What a Wonderful Christmas

My Tree - I barely got the tree up and trimmed before Christmas this year. I moved my treadle machine down to the living room. That is what the tree is sitting on. It is a little artificial flocked one that I adore.

All my loot - minus my 1941 Singer Featherweight from my dear and loving husband. Picture is a little fuzzy, but you get the idea - I am spoiled.





RRCB

Roll Roll, Cotton Boll:
Here are my efforts on a mystery quilt available through Bonnie Hunter's blog. I had a late start, but I am making progress. Love Bonnie, Love Quiltville, Love Quiltville Chat, Love Quiltville Quips & Snips.

 Alll my browns, pinks, and greens. You can see below that my string blocks are very neutral. I found I already had cut a lot of 11/2" strips.

This is my one constant.

 Here is everything together. You can see that the fabric is not that red. I can't wait to work on rrcb this weekend.

Happy Holidays

http://www.petcentric.com/fun-games/Critter-Carols.aspx?mid=37945148

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

I taped my little quilt up at work and quickly toke the picture - Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Visit to Granny's House

Guess who came down from Syracuse last month? Thomas!
Look at all the crabs AJ, Ross, and Thomas caught -- so guess what we had to eat all weekend?
Lots of crabs and crab soup.

Sunday, AJ and Ross went to the Ravens-Buffalo football game while Anne Marie, Thomas, and I went to the ocean. It was so warm that we had our lunch - Thrasher fries - on the beach. Thomas got very wet and we had to shop for some dry sweat pants for him to wear home.

Even Scrappy enjoyed this visit.

Mississippi Trip

AJ and I drove down to MS to see Brian and Tisha. It was an excellent trip. The weather was fantastic and the scenery was beautiful.

We all went to Tupelo on Saturday. Of course, I found a quilt shop to spend some of my $.

AJ wanted to see the car museum so we all went. You know you are old when the museum displays a car you owned and bought new! Note the red 1974 VW. I had a bright yellow one.

I enjoyed seeing a Tucker up close and personal ----

Of course, you cannot go to Tupelo with out seeing where Elvis lived.

I took pictures of some of my stuff that I made that I sent down south.

This is the quilt I gave to Brian and Tisha for a thank you.

Just want to say one more time - great trip!

Texas Trip - August

I know, I know, I am really behind in my posts. I am going to try to update each week starting with my trip to Texas in August. It was a fantastic trip despite the heat. I was fascinated with the Texas size spiders. Too bad they did not eat all the grasshoppers that were in the yard.

I got to go to Brice's school - Huckabee - a small central school like the one my children attended in New York and like the one where I taught junior & senior high school science.

I almost jumped out of Mary Beth's truck to go to the administrative office and apply for a job teaching physics. But alas, it would be a long way to commute from the eastern shore.

I love all the horses - especially little Lucky.

Mary Beth, Brice and I went to the San Marcos outlets and spent the afternoon shopping. Brice likes clothes that are "fashionable and random." Here he is wearing his grandfather's golf hat from Germany. I love it.

Catching up

Here are some of the projects I am currentlly working on-----

1. Quilting

2. Cross Stitch

Birds and Quilting

This is a picture of my mother robin that has a nest right at my driveway. The nest is not hidden very well.

This web site has a live cam or two baby humming birds. I can not resist watching them.

http://phoebeallens.com/

On to quilting -- Scrappy loves the flannel quilt I just finished.

With Memorial Day weekend coming up, I plan to set aside some

serious quilting time to finish up some of my UFOs!

Update on the ducks

This is the daughter of last year's "black" duck. She has some white spots on her chest and she has a mallard boyfriend!

I am making another quillow!

Here is the fabric for Thomas' quillow. I need to make a push this Easter weekend on making it.

I will keep you posted....

Meanwhile, I mailed out this dish towel and cloth that I knitted to Brian and Tisha.

Brice's Quillow

Fabrics and threads used

Scrappy was a big help!

I used the Mega Quilter to baste the quilt sandwich

I sewed the binding while commuting to work. Don't worry -- AJ was driving.

Finished!! and I had enough fabric left over for a pillow case.

Quillows for my Grandsons!

I am making quillows for my grandsons. I never made a quillow before. I am using directions from Fons and Porter's magazine - Jan/Feb 2007, pages 94-97, and a pattern that was free from Connecting Threads. The pattern is no longer on the website. It has directions for a pieced pillow top and the quilt part. You can watch a video -- link is below. I have the labels made!

http://www.fonsandporter.com/aspx/fonsandporter/Videos/ViewVideo.aspx?v=1755

Mom's Quilt

I took a picture of it this morning before I shipped it to Florida. It was a kit I bought at Lilies of the Field in Easton. The pieces were badly cut. Some even had selvage as part of the measurement. So I had to do a little fudging here and there. Then I had the worst time quilting it. I spent a lot of time with my seam ripper. All in all - it is a cute quilt and it is finished!

Oh did I mention it came without directions!

Almost Spring

Saturday, as I was at my ironing board pressing fabric, I noticed a wren peeking out of the bird house. Yeah! This is a sure sign of spring when you see the birds building nests.

Both house are occupied.

Second Snow Storm

The second snow storm that hit had the ducks visiting the bird feeder even though I hauled corn and bread crumbs down to the water every morning (through the snow drifts!)

First Snow Storm

I love the snow! But this time I got snowed out of my quilt retreat. With AJ away in Florida, I needed to go home at night to take care of Scrappy. Sooo - I only enjoyed two days of quilt retreat an then 9 days home with snow! I was a happy camper.

This picture was taken Saturday, 2/6. You can see why I could not go over to the Narrows for the retreat.

Scrappy loves the snow as much as I do.

I will post more on the snow adventures and show what I worked on at the retreat.

Neglected my blog

Ok, I know I have neglected my blog, but I am ready to do my updates.

Here is last Saturday. A trip to the ocean complete with a blizzard. Poor AJ, he could not see out the windshield. It was a scary, beautiful, and fun all the same time. We went down for the Waterman's convention. I got to go into 1 outlet & 1 yarn shop. So we definitely need to plan a return trip soon.

We were going to have dinner at Jimmy's, but decided to just go home while we could.

The cows were running and frolicking in the stuff. I could not resist taking their photo.

As you can see, the snow kept coming.

Home at last!!! And are neighbors had fireworks.

I tried to capture the event.