Worldwide............................

I see that the silly incident that I wrote about in my last post has now achieved worldwide interest. A reader from Australia commented to one of the articles. The whole thing has been blown completely out of proportion. Lots of publicity. I just hope the world doesn't think Nebraskans don't have anything more important than this to think about.

shhhhhhhhhh.......I read at work............Don't tell anyone

Yes, I admit it. I work in a library. I read at work. On the taxpayer's dime. Please, please, please don't tell Mike Foley. He'd probably investigate me and God only knows what he'd find.

For those of you not in the know, Network Services staff at the Nebraska Library Commission made a video of themselves setting up and testing a gaming system & the games Rock Band & Dance Dance Revolution. It's actually pretty entertaining except for the annoying music. They posted it on youTube. Some good Nebraska citizen stumbled across it and complained to Action 3 News in Omaha. The ensuing media uproar led State Auditor Mike Foley to instigate an in depth investigation of the incident, which actually IS part of the staffers' jobs. The whole situation has become a nationwide sensation. It's been written up on numerous blogs & there have been some pretty interesting comments from readers. The general gist is that Nebraskans must be pretty backward to not know that libraries offer a lot more than books these days and that video gaming events are legitimate library programming.

The video even made it onto G4TV's web page! The significance of that is debatable. G4TV used to be TechTV & one of my favorite channels when they actually had some useful computer help shows. Now it's mostly crap & I quit watching years ago.

Hey, Nebraska is famous now....................and our State Auditor & TV "news reporters" look like real yahoos. I just wonder what the investigation cost? Do you suppose it was more than the less than $500 spent by the Library Commission on the games & gaming system? Bet it was. Just who is wasting taxpayers' money here?

While I sometimes get irritated when it seems like Commission staff spends all it's time in meetings when they should be sitting there at their desks waiting for my calls, I don't think they did anything wrong. It WAS unwise to post the video on youTube. Sometimes it's just better to do the job & stay under the radar.

I retreated..............at home

Judy L. over at patchworktimes.com has been hosting an at-home retreat this weekend & I decided to play along. I had to work on Sat. so didn't get started until that evening, by pressing & trimming the brown/gold square-in-square patches for the Double Delight mystery from over on quiltville.com. By the time I went bed Sat. night this is what I had ready to go for today.


And here are the finished blocks that I put together today. I feel so productive!! I tell you, I have never done so much cutting, sewing, pressing and trimming without having any finished blocks. Now they just need to be pressed and then I can start setting them together. I don't think I'll show any more pictures of this quilt until the top is completely finished. I feel like it's getting to be a very boring, drawn out affair.

R/W/B done

This one is all quilted & bound now. I still need to put a label on it and get it washed & dryed. Then it will be ready to send to Alycia C. By Friday, hopefully.



The back is pieced out of 10 1/2" squares that have been curing in my stash for quite a while.......some since the 80's and early 90's. It was high time they got used for something............and there's plenty more old fabrics to make backs for several more quilts.




It's quilted with the "Plumage" panto. This has to be one of my favorites so far. I'm going to use it on my Brown & Pink quilt next............I really have to come up with a name for that one.




And here's the matching pillowcase. That navy blue plaid in the main part really boggles the eyes.

How cool is this?

My new MP3 player that I won came home today. At last. It had been at the P.O. already on Friday. I found the delivery notice in the mail box on Sat. but the P.O. closes early on Sat. So, Mon. I hot foot it to the P.O. only to find they are closed for Presidents Day. Now, I ask you, do they really NEED all those Federal holidays? I was working!! And they were keeping me from my good stuff!! Anyway, my name was put in a drawing along with everyone else's who completed the Nebraska Learns 2.0 online course at the Nebr. Library Commission & I was one of nine winners. Many thanks to the Nebr. Library Commission and the sponsors who provided the prizes: Nebraska Library Association, Nebraska Educational Media Association and the Information Technology and Access Round Table of NLA. Thanks too, to Allana, Susan, Christa and Michael for their patience with our sometimes less than technical wizardry.


Here's another cool thing. I was cruising Alycia C.'s blog one day, looking at pictures of QOV quilts donated for her No Soldier Forgotten project & there was something about this quilt that caught my eye. There was a close-up pic of a block & when I enlarged it I recognized it as one of the blocks I made to send to Sue Frank for Heartstrings last summer for the Red/White/Blue project. The blocks were put together & sent to Ann C. in Canada, who quilted it, bound it & sent it to Alycia. It was so fun to see what had been done with the blocks.

A gazillion of them

Well, actually only 162 but it started to feel like a gazillion by the time they were pieced, pressed and squared up. I know Bonnie H.'s direction don't mention squaring these up but I find that with quilts with this many pieces everything just fits together so much better if each step is squared up.

Now I can back up and do step 2. See, they're all laid out and ready to go.

So far everything in this quilt is from stash. A lot of it is left-overs from my brown & pink quilt I pieced last year. The one that's still waiting to be quilted. I did go to the quilt shop to find some brown print with some pink in it for the borders and they didn't have any, except for the one I already used on that brown/pink quilt. I didn't want to use it on two so I did get a brown with gold print, I thought it would do. Then I dug around in the brown stash once I got home and found a piece that I think might work better that I've probably had since the early 90's. I think there's enough for borders and it's probably aged long enough by now.

We had to get a new Internet provider at the library because the one who has been giving us free access for the last 12 yrs. or so is pulling out of our area. The Frontier tech came yesterday and hooked it up. Now it's up to me to get our networking and our online catalog working with it. I hope there's no problems because I can't get into the modem/router to change anything and I really, really hate sitting on hold waiting for tech support to get around to me. The library web page will also have to be changed, all our suppliers will have to be notified of our new email address, web host too, as well as the Library commission who will also have to be notified of our new IP address for our access to the State provided databases. A lot of details. One good thing is that through all this and my contact with the phone co. we were informed of a charge on the Village/Library phone bill from a company that was charging us $34.95 a mo. for web hosting since Sept. and neither one of us was using that co. It's been blocked now & our Village Clerk is trying to get hold of them for a refund. That doesn't look very promising, but at least the situation was caught & won't continue.

The forecast for today is for up to 6" of snow but nary a flake so far. It won't hurt my feelings at all if the forecast was wrong. The old snow is pretty much all melted now and the mud is drying up. It would be nice if it stayed that way.

Still lucky............................

I guess my lucky streak from Dec. & Jan. must still be in force. Last night at quilt club I won the door prize that Jane brought, a casserole carrier, a small wallet and eight BRIGHT fat quarters. She made the casserole carrier & wallet. Thank you, Jane.

We met at the library and everyone made it even though it was kind of nasty out with rain and wind. Linda P. hosted and fed us way to well, like she always does............and we all enjoy every bite!!

Today I sewed together a gazillion little 3 1/2" nine patches for the Double Delight. They're pressed but I still need to square them up. Maybe I'd be able to get away without doing that step but I've found that quilts with this many little pieces in each block go together so much better if I take the time to do it.

My sympathies go out to the Australians who have lost homes & loved ones in the fires. It's hard for me to imagine such huge fires, traveling so fast and burning hundreds of thousands of acres. It's so far away and yet the Internet brings it all so close. And now I read that tornadoes struck already in Oklahoma. It's so early in the year for that. One can only wonder what the rest of the year will bring.

Quiet weekend

Sorry, no pictures. It's a pretty quiet weekend. Slept late this morning, read blogs & email, got a load of laundry in, sub-cut some strip sets for the Double Delight 4-patches, cut & pieced binding for the R/W/B quilt, made a batch of brownies & supper. Nothing exciting.

Last night my FCE club had our annual card party. As always, my score was mediocre. Too low to win the high prize & too high for the low prize. Actually my first two hands were really good and after that I might as well have come home & gone to bed. Every time I thought I had something worth bidding on, somebody else had something better. The snacks were good though............................

I did it again...

What is it that I did again? I lost another scarf....the second one this winter. It's getting so that you can follow me by the trail of lost scarves I leave behind. I DO know I left this one at the dentist's office yesterday. I called and yes, it's there. I asked the receptionist if she could stuff it in a big envelope & mail it to me since it's so lightweight. She sounded hesitant so I'll wait a couple days to see what happens. You'd think after you paid $55 for about 20 minutes of tooth cleaning that they could afford a couple bucks in postage..........and I'd repay it anyway. Like I say, we'll see what happens.

And, last night I finished step 1 of the Double Delight mystery quilt. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!! I'd better be careful to not hurt myself patting my own back......
Now I think I'll skip ahead to step 3 and tackle these.......
That will give me a little break from sewing, pressing & trimming all those triangles.

Where does the time go???

I'm sure I don't know. And I can't say I've accomplished a whole lot since the last post a week
ago. I did get the back pieced for the patriotic string quilt & cut the batting to size. I want to get it loaded on the machine Tues. or Wed. & get started on the quilting. Today I finally got started sewing on the Double Delight mystery quilt. I sewed and pressed and trimmed and sewed and pressed and trimmed and repeated for hours and I'm still not finished with step #1.
The pieces were all cut in advance too. I'm beginning to think it may be next New Year's before this one is finished.

Friday I went to stay with my grandkids while their parents were in Omaha. My SIL had been sent to Clarkson Hospital to have surgery for a cyst in his pancreas so grandma got called on to babysit. I had no idea how long I'd be there so I packed up my laptop, a book & new quilting magazine & my lightweight sewing machine and the parts & pieces of the DD. Was also returning their computer which had come to see Computer Dr. Grandma to get it working right again. The upshot was that I set up all my sewing stuff, set up their computer only to find it needed a new mouse, searched the town of Pierce to find one, looked through my magazine, never opened my book, now the computer needs a keyboard, and found out the Omaha Drs. want to wait on the surgery until the cyst develops thicker walls, daughter came home, I packed up all my stuff & came home & SIL was supposed to come home today too, to await the optimum time for surgery. I never sewed a single stitch!! Such is life.

I'm including this last picture as a bonus. It was taken from my
front step last Tues. It was just so pretty out with all the frost
& snow on the trees.