Hmm, What To Do Today?

It's Black Friday.  I'm not much of a shopper, but I make jokes about going to the mall to get away from it all~~all being 4000 acres of nature preserve.  We get maybe a hundred cars on our road each day, and if it weren't for the airport that's only 4 miles from here, it would be really, really quiet and wonderful all the time.  Sometimes, I do have to get away from it all. 

Today might be the day. 

There's a locally owned department type store near here~~The Anderson's.  Several members of the family are good friends of ours, and every single one of them are super-duper folks.  Naturalists, artists, gear heads, all sorts of great and talented people.  And people of faith, too.  They run their businesses they way they run their families, with love, guidance, compassion, and with a terrific work ethic.  So I shop there with no guilt about supporting a huge multi-national conglomerate. 


I do think I'll get away from it all for a while.  Good thing they don't have a quilt shop....... but you should see their everything-else!

Tomorrow is Small Business Saturday~~a really great idea..... with a kicker.  The kicker is that American Express, one of those huge Wall Street multinational conglomerates is sort of behind it.  So if you're going out tomorrow to support your local small business, take cash.  Way better for the small business!

A Week of Threadbanger Heaven!

DD found my upload cord, right where it should have been, and right where we looked for days and days.  So here's a whole mess of stuff from the past week.  I also cut the first of the shrunk-felted sweaters.  It's tough on my rotary cutters--time to see if BadAmy can order me some from her wholesale distributor.

Upload cord~~found.

What you get after a week of fun in the crafty corner.  Even the scraps are cute~

Top:  Quilt my Grandmother made for me (1960ish) and bottom is one I'll be giving to a Great-niece for Christmas.

The one I'll give to the Great-niece.

Some of these quilts will go to a charity and some will go to the arts show I'm doing with BadAmy.

Fun to do girly stuff for a change.

This one has a real binding.  Bad idea.  I self-bound the others, sooooooo much better!

Backs of a couple.

And the fronts.  The McColls pattern fabric is from JoAnnes.

4Patches4Hope blocks. Gotta get them in the mail soon.

Pine cone bags for FTD's sale.

The unglamorous part of the relaxer packs.  I used rice for the base.  Some will have lavender, chamomile, peppermint in various combinations.  Some will be plain.  If you are a female member of my family, pretend you don't see these.

Outsides of relaxer packs.  Some are in Manly Man colors. I'm working on all sorts of ties.

Pre-printed placemats for the sale. 6 of 'em.

Pre-printed mug rugs.  They're supposed to be used as gift tags, but I went with mug rugs.

And some dolly fleece blankets for sale and charity.

Friday Night Sew In!

Heidi, of Handmade by fame is again hosting the Friday Night Sew In, and she picked my birthday to have it.  Well, okay it's always the 3rd Friday of the month.  I've been able to join in the fun several times, and tomorrow . . . I'll be busy but I've been sewing several evenings this week, so I'm counting myself in.  My birthday present to me.

So.  I've signed up for my first 'craft' sale.  Our little village is having an Arts Show and I'm going to take a few things over and BadAmy is providing some of her good stuff.  Her stock is a little on the low side this year, since she's been so busy with her sock clubs.  I'm working on some mellow relaxer packs, and have the inner packs done and now am working on the outer bags.  The pattern I found needs some tweaking, so a-tweaking I will go.  I want to give them a quilted feel, hence the tweaking.

I did get lots of little dolly quilts and fleece blankies made this week. My virtual friend, the Impera Magna, found a quilter who was working with some wood workers who are working on dolly cradles, which need little quilts.  My little quilts will go to Church for the ChristChild boxes we make for kids.  And since my camera upload cord is still hiding somewhere I can't post the pics.  Sheesh.  When I find the dang thing I'll do a post of just pics.  One of the little quilts turned out really nicely--just the look I was looking for, because of its similarity to a doll quilt my Grandmother made for me, 6 nine patches set in sashing and self-bound.  I'll be giving this to one of my little great-nieces for Christmas this year.


I also dug all of my Christmas stash out and drooled all over it again.  I found a pattern I like for a couch size quilt, but naturally I was 4 fabrics short.  No problem, I had a huge fist full of coupons, so off I went to HoAnne's.  Didn't pay more than 60% on the full price of anything.  Dang, I'm good. In my stash,  I also found some pre-printed stocking and tags fabric that I got for free last year on quilt shop hop.  I've got the tags nearly done as mug rugs and the stockings cut out.  The reason it was free was that candle wax dripped all over into a basket of fabric during the shop hop--too many crazed women crammed into a small space, ya know.  Somebody knocked it in the basket.  Rather than try to salvage it themselves, the owners just put it out and said if you want it, take it.  I spent a long time going thru the basket and picked up some winning fabric.  Sweet.

So for the daytime/night time sew in, I'll be finishing some snowman pre-printed placemats I found last winter, and the stockings, and the relaxer dealies.  That will keep me busy.  Then next week, I need to finish up the Green Hats pink pajama bottoms, so they'll be ready for our party.

But the big news is that I've decided to have FTD's log cabin quilt bound by someone else.  I think I can get the binding machine sewed on, but I want it hand bound.  No can do, so I'll see if the LAQ in Whitehouse can do it for me.  It deserves to be done properly.

Whew.  Lots to do.  And that doesn't include DD's train club activities.  More on that later.

1930 Grandmother's Garden Hexie Quilt Top for Sale

Just a quick post.  BadAmy found this quilt top for sale over on Ravelry.  If you aren't a member, just sign up, it's a cool and free site for our sista fiber-nistas.  If you can't see the top, it's about 90 x 90, in greens, pinks, and whites Grandmother's Garden Hexie quilt. currently going for about $175 or so.  Just thought you'd like to know.

Lights, Threadbanger, Action!

Pics will follow someday----after I find the camera upload cord which has gone walkabout.  Sheesh. 


Yea!  DH got the lights up in the Crafty Corner, helped me up the 'ceiling' back up, sorta put his tools away, and I re-organized the sewing crafty crap and Viola!  I actually got to sew tonight.

I think I might also be in hyper-drive.  Which I will regret tomorrow.


I took a good look at my Crafty Corner, trying to figure out what wasn't quite right about it.  My sewing area is fine, even though it took me a while to remember where all the stuff goes--between moving it all to put the lights up, and putting stuff away that I took out west, I really had to put my puny grey cells to work.  Arg.

And then it dawned on me.  My Crafty Table, a great find at the Habitat Re-Store was way over there, not over here.  So I conned DD (who was home sick today, after being off for conferences for 5, count 'em, 5 days) into helping me move the old oak Sunday School table that-a-way, and then the chairs and love seat from hell with it, followed by moving the Crafty Table closer to the sewing area.  Wow.  Makes a whole heck of a lot more sense.

One of the local libraries is having 2 fund-raisers this weekend, which involves folks from the community each decorating a dinner table for 8.  I'm calling mine "My Yellowstone Cabin."  Very funny since we don't have a cabin, and never in a million years would I be able to set the table nicely.  Anywho.  I had already made napkins out of red ticking, but only had 6.... I need 8.  So back to the store I go for fabric, and now I have 8 in one size and 6 in the other.  Cute.  (My Mom hated ticking.  Only the poor people had to use ticking.)  I just made squares, then fringed the edges.  So lazy am I that I even used the selvages for one side.

Then I made 6 more bags for DD's trains.  I found (dirt cheap) really cool pre-quilted train fabric.  I used black store bought bias tape around the top edges and then just folded them over for the bags.  Way too easy.  And really helpful when we're moving trains from place to place.

Hmmm, then I made patches for a project I heard about from the Impera Magna Herself.  It's called 4Patches4Hope.  Easy breezy 4 patches.  I got a fat quarters of red, white, and blue, and presto-bingo 49 patches done.  Okay, that took a couple of hours, but still, pretty darn quick.

Next week's project~~another cool thing that the Impera Magna found--quilty doll quilts for charity.  So cute!  I won't get back to the threadbanger until next week likely, but I can start plotting the doll quilts now.  Then I'll be settled into my groove, and will get serious and finish up some other special projects--especially B&L's quilt.  

And since we're having nutty wacky warm weather, I worked on putting lights outside so I can see the boys standing outside at 6:dark:30 waiting for the bus.  I use Christmas lights and checked them before sticking them up.  They hate me.  A section in the middle is now out. Crap.

I'm whipped, but in a good way.  Yea!

World Bird Wednesday!

And I finally have a new pic to post on World Bird Wednesday, and I'm now Piliated Obsessed again.  The last time the birds were in the yard there was no way to get the camera.  We did this time, and it was pouring down rain.

They were back yesterday, and I did get what I hope will be a good sound recording of two birds calling back and forth--I haven't had time to upload stuff from yesterday yet.  Sheesh.  And it was sunny and pleasant yesterday, so of course I couldn't get close enough to the birds to get any photos.

Anywho, if you aren't familiar with World Bird Wednesday over at Springman's blog, click here or just find it the old fashioned way... Cut'n'paste.  Back to the woods for me!

By the by, I attended Alma College which is on the Pine River of Pine River Review fame.  One summer I also worked for the Youth Conservation Corps as a Team Leader, and worked on the Tittabawassee River mostly at Imerman Park.  A fantastic summer, where I learned so much about where I wanted to be and what I wanted to do when I grew up.....

 http://pineriverreview.blogspot.com/