Albuquerque Friday

It's going to be a long day away from home. I'm due for my two-week post-op check. Won't they be surprised that I don't have any sutures for them to take out. Since reading that 8-10 days was the norm I decided to take them out myself, and sure glad I didn't have them poking and pulling for any longer.

I didn't post yesterday, but did have a somewhat productive day in my sewing room. I'm working on a piece to cover foam insulation that we use at night to put in our bedroom window. It was a necessity when we had the old single pane windows, but we find it helps keep the house temperature more stable if we still use it. Maybe tomorrow I'll have made enough progress on it to post a picture.

The weather continues to shift towards winter and more normal temps rather than the unseasonable warm temps we'd been having.

And a picture because a post seems so sparse without a photo. We stopped at a beautifully desert landscaped rest area after a camping trip in the Gila Wilderness area. There were so many bunnies hiding and moving around the cacti. I don't know how they do it.

Slow progress

Well, I knew recovery wasn't linear and only in an up(beat) direction. So I have a day of progress, and a couple of days of stagnating. I'm glad I didn't create a traffic jam for all the people beating a path to my blog for the PIF challenge. ;-)

For lack of anything better to post about, I'll include a picture of all the postcards I got from the Dia de los Muertos postcard swap that I hosted on About.com. It was a lot of fun, and it's great to get such a variety of creativity. I can also post the cards I made for the swap now that it's over. There was much discussion about postage rates, and I mailed all of mine for the postcard rate, which the postmistress of our little post office thinks falls within the guidelines.

It was windy with a cold wind blowing from the east all day today. Still our days are warm and sunny and we haven't used the heat except for a few days when it got down to 15. I think winter will eventually catch up to us. I hope by then to be more productive...Christmas is just around the corner.

Pay it Forward Challenge

I was lucky enough to be in on Sophie's Pay it Forward Challenge, and so here I am posting my own.

I will send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this PIF exchange. I don’t know what that gift will be yet–though my intention is to make something for you that you will know to be useful or believe to be beautiful–and you may not receive it tomorrow or next week, but you will receive it within 365 days, that is my promise! The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog.

I love making things, and I think they will probably all be different since I keep wanting to try different techniques. I know my blog doesn't exactly have a huge (ha!) readership, and so I'm sending out a notice to certain people (that I would love to make something for)to let them know that I've posted this.

Well, this makes two posts in two days. I wonder if I can keep this up for the rest of the month! I should strive for it, since I don't seem to very productive in anything else.

Another month...

The days just seem to pass, one after the other. I love reading so many blogs and feel like I know some of these people, and envy their easy, frequent writing styles. I have to push myself to add another blog post. I thought about joining NaBloPoMo, but I really didn't think I'd pull it off. I think the only time I blogged regularly was when I was participating, along with other quilters on the About.com forum in The Artist's Way exercises. That kicked off the blog, and then I just let it fall by the wayside.

So now I'm recovering from arthroscopy of my knee, and have all this rather unproductive time, but still have to push myself to blog. I guess having two close friends that I email daily leaves little else that I feel the need to write about.

Our house remodel and renovation is coming along, with little participation from me. My husband, who I've recently started calling, the keeper, since it was pointed out to me that he was "a keeper," is the one who makes the changes happen. He is nearing the completion of an added three-quarter bath to our little abode. He works day after day, and the changes keep accumulating, all I have to do is feed him! I need to follow his example more, and plow along and make progress with my quilting. I've committed to make the girls a quilt each for Christmas. One is ready to be quilted on the long-arm, and the other hasn't been started, still an ever changing vision that comes and goes from my head! And my mind is a bit addled with pain medication!

Where do the days go?

Went away this past weekend to a quilting retreat near Payson, AZ. Had a wonderful, productive time. Got a quilt top together for older daughter and it's ready to load on the long-arm. (Along with a couple of others that have been waiting.)

Now that it's been delivered, I can post a picture of the birthday gift, a pencil case, I made Pat.

This along with a pincushion was rather hastily made before the retreat from this book, Last Minute Patchwork & Quilted Gifts. It's a beautifully photographed book, and I hope to take on more projects from it. Of course, now I see the Purl Bee has put together fabrics to make the pencil case, while I struggled to find appropriate pieces from my stash.

Fall has taken hold around here with a hard freeze while I was gone. I'm so glad to have jars and jars of canned peaches, peachsauce, and apricot jam. The days are warm and sunny and the nights cool, just right for sleeping under the covers, instead of kicking them all off.

The Peaches are done!

What a bounty! I never expected that we'd get this many peaches! Thankfully a friend told us to thin the fruit on the tree, and the remaining fruit matured to a nicer size. They are beautiful white fleshed peaches, and the canning work begins!



I finished my second Priority Alzheimer's project quilt, got them both registered and they are on their way. It was a fun project. Working with smaller than bed sized quilts is always rewarding as it's much easier to finish.

Now to start thinking about my next project, a friend's quilt to do on the long-arm. I'm still mulling over what design I want to do on it. Okay, back to work in my heavenly peach smelling kitchen.

Inspiration Monday

Well, after a dry spell, I got out in my sewing/sunroom early and made this scary sock stuffie. Several years ago I made sock monkeys and a sock elephant for my daughters. Today I came across these wonderful creatures and decided the pair of socks I scavenged from hubby's uncle had seen the inside of a drawer long enough. This one has a home, if she wants it, with my daughter's friend to whom I promised a sock monkey if she quit smoking. Don't know that she has quit, but her birthday is coming up.



Got to the post office and mailed off a couple of quilts. I'm also putting more touches on the second Alzheimer's project quilt. Hope to get that done soon so I can concentrate on another quilt on the long-arm. I still have a box of apples that need handling, and peaches keep dropping off our tree. They aren't quite ripe, but tasty with a sprinkling of sugar.


I'm going to try cooking them into something, perhaps a peachy orange sauce for our fish dinner tonight. The peaches have survived lots of wind without coming down, but now that they are heavier we're getting a lot more of them blowing off.

A WIP and a finished piece

I've been working on a small piece (9X12) for Ami Simms Priority: Alzheimer's Quilts project and finally finished it. I'd had the little jellyfish hanging on my bulletin board for a couple of years since I participated in a postcard swap on About.com. I had intended to make a postcard out of it, but the swap ended and I hadn't yet found inspiration. I needed a little more background to make it a 9X12 size and so pieced some fabric to give a watery look. It's so nice now to quilt backgrounds on the bottoms of what's left when I finish a quilt on the long-arm.


My other piece is still a work in progress and I hope to get it finished in the next couple of days. I'm terrible at naming things and hope that someone will be able to help come up with something.

Nobody in my family or that I know personally has been struck with Alzheimer's but I do understand the burden of taking care of a sick and/or aging family member, having spent eight months in MN caring for my mother-in-law.
I better get back to my "work" before I lose the momentum.

Girl Trip to Colorado

Well, if I waited a few more days I could make it an even four months since I last posted anything to this long forgotten blog! I can't believe it's been that long. The summer is getting away from me.

So, my BFF Rosie and I are on a girl trip to Colorado, staying with Jackie at her new digs with a wonderful view of Colorado Springs and Pikes Peak in particular. The weather has been beautiful, and there is never a dull moment watching the clouds and light playing over the mountains. The photo credit belongs to Rosie. While I have my camera with me, I haven't taken many pictures. Hers is always at the ready.
The days have been filled with lots of thrift store shopping, good food, and today I spent some time (and money) at a fabric store.
The last few months have been busy. Besides nursing a bum knee, I've gotten my long-arm machine and am just getting into it. We also got broadband access at home, so maybe I'll be better about updating this blog, though I won't make any promises.

Postcard swap

These are all the great cards I got in the postcard swap for Earth Day on About.com with the exception of the one bottom right. That was the first butterfly I tried for my card--my sewing machine was seriously misbehaving and didn't want to do the zig-zag stitching around the card.

The spring bird migration is well underway. I need to sit patiently with my new camera and try to get some better photos. This one of the Bullock's oriole was a quick one through a dirty window, but even so, it's beautiful bird.



I'm now working on the Turtle Day postcards. I still can't settle on just one idea, and make them all the same.