Tuesday, June 30, 2009

A little of this, a little of that

These are the quilts that will go in the quilt show in Tilden in July. They still need bindings and labels, but I have time.









This is what was in the lovely package waiting for me at the Post Office this morning. I'm so glad Lori in SD, oops, I mean Nebraska's mail box is working. Thanks lots, Lori.




I just finished reading the 9th book in Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse series. Another good one. I know there's another one coming but the ending of this one really has me wondering where the story will go next. I also got the DVDs of the first season of True Blood, the HBO series based on the series so one of these days I'll just have to close the shades and have a vampire marathon. Hey, maybe that's what I can do on the 4th of July. I'm going to be home alone except for my son's dogs. I'm sure they'll enjoy vampires too. LOL The second season is starting on HBO but since I don't get it I'll have to wait for it to come out on DVD too.


A really good book that you should read if you get a chance is "The Girls From Ames" by Jeffrey Zaslow. It's non-fiction about a group of women from Ames, Iowa who have remained close friends for forty years, some of them since kindergarten and first grade, but all of them through high school. How many groups of high school friends stay close for that long? A couple of close friends maybe, but not ten of them.


I also regularly read quite a few blogs. Quilters' blogs of course, but also blogs about libraries/books, scrapbooking and genealogy. Of the genealogy ones, I enjoy Genea-Musings by Randy Seaver the most. He always includes a lot of good genealogy information, websites and tips about genealogy software. Always interesting.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

The week that was

* Finished quilting the five quilts for the quilt show, measured & photographed them. Will send off the applications on Monday. Then it's on to bindings and labels.

* Wasted a good part of one day getting all the music on my MP3 player sorted into the genres I wanted which involved finding software to do batch tagging of the songs. Over 700 songs would have taken way to long to try to do each one individually. Then I recorded more, so now there's closer to 800.

* Messed around with downloading an audio book from Overdrive through the Norfolk library. Refuses to work with my Sony Vaio laptop running Windows Media Player 11 but works fine on the Dell desktop with Media Player 10. Go figure. More hours wasted and I don't think I even like listening to audio books.

* Had some promising news about a grant I had written for the Fire. Dept. almost a year and a half ago. I will say more when I know more.

* Somehow managed to lose the whole folder on my laptop where I keep all the digital scrapbooking stuff. Three months worth of free downloads.......gone. Hadn't been burned to disc yet. Some pages I had made....they were backed up. Some downloaded layout examples........backed up except for the last three mo. worth. Tell me, how does one accidentally delete a folder that holds almost 4GB of stuff. It had to have happened while I was messing with the music or the downloaded book. Those recovery programs aren't all they are cracked up to be either. Even when they claim to have recovered a file it doesn't necessarily open.........message says it's corrupted. I got a few files back but the rest are just gone, gone, gone.

* Made the presentation for the County Library Assoc. to the County Supervisors for continued funding in the next fiscal year. They always seem happy to see us, I guess because we don't get loud and abusive. Lets hope they keep the money coming.

Anyway, that's the week that was. Spent most of it spinning my wheels.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

On the receiving end again

Judy L.had a drawing over on her blog for one of the new June Tailor rulers for making half square and quarter square triangles. I was lucky enough to win one of them so this is what was waiting for me at the Post Office yesterday. I am not letting myself use it until I finish the quilts I'm working on for the July quilt show entries. One still needs to be quilted and five will need to be bound and labeled. I'll probably take pictures for the entry forms before the binding gets done but my new ruler is going to be incentive to git 'er done!! Thanks so much Judy.

And over in the right-hand column is the One Lovely Blog award, given to me by Miri. It's a good feeling to know someone reads your blog and enjoys it. I'm supposed to send this award on to fifteen newly discovered bloggers that I enjoy. I don't know about newly discovered but I think all the blogs I read are lovely and should get this award so I'm giving you permission to add it to your blog page too.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Stormy weather..............




We started our morning out with a bang this morning. The power went out at 4:15am & shortly thereafter we got hit with a terrific thunderstorm.....constant lightning, a steady rumble of thunder, heavy rain and very high wind. The one thing we didn't get was hail, though where my kids work in Norfolk they had hail from the storm they had earlier in the evening yesterday. My DIL was there at the time and her car has some hail dents. They get it paid off in July and wouldn't you know it, now it gets hailed on. Here's some pictures of wind damage on our property. There were quite a few limbs and some trees down all over town. Note the position of the bird house....darned lucky it didn't get smashed. Click the pictures to make them bigger.

The Quilted Kitty in Lincoln was having a sale on it's web site so I had to buy an assortment of the marbled blenders. I HAD to, I tell you. Aren't they pretty?





More thunderstorms are predicted for tonight but I sure hope it doesn't get as wild as early this morning.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

No pictures...or much else either

It pretty much rained all week, plus it was really chilly. I tried to turn the heat on one morning, but it's not working, so that will be something to see to before fall gets here. The sun has finally been shining today, so I'll get to listen to lawn mowers all weekend. And I'd better get out there and pull weeds & grass out of my flowers before they take over.

I'm working on quilting, binding and labels, getting ready for a quilt show so maybe soon I'll have some finished work to show

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Busy week



In addition to the Husker quilt I finished quilting and put the binding on on Tuesday, on Friday I put together a quilt top and made bindings for four quilts. Today I made backing for four quilts. Two were made of two simple lengths of fabric seamed together down the middle, one was four pieces seamed together and one is made of 39 blocks cut from cat prints & one left-over block. Just need to get the batting out to relax a little & one of them can go on the Premier.

I DID decline to take on a computer building job. While the idea intrigues, it might be better to NOT do the first one using someone elses expensive parts & pieces. I did study up on it though and I think I could DO IT. Just a little chicken-hearted. All I can say is that it will be one sweet, kick-ass system once they find someone to put it together for them.

What I also did this week-end is SKIP the whole local Celebration Days. Friday was nice out, but I was busy sewing & washing clothes & running dishes through the dishwasher and forgot all about the Historical Society dinner. There was free swimming for the kids......I don't qualify. Was running late for work yesterday morning so didn't stop at the Amish bake sale. There was a Poker Run...not my thing. There was a Cruise Night for the car enthusiasts. My husband took his '55 Chevy downtown for that....I let him tell me all about it when he got home. Yesterday and today were cold, windy and damp so I just blew the whole thing off. There was a street dance last night...cold, windy, damp. Ugh. On to today. I sure as heck didn't want to go to an outdoor church service at 8:30 this morning or do the Fun Run/Walk. Who wants to stand in the rain to watch a parade? Or stand in line in the cold damp wind to get a plate at the barbeque and then sit at a wet picnic table to eat it. I think I can safely say this year's Celebration was a flop & I'm glad I got lots of sewing done instead.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

What I did today

Another customer quilt done. I also put on the binding and label. The customer is donating this one for a fundraiser.


I wonder how many of those Husker Hankies she bought. This is four quilts made out of them that I have quilted for her.

Tonight was our FCE meeting. Only four of us made it but we had a good visit before and after the business meeting. Eileen, our hostess, served a yummy rhubarb dessert with ice cream. Usually I can take or leave rhubarb but this was really good.