Trying new Quilting

I haven't blogged in a few days, but my Mom says that's okay because I outdid myself the last time by blogging 3 times in one day. I kept forgetting things, though!

Thursday my grandparents, aunt, uncle and cousin came into town. Apparently Gatlinburg TN has some big fireworks thing they didn't want to miss. We on the other hand are lazy and won't even drive into town to see them. More on that later. I snapped this pic of Mom sitting at IHOP waiting on her dinner, knitting of course.

Friday we went to Mom's for Tony to mess around more with the back porch and while he was doing whatever it was he was doing I pinned and quilted 3 smallish/lap/wallhanging quilts. I bring things that I want to stipple quilt here to Mom's because my little Singer Simple machine has a tension problem (too much caffeine??) and Mom has an antique 50's Singer like machine that does a WONDERFUL easy stipple. I always do just a random meandering pattern because it's quick, I'm good at it, and it's quick. However on the N2Quilting yahoo group I'm on there has been some discussion about free motion/stipple quilting and I thought I'd give something different a try. Of course, being the coward that I am I stayed almost in my comfort zone. One quilt I just did my normal stipple. Quilt #2 got a random, meandering stipple like normal with little loops thrown in here and there for fun. Quilt #3 got a radom meandering stripple like normal with spirals thrown in here and there for fun. The loops were difficult for me to feel like I had a rhythm. It felt like it took longer because since I wasn't used to it, I wasn't as fluid in my movements. The spirals though, were suprisingly easy.

Friday evening was the First Friday's thing downtown where I live. We raced back from Mom's and set up our "booth" with Dad's soaps, Diantha's handspuns, Mom's recycled yarns and my handbags. 3 hours of standing around because I forgot the chairs, with about 10 people walking past. Right before we left I sold one small handbag, which let me put gas in Tony's truck, buy him a joke of a lottery ticket (with which he won $3!) and buy myself a bottle of Bacardi pre-mixed Mojito, which BTW is NASTY. I had a "real" mojito at Chili's a week or so ago and it was yummy. This pre bottled crap tasted like watered down tooth paste. Ugh.

Saturday we lay around the house taking our time with this. Tony helped me do housework, we got the kitchen, living room and our room cleaned up and all the laundry done and all but 1 load put away. In between all these I sat around sleepily rereading twilight. Then we made a walmart run where we wandered about looking at things like area rugs and a Shark Steamer.
All with the hardwoods in the house we are trying to buy in mind.

Then it was time to head back downtown and set up for their 4th of July thing. They had told us we could put our booth back up, that the shops were having sales and the City was doing a celebration/fireworks thing about a mile away so they expected foot traffic. It turns out that it was an all-day thing and we should have set up about 10am. Oh well. 6 people walking past us and 2 hours later we decided we were bored and packed up. We didn't take the kids to see any fireworks, we were both tired and didn't feel like it. They saw a few from our porch and were so excited that then I was sad they missed the bigger displays.

Yesterday we went over to Mom and Dad's again. Tony wanted to weed eat, LOL! I didn't take any quilty, spinny or knityy projects; just new moon which I'm rereading now that I finished the first one last night. On my way there I stopped at the Buy 1/Get 1 Fireworks place and bought $20 worth of fireworks to set off in their driveway for the kids once it got dark. Of course by the time it was nearly dark it was also RAINING! The kids huddled under the overhang they made from the back door to Mom's van and watched as Tony, Artemas and I lit fireworks with wet lighters. We tried lighting a cigarette and using it to light them, that worked best...it took the cigarette longer to get soggy than the lighters, LOL! By the time we were out of fireworks the rain had stopped but we were still dripping. I went back in the house and very cheerily announced to Mom that I burned both my thumbs and caught my shirt on fire! She wasn't surprised, remembering the slight pyromania of my youth (that Tony says I didn't outgrow!) I'm sure. Diantha came in behind me and just as cheerily said that I also won the wet tshirt contest.