Babies

I love babies.  Especially when they belong to other people.  I spent Sunday afternoon at my cousin’s house, she and her sister both have little boys who are around 18 months old.  Totally cute.  At that age where they don’t really want to have anything to do with big people that they don’t know, but they were fun to watch.

I’m going to get to spend a few days with my sister’s kids in a couple of months, they are buying a house, and I’m going to fly out for the weekend to help corral children so that Mom and Dad can concentrate on moving.  Mark says he’ll watch the shop for me as long as no one expects him to answer any questions.  My nephew is getting closer and closer to 3 years old.  He’s such a cutie pie and a smarty pants.  His 6 month old sister is sweet, sweet, sweet.

My brother and his wife are getting ready for the arrival of their 3rd bundle of joy.  Their older kids are 8 and 6.  They are pretty cute, too, but 8 and 6 year old cute is different than toddler or baby cute.

I was reminded today that I probably ought to be thinking about a baby quilt, and remembered that a request had been put in for something blue/green, think:  Earth from space:

I’m thinking these pieces ought to do.  I’m going to do a Disappearing Nine Patch (I did one last summer for one of my cousin’s babies.  Should be fast, and the greens and blues should all blend together nicely.  I used fat 8ths and cut the strips at 4 inches, so the blocks will be a bit bigger than last time.

Time for a Knitting Olympics update!  Not only am I going to be finished before the Closing Ceremonies, I’m thinking I’m going to set a World Record.  I’m only 3.5 rows away from being finished with all of the knitting.  Crazy, isn’t it?  Part of why I’m done sooner than expected is that I ran out of black yarn.  I’m using larger needles than what the pattern calls for, so I think that’s the explanation.  I can only make 14 rows instead of 16.

I’m not worried, it’s plenty big:

Gargantuan, even.

I’ve also got the knitting done for a flower:

Though, I do have to sew it up.  The way I cropped the pictures makes the flower look as big as the bag, but really, it’s not.

Can’t wait to felt them both and see how they turn out!!!

Tomorrow, I’ll have a machine quilting job to show off.  It’s a Buggy Barn Coneflower Crazies quilt, I’m really pleased with how it is turning out.

Small funny:  my first customers of the day came in carrying a pair of football pants, wanting to know if I did any hemming.

Hem?  You want me to hem?  Now, I’m not one to turn away money, but…I know my area of expertise and it does NOT include hemming pants for anyone, including my own family members, let alone strangers.  I pointed them across the street to the clothing store.

I hope you all had a great Monday.

See you tomorrow,

Suzanne

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And the winners are….

Well, there is nothing more random than a pair of 9 year old twin boys, so I asked Will and Joe to each pick a number between 1 and 88 (88!!  that’s a lot of comments, people!  thanks for inviting all of your friends!!).

Their numbers were:

(Those would be Do-We-Really-Have-To-Smile-Smiles)

The numbers they picked correspond to comments from Betsy and Michele in TN.  Congratulations to the both of you, I’ll be in touch privately with the details of your prezzies.

Ironically, neither of them posted with what they were bringing to the party, but quite frankly, I’m not sure we needed any more food or drink!!  LOL

Thanks a bunch to all of you that played along.  I had fun reading your comments, and will try to respond to those that I haven’t responded to yet in the next day or so.  Plus, I have to go add all of those blogs to my blog reader!!

Have a great Monday!

Suzanne

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Wowee zowee

Two things, quickly:

One, you guys are awesome!  My 600 blog post party is HUGE!  Thanks for coming, and thanks for inviting your friends.  You still have until tomorrow at Noon Central Time to join in if you want to win one of the gift certificates!  Just go comment on this post!

One problem, though, now there are all of these new blogs I need to go check out.  When am I supposed to do that??? LOL

Two, did you know that it is Ragweed season here in Iowa?  You wouldn’t know it by me!  I am so so so excited this year — I’ve been using Flonase (Or is it Nasocort?) and Wow.  Virtually no sneezing.  Considering the fact that Ragweed is the one thing that I am the most allergic too — this is…unprecendented.

OK, three things — we went grocery shoppnig last night and I was worried that I’d miss the swimming finals last night.  Shouldn’t have worried, and was so glad we got to watch.  If you are the other teams in that pool, are you trying your darndest to beat Team USA, or are you secretly hopeful that Team USA wins so that Phelps can make history with 8 gold medals?

Did anyone else, though, wish that they had shown some other sport instead of the 15 minutes of men swimming back and forth and back and forth in the 1500M finals?  Hello?  That part is really boring!  Just show us the finish!!

That really is all for now.  We’re off to a family picnic.

Suzanne

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Getting rid of scraps

Did you see Vicki’s comment about donating my scraps to someone who might use them for something like QOVs or other charity projects?

I’m sad to say that my immediate first reaction was…(in a really whiny voice)

But, but, but….I might need those scraps some day.

You know, for when they stop making new fabric.

Sheesh.

I’m trying to work my way through that sewing room a little bit at a time, and the next time I’m up there this week, I’ll be eyeing the scraps and other piles of fabric a little differently.

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Now this is what I call a party

Wow.  Have you guys read through any of the comments to see what yummy stuff people are bringing to my party?  It’s probably a good thing that it is all virtual, becasue I think we’d all be in trouble otherwise!

And this morning I flashed on all of those TV shows and movies where the teenager’s parents are out of town and the teenager invites a “few” of her friends — pretty soon the house is full of people she doesn’t know and shortly after that the cops arrive….

It doesn’t appear that anything is broken (yet) and no one has called the cops, so I think we’re good to keep inviting people to the party.  Even though I don’t know some of you, I’m sure glad you have joined in!

Remember, you have until Monday morning to join the party (by commenting on the previous post), and I’ll be handing out the presents (two $25 gift certificates to my new shop) shortly after I close comments.

In other completely unrelated news:  I need an intervention.  Or something.  My scrap bins have reached epic proportion and I need help.  I know that when I’m cutting for a project, I should be doing something about the leftovers right away (cutting them down to usable sizes, sorting things out by size and shape…), but I never seem to do that.  Instead, I dump everything into a bin.  Many bins, now, unfortunately.  I’ve seen and read and thought about all of the scrap organizing systems and schools of thought.  All of them come down to one thing:  you have to actually DO IT.  And not just think about doing it.

I’ve decided that what I really need is for a girlfriend (or 5) to come to my house and help me sort it all out.  It would be a lot more fun if I didn’t have to do it myself, and maybe I could pawn off gift some of the various goodies in there to one or more of those friends.

I was going to take a picture and make this post more interesting, but SOMEONE left the memory card at the shop again.  Sheesh.  I really ought to get a 2nd memory card.  You know, so I could misplace both of them at the same time.

So if anyone wants to come, let me know.  I’ll make some more pink lemonade (or whatever else you like to drink, although we’d have to be careful if you want red wine, wouldn’t want you spilling on my stash) and I’ll definitely make more cookies.

Suzanne

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600

August 18, 2008 — You are welcome to join in the party by telling me what you are bringing, but the prize drawing is now closed.  Thanks to so many for participating!!!

I stayed up way too late last night watching the women’s all-round gymnastics finals. I was bound and determined to watch and see who won the medals. It took everything I had to actually stay awake, though. At one point, there were two blurry Nastia Liuken’s tumbling across my TV screen as my vision blurred and my eyes fought to stay open.

It’s pretty amazing what those young women can do with their bodies. I remember way back in gym class, when we had to do stuff on the balance beam, or the uneven bars: scared the crap out of me. I can barely stay up straight on flat ground, let alone a balance beam, even the one that was just a couple of inches off the ground. And they do tumbling, and turns and and flips? Crazy.

Speaking of crazy, my WordPress dashboard tells me that this my 600th post. I fear that most of those 600 posts are merely inane ramblings, but hopefully one or two sparked a smile or provided inspiration. In honor of such a nice big fat round number, I decided it was time for another blog party.

I’ve got cookies (peanut butter, white chocolate macadamia and double chocolate brownie), pink lemonade and presents.**

All you HAVE to do is show up (i.e. leave a comment by Monday, the 18th, noon Central time), and YOU might be one of the lucky ones to get a present.

What you COULD do if you wanted is let the party spill over to your blog — post about what you are going to bring to the party, along with a link back to my blog. Will you bring adult beverages? A cake? Appetizers? (photograph of goodies is optional…)

Here’s a handy-dandy link you could copy and use if you wanted to do so:

http://blog.saltcreekquilts.com/2008/08/15/600/

And for the presents? Well, I just happen to know someone who just opened an online shop selling yarn and fabric, and I’ve convinced her to donate TWO $25 gift certificates for this party. TWO!

She did mention that if one of the winners lives outside the US, there will have to be some figuring out of how to actually use the gift certificate, but she’s sure she can work it out.

Time to get the boys to hustle through their (late) breakfast and head to work!

Have a great day!

Suzanne

** I do have to admit that my cookies are made out of frozen cookie dough, but trust me, they are VERY good.

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Simple

The simple meander is often maligned by quilters, many of whom are longarm quilters and get tired of quilting it on their customers quilts.

Sometimes, though, it’s just the ticket, especially when your customer wants something super-quick and simple, just something that holds it all together:

(customer = myself.  quilt = shop sample, pattern = ellen’s favorite lap quilt in the book laps from fats)

This coming weekend is the Traer Cruise, if anybody has a classic car they want to bring to town, I’m sure you could join the crowd.

I pulled out the blue and white double Irish Chain I mentioned yesterday and was pleasantly surprised to discover that I had more of it done than I remembered.  In fact, nearly all of the 169 blocks are made, and I had even started sewing some of them in rows!

As a refresher, those blue squares finish at 1 inch.  I worked on a little bit of sewing last night, but had to bring all of the pieces to the shop today — I had brought my iron and ironing board down here and had no way to press them!  I need to get a second ironing board, but I keep forgetting, or haven’t had enough room in the vehicle.

Got a call from Mark a bit ago, we are out of milk AND bread, so I HAVE to remember to stop at the grocery store on the way home.  I need to work on some menu planning, and getting more use out of our crockpot.  I actually put some chicken and rice in the crockpost on Tuesday.  Tonight, they had to fend for themselves.

I’m trying to think of a snappy way to end this, but nothing is coming to me.  I guess I’ll just quit.

Suzanne

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New ideas

I need new ideas right now like I need a hole in my head.  Sheesh.  Browsing through blogs today I saw a quilt that sparked an idea for one I would like to design  and make.  When am I going to do that?  Sheesh.

I spent a short amount of time last night trying to unpack some boxes in my new at-home-sewing-studio.  What a disaster area.  I did about 5 boxes, it’s going to be a VERY slow process, as I don’t really know how to arrange it all.  In the process I uncovered the blue and white Irish Chain I was working on awhile back.  I think I should probably finish piecing it before I start a new piecing project.  Of course, I should probably finish about a gazillion other projects before I start something new (in my spare time).

Speaking of finishing things, I got another stripe done on my bag, I think I’m halfway on the stripes now.  No new pictures, as it really doesn’t look any different.  I would have worked on the flowers last night, too, but managed to leave one of the needles at the shop.  Which is why I prefer circular needles, even for straight knitting:  they are always attached to each other!

I wanted to respond to a comment ath Sharon made on my previous blog post, she mentioned that she has quiletd many quilts similar to the one that I posted (and created a pattern for).  I wanted to let all of you know that while I do not own a pattern like that one, I’m 100% sure that someone else out there has put together a pattern that looks similar — it’s really just a courthouse steps variation with sashing.  I don’t ever pretend that what I am doing when I design  a piecing pattern is 100% original or unique — I don’t think very many of us can, when we are all working from the same quilt blocks and being inspired by the same existing patterns and quilts that we see online and in quilt shows.   I put that particular quilt together after being inspired by the candy fabric and wanting to use a bunch of brights.  I probably sound like I’m being defensive, and really, I’m not.  I just thought it was an important comment to respond to and hope that I’ve made some sort of sense.

I hope all of you have a great evening — I need to go curl up on my bed and get some more knitting done and do some really important Olympic watching.

Suzanne

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Breaking rules

i just posted a version of this over on MQResource, and then decided to post it here, too, apologies to those of you that might see this twice.

I pieced this quilt as a shop sample, I designed the quilt (and you can download the free pattern from the shop blog).

When I quilted it, I wanted something fast and simple, like an allover loopy meander.

Now, since I started quilting, I’ve always quilted my allover loopy meander such that I always changed direction after each loop, like so:

Apologies for the terrible mouse drawing.

Well, the stripy fabric that I used in the quilt had these squiggly lines on it and I had an epiphany:

Look!  The loopies don’t always change direction!!!!  Did you know that you CAN actually quilt meandering loops that DON’T change direction after each loop?  Deep down, I’m sure I did know this, but I was so used to making myself change direction, I didn’t even think about it anymore.

So, this is how I quilted it, and you are going to have to suffer through another bad mouse drawing, because the quilting doesn’t actually show up in photographs.  It does look quite cute in person on the quilt:

I was pretty irritated with myself when I realized I was doing something “just because” someone told me that’s the way the loops had to be.  I hate that kind of thinking: “that’s the way it’s always been done” is like nails on a chalkboard to me.  Yes, I realize that this is a pretty minor sort of epiphany, but it’s got me wondering.

What other “rules” do I subconsciously follow in my quilting??  Sure, there are some that I follow because they make sense to me, or because I’ve learned from experience that that is what works the best — but what are the things that I do just because I was told to do so?

Of course, I can’t think of any others right now, but I thought I’d open the challenge up to all of you, my beloved blog readers.

What sorts of things do you do because someone said you HAD to do it that way? Maybe you could take some time to think about a different way to do them, or maybe you will discover that the way you do it really does make sense to you!

My challenge to you:  go break some rules, challenge some assumptions, and try something new.

And then come back and tell me about it.  Or post about it on your blog, but be sure to leave me a link so I can read about your rule-breaking ways.

Suzanne

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2nd try on new theme

different theme.  still not sure i like this one either.  will keep experimenting, but not now: now it’s time to get joe showered and then go hang out and watch some olympics.

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