Three Quilts for West, Texas

These three tops, complete with backing and batting, had been stacked in my sewing room since well before Christmas. Finally they are quilted, bound, and sent off to JudyL  for giving to folks in West, Texas who lost homes and loved ones in the big fertilizer plant explosion.  I forgot to take pictures before I boxed them up, so thanks for the pictures, Judy.

 

Some of the blocks were pieced by my quilt group and the rest were pieced by Jennifer T. and her daughters. They also put them together into tops and provided backing and batting. 

On Their Way

Three quilts on their way to JudyL for the Quilts for West (Texas) project.

Sadly, this is the only picture I have of them.  :(  I wanted to get them mailed today, our Post Office window closes at 2:30 and I suddenly realized it was already 1:45.  Hurriedly got them boxed up and an address label on. That's when I realized I hadn't gotten any pictures of the actual quilts.  Oh well, you've all seen the Heartstrings type of string quilts before.  Just remembered, you can see part of one on the machine in the previous post.

Quilty Post

Finished quilting this one early in the week.  Love the colors.

Donation quilt on the machine.

That one is finished now and the next one is loaded.

Not much else going on. Snow/ice storms two weeks in a row and more forecast for next week. I'm doubting that Nebraska has Spring this year.  We'll go straight from the furnace to the air conditioner.

Makes For An Interesting Search

A library patron saying something like this always leads to an interesting book search....and sometimes they have the color wrong.

Today has been designated "Tax Day."  Bah, Humbug!!

Some Days Are Better Than Others

Some say all in one day.

This Should Keep You Feeling SO Much Safer

The gun control contingent is trying to pull another fast one on the American public.

From:  http://ourrvadventures.wordpress.com/2013/04/09/dont-you-feel-safer-now/

Please keep reading.  I consider the writer of the blog where I found it to be a reputable source.

The Senate is suppose to start debating the ‘‘Safe Communities, Safe Schools Act of 2013’’ very soon now. This is the ‘Universal Background Check’ that many people are in favor of.
Here are a few ‘highlights’ of the Bill.

• Take an unloaded rifle to a friend’s house, for instance, because the friend is thinking of buying a gun and wants to learn more about guns. The friend handles the rifle for a few minutes before handing it back. You’ve both committed a Federal Felony.
• Lend your gun to your niece, who takes it on a camping trip for the weekend. You’ve committed a Federal Felony.
• You live on a farm and occasionally take friends or relatives out to a safe area to target shoot using your guns. You’ve committed a Federal Felony.
• You loan a rifle to your brother-in-law so he can go target shooting. You’ve committed a Federal Felony.

Here’s an article from National Review Online by David Kopel, Constitutional Law Professor at Denver University

Turning Gun Owners into Felons
A new bill would make it a crime to “transfer” your gun to a spouse for more than seven days.  By Dave Kopel

Public-opinion polls about “universal background checks” for gun sales show widespread support. While President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg talk about “gun sales,” the actual legislation moving through Congress aims to regulate far more than sales. It would turn almost every gun owner into a felon. The trick is that the language under consideration applies not only to sales but also to “transfers,” which are defined to include innocent activities such as letting your spouse borrow your gun for a few hours.
Consider, for example, Senate bill S.649, which the Senate will soon take up for debate. The background-check portion of the bill, Charles Schumer’s “Fix Gun Checks Act,” is based on model language that the Bloomberg gun-control lobby is pushing all over the country.
To see how the Bloomberg bill makes felons of people who do not sell guns, consider a woman who buys a rifle when she is 25 years old. She keeps the rifle her entire life. Yet over her lifetime, she — like most gun owners — engages in dozens of firearms “transfers.” She brings the unloaded rifle to a friend’s house, for instance, because the friend is thinking of buying a gun and wants to learn more about guns. The friend handles the rifle for a few minutes before handing it back. Another time, the woman lends the gun to her niece, who takes it on a camping trip for the weekend.
While the woman is out of town on a business trip for two weeks, she gives the gun to her husband or her sister. If the woman lives on a farm, she allows all her relatives to take the rifle into the fields for pest and predator control — and sometimes, when friends are visiting, she takes them to a safe place on the farm where they spend an hour or two target shooting, passing her gun back and forth. At other times, she and her friends go target shooting in open spaces of land owned by the National Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management.
Or perhaps the woman is in a same-sex civil union, and she allows her partner to take her gun to a target range one afternoon. Another time, she allows her cousin to borrow the gun for an afternoon of target shooting. If the woman is in the Army Reserve and she is called up for an overseas deployment, she gives the gun to her sister for temporary safekeeping.
One time, she learns that her neighbor is being threatened by an abusive ex-boyfriend, and she lets this woman borrow a gun for several days until she can buy her own gun. And if the woman becomes a firearms-safety instructor, she regularly teaches classes at office parks, in school buildings at nights and on weekends, at gun stores, and so on. Following the standard curriculum of gun-safety classes (such as NRA safety courses), the woman will bring some unloaded guns to the classroom, and under her supervision, students will learn the first steps in how to handle the guns, including how to load and unload them (using dummy ammunition). During the class, the firearms will be “transferred” dozens of times, since students must practice how to hand a gun to someone else safely. As a Boy Scout den mother or 4-H leader, the woman may also transfer her gun to young people dozens of times while instructing them in gun safety.
Under S. 649, every one of the above activities would be a federal felony, subject to precisely the same punishment a person would receive if he had knowingly sold a firearm to a convicted violent felon. S. 649, like other Bloomberg-model bills, has a few exceptions to the ban on transfers, but none of them apply to the situations described above.
You can make a “bona fide gift” (but not a three-hour loan) to certain close family members, not including aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, in-laws, or civil-union partners.
You can let someone else borrow your gun for up to seven days, but only within your home or its curtilage (e.g., the porch or deck).
You cannot lend your gun to someone on any open space you own. And even your husband can’t borrow your gun for more than seven days.
You can share a gun at a shooting range, but only if the shooting range is owned by a corporation — not if it’s on public lands or on your own property.
You can share a gun while out hunting in the field. But back at the hunting camp, you can’t clean someone else’s gun.
This is not “gun control” in the constitutionally legitimate sense: reasonable laws that protect public safety without interfering with the responsible ownership and use of firearms.
— Dave Kopel is an adjunct professor of advanced constitutional law at Denver University, Sturm College of Law, and also research director at the Independence Institute, in Denver.

And here’s the bill itself from the GPO website. -Senate Bill S.649 

Of course, the major part of this bill is the fact that EVERY firearm transaction (selling a pistol to your neighbor, for example) will have to be done through a Federal Firearm License holder for which you will have to pay a fee.

One kink in this idea is a report that some FFL’s are being told by their insurance companies that their company liability insurance will not cover these transactions. And their lawyers are also recommending that they not process these transactions due to the possible liability in case something happens using a gun they transferred.
Don’t you feel safer now?

Whatcha Reading Tuesday

I guess you could say this is another one of those odd books I was famous for reading in my book club. Sadly, the book club has faded away but I still like books a little on the strange side. I've always liked the James Rollins books, but now that he's teamed up with Rebecca Cantrell they are taking off in a new direction with a new series.

 Here's the description from Amazon.com:



"In his first-ever collaboration, New York Times bestselling author James Rollins combines his skill for cutting-edge science and historical mystery with award-winning novelist Rebecca Cantrell's talent for haunting suspense and sensual atmosphere in a gothic tale about an ancient order and the hunt for a miraculous book known only as . . . The Blood Gospel
An earthquake in Masada, Israel, kills hundreds and reveals a tomb buried in the heart of the mountain. A trio of investigators—Sergeant Jordan Stone, a military forensic expert; Father Rhun Korza, a Vatican priest; and Dr. Erin Granger, a brilliant but disillusioned archaeologist—are sent to explore the macabre discovery, a subterranean temple holding the crucified body of a mummified girl.
But a brutal attack at the site sets the three on the run, thrusting them into a race to recover what was once preserved in the tomb's sarcophagus: a book rumored to have been written by Christ's own hand, a tome that is said to hold the secrets to His divinity. The enemy who hounds them is like no other, a force of ancient evil directed by a leader of impossible ambitions and incalculable cunning.
From crumbling tombs to splendorous churches, Erin and her two companions must confront a past that traces back thousands of years, to a time when ungodly beasts hunted the dark spaces of the world, to a moment in history when Christ made a miraculous offer, a pact of salvation for those who were damned for eternity.
Here is a novel that is explosive in its revelation of a secret history. Why do Catholic priests wear pectoral crosses? Why are they sworn to celibacy? Why do the monks hide their countenances under hoods? And why does Catholicism insist that the consecration of wine during Mass results in its transformation to Christ's own blood? The answers to all go back to a secret sect within the Vatican, one whispered as rumor but whose very existence was painted for all to see by Rembrandt himself, a shadowy order known simply as the Sanguines.
In the end, be warned: some books should never be found, never opened—until now."

Action, adventure, archeology, revised history, vampires.....it has all the elements to keep the pages turning.