Purses for Trish

Some time ago, Trish, Damien's other grandmother, asked me to make these two purses for her to give her friends for Christmas. She brought me the butterfly fabric. Of course, I put it off as long as I could but I finally got them finished this afternoon. They have been cut out and laying on my cutting table for at least three weeks. This is the Margo purse pattern from Lazy Girl Designs. I have made this pattern up many times. In fact, I had given Trish the one I used as a class sample at work. We had that class quite a few times. I love this purse even though I don't carry a purse this size and have never made one for myself.

Orca Bay Mystery Quilt - Part 3

I finally finished my Orca Bay mystery quilt part three - which was posted last Friday morning. It has taken five days of hard work to get these 350 half-square triangles done. I did about 250 of them using my easy-angle ruler the hard way. Then someone posted online about a web site that had downloads you could print out and place the paper on fabric and sew a bunch of them at once. Here is a link to that site: http://www.quiltingandwhatnot.ca/Half-Square-Triangle.html It really helped to get the last hundred done. The other picture shows all the parts in the box I am keeping them in until they get too big for it. Sorry it is sideways, I couldn't figure out how to turn it around. At the top of the picture are all the half-square triangles, then the gold string blocks of part 2, and the bottom shows the quarter-square triangles. I love doing Bonnie Hunter's mysteries - but she sure likes to use very small pieces! I haven't used the blues yet, the other main color in this quilt. Maybe part 4 will use them. I have had blues and greens in mind for a quilt for quite a while now. I love adding the yellows (golds) to them. My blues will be darker than the greens, but not all the way to navy. I have a lot of different pieces and I know it will be gorgeous.

Fire in the Neighborhood

During the night last night I was awoken by a disturbance. I could see flashing lights out front so I got up to see what was going on. There was a police car parked in the intersection directing traffic away from the fifteen hundred block of Seventh Avenue. I opened the door and saw a bunch of fire trucks only half a block away. I put a jacket over my warm robe and found a pair of shoes and went out to see which house was ablaze. There are very old houses in my neighborhood and two of them had flames high over the roof. These houses are VERY close together and there was no way only one of them could burn. The young men who worked on our stone wall this summer live in one of them, and I heard one say that the fire started in the attic. While I was standing there gawking I heard Audrey yell for me. She and Jason were standing across the street, and Pam was there with Shana, Jonathan's girlfriend. It seems we all meet in the street like that far too often. In just a few minutes I was freezing so I went home. Richard was sitting in the living room and asked what was going on. I just went back to bed - I had taken Ambien a couple of hours before that. We drove past the houses this morning and the second story of each was really burned. We have lost many, many houses in this neighborhood to fire.

Orca Bay Mystery Quilt - Part 2

I can't believe it! I have already finished part 2 of the Orca Bay mystery quilt. I made 72 small string blocks = 3 1/2" square. They are gorgeous but I don't enjoy making them. The next part will not be released until Friday morning so now I can work on my bowtie blocks. Hurry up Friday - I'm ready!!!

View of my decorations from the front door

Not a great picture, but it shows the stars hanging from the awning and the tall spiral tree. The stars are blue, green, red and they flash on and off. The spiral tree is multi-colored but it does not flash. Beside the big spiral tree are five little spiral trees. I will get a picture when all the decorations are done. We had to do it a little differently than we usually do because the new awning doesn't have a railing, and we always put lights and garland on the railing. We also would run red rope light down the fence. The star lights we just bought last month, but the spiral trees have been here for a few years.

Orca Bay Mystery Quilt - Part 1

Bonnie Hunter is doing a new mystery quilt on her blog. It is called Orca Bay and she posted the first clue last Friday. I have been all week getting this done. In the picture I show my first clue all finished. I am doing my quilt in medium greens and dark blues with yellows (sort of gold) as an accent and of course neutral backgrounds. Here are my greens and neutral backgrounds in 224 quarter square triangles, pinned together in groups of 10. They only measure 2 1/2' square and Bonnie says they will be scattered all over the quilt. Now I have to make 72 3 1/2" string blocks in my yellows. I hope to post each clue to my blog whenever I get one finished. I hope to be able to keep up and get each clue finished each week. Here is a link to the mystery quilt http://quiltville.blogspot.com/p/orca-bay-mystery.html

Happy Turkey Day!

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. I spent the day cooking and cleaning and cooking and cleaning! We had a wonderful meal - turkey and stuffing and all the trimmings, including several desserts. The picture I put on here today is my graham cracker pie, something my grandmother always made and I didn't get the recipe from her. My friend gave me her mother's recipe and it was the right taste, so I have made it my own. I got a Kitchenaid mixer this year and boy it made terrific meringue! That's really all you can see in the picture. I also had german chocolate pie, something new for me. I had always enjoyed it in restaurants but never made it until yesterday. I will definitely make that again! Audrey came over with her husband and mother-in-law and Adam and Richard were here too. When I was a kid there were thirty or more for dinner each year, but my family is dwindling away.

Thanksgiving was always my favorite holiday until four years ago, when my dad died. I had visited him in the hospital that morning and then came home and fixed our dinner. We had just gotten the kitchen cleaned up when Dad's nurse called and told me to come to the hospital. I called Jeff, my brother, and we ran right up there, but Dad was gone. Since Thanksgiving is always on the third Thursday of November, I get two days each year to morn for him, November 22 and Thanksgiving Day. It will never be the same for me again.