No Stitching–Some Family Time

I don’t think I even set foot in the studio last week.  On Monday I saw the orthopedic surgeon’s nurse practitioner who told me I was free to do as much as I could.  I complained at the slow progress I was making and she reminded me that I had had 3 surgeries within 5 weeks (none my idea) and that my body was still reeling from the assaults.  So I stopped my complaining.  Then it was off to breakfast out and some shopping at the drug store (which has been getting a lot of our money).

On Tuesday I visited with the cardiologist.  I was again reminded that every time you go to a doctor you have to give them all the same information that you just gave the other doctors.   Anyway, he was pretty happy with how my heart and pacemaker are working together.  He did think there was room for improvement and turned the beats per minute up a bit.  I can’t tell the difference.  Both of these doctors don’t want to see me again until mid-December which is just fine by me.

And today I started the new medication that is supposed to be more potent in cancer retarding.  I will see the oncologist in two weeks and he will be looking at my lab work to see if it is doing what it is supposed to do.  Fingers crossed.

Meanwhile we have been visiting with family.  Our daughter came by on Saturday and we fell into watching football.  She is a rabid fan (wrong school) and yells as though she were in the stands.  She and hubby were so involved I called her the son he never had: I don’t think any of our three sons are as passionate as Lisa.
  

We offered to take her to lunch and she drove us in her new car.  Then the funny thing was that she paid for lunch.  Not bad, huh?











And I must say we looked pretty good in it.













This past Sunday we went to Florida to visit our grandson, his wife, and their really sweet son, Ryder.  We treated them, and ourselves, to Red Lobster where I ate 1# of crab legs and drawn butter.  I was still cracking shells long after everyone else was done: it was worth it!!


















Back at their house his Mommy read to him.  Look at how involved he is in the book.  He is not quite 11 months and you would swear he was reading along with her.










And then it was time to climb on Daddy.  We were again impressed both with how happy a baby Ryder is and his parents approach to parenting.

I do have to say that I was quite tired by the time we got home so was in bed early.  Now I just have to get myself motivated to do my exercises and then move on to fabric manipulation and then yarn entanglement.

I hope everyone who reads this has a great week with a sense of accomplishment, great or small.  Gari

BOMs Away

This week, for the first time in 5 months, I was able to go fabric shopping.  I had known that I needed some red fabric for one of my BOMs but since I was unable to stand long enough to cut fabric and press the fusible on it, it really had been a  moot point.  But since I have been getting a little stronger (slowly, oh so slowly) I decided it was time to venture out and shop.  I took this picture because those two rows of fabric are all polka dot fabrics and I was very impressed.






Then yesterday I spent some time drawing/copying the applique shapes on my fusible: I did this for three BOM blocks.

And then today I began cutting fabric and applying the fusible.  I’m getting all three blocks ready at the same time so it was a little confusing. I only cut into four fabrics so I still have some more to prepare.  I kind of got waylaid by knitting needles and yarn. 



One fun thing we did last week was to drive our daughter to where she was picking up her very first brand new car. It was 300 miles up and back with sitting time while she went through the car buying process and then we also stopped for a late dinner.  But we had lots of fun and she was very happy.  She even got a nurse specialty car tag.

Health Update:  I saw the oncologist a couple of weeks ago and he is putting me on a relatively new medication that is supposed to help build up my bones while killing cancer cells.  It has to come from a special pharmacy and be approved by the insurance.  It took two weeks of back and forth conversations to get that approval but he finally got it. The medication comes in the mail so we are waiting on that.

Tomorrow I see the orthopedic surgeon with the hope that I will be told that all is well with my hip and clearance to drive.  He never told me not to drive but the home health nurse assured me I wasn’t supposed to.
Then the next day I am seeing the cardiologist who will tell me that the pacemaker is working fine.

All three of these doctors are great but I am ready to not be tied to them quite so much.

I hope everyone had as nice a weekend as we did and that this will be a great week.  Gari

WEEKEND FUN

No pictures today.  About three hours after my last post my computer gave up the ghost and died .... while I was using it.  So for DH's birthday I got a new computer.  I am not complaining, really, except that I am not a Win 8 fan.  I lost Live Writer, which I have used faithfully for years to write my blog , and I now have to learn how to function with this new, to me, system and then find the disks for the programs I use a lot.  Additionally I will be trying to see how much I can get off the old disk.

Contrary  to what I just said I figured out a round about way to get a picture into this new computer and am really glad to share our oldest son and his wife's picture.  They came for a weekend visit, from Atlanta, to celebrate DH's birthday.  We antiqued, ate and laughed throughout the weekend and had a lot of fun together.  Thanks, Scott and Sue for a great visit.

 

Almost immediately after they pulled out of the driveway, our daughter arrived with her husband and son to take us out for dinner, again to celebrate DH's birthday and also her husband's birthday which is today.  Sad to say, we were so busy eating and laughing that I forgot to take any pictures so that will have to wait for another celebration.

 

Given the above, there was NO SEWING this weekend.  I have, however, already turned on the heat in the studio (just to take the 50F chill off) and am off to do some damage in there.  DH is home for Spring Break so he is the dog sitter for the week and maybe I can at least get the top of his birthday quilt together in this time.,

 

Have a great week everybody.   GARI 

Design Wall Preparation

My design wall was abandoned last week in favor of a vacation trip to North Carolina.  However what would be coming to the wall was uppermost in my mind: please check out my last post.  Here you will see how I worked to make sure I am supplied with the wherewithal to keep that wall alive.


I had a great time at Mary Jo’s in Gastonia, NC.  All of the top fabric is batiks.  I tend to buy darker batiks so I made myself get lots of brights and even some lights.  The bottom three are fabrics that I just couldn’t pass up.









Then I added new quilting threads from Long Creek Mills, also in Gastonia.  I tried to choose colors I don’t already have.  These were $4 each and are first run.












And for additional inspiration I brought home these lovelies from Wanda’s show (again see the last post).  I could find the same triangles in one of Wanda’s pieces so I figured I had brought home a piece of one of her “real” quilts.







All of that happened in one day.  Then we began 5 days of doing this.  Here you see our granddog, Ponce, doing what he does better than the rest of us.









Here are the guys, DH and DS#3, doing what they did best…resting.












And here is our DIL doing  a crossword.  She made us hunt down new papers every day just so she could work a new one. 












And what was I doing while they were all relaxing?  Well, this is my sewing station, set up on the back deck.










And I began appliqueing the Dragon. 













See my tiny stitches?  Because of my arthritic hands I can only stitch for short periods (no more than an hour) so I will be working on this for quite awhile. 

I did work on a couple of other projects, one new and one a UFO, and hope to show them later, maybe even on that design wall.







The week was one of rest, eating great food, antiquing, eating some more, and fun.  I took this picture on our last night in NC.  I was outside, walking Ponce, and the others were inside playing a board game.  I thought this was a beautiful sight, fun with family.

Yippy!!

Look what came home yesterday!

After a very depressing phone call on Tuesday, I didn’t expect to see it for quite some time. My very nice repairman told me “oh, we are not doing well, at all.” With much trepidation I asked “why.” Well, he said that he and the main repair person at Brother had decided that one of the problems I was having was that there was thread still wound around the wheel, deep inside the machine. He also said that he cannot just take the wheel off because it is part of the “drive shaft” and if he takes that out I would have to have a new drive shaft (about $400). So he is doing what I did back in June 2009: please go see http://gariquilts.blogspot.com/2009/06/one-of-those-days.html before you read any further.

I knew I had not gotten it all out but I had taken out all I could reach. He said that he works on it in between other jobs, about an hour at a time is all he can stand, and I just need to be patient.

And then yesterday morning he called and said it was ready. When I went to get it he started describing how he got the thread out and it was exactly what I did back in June 2009 except that he had sharper and thinner tools to work with. The procedure is “cut threads, pull threads out, sometimes one at a time.” It is a very tiring procedure and here is what all he got out of her.

Anyway, she is home and we spent several very productive hours working on our Christmas projects.

Prior to that I had to make a block for the guild swap and I had to make it on a machine I have never tried to do a quarter inch seam.

I did a pretty good job anyway and it came out measuring 12 ½”. How about that!

And yesterday I also got some of the sashing cut for my Christmas project.

Although it doesn’t show very well, this 100% cotton fabric has a metallic finish so it really does look like gold. I spent a great deal of time looking for it (fabric shopping, what a shame) because I had thread just the shade/color I wanted and nothing else would do. I was so excited when I found this.

And to top off yesterday’s good news, DH invited me out to lunch and then later DD invited me out to dinner. One can’t do better than that.

I think I have a pretty good life (and family).

And, speaking of family, earlier this week DS#3 called to invite us to his and DDIL's house for Christmas. Now, normally I would love to be with them at this special holiday season. However, many years ago we were on our way to the DC area to be with my folks for Christmas when we hit ice on bridges in Atlanta. We watched the car in front of us do 360s and then we "crept" across (on more than one bridge). After snow on the way back I vowed I would never go north again in the winter.

Then many years passed and DS#3 invited us to spend Christmas at a timeshare in Virginia, just south of DC. I told him of my concerns and he assured me the weather was going to be fine. And we have a beautiful drive up there but when we woke the next morning everything was covered in a very thick layer of ICE. It stayed all the time we were there and was with us for half of the slippery drive home. Needless to say, I was not happy to be out of the deep south.

When the same DS#3 called for this invitation I reminded him of all of this history and he assured me that because they had experienced such a bad winter last year (driven out of their house becuase of no heat/electricity after a BIG snowstorm) this year would be much warmer and that it never snows before February (a big fat lie, by the way).

So, I am confronted with a dilemma. I really want to go to MD to spend Christmas with my son and his wife. I really do not want to go north at Christmas. What's a mother to do?

Painted Pants

Well, really they are painted overalls. As requested by a couple of people, here is a picture of the overalls I bought at the Art & Crafts Show last weekend.

And this is a picture of the ones I bought last year.

These are so very comfortable, especially for long days of sewing.

Today was spent with our daughter and her husband (his 45^th birthday). We drove 110 miles to eat at a Bass Pro Shop restaurant and the she and I went off (left the “boys” to shop on their own) to secretly purchase a HDTV as a surprise gift for him. This was her birthday and “thank you” gift for all his support while she was in nursing school. When we went back to pick the guys up he was asked to move a package from the back seat to the back of the truck. Imagine his surprise when he saw what he was moving. It is really fun to see a wife, or husband, going to great lengths to be nice to her/his spouse.

We had lots of fun, lots of laughs, and were ready for rest by the time we got home.

No sewing for the last couple of days but hope to get back in the studio by tomorrow afternoon.

DP Progress & Diamonds

I know it isn't Design Wall Monday but I wanted to share how far I have gotten with my current quilt. I am really liking how my Drunkard's Path blocks are turning out and what I am doing with them.

However, starting on Tuesday there has been no sewing going on. First came a concert. DH got tickets to see The Diamonds in Panama City, FL. Many will not have heard of them but when I was in high school, late 50s, they were a hot rock & roll singing group. And "our song" was Little Darlin'. The audience was about 300 people "of a certain age" who rocked with the music and happily remembered American Bandstand. What fun we had.

And, while we were driving to the concert we got a call from DH's sister saying that she and her husband were in our town, ready to visit. Did we know they were coming? No! So we told them we would be back after midnight and today has been a full day of visiting.

This is George and Cera. They are from NH and came south to find warmer weather. Boy did they pick the wrong winter to make this trip. Anyway, we just came home from dinner with our daughter, son in law, grandson, granddaughter, and great grandson. Lots of stories and laughter.

They will be here for the next two days and then I will have to do a big quilting push in order to have a February finish for OPAM. Wish me luck.

Perfect Christmas

I love it when a plan comes together. Woke up Christmas morning and Santa, a Northwestern fan, had come with all things Auburn.

The weather here in South Alabama was picture perfect: blue skies and a nip in the air. None of that white stuff and no rain (had that the night before).

We had opened gifts the night before so it was a quiet breakfast before leaving for our daughter’s for Christmas dinner. There we also had our granddaughter (Megan) and her boyfriend (Eric) and their son Skylar, the hit of the party.

This picture is entitled “Eric Bookends.”

Having two Eric’s has been just a little confusing.

Our daughter got a stethoscope and here, in this very fuzzy picture, she is showing it off while talking on the phone with her older brother. Think he can see it?

This is our SIL, Gary, who besides getting a fleece throw from us got this hat. He is a big hunter with an even bigger sense of humor.

After all that fun, Eric and I left for NWFL where we took in a movie, Sherlock Holmes, and went out for a Chinese dinner (wonderful). Then home to a fire in the fireplace and peace and quiet. Wonderful day.

No new design wall picture this week to put on Judy's blog: see last week’s post. I did finish the appliqué on the basket blocks and even got the rail fence blocks sewn together but they look just the same . I will be showing some of the quilty gifts I made in the days to come.

Now, at our house, we are doing some “spring” cleaning.” Yesterday I was cleaning out a junque area that I hope to turn into a fused glass studio and today I am working on finding all the surfaces in the quilt studio. I have told myself that I cannot start another project until I have cleared out the scraps and leftovers from both my prior projects and the room switch. So wish me luck and I’ll be back.

Fun Week So Far

This past Tuesday was my twins birthday, they are now 41 years old. Each of their spouses decided to do something special for their special day. My DIL arranged a camping trip, in the cold mountains of MD. Please visit her blog to see their trip: Ponce.

My SIL arranged a surprise birthday party for my daughter. She was to be at the hospital for her clinical rotation, nurses’ training, so he got permission to bring cake and stuff around lunch time and she got to celebrate with her classmates, and us.

The class has been studying for their state board exam so a party seemed just the thing, don’t you think?

And here is SIL and DH getting the table ready for cake, etc. Isn’t it nice to see the men working?

I embroidered two t-shirts for DD, each with a nurse, of sorts, on the front.








Please excuse the face in the first shot. This daughter used to stand in front of a mirror, practicing her “faces,” nothing dramatic about her. Of ourse her father is a drama teacher.

Anyway, she graduates one month from her birthday and we couldn’t be prouder of her.

No pictures from the studio this time. I am working on three Christmas gifts and although I don’t think the people they are going to read my blog, I can’t be sure so they will be shown at the end of December. I will tell you that I also took a “fused glass” class last Tuesday night. I can’t show what I did because I had to leave it there to cool overnight and the class was 90 miles away. I am hoping to be able to go get them this weekend.

Today I have three hours to sew and then I have to get ready to teach my WW class. Tomorrow I will be sewing for about three hours and then I am going with DH to see a play. It seems it is getting harder and harder to get quality and quantity time in my studio. What ever happened to that quiet retirement life I envisioned?

Musings and Batik

Given how busy I seem to be, one would not think I had time to “muse.” But when I am piecing, I tend to think. What I have been thinking this week is that I don’t think any of my family reads my blog. I think that when I first started writing some did, but I don’t think they do now. I am careful to not show the things I may be making for them but I never get comments about what I am doing or what I share about the goings on in my/our lives. Now, I don’t know how I feel about this, maybe a little hurt and maybe a little relieved. Fortunately, musings don’t have to come to any conclusion, just flit around in my head and then leave.

The batik part of this post is much more exciting. I started a new project Monday. A little history first. A couple of years ago I made two sweatshirt jackets.

Then one year ago I started Weight Watchers and after a 60# weight loss, they are too big for me. I really hate that because I love them but I haven’t seen a good way of altering them so I decided I needed to make a new one. Here are the parts I have so far made.

This is the back.

This is one of the fronts.

And this is one of the sleeves.

I love the dog batik and have had it around for at least 2 years. The colored squares were a pack of batik nickels I won at guild about 4 years ago and never had any idea of what to do with them. But Monday I had inspiration and off I went. I paired 2 nickels with a 91/2” square of the dog fabric and then made up 3 mini quilts to cover the back and two fronts. Then I cut smaller batik squares, paring them with orange strips, and ran them down the middle of each of the sleeves with a different batik flanking it. Anyway, I had hoped to get this done today but, alas, I chose to spend time with family instead. I will be gone every day for the next three days so I won’t get back to it until at least Sunday. Too bad, too, since we are supposed to actually get some Fall temps over the weekend and I probably will wish I had it to wear. Anyway, Sunday I will be trying to figure out what to use for the binding and then serge the parts together and bind.

There has been no sewing or quilting here since Monday. Monday I did get the last of 28 appliqué blocks finished and began looking at the additional fabrics (by the way, this is still a secret so can’t show anything yet). I had decided on the coordinating fabric some time ago but a couple of weeks ago I couldn’t find it. So, since I was so close to being ready for it, I decided on a different fabric that I also really liked for this quilt. Then on Monday I found the original fabric so was in a quandary that took up the rest of Monday.

Tuesday I went to a class for embroidery software. Even at my advanced age I try to keep up to date and learn the new things that come with upgrades. But by the time I left Monday afternoon my head was spinning. Yet, to keep learning, I signed up for a class on EQ6 on April 3.

So today I had planned to do the laundry, a never ending job, and play with the above mentioned software. However, yesterday afternoon my son from CO called to say his son, who is in the Air Force, is just 75 miles away and will be there until today at 8 when he will be leaving for Afghanistan and would I be interested in going to visit with him. So of course off I went this morning. This is Chris

And this is me with him.

Also with us were his other grandparents. We had a good visit and then lunch. I left them after we took Chris to Best Buy to pick up a power cord for his laptop (he seemed to think it wouldn’t hold a charge for 6 months) and then the others were then on their way to the AF base so he could get a belt he also had forgotten to pack. Our prayers will be going with Chris.

So, tomorrow I HAVE to do laundry (how boring) and will play with the software, but if I can I must sneak over to the studio to get some fabric ready to make “hundreds” of half square triangles. Oh, my!

Monday, Monday

Anywone want to know why I'm not sewing? Last night I was asked to babysit with our great grandson. We did really well until he got tired and then we had this until he fell asleep on greatgranddad. He will be here all day so no studio time for me.

The picture quality is not great (cell phone) but isn't this the neatest way to enter into Christmas week? What you are looking at is great grandson, Skylar (Sky) with his Grandpa Santa.

Now a puzzle: what in the world are these? No prizes as I am all gifted out what with Christmas, but I think they really look funny.

I think we are almost ready for Christmas. We have either made or gotten all of our gifts with the exception of two: one is still on backorder and the other will be a gift card that I will get getting tomorrow.

We have heard from my SIL: they got electricity shortly after I posted that they were out. However it is snowing there now and they are expecting another ice storm soon. It's a good thing they got a new cord of wood for the stove, it sounds like they may need it.

And here in the South, we are supposed to be going down to 22F tonight with a brisk breeze. I should tell you that I really don't like to be cold. But at least we won't have ice to wake up to.