New Year's Eve

We're just having a quiet New Year's Eve at home. Thought we might be babysitting, but Son & his Wife decided to stay home too and have a movie night with the kids.  Hayden told me they were having popcorn & Ms too. :)

I wish all of you happiness, good health and prosperity in 2017.

That Little Voice.....

When that little voice at the back of your brain oh so quietly says, "Something might not be right here" LISTEN TO IT!!  Or you might find yourself doing what I'm doing today.

Frogging...rip-it! rip-it! rip-it!

Take a gander at this picture:

The hourglasses in the upper left quarter block are turned correctly. The ones in the bottom quarter block  are turned wrong. There is no way the quilt design will come out right with them turned that way....almost half of them in this quilt.

How can it be...set those little hourglasses together, pressed them, trimmed them...and the little voice said nothing.  It did whisper while the the hourglass quarters were being sewed to the string quarters. Did I pay attention. NO!

Rip-it! Rip-it! Rip-it!

A Few Christmas Pictures

As usual I took way too many Christmas pictures.....and deleted the out of focus ones because people just won't stay still. Here's just a sampling. We had a fun Christmas!

They say he can abandon the Wal-Mart bag now.  :)

From the two little grandchildren. So sweet.

I think the moose was a hit.

I guess if she thinks it's too tacky she can hide it in a closet or add it to a rummage sale or something.

The little ones were Hailey's buddies, especially Hayden.

Hope you all had a Merry Christmas as well. Now that it's over I actually spent a couple hours sewing today. First time since early in the month. I got the string-pieced blocks for Pfefferneuse sewed together. I can see that the center piece on the neutral halves should have been a little wider, but it is what it is at this point.

Merry Christmas!

It's been busy around here getting ready for Christmas....cleaning, decorating, making sure all the ingredients for Christmas dinner are on hand, getting presents & doing the wrapping. Would you believe I had the presents all wrapped & under the tree a whole week in advance? Yeah, it's hard for me to believe too!!

Our family will be getting together tomorrow, Christmas Day. Kind of hectic in a small house, but fun too. It's so much fun watching the two littlest grandchildren unwrap their presents. Last year, when they were two, they were my little elves for handing out presents.....cute as could be!

This year I only made three gifts....two for a couple of early Christmas parties for groups I belong to and this t-shirt quilt for my middle granddaughter. It's safe to share it here since she doesn't know that her old grandma even has a blog. :)

While Christmas is fun, it's lots of work too. and I'm looking forward to after Christmas when the preps are over, the house is clean and there are leftovers to eat. Then I can have time to sew and maybe, just maybe, get a couple quilt tops sewed together that I have been working on for quite a while.

Merry Christmas, everyone. Enjoy your families and the festivities and then you can sew, sew, sew the winter away.

Not By Chocolate Alone

And quilt I have. Here's a peek at the latest ones off the machine....

Not mine, unfortunately. They're ones I quilted for family.

Stringing Along

String blocks for Pfefferneuse all sewed up....

Now to trim, slice, de-paper and make the actual blocks. Oh yeah, and clean up the mess that string piecing creates.  I can't see that my string collection has decreased at all!

Canning Vegetable Beef soup today.  It's so good for a quick meal instead of getting a sandwich or pizza downtown.

I think our weather guessers got it wrong again today. Forecast was for sunny and 80 degrees. Here it is, 2:30 already and only about 62 degrees. I feel cheated! :)

Sneaking In A Little Sewing

Even with the canning, freezing, grandkids' ball games, etc. I've been trying to sneak in a little sewing.  The hour-glass blocks for my Pfefferneuse quilt are finished. I'm making it one row longer than the pattern and out of eighty-four of them I only had to rip out & redo five because I turned pieces wrong. I'm just glad I caught the mistakes while I was pressing and not after the whole quilt is quilted and bound.....that's happened before. :)

Now I can move on to my favorite kind of mindless sewing....string blocks! Some in browns and some in neutrals.

Here's my happy Jack-o-Lantern wall hanging...the project at our Quilt Club meeting last month. It really is square...it's just the way it's hanging on the wall that makes it look narrower at the top.

And this is the pile of t-shirts for my middle granddaughter's t-shirt quilt. She wants it in time to display for graduation, but maybe I should get busy and get it made for Christmas....that would be one gift solved.

Hope everyone has been enjoying the beautiful Fall weather. After chilly wind, rain & some sleet yesterday, with frost this morning, I'm ready to go back to sunny days in the high 60s or low 70s for a while.

Backing Up A Little

I see my last post was Sept. 5 and I skipped over a couple things.

I retired from the library on August 29th. The week before, the Library Board held a retirement reception for me. How did I not remember to post that?

It's only been a little over a month, yet it seems much longer than that. It's nice to be able to do what I want or need to do without having to plan around a part-time job schedule. I have been keeping busy though!

The twins' 3rd birthday was later in September. Certainly can't leave that out. They're just growing up too fast.  The party theme was "Paw Patrol" since that's their favorite TV show.....Holden's absolutely crazy about it....has the episodes memorized.  Their Grandma LeeAnn made them the cutest Paw Patrol birthday cake.

Fall Roses

The weather cooled off so my Knockout rose decided to put on a Fall show...

Tomatoes, Apples.......

....and not much sewing going on.

Not much genealogy work going on.

This was yesterday.....

It's almost hard to believe how many apples you have to peel to fill seven quart jars.

This is today's task....

...to get these made into juice.

These were picked yesterday..............

And will be ready in a few days.
Let's not forget these...

Can't make tomato juice without some peppers.
The peppers & tomatoes picked yesterday were still a little green, but with the possibility of severe thunderstorms it seemed best to pick anything that was even a little bit turned. If the plants got hailed to a pulp at least I got these.

And here's the future......

....plenty of pears to can if nothing happens to them.  At least they shouldn't be ready until late this month or even in October.

The only even vaguely sewing project I did last week was to get these pressed...

They still need to be squared up and counted. I sure hope I have enough made.

Then there's this that needs to be worked on. It's the project for Quilt Club on the 14th. Doesn't look like much yet.

I'm doing it from a picture I found on the Internet so must sew it up and write the pattern. Wish me luck.....actually, maybe you should wish the other members good luck!

Ah, Retirement!

I'm just about through my first full day of retirement. My last day of work was actually Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday were my regular days off so today was the first day I would have had to go to work. The time between last January, when I told the Library Board I was retiring at the end of the summer, literally flew by and before I knew it the newly hired Director was working with me, training for her new job. And here I am, a lady of leisure.

Lady of leisure my foot!!!  There's several buckets of tomatoes, apples and pears sitting here waiting their turn to be canned, a quilt waiting to be quilted, a trip today to pick up granddaughter's repaired ball glove and meeting her downtown to make the hand-off as she was on her way through town to her game. Add a trip to the grocery store, then a trip back downtown to the post office when I realized I needed to get Daughter's birthday card mailed along with a stop at the Library with an invoice that had come in e-mail and answering some questions the new gal had. When would I have found time to work??

I have realized that the title of my blog is out of date now. Maybe I'll have to stick a (retired) in there somewhere. :)

I know things will settle down once all the canning is done and then maybe I'll have time to catch up on reading, work on genealogy, sew more and maybe even try my hand at digital scrapbooking....I've been collecting stuff for that for years (gigabytes worth!) but the time it takes to learn just hasn't been there.  So I guess I do have sort of a plan for all that "leisure time".

They're Blocks!!

Now they are blocks....started sewing on these at my quilt group's mini-retreat last Tuesday. It was so much fun sewing out on the deck at a member's cabin. The day got pretty hot by late afternoon, but a nice breeze kept it bearable. We did need a few canned goods to hold down the quilt pieces though.

Ready to be pressed and set together...or maybe just mellow in the container for a while. :)

Next up is some pretty, fluffy thunderheads against a bright blue sky earlier this afternoon off to the north and northeast.  Hope they didn't result in a nasty storm somewhere.

The pictures don't really do them justice.

I Actually Sewed Today!

Yes, I did!  The first time since our July quilt group meeting when my little light-weight, cheap Brother sewing machine gave up the ghost. It lasted about 7 1/2 years, so that isn't too bad. The group has a little mini retreat planned for next week so I had to get another machine---I don't like dragging my good Pfaff machine around---this is it:

It's another Brother. It's a step or two up from the previous one but still inexpensive. I looked at other machines, but none of them came with the extension table included. It sews nice and has way more stitches and features than I ever use. I hope it lasts at least as long as the previous one.

Like the post title says, I SEWED today!  Had to play a little with the new machine, figure out the settings for the best quarter inch seam, how to fill a bobbin---it's a little different from the old machine---stuff like that. And then I moved over to my trusty Pfaff machine & did some real sewing.  It felt so good!

It's been such a busy summer. The Story Times, craft days and movie days at the library were very well attended, but that means prep time increases. Getting ready to hire a new librarian----because I'm retiring at the end of this month---meant added paperwork and trying to get things done that had been let go for lack of time, weeding the collection & rearranging shelves, budget time, Strategic plan, accreditation---you name it---this is the year for it.  Add in the canning and/or freezing of apricots, strawberries, early apples, green beans and sweet corn and it gets exhausting. I keep saying that if I can make it through this week and next week I will be home free. The calendar for the rest of the month doesn't have anything extra, the beans & corn are finished, tomatoes haven't started, library events will be done----just regular work days and the new librarian will start training and will take over on Sept. 1st.

Just think----I will have at least an extra seventeen hours a week to sew, quilt, read, do genealogy, anything I want!

Just Sharing

I just thought I would share this beautiful quilt I just finished quilting for a relative. She has wonderful color sense. It's made in shades of purple, blue and green with a background of tone-on-tone neutrals. She plans to give it away at the Knox County Fair. If you want to claim this one for yourself go to the fair, head over to the quilt display, and enter to win.

I really, really don't want to give it back to her. I KNOW I could find something to bind it with!

Some Finishes!

I finally got these three QOV quilts finished on Friday. They were SUPPOSED to get finished last fall and mailed off way before Christmas. Didn't happen...procrastination, I guess. That's as good an excuse as any. They were pieced last summer then mellowed for a while. This Spring I got backs & battings pieced. Then they laid in a pile for about two months or so, getting moved from spot to spot until I just got tired of moving them and said, "That's it, they're getting finished."  So last Sunday, Tuesday & Wednesday they got quilted and the bindings went on Friday. Now I feel like I can move on to something else.

Now to get them boxed up and in the mail. I think instead of lugging them along to Quilt Club for Show 'n Tell I might just post them on Facebook as well as here. I think my fellow quilters have access to that. Just less stuff to carry along, you know?

I think that first one would make up nice in the old feedsacks I have, only maybe start out with squares smaller than 10".... maybe 9" instead. Maybe not. We'll see.

Our Little Firecrackers

Here's our little firecrackers....the two youngest grandchildren dressed up for Independence Day in their new cowboy boots. They just recently returned from a vacation in Rocky Mountain National Park and I think all that fresh mountain air made them wilder than usual. They were sure full of it when they came to pick up their dog Wednesday evening! Their Mom & Dad report that they are good little hikers.

Happy Independence Day !!

Herding Cats

This is the picture of the Hubby's 50th class reunion. About half of the class was there, and honestly, it was like herding cats trying to get a picture with everyone's face showing and all of them looking in the same general direction (except for two, I see).

I'd kind of been dreading going, thought $50 was a lot to pay for a meal & several hours of boredom with people I mostly didn't know. It turned out to be not quite so bad. When we walking in the door at the "before" party the Hubby's cousin & wife were right there and another woman I knew slightly. Even connected with someone from my graduating class who had married an "older woman" from the Hubby's class. As a bonus the meal was actually pretty good. :)  I'm still dreading my 50th though, but after going to Hubby's with him I see that a majority of us get old & fatter and we are what we are.

A Good Crowd and Adventures In Gardening

We had a good crowd at the library on Thursday for the first Story Time of the summer. Nineteen children attending, with two helpers, a big sister, several moms and a baby asleep in his stroller.

We hope attendance stays this good.

On another note.....my rose bush is beautiful this year. Just covered in blooms.

Now for our Friday night excitement. Hubby spends a lot of time in his garden raising all kinds of stuff....and complaining about the rabbits & pheasants who want their share of young plants. And later the coons who want the biggest share of the sweet corn.  Today's wild life was a little bigger and more of a surprise. Hubby was getting tomato cages out of the garage and when he came out and found himself face to face with fifteen head of Black Angus cattle tromping around in the gardens. Not something you expect to see right in town. Called the sheriff and they found the owners who came with a portable corral and loaded them on a trailer for a ride home. A gate had been left open at a neighbor's a mile away where they were being kept and all fifteen of them made a break for it. The garden will recover and it could have been much worse if they had gotten to the highway and caused an accident.

The strawberries are doing well. I got another two ice cream buckets full into the freezer today with another bucket waiting for me to get to tomorrow after work. Luckily they had been picked before the escaped cattle tromped all over them.

And that concludes our Friday adventures!

Allietare Fabrics Selected

Looking back, I can see that my blog has gone by the wayside. Since I haven't finished anything quilt-y there hasn't been much to write about. I don't have the knack of making everyday happenings sound interesting like some bloggers do.

Three quilt tops, complete with backings & pieced battings have been sitting on my sofa for better than a month waiting for me to get in the quilting mood again.  After the push to get some quilts done in March/April my quilting mojo kind of left me.

On my birthday I went shopping with left-over Christmas gift cards to the quilt store in hand. Picked up a LOT of fabric in 1/3 - 1/2 yd. cuts to add some variety to my stash, including some reds, golds, blacks & neutrals to include in Allietare, Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt from last November. Needless to say, I had to add a little cash to the gift cards. :)  The rest were pulled from stash and here they are, including the gray that I was looking for and was lucky enough to receive some.

I've seen pictures of beautiful finished Allietare quilts in other, gorgeous colorways, but it was the original color scheme that grabbed me so I'm going with it. I keep asking myself why on earth I'm starting another project, but why not, right?

One other thing, we took a road trip out to Chadron the middle of April to see the new headstones family members all chipped in to buy for the Great-Grandparents' and two Great-Aunts' graves that had gone unmarked for over a hundred years. While we were there we toured Chadron State Park. Such a beautiful place, even in the rain & snow. My favorite picture is this one of this big rock formation with the little Charlie Brown tree on the top.  Can't you just picture it with a string of multi-color Christmas lights?  :)

And let's not forget this.....it snowed several inches on us while we were out there. So much for it being Spring!

Today I've been getting flowers set out, mulching and pulling weeds out of the brick patio. The Adirondack chairs & table have been hosed off. Maybe can even get the grill hauled out of the garage. Gotta get ready for Summer!  Hopefully I can get the few tomato & pepper plants set out a little later.....and then hope they don't get annihilated on their first night in the garden by some crazy storm.

Till next time... whenever it may be!