Orca Bay Mystery Quilt Part 6 Finished

Bonnie Hunter posted part six clue on Thursday last week - one day early. I have worked pretty hard to get it done. That was 28 green blocks and 28 white blocks using the quarter square triangles made weeks ago. I love the blue centers.

Here is a picture of Rosie dozing on my desk under the light. She is my companion - my shadow. She follows me all around the house and sleeps with me at night. She was nearly feral when we brought her in and still is scared of most people. When we have visitors she stays hidden until they leave. It was a big day when she actually sat in my lap. Now she sleeps there a lot.

More Christmas Eve Pictures

Here is a picture of Damien with one of his gifts from Richard and me - a K'nex set. I wanted to get it because it is made in America. I also show Damien with his Rallystomper. This is a radio-controlled car that he really didn't have any interest in. We had gotten him a Paper Mario game for the Wii and that is what he liked. He prefers video games to all the other toys. I am not sure whether to encourage this. My kids grew up with video games but they like other things too. Then I show Richard with his car emergency kit he got from Audrey and Jason. They got me a watch and Richard got me a necklace shaped like a butterfly. As long as I have my family and my cats I am a happy person. We shared a really nice Christmas but I am glad it is over! Now life can get back to normal. (I wish these pictures would be on here in the order that I load them!)

Christmas Eve at the Harmon's

Here is a picture of Damien with his radio-controlled car and Audrey holding her box-link chain with Jason wearing his WVU cap. We took plenty of pictures so I will put them on here when I can. Adam wasn't feeling well - I hope he doesn't have the flu. Damien had a potty accident soon after he got here. I don't know why but it seems there is always something out of sorts at Christmas. When the kids were little usually at least one of them was sick each year. I guess that is continuing on. Yesterday I baked Snickerdoodles and brownies so we had lots of snacks to eat tonight. Tomorrow I am cooking a ham (first time) and I will fix mashed potatoes and other veggies. Baking a cake (mix) in the morning. I am trying to take it easy for Christmas dinner, not doing much from scratch. Fortunately, box mixes and canned food tastes pretty good now and I doctor these things up. There are usually five or six of us for Christmas dinner now. When I was little there would be thirty or more at dinner. My family has dwindled down the past few years.

Part 5 done

Today I finished Part 5 of the Orca Bay mystery quilt. I was to add a green triangle to two sides of the 350 half-square triangle blocks made in a previous step. This turns them into corner pieces. I put one out in front of all the others so you could see how they are made. These are small pieces. I am keeping all the parts of the quilt in a plastic box maybe a little larger than a shoe box, and that box is full. If the next part is adding more pieces I will have to find a larger box to keep them in. I love my blues, greens and golds together, and I hope the next step will be putting some of them together. I doubt it though - these pieces don't seem to fit together into a block. I'll bet we will be adding more blue because it is one of the dominant colors in the quilt and we really haven't done much with them yet. I have barely touched the fabrics I pulled for this quilt - most of it so far has come out of my scrap bins. I have cut into the greens quite a bit but very little blues.

I am sitting here in a fleece nightgown and I have my little heater here beside me going full blast. This winter is already freezing me and it has barely begun. I know that Christmas is still a week away but I wish it were the first of APRIL! There is very little warmth at JoAnn Fabrics where I work because (the manager says) four air handlers aren't working. I wore my Cuddle Duds (long underwear) on Friday and I am wearing it again tomorrow. I think I will put my little heater in the car and then I can huddle in front of it if I get too cold. I don't think there has been much heat in there yet this winter.

Orca Bay Mystery Quilt - Part 4 - Finally Finished!

Part four of the Orca Bay Mystery Quilt is 128 triangles from string blocks, which means that I had to make 64 string blocks and cut them in half. It has taken me since Friday morning to get these done. I love the look of string blocks but I hate making them. I have already made green string blocks for this quilt and I know these blue ones will look terrific with them. If Bonnie Hunter has me make more string blocks I will pull my hair out!

After the concert - Hot Pursuit!

Jason drove us to the concert in their car, and when we got home he parked in their driveway. I came across the street. I knew there was a man and a boy slightly behind me and to the left. When I got to my yard I was feeling in my purse for my keys when I heard a crashing sound down on Sixth Avenue. I paused there at the side of the house and looked down Bream Street to see what was going on. Then I saw a speeding car with no lights on coming up the wrong way on Bream Street (which is a one-way street) and the flashing lights of a police car in hot pursuit. They were headed for Seventh Avenue! I screamed for the man and boy to get out of the street because there were also two cars coming up Seventh and they were all aimed for the corner of our yard! The man threw the boy in our yard and jumped on top of him. The two cars on Seventh held back (thank heavens) and the speeding car turned the corner and headed on up Seventh. The police car had hung back a bit, probably expecting a crash. I knew I was safe but I worried about the man and boy. They were ok, but just as shaken up as I was. I am still shaking like a leaf as I sit here typing this. It's a good thing we haven't replaced our fence yet because they would have been right up against it.

Damien's Christmas Concert

Tonight was the JE Robins school Christmas concert and Jason, Audrey and I went. It was held at Stonewall Jackson Middle School. Damien is in Kindergarten there. He is the one in the center with the Christmas tie. He looked just like his father up there, like he didn't want to be there. It was a real fun concert and I'm glad I got to go.

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.