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.

I have been ignoring this blog for way too long. Life intervenes, you know!
Notice that I have changed the picture at the top. That is Sascha, curled up asleep on a pile of clothes. Kitty cats need lots of sleep! I'll bet they sleep at least 22 hours a day. Every morning they get me out of bed so I can feed them then they all go right to sleep. Eat, sleep, use the litter box. My cats are too old to play much, and definitely not with each other! They can barely tolerate each other's presence in the house. They used to play together but not for years now.

I baked this raisin pie for Richard today. He loves raisin pie but he never gets any. I found the recipe on the web and it looked pretty easy so there it is! I decided not to make it for Thanksgiving, so I made it today. I won't eat it, I don't like raisins. I hate the texture when you bite into them, although I will eat raisins straight out of the box. I just hate raisins baked in anything. I cringe at the thought of eating muffins or anything with raisins in it. The pie baked up beautifully and smelled really good. Richard said it was a little too sweet, that raisins have their own sugar, so the next time I will cut back a little on the sweetness. It was good to bake again, I used to bake all the time but not recently at all. I am cooking our Thanksgiving meal this week. Richard has decided to work the holiday so I am not going all-out for our meal. I have a turkey and stuffing and all the rest, but I am not really cooking much from scratch.

Bonnie Hunter has started a new mystery quilt on her blog, called Orca Bay. Naturally, I am participating in this mystery. I am doing my quilt in dark blues, medium greens, yellows to golds, with neutral backgrounds. She is going to post a new clue to the mystery every Friday, starting yesterday. I have about half of yesterday's clue made so far. I hope to keep up with Bonnie every week. Will post pictures along the way.

Amish Bus Trip

Yesterday Debbie and I joined Linda's guild members for a trip to Berlin, Ohio on a tour bus. I got up at 4:30am and met the bus at the South Charleston Recreation Center by 5:30. We drove to Teays Valley and picked up another bunch of women and suddenly we were 37 quilters going to quilt shops! Even the bus driver was a woman!
We watched the daylight come up thru the windows of the bus on I-77. Our first stop was at Miller's bakery in Charm. I loved the cinnamon smell in there! But I controlled myself and didn't buy anything. It was raining and pretty chilly. After that we visited Miller's Dry Goods. A wonderful quilt shop! Although I was very tempted I controlled myself once more.
The bus drove back to Berlin and parked in a church lot right on the main street. Debbie and I were starved so we went straight to a crowded little restaurant. After a delightful lunch of beef and noodles with green beans and homemade rolls we hit the shops on the main street. I bought some candies in the bulk foods section of Sol's and some fudge at Coblentz. Debbie got a pumpkin latte and it was time to head back to the bus.
Granny Fanny's Quilt Shop was next. It is in a little village of shops that includes a crafts mall, a pet shop, and more. The shop I liked best is called Tis The Season and is a year-round Christmas store. I have been there before and I really enjoyed it. The hard part was walking back up the hill to the bus afterwards. I am so out of shape! I had to stop a couple of times so my muscles would keep working.
When we left there we stopped at Dutch Valley for dinner. A $12.98 buffet! I knew I couldn't eat enough to justify that so I ordered a turkey sandwich and fries. My dinner was only $7.50. I know that several of the ladies were disappointed with the food, including Debbie. Mine was ok. They had a bakery in the restaurant but I controlled myself there also.
Then it was time to start home. We stopped at a rest stop just inside the West Virginia line, and soon we were back in South Charleston, where we had left our cars. I got home a 10pm, tired but happy.
All in all, I brought most of my money back home with me. I only bought food and candy. I really didn't see any fabric or patterns that I couldn't live without. I still enjoyed my day with Debbie and the ladies from the quilt guild. This morning I was still tired when I got up but I was scheduled to work today. I took a couple of Tylenols and soldiered on. Besides feeling very tired I have sore muscles (the back of my legs!) and I really didn't want to get out of bed this morning. Work wasn't hard and I was able to sit around a lot. The only thing I was disappointed about was no stop at one of the cheese places, especially when we drove right past one. I was looking forward to getting some chocolate cheese.
I want to make another trip to Berlin (maybe next spring) and enjoy all the places we didn't go yesterday. I'm sure it would take several days to do everything I want to do there, like visit Behalt, Heini's cheese, Warther's, Wendell August, and other places I have been before and really enjoyed.

We got an electric fireplace

This is something we have wanted for about a year. We shopped everywhere for an electric fireplace last winter, especially late winter when I figured they might be clearanced. Alas, we did not find one we would pay the money for. We finally decided we wanted this one from Sam's Club and no luck, they didn't have them any more! Richard and I started looking at them again last week and decided we had better get it when we could! This one sold for $629 last year but this year we paid $600. I wrote an ad for our entertainment unit and put it on kanawhacafe.com for $300 and I hope it sells quickly. The fireplace has heat! Wonderful heat! It has a thermostat and a timer and a remote control, which will be quickly lost. The storage on the sides is not to my liking (it is made for cd's) and won't hold much, but we really wanted the shelf for the Wii and cable box. Our TV is small but the next one will be bigger. That is Ace, Richard's cat, in the picture. I am so happy with my fireplace! When we were first married our little house on Edgewood had a fireplace with gas logs and I loved it.