Not a lot happening

Yesterday I delivered the string quilt to my daughter's house. DGD had stayed the night with a friend so she didn't see it right away. I hope she doesn't think it's too dorky of Grandma & friends to make a quilt for her friend & gives it to him with a certain amount of grace.

Here's a rhetorical question for you. Why do people always tell you to have a good day?? Especially when you have to go shopping. To me a good day is when I DON'T have to shop for anything. I did finish buying prizes for the library's Summer Reading Program though, and the pizza party is Sat. at 11:30. Then that will be over for another year. It's always a good feeling to get it crossed off the list.

I'm really surprised nobody blasted me for the post about the neighbors & their dogs. Only one comment made & it thanked me for my post. Maybe the post was a bit harsh, but it stands. Those dogs woke me up with their barking in the middle of the night so I'm not feeling any more "neighborly" to them. If those people won't bother giving them water on a hot day do you think they will clean up the pen? So you know how lovely accumulated dog poop smells on a hot, humid day? That's what my future holds from these neighbors & their "pets".

HAVE A GOOD DAY!!! :-)

Ready for a little ranting?

.......or venting or whatever you want to call it. We've recently acquired some less than wonderful neighbors. Four households in our neighborhood and another household further away near school. They all have big, loud, dangerous dogs...several pit bulls among them. The household near school also has a strange young man living there along with five pit bulls. Recently several kids where attacked near this house, at least one bitten. They said the door was opened & the dog just shot out right at them, on the attack. The Village made sure they got rid of the five pit bulls there, the deputy serving the papers got bitten so that dog is now dead. Four more are locked up somewhere. They had tried moving two of them to the daughter's house but that didn't work, she had been served papers too. Another house about a block away from me has at least one pit bull & there's a pen with three big dogs, two possible pit bulls, one possible rottweiler less than a hundred yards from our yard. With several small children in the neighborhood it's a definite worry. I know the people living near me are neglecting the animals.............their water container was laying on it's side when I got home from work yesterday around 4pm and it's still laying in exactly the same spot so I know they haven't been given water. They barked off and on all morning. What is wrong with people???? I'm afraid one problem is that their dogs are probably smarter than they are. All these people in five households are related and I doubt there's a fully functioning brain among them.

One of the couples lived here before and moved to Ewing because they felt they were being "harassed" because of their dogs. The minutes of a recent Ewing Town Board meeting in their newspaper states that "C.H.'s pit bull won't be a problem any more because it has been moved to Orchard." Sounds like Ewing is plenty glad to be rid of them. Lucky Orchard. Most of the nearby neighbors would just like to make these dogs disappear some dark night. And if their owners packed up and suddenly left nobody would shed any tears over that either. End of rant.

All finished & ready to go

This is the quilt we worked on during our sewing day for the Nebraska/S. Dakota members of Heartstrings at the Orchard Library. Tomorrow it's going to my daughter's house so my grand-daughter can give it to her classmate who has been fighting cancer. I think it turned out very well and I hope he gets to use it for a long time.

What's wrong in this picture............................?

I took some pictures of my quilts hanging in the show today. They looked nice, but there is a teensy weensy problem with this one............can you find it?

/>

Over on the right side, fifth row down. There, see it now? Well, this was the first time I noticed it too. I admit I'm a little embarrassed. How many times did I look at that quilt & not see it? I laid everything out on the floor before I started sewing. Sewed the rows & left them lay while I sewed the rows together. Laid it all out & left it for a while to admire it. Loaded it on the machine & quilted it. Spread it out over the couch & took a picture for the show entry......never noticed a thing wrong. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!! By the way, that picture was on my blog and none of YOU noticed either or I hope somebody would have let me know. I just hope I can live with leaving it as it is.......otherwise I'd have to take off part of the binding, pick out the quilting, take the piece out & turn it the right way, requilt that section and reapply the binding. Sounds waaaaaaaaaaaay to tedious. We'll see how resistant I can be to glaring errors.

Amish store

Judy L. talks a lot about going to a nearby Amish store and the wonderful produce they have there. There's an Amish store near where I live too, but it just started up a few months ago so they don't have a whole lot yet.....and none of that wonderful produce. This is a photo of a few things I picked up when I made a little jaunt out there this morning. So far they have mostly bulk foods but they are planning to expand. The young Amish lady who owns it says she orders a little more each time she puts an order in.


Best of all, I could get Clear Jel without having to order it online...and cheaper too. In fact, I thought the prices on what I bought were quite good. The cinnamon and pecans were real bargains, the ginger was quite reasonable, but I thought the nutmeg was a little high compared to the other spices there. So far I've only compared the prices to the place online I ordered Clear Jel from last year and find I saved $20. I need to compare the spice prices at the regular grocery store. I'll probably be even happier with my purchases after that.

So far this little store isn't offering a lot of competition to the regular grocery store in town but they do offer good deals on the staples, and of course the Clear Jel, which you can't buy in any regular store I've looked in. I hope as time goes on that they will offer fresh produce and fresh farm eggs seasonally as well. Growing vegetables and raising hens for eggs could be a nice little bit of supplemental income for some Amish families and us English could have good fresh food at a reasonable price. Couldn't beat that.

Voila!!! Pictures!!

After searching for & finding my camera, here are the blocks we made last Tuesday at our sew-in all sewed into rows.



And the following pictures explain why I had to search for my camera. Amateur photographers sometimes have to be parted from their equipment. Love her self portrait but could have done without the one of Grandma trying to hide behind an Oreo.

























So there you have it, pictures of the weekend after all............and the stack of finished quilts as well, if you pay attention to the backgrounds.

Genealogy tidbit

While I was reading blogs last night I came across this post: http://www.genealogywise.com/forum/topics/your-favorite-free-or-lowcost I always like something free or cheap and I hadn't heard of some of the sites listed in this posting.

I must admit that I have been extremely lucky in finding family history on the Internet. Admittedly most of it was on private websites and from people I made contact with through private websites but some of these sound worth a try.

I have a few elusive ancestors that must have been hiding out when the census taker came around and I swear whole families must have been stowaways when they immigrated.....or maybe they paddled over from Germany in a canoe!!!

Crossing things off the list

Two of the grand-kids were here over the weekend....Hailey and Tyler. They are both great kids, but man can they fight. Yet neither one wants to do anything alone. They're both too stubborn for that. I didn't think to take a single picture.

I got the five quilts completely finished and took them to Tilden yesterday to check in for the quilt show. I will go back to take in the show and bring them home on Sunday. I forgot to take a picture of the stack before packing them up.

Last night we had a local author at the library for a book signing for his first book called "The Hills of Mars." It's part family history, part Nebraska pioneer history and the story of a little community that no longer exists. I totally forgot to take my camera, so no pictures.

Do you see a trend developing here with the "no pictures" situation? I really need to do better. I DID get some new rechargeable batteries for my camera so maybe I'm not completely hopeless after all.

Today I'm hoping to get the blocks we made at the sew-in last week laid out and at least get started sewing them together. Better not hold your breath waiting for pictures.

A good day

Today we had our mini Heartstrings sew-in for Nebraska. We started the day off by meeting at the Orchard Library before going to Ashfall Fossil Bed State Historical Park. Being the frugal quilters we are we wanted to all ride in one car & only have to buy one park sticker. I did my tourist's duty and spent actual money on a souvenir bag full of pretty stones. Does that make me dumb as a box of rocks?....Don't answer that!! The pictures show the large, new barn enclosing the dig, Mike Voorhies, the discoverer of the site, working at uncovering a fossil, US (Lori, Linda, Flicsha, Jennie) and my bag of rocks on a map of the excavated portion in the barn.

Next, our thoughts turned to FOOD. We found that the restaurant we planned to have lunch at is closed on Mon. & Tues. Their loss. After some discussion we headed to the "One And Only Winnetoon" to eat at Elaine's Tavern. Good food & we got to gawk at a busload of tourists. After eating we toured around Main St. fixed up to look like an old timey town. I took a lot of pictures but the gremlins got them....or maybe I accidentally made some change to the settings dial that made all the outdoor pictures' exposure totally blown out. All I have to show for that adventure is these: Outhouse Row.


After taking the scenic route back to Orchard, skipping the 3hr. $5 hiking tour of "Mars", opting instead for the free drive-by, we got back to the library in Orchard and sewed for a few hours.














Hey, I'm not in any of those!! How did that happen? he he

Even with some goofing off and silliness we managed to finish 51 blocks, enough for a quilt with a few left over. I'll set them together, quilt & bind. The quilt will be going to a boy in my grand-daughter's class who has been fighting cancer. I hear he's doing well and hopes to start 9th grade with his class this fall.
We had a good time and there's been talk of trying to get together sometime again this summer.

Don't think I'm cut out to have dogs

The dogs have gone home!! The kids picked them up a little after midnight last night. You have never seen three such happy dogs. I thought they'd wag their tails right off.
Jenny is much calmer in this picture:



And here's Zoe, the little rabble-rouser. I'll miss that cute little face & satellite ears, but I WILL NOT miss that shrill bark. Every little noise and she would start barking and trying to incite the Labs to join her.



I never got used to them jumping up to follow me around every single time I moved. My cats watch me all the time, but they don't want to join in every time I move from one spot to another.

I did get the binding on another quilt today. One more to go for the quilt show. I think the labels are going to be the iron-on kind, I'm running out of time. The next week or so will be pretty busy....work tomorrow, budget meeting with Village Board tomorrow night, followed by Quilt Club in Ewing. Tuesday will be touring Ashfall, lunch out and sewing with some fellow Heartstrings members. The rest of the week will be routine, but next Monday I work, run my quilts to Tilden for the show and hurry back for a book signing at the library in the evening. Maybe I'll collapse after that.

Dog Sitting

My dog sitting duties began late yesterday afternoon when DS dropped off his dogs and a whole carload of dog supplies. I didn't have that much stuff when I took my kids somewhere to stay for a while!!! Here's a photo of my charges. The two labs take up most of my kitchen floor space. The little Pomeranian is just peeking over the seat, through the spindles on the side of the chair in the foreground.



I hope the kids enjoy their trip to Yellowstone. When will it be my turn? Can I take my cats to their house so they can cat sit? Uh huh, I can see THAT working. My cats would never forgive me for making them stay somewhere strange.....with DOGS yet!!!