a logical person be doing?? They're in my favorite colors. Yeah!

YO YO

I'm still plugging away on the Yo Yo's. I've got a hundred or so finished already. They really don't require too much time. I need to figure out how far apart I will space them and what size quilt I want. I don't think I bought enough fabric.

Oh, and my link down below to the Sturbridge Yankee quilt has changed from red to pink and the quilt itself has disappeared from their website. I'm liking the pink. How cute. Now I might have to make a baby quilt out of pink. Ah, the many plans that I have in my head. I'm a crazy idiot.

Still more aprons. . .

I'm an apron fool, apparently.

I made a couple more this past week. Matching aprons for my sister and the guy she's dating. Then one for my Husband, who turned 29 this past week. Wahoo!