Whew! I'm done. I had a horrible time getting a decent photo of the block. A lot of the beads don't really show well and the colors are a bit out of whack (like that upper left hand purple is a duo-tone purple/red dupioni). Anyway, hopefully winging it's way 1st class today off to Sharon! Thanks for letting me be a part of this!
Stumble It!

Today has been the Monday after the weekend....sigh...laundry....bigger sigh....catching up with clients....biggest sigh...and getting ready for Thanksgiving...not to big of a sigh because we're not doing much. The biggest news is that I'm almost done with my "All that Jazz" block! Woo Hooo (extra Hoo) as my client's daughter would say! I'm going to spend the morning looking at it and deciding if it needs one or two more stitches, then a photograph for here and OFF to Australia. WHEW! (so peek back this afternoon and I'll post a picture)

For the grandparents, here are the kids in the snow in Silverthorne:


The snow up there reminds me of Leadville where our family lived (believe it or not) for 10 years. The piles in the parking lots showed little signs of any melting...I remember walking on piles like that as a kid that were taller than me. Well one thing I can say is that I'd have to drag Rex kicking and screaming somewhere like that to live permanently. The high both days was 36 degrees! When I walked the dog one morning it was 4 degrees (and this is Fahrenheit for all you Aussies and other C users out there)! BRRRRRRR!!!!!!

Oh, and Happy Birthday to Mom today! Stumble It!

After our Rocky Mountain Crazy Quilters meeting this Saturday we went to a sale by some Art Quilters...trying to reduce stash. I got this amazing group of stuff (and this is just the beginning!)

You might see some of this fabric (above left) in my new background....yes, I LOVE it! Does anyone know what it is? I love it so much I'd love to get more!


Okay, you can all quit drooling now! ;-)

Stumble It!

To start, I have a "duh, what a totally good idea" tip...Rhonda on our retreat had her Crazy Quilt Stitches book bound...you get the binding cut off and replaced at Kinkos...makes it SO much easier to use and it only cost $6. My understanding is that Carol Samples, not only allows this on her books, she encourages it! So, cool idea eh?:

I have again slacked in my posting...the worst thing when I do this is that I have SO much to say that I either post 10 times or write the world's longest post. more often than not I end up just dropping stuff out...which I'm sad about. Some cool things out there, like, have you all heard about the upside down Christmas trees that are all the rage?

Ok, the first thing I'm going to do is post last weeks (themewise) stash Sunday. Then I'm going to follow this up with another post with another one (mainly because I got some seriously cool new fabric!

So, the stash Sunday from last week is:

These are handkerchiefs that I inherited from both grandmothers...cool, eh? Most have stains, but for Crazy Quilting that means I can cut off a corner and use it to fix my pieces!

Here's the most recent progress on my 2nd banner block. I have a long way to go, but if I post progress it makes me feel like I'm getting somewhere!

We're off to the store for cupcakes for Missy C's 5th birthday party at school. The "treat" in class has to be store bought...isn't that a sad statement on the world? Oh well! I understand they all love cupcakes!

Stumble It!

I was late again with Stash sunday, but I have one all prepared so I'm going to leave it for this Sunday (clever eh? That way I'm a week ahead not a week behind!)

I'm off to the dentist this morning...I HATE dentists. Not the usual reasons...I have a fairly high pain threshold, but I was honored with really really crappy teeth (sorry Mom and Dad, it's the truth) and so when I walk into a Dentist's office they see "CASH COW!"..."THERE's that trip we've been wanting to take", etc. As you can tell my last trip was really bad and it was 4 years ago....i know, horrible. So, I'm going in with a broken tooth, preparing myself for a lecture and to give the new dentist a big lecture about how "financing" and "my first born child" are not an option in return for gleaming white teeth.

Ok, this has NOTHING to do with crazy quilting, art quilting or anything, but I had to vent.

I do have pictures of progress on my block and I hope to have those up today. I have a heap of photos (mostly for grandparents and such) to put up in flickr, but I'm still trying to move over there from Webshots....ah, too much to do. Stumble It!

The last post I put up took me a couple of days to get up...which was annoying to say the least.
I'm in process of doing some work to my blog over the next couple of days and I may even move to Wordpress...not sure, still looking into it. But while I "geek out" with all of that, I found a few things to entertain all of you.

Pam Rubert's blog is wonderful (I adore her stuff) and she's done a fantastic job of taking pictures and giving comments from Houston. I actually haven't spent much time on it yet (I figure it's at least an hour or two) but if you've got a bit of time today, check it out!

I also seldom gush about someone elses work, but I've been reading "My Little Mochi" for some time now and holy cow! Check out this bag! It may just be my taste (and about the 30 others that left comments), but I think that's just the coolest bag I've ever seen.....EVER! The girl on it is hand appliqued - and there's some skillful machine work there too! I think anyone would appreciate the work and talent.

I think this just goes to show that hand work (I'm still blown away by the hand appliqued girl) is not dead at all. I sometimes take flack for loving to do stuff by hand, but there's a satisfaction and frankly a look of quality that you can't get from fusing or slapping things together. Ok, I may take some heat for that, but I honestly believe it. If your'e going for a certain look AND enjoy doing handwork....nothing beats it! (off my soapbox for today!) Stumble It!

I got a little beading done day before yesterday, when my Ott Lite finally arrived home! I'm SO totally excited about that. I bought it in a mark down bin at Joanne Fabrics for $11. Their note on it said it lit in a few places. So, I took it home and it really didn't work at all. I got emailing the tech support guy at Ott Lite...tried a new bulb (at his direction) and then finally deemed it didn't work (he agreed), so I paid $8 to ship it off to them. About 2 weeks later, I got an email that even though it wasn't under warranty (I didn't really tell them how I bought it, just said I doubted it was warranteed), they just charged me shipping to send it back...another $10. So, I have a $70 Ott Lite for just about $30....don't you love that! It's in LOVELY working order and hopefully I'll save my eyesight early...so I will have years of stitching in my future.

So, in lieu of any stitching here, my good friend Leslie has some lovely work over on Pinyon Creek Stitchin'! - her Banner block is going to be fantastic! I can't wait to see this banner altogether...should be a fabulous reflection of all of our tastes and personality.

And with that, I'm off to get my stewing tomatoes (yep, still ones we picked out of the garden) off the stove and into containers suitable for freezing...there are a heap of tomatoes there....fun to have fresh tomatoes in the middle of winter tho. Well, ok, not FRESH! ;-) Stumble It!