Poof!

Tomorrow will be 6 months until Christmas Eve. Normally that statement would cue the holiday gift list making in the back of my brain (I inherited that gene - my Grandma White would already have presents WRAPPED and hidden by this point in the year). But this year, sigh, is different. I've finally concurred agreed to abide by my siblings wishes and only do presents for parents and children. SIGH. They have no idea how many times this year I've already pulled things off a store shelf with them in my mind, and then put it back. I LOVE to shop for other people. And this year, I almost can't. It's a bit sad, really. But a promise is a promise.

And that is not where I was headed with this post, but I guess the date has my brain whirring in all kinds of crazy directions.

Highlights from this crazy week:

• Quilted a full size quilt top in 2 hrs at Thread Waggle Quilting (a long arm rental place in Raleigh)
• Spent yesterday cutting grass on a borrowed zero-turn lawnmower (ours broke down and goes back to the shop Monday).
• I stupidly did not apply sunscreen and am slightly pink.
• Uncovered the cabbages to weed in their bed and left them uncovered for less than 24 hrs. We are now 2 heads less. One is totally devoured; the other halfway. Oh those dear, stupid chickens.
• We're checking daily now for little heads to be poking out from Momma hen. Monday is the official day, and next Wednesday is don the gloves and throw out eggs if nothing has happened day.
• E5 bp readings are becoming a trend in our household again.
• Bought a LulaRoe shirt that I LOVE!!!
• Finished some sewing/store samples for a friend/quilt shop owner.
• Spent a lot of time browsing on CraigsList this week. 
• Potential training slots for election schedules came out this week...so not ready for it to be that time of year again.

Monday, Monday

With all the rain we've had I've not been able to get my usual yardwork in, so my yard and garden look horrible. This morning I was able to put in a couple of hours before getting ready for a Quilt of Valor presentation. The recipient is 100 years old, served as an Army Nurse during WWII, and lives by herself. When we arrived, there was no one home. As we were about to leave, her neighbor pulled into his driveway. I let him know we had an appointment with her and that I had left my contact information  in the mailbox. He said an ambulance had picked her up around 11am. Our appt was for 2pm. So we're hoping that she'll make it home, and that even if she doesn't return home to live that we'll be able to give her the designated quilt soon.  I find that half of the requests we get go unfilled. Either the nominator doesn't give us correct contact information, or else the person simply refuses to return our phone calls or e-mails. It can be a bit frustrating. But on the flip side, it makes it even more rewarding when we are able to complete a request.

So now I'm alternating between housework and projects. All in all, it's been a good and semi-productive day.

the same but different

I didn't attend the lecture, but BWOS recently had a lecture on color choices and layout. All the blocks in the quilt below are the same pattern, but the fabric choices make them totally different.

And because this has been on my mind a lot lately, this reminds me a lot of faith. People can have faith in only Jesus Christ, but that faith can be lived out in different ways and look totally different. It has always bothered me when people say someone can't really or truly be a Christian because of x, y, or z. It really boils down to what we believe about Jesus. It reminds me of the disciples going to Christ and telling him about another group of people who didn't hang out with them performing miracles in the name of Jesus. They wanted Christ to tell them to stop. And his response? "I have disciples you know nothing about."  Maybe I'll do a one block pattern quilt one day with different fabrics like the one above to help me remember that.  I can't wait to get to heaven and see how diverse the backgrounds and thoughts and former doctrines will be.

stripping

There's a technique in quilting called stripping. It's where you take small strips of fabric and sew them together, as opposed to piecing, where you cut shapes and sew them into a pattern or design. For the last several months I've been eyeing a quilt hanging up at Bernina World of Sewing that is created using the piecing method. My scrap basket was overflowing, so I decided that would be a neat pattern to try and use up all my scraps. HA!!

I will say, I've thoroughly enjoyed the process. For this pattern, you start with either a 6.5" square of muslin or foundation paper, then sew a 1.5" strip of white or another solid color across it diagonally. From there, you simply add strips on either side. Once it's done, you trim to size, and a square is done!  I did a full size, and my scrap bin was STILL not depleted. So this week I've been working on eradicating some of that. I may actually get a 2nd quilt top out of the bin with only adding white fabric for visual interest. But that will have to be another post.

Here's my latest top:

My white strips don't line up on everything, but only someone
closely looking would realize that.
I can't wait to get this one quilted and finished!!

skinny houses

There's a new subdivision being built in Raleigh that just totally amazes me.

I would love to go inside and see what they look like on the inside. Bobby laughed and said the ones in the top pictures would mostly be stairwell. And we debated whether or not you could really count the top floor as a third story since the with the slanted roof you don't get full rooms. I'd love to know how these are priced. I suppose it's a step up from a town home. I love the look. It's just so different. Although the yellow siding on the bottom makes me think of storage containers with windows that are stacked one on the other. I imagine the width isn't much different than the 12' wide trailers. My parents' first home was an 8' wide trailer, and this seems to be wider than that. I don't think I'd be that crazy about living so close to my neighbor that you can throw things through each other's windows if they're both open, though. As a kid, I would have thought that wonderful. As an adult...meh.  There's some home similar to this on the way to Cary, except the back half of the home on the bottom floor is the garage. It's nice to see something that's not the standard box houses going up around us.

frog houses

When I was a child, my grandmother would let us play in the mud. Well, for North Alabama, that meant the red clay. One of my favorite things to do would be burying my hand or foot. When you'd pull it out, it would leave a little mound. My grandmother would always laugh and say we were making frog houses. I thought she was being silly.

This year in my garden, despite planting marigolds (which is supposed to naturally deter moles or voles from digging up your plants), I've been seeing a lot of holes between a quarter to a silver dollar in size. I've wondered if it was still the moles, or if it was the bunny rabbit, field mice, or snake. And this week while cutting grass, I saw something. I inched closer, then realized the animal was sitting on top of another animal. I ran in to get my camera, and when I got back outside, they were side by side, but still sitting in the hole.

So here I am, 35 years later, realizing that my grandmother was right all along...frogs DO have houses in the ground!!

Farmer's Market Restaurant

Bobby has a former coworker that we occasionally meet at the Farmer's Market Restaurant in Raleigh. Sometimes it's for breakfast (and I opt out of those half the time), and other times it's for lunch. Monday was a lunch day. As one of his 3 veggies on the vegetable plate, Bobby got a sweet potato. It was so big, that he ate half of it, and we split the remainder of it for lunch yesterday. I'm not kidding.

This picture doesn't do it justice. It filled up the ENTIRE large section of a normal size take-out tray. What is left above amounted to a cup of sweet potato, maybe a little more. And it wasn't just his. We noticed at least 3 or 4 other people on the way out who had sweet potatoes that covered over half the plate. I'm thinking these had to be 4-5 pounds. It was unreal. So if you want a meal...sweet potatoes at the NC State Farmer's Market Restaurant. If you leave hungry, it's your own fault.