With Fear and Trembling

I didn't make yesterday's block yesterday because honestly, it scared me. I love HSTs because I know THE TRICK. Yesterday's block was this pinwheel thing that looked like HSTs, and is in fact HSTs but THE TRICK doesn't work. I would have to cut out the squares, cut them into triangles and then sew them together. Scary. My friend Jenn has inspired me to have a "Tackle it Tuesday", taking one insurmountable obstacle in your house/life/sewing room/etc and tackling it.

Today I tackled (my hubby, hehe) laundry, vacuuming, squaring up star blocks and yes, the terrifying pinwheel block. The contrast isn't as good as I would have hoped, should have picked a lighter light but I like it. It goes in my green quilt. And look, my points are perfecy! What was I afraid of, LoL!! While I was at it, I made a block for today too! It's a Not-Really-a-Bento-Box.

I made progress of the hat I'm knitting too, though not as much as I would have liked. I stayed up an hour past the kids last night just knitting and this morning Hannah got ahold of it (in the minute I was out of the room!!) and dropped stitches everywhere down to where I was when she fell asleep last night. Sigh. I don't own a crochet hook either. I had to pick it out down to the first little yellow stripe I put in it (about 3 rows past the ribbing) and redo it. I made a lot of progress since then though and hope to get it to where I can begin to decrease the crown tonight, if not finish it. We'll see!

Thouht I'd share Jeremiah's favorite song and dance at the moment. The kid really can do the Time Warp!

The World According to Jeremiah

I must begin this post with a photo collage of pictures Jeremiah took this evening. We were playing in Hannah's room and I guess this is how he sees the world, from the knees down. Yes he did cut off our heads, but all in all not too bad! :-)

I snapped a quick pic of him because an artist must be seen with his work, LOL! He's being goofy but just look at those gorgeous dark brown eyes!

Today was a no-sew, take it easy day except for when I tried to go pay my car insurance and Hannah pooped all over the world. Instead of taking the poo-clad baby into the insurance office I shoved the check in their mail slot. I hope they got it. I'm sure they were a little confused since it was during office hours, LOL! One of the reasons for my not sewing today was I have some knitting I need to work on. Here's what I got accomplished, the second Steeler's hat. It kind of looks like a bumble bee! : )

I have a UFO (unfinshed object) that I planned to work on this year. I bought the sashing fabric for it yesterday and just out of curiosity I pulled out the blocks (30 of them) to look at them and realized that I didn't square them up before I put them up and they are horribly out of square. I got about 10 of them squared up this evening (might not be done, we'll see now that the kids are going to bed). So far they are all squaring up at 12 and a quarter inches, which is weird to say the least but at least all (except one side of one, which will need wider sashing) are the same size. We'll see about the other 20, LoL! All the blocks are made from an "Ugly" charm and strip swap.

I forgot to post pics of our finished pottery so here is the wonderful Race car that Jeremiah painted and my little cherry tile.

So now do I knit or square up? Decisions, decisions!!

WindyCindy Wins!

Trying to tally up all the comments and entries was too difficult for me on the computer, so I did it the old fashioned way and wrote each entry on a little slip of paper and tossed it in a small cardboard box.

Recap: Up for grabs was the Bad Lula set of Potholders! To gain an entry a person had to leave a comment with their e-mail address and favorite item in my etsy shop. A second entry was given for following this blog. A third entry was given for suggesting a book to read. A fourth entry was given for posting about this giveaway on another blog. Almost everyone who entered got at least 3 entries!

After putting all the names on slips of paper and crumpling them and tossing them in a box, I had my 3 yr old Jeremiah come and with his eyes closed choose our winner!

And the winner is WindyCindy! I will e-mail her and these lovely potholders will make their way to her as soon as I've recieved her mailing address. Should I not here back from her another winner will be chosen, but come on! Who's not going to immediately jump up and say, "OOH! I'm the winner! Here I am!!"

So congratulations Cindy! I hope these potholders will bring you amusement and unburned fingers for many years to come!

A good time with Lula

I actually accomplished everything on my quilty-to-do-list for this weekend! I can't believe it! I didn't get my laundry put up but my loving room is pretty much clean and I ran my dishwasher a few minutes ago.

I took a little of my birthday money from my granny and bought the rest of the fabric I need for my purple/batik quilt and the fabric for sashings on one of my UFOs. Hopefully in the next week or two I can break it out and start work on it. At some point too I must get my hands on the lovely black merino wool I bought about a month ago and spin some of it so I can break out my new swift and ball winder. I will have to paint the swift, since it is wood and is able to be painted LOL! I haven't decided yet what to paint on it. Mom painted hers with green hills, cloudy skies and little sheepies. I mustn't be a copy cat so I'll have to think outside the box on this one.

I finished my Good Times with Lula quilt top for my Bumbling Bounty Hunter's Challenge quilt #1. It's 24" square! In true form, it did not cooperate entirely! I squared up HSTs perfectly. I squared up blocks. I lost points everywhere. Sigh. Hannah LOVES this top so I think I will quilt it and let her have it as a doll or snuggle quilt.

Another major accomplishment for the night is I got my first ever etsy Treasury! If you're an etsy member and you catch the lists at the right time you can put together a little page of things you like on etsy. I chose purples and reds, all from either the quiltsy team I am on or the etsyknitters team I am on. I was so nervous, LOL! If that link doesn't work for you and you want to take a peak: http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list_west.php?room_id=43643

I don't know if I shared pics of the Steeler's hat I made for a guy Tony works with. I have a second one for him I started tonight to use up the rest of the black and gold yarn. Here's my gorgeous, big headed kid modeling my crafts for me again, LOL! He wasn't happy about getting his pic taken, he was playing a "Wow wow Wubzy" computer game and Mama was interupting!

We had a nice, lazy end of the weekend. We took the kids (LOL) to Ryan's buffet for lunch where even Hannah got so full be the end of the meal she way laying her head on the table. Post-buffet we went grocery shopping at Kroger WITHOUT A LIST. I don't know what I bought or for how many meals I bought or actually even what I spent. I do know we got 3 frozen pizzas and 3 2ltrs of mountain dew, LOL. Other than that...it's a surprise!

Happy Birthday to me

Well my birthday is almost over and it was great, and I made out like a bandit! I can't believe all the nice things I recieved from family and friends and I am so thankful!!

My family (minus Dad who was at work), aunt, uncle and little cousin and mother in law came over last night for an impromptu patry. We are some serious carnivors and went though about 5 pounds of steak which Tony, grill master extraordinaire cooked to orgasmic perfection and about 9 pounds of spare ribs which my Mom cooked just as well. Since we thought maybe meat and cake didn't exactly mak a balanced meal we had scallopped potatoes and cole slaw. Yum, yum, yum.

My hubby had the windows tinted on my car!!! Something we've been wanting to do since before we actually got this one. He also got me a swift and 2 yards of fabric. Jeremiah gave me too pretty beaded bracelets. My Mom and Dad gave me a ball winder! My MIL bought me a gorgeous red leather purse!! There's kind of a joke behind this: she got one for Christmas and as soon as she opened it I said, "Oh you opened the wrong gift, that one was mine." Since then everytime I've seen her I've said, "Hey there's Cheryl, with my red purse!"

My friend Jenn sent me a wonderful squishy in the mail with a bunch of beautiful CW repro FQs, 2 red and white fabrics and some green FQs! I can't believe she did this! Thank you! I will use this green FQs quickly in my St Patty's quilt.

I also recieved another squishy today from my secret pal Diana with 3 pretty FQs, Fudge Cupcake Murders by JoAnn Fluke, some monogrammed "D" notecards--which I needed! and some wonderful, delicious, yummy truffles! Oh, and 2 mounds bars! Buahaha, all mine...yumm.

I have had a migraine for 4 days now and it was so bad today I was dizzy, thinking I might pass out everytime I stood up and walked around. I sat around this afternoon before church with a bag of frozen corn on my head, which Hannah thought was really interesting.

We took some of my handbags to The Artisan Studio here in Clinton and the woman was thrilled with them! She has such a cute little shop with lots of neat and different handmade things. A LOT of handmade jewerly, which is where the two beaded bracelets Jeremiah got me came from. I will definitely have to look over them more closely the next time I visit! She thinks my bags will do very well there and I am praying they will. We are fine financially with Tony's job being our sole income but I love making a little money on the side. It makes me feel like I help or contribute and it came in really handy at Christmas, LOL!

Despite the headache of apocolyptic proportions I have managed to get some sewing done so far this weekend. I finished my green mini yesterday morning (binding and label), and today I finally finished the puppy baby quilt! Oh, and I made a block for today too even though there wasn't one. Tomorrow I'm hoping to put together the other three Lula blocks I cut out but we shall see!

Hope everyone had a great Valentine's Day!

10 New Bags

Okay, I'm still new at Flickr so hopefully I have figured out this slide show thing and it will show up! If not, all my new bags can be seen in a folder in my flickr account.

I needed about 8 bags to take to this lady for her to sell in her store, and ended up with 10 so 2 bags--the all pink and the regular sized all aqua found their way to my etsy store earlier! I have made 5 regular sized bags to take to her and 3 sock-knitting sized, with a small pocket on the back.

Now that I have these out of way I am off to do other quilty things like my block for the day, my Lula top and the binding on my green mini. Probably I won't do all of that tonight, but definitely sometime this weekend.
Enjoy the show!

Up on a Pedestal

Whew! I finally got all those bags I was working on finished! It took me exactly 7 days, but a couple of those I didn't make any progress 'cause my machine was messing up. In the last 3 days I've managed to make 2 bags a day along with my block a day. And my house is fairly clean! I must be in an episode of the Twilight Zone or something because usually Major Sewing = Messy House. Before I share pics of that (another post later) I must share about the bed frame.

When Hannah was a couple months old we decided we needed to upgrade our bed from a Queen to a King. We needed a new matress anyway and at some point every night, because we are hippies, both kids end up in bed with us and the queen was just a little too crowded. I'm not a very round person but I need more than 7.5" of space to sleep! We got an incredible deal, around $375 for boxsprings and beauitful, soft, comfortable double sided pillow top mattress. No it did not fall off the back of a truck, either. My dh is one of those guys who knows other guys whose buddies owe them favors, LOL!!

Then we had a big bed with no frame. Again, cause we're hippies (or maybe artists? LOL) we set the bed up on the floor. We drove around and looked at "pedestal frames" with drawers in the sides but they run around $1500 on "clearance". Ahem. That's almost 3 months worth of rent! So Tony comes out of the Think Tank one days and says, "You know, I could build one of those and I could even make the drawers bigger." Of course!

He started in earnest. Bought graph paper, drew his design. Took measurements of the bed. Looked up measurements of other pedestal frames. Tweaked the design. Went to Home Depot and measured wood. Took more measurements. Bought wood. For the last 6 months about every other weekend he's been going to my aunt and uncle's to borrow their garage to work an hour or two on this bed frame. They are moving soon so last weekend we went over and he and I worked together, sanding and staining and sealing and we finally got it all done!

The whole time we were doing this we knew it would add about a foot of height to our bed. In fact, exactly a foot. We have nice 24" deep drawers, 2 per side! I picked out the stain and sealant, a lovely "Pecan" shade that dried and still looks wet. Awesome! It looks nice. It SMELLS nice.

Tony took his truck today and picked up the frame, which took up the entire bed of his Dakota truck. My uncle came over with the drawers and Tony's tools. They carried it in and set the bed up on it and OH MY GOSH. I'm the Princess and the Pea. You know the story where the whiny chick piles like, 43 mattresses up?

We forgot our mattress was a double sided pillow top. Our bed is now almost 4 feet tall. We are having to be extra super careful Hannah doesn't roll out of it, LoL! For that matter, I don't want to roll out of it. I love it though, it's gorgeous. Just gonna take some getting used to!

Finally some sewing!

It's amazing what you can get done with a sewing machine out of commission! Jenn posted some before and after pics of her housecleaning today and inspired me to do the same. I had already straighened up around my living room/dining room area and vacuumed by the time I took pics, but my table (ie Sewing Table) and ironing board were piled sky high. In fact, I was too embarrassed to take a Before pic and took a Halfway through pic and an after. It was so nice to get everything organized and cleaned down to a bare surface. I also was able to cut out quilty things while waiting on Mom to get here with a loaner machine. The pic of my kitchen table is my sewing area, where I create all my lovely quilts, LOL! YES my pin cusion IS a doughnut. I love dougnuts. Yes, it even has "sprinkles". No, you can't have it.

Mom and Dad came over and brought all the kids (except my 20yr old brother Allen who makes my blood pressure go up, LOL!) and we made a huge mess of burittos for dinner, along with brownies later.

Diantha brought her little midget sewing machine for me to borrow and it's working WONDERFULLY! It is so cute and small though, even compaired to my machine which isn't really all that big. I just had to take a pic to share. I managed to get my block made for today and also for tomorrow (cause I cut it out while waiting) and I finished the bag I was unable to finish last night. Then I started another bag, all in purples except each side has one little "because I felt like it" red strip in it somewhere. I got the lining and button tab made and one side quilted before I sat down to type this while nursing Hannah. She's asleep right now so I'm going to try to finish it tonight! Then I won't be so far behind on the bag making! : )

And so I leave you with pics. Bear in mind I have gray scaled the blocks because they are for a something special and the person who might get them might read my blog. Have a good night everyone!

Randomly speaking

I've made the block on the calender for today twice in the last month and I'm bored with it. You can see it on Mom's blog at some point tonight. Instead I made 1 of 4 blocks I designed for my Reformed Lula quilt. I made sure my measurements were correct tonight and my block came out to the 12.5" square it was supposed to! I have the pieces cut out for the other 3 blocks but my machine is misbehaving again so they will have to wait until tomorrow, maybe. Hannah loved today's block. She kept going over to it and patting it and laughing, though of course when I snapped the pic she snatched it off the wall. I don't know why she always seems to be half naked when I take pictures of her.
When the four of these blocks are set together they will form a big pinwheel in the center and a diamond shape around it. I think it will be very visually interesting and I think I might need to use a bright, hurt your teeth lime for the binding.

I love Maybelline cosmetics, always have. I am a big fan of their regular pink bottle mascara in Blackest Black but about a month ago I needed a new one and thought I'd give their new Colossal mascara a try. It comes in a huge fat yellow and purple tube and costs between $2 and $3 more than the other one. And it stinks. Literally, and kind of a mix between sour beer and urine. It smells so badly I only used it when absolutely necessary (LOL!) and it gave me a headache every time. And after only a month it turned to a weird globby gel so I am giving Colossal two thumbs down!

I have a moment of shame for today. After skipping breakfast and running errands for an hour I was starving and (with another hour of errands in front of me) I ate a Frito I found on the seat of my car. It's okay 'cause I dropped it there on Friday.

Today our weather was WEIRD, having had snow last week it was in the 70's today!! Jeremiah and Hannah and I took a walk this evening, and I am SO FRIGGING OUT OF SHAPE. My legs hurt. My back hurts. Sigh. I lost over 20lbs since last June but haven't exercised. Need to start walking again. Must. Walk. Badly!

I love a Christian band from Australia called the Newsboys. In fact at one time (about 6 years ago) I owned every album they'd made, including a couple little known albums from back in Australia. I have a CD of theirs called Adoration and if you like praise and worship music at all, please go buy this CD! I think it came out in 2002. I was listening to it while driving today and I am so blessed everytime I listen to it, with every song. It's just beautiful! Probably it can be found on Half.com or Ebay.com for only a few dollars since it's not new, but it is SO worth it.

I got a wonderful squishy in the mail today from a kind lady named Sarah Nolt from Sarah's Quilts N Crafts on Etsy. She purchased a bag from me the other day and sent ME a thank you! Imagine that! The dark brown is a FQ, the gold is about 2/3rds of an FQ and the gold coins fabric is about 6"x22". Thank you, thank you! How pleasing and unexpected!

Well I think that is all the randomness I have in me for tonight. My babies are asleep, YAY! I need to go try to fool with my machine and get it to work, or I could actually go to bed early for once! Nah....

Bad Lula Potholders Giveaway

Sorry but this contest ended on Monday Feb 16th. WindyCindi was the lucky winner! Stay tuned for future giveaways and specials!

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What did I do with the horribly small Bad Lulu block that was supposed to be for my Lula quilt? I made it into a potholder and used a coordinating fabric for another one, forming a complete set!
And since I don't need them I'm offering them up as a giveaway!

Probably Lula (sidekick extraordinaire from the Stephanie Plum books by Janet Evanovich) never cooks, not when Cluck in a Bucket is right down the street! But if she did, she would surely use diva potholders like these!

These potholders are made from 100% cotton, quilt quality fabrics. They have 2 layers of Warm and White cotton batting in the middle making them just thick enough that you won't burn your hands and thin enough to be able to wrap around pots coming out of the oven without being cumbersome! They are a whopping 8.5" square (because Lula's not a small woman and would want to use voluptuous potholders) with a hook on one corner if you need to hang them. They have been machine quilted in a random wavy line pattern and machine bound for durability. They are 100% machine washable!!

All you need to do to enter to win is follow these instructions:
First entry: Leave a comment on THIS post telling me what your favorite item is from my etsy shop! Also leave your NAME and e-mail address (in blahblah AT somewhere DOT com format to stop spammers from spidering this page and getting your address) or etsy address so I can contact you.
Second entry: Recommend a book for me to read!
Third Entry: Post about this giveaway on your blog and link to it!
Fourth Entry: Follow my blog!

Note: people who don't leave me their email or etsy shop addresses so I can contact them won't be entered! I don't have time to try to hunt you down, so follow the directions! : )

Contest starts today, Monday Feb 9th and ends Monday Feb 16th!
Drawing will be at random and the winner will be announced and contacted on the 16th. If I haven't heard back from them within 7 days a new winner will be chosen, again at random.

Disclaimer: Having and using potholders doesn't give you super powers. If you hold a hot pan long enough, even with these potholders, you will eventually burn your hands. Use common sense when cooking. And fry some bacon while you're at it.

Bad Lula

This post is titled "Bad Lula" subtitled "OH MY GOD I AM SO STUPID."

Tonight is my 100th post! If I were a TV show I'd get a cake. Where the heck is the cake???
It seems only fitting that this post be about Lula. Okay, by now I'm sure you all know I love the Stephanie Plum books, so much so in fact that I have endeavored to imortalize the characters forever (barring decay and moths) in quilted form. I am so very behind on my Block-a-Days that when I saw today's block was very complex I thought, "Ah, penance! I will make FOUR of them out of my Lula fabrics and have my mini Lula (an oxymoron in itself) top complete!" I intended to make 4, 12" blocks for a 24" finished quilt.

I took one look at the block on the calender, a block based on a nine patch and thought "okay, I need 3.5" sections." Wrong. Duh. It gets worse. Some of the sections were actually 4 patches (3 HSTs and 1 plain square). So I thought, "For a 3.5" section I'll need 1.5" HSTs" and I cut out and made 72 1.5" HSTs. I did not square them all up, thank GOD because as I was squaring up just the 18 I needed for ONE block I realized that they would finish to 1", which would give me a much smaller block than I originally intended. Really? Duh!

So here it is, my Bad Lula block which is SIX and a HALF INCHES. No, it isn't square. I don't know what happened with that. The fabrics are great, just like I thought but no way am I making any more of these. All those remaining unsquared microscopic HSTs are going in the trash. Probably I will use this block, as planned and laid out like this for my mini-Lula quilt but with the correct measurements to ensure a 12.5" quilt block. What do I do with this one? Small borders and make it a horrible potholder?


In other news I finished the last bag today that I had the pieces made for. I got it done about 7 and thought that I just didn't want to have to dig through a bunch of little batik scraps to make another one tonight. So instead of made a million little HSTs. Sigh. Tomorrow I'll make another bag.

Today Tony and I finally finished the pedestal frame for our king size bed!! He sanded and I painted stain/sealant on it and we got it DONE! Finally! He made it in 2 sections, each twin size with 2 24" deep drawers in the side. We will lay the 2 pieces together in our room with a board across the top to support the mattress and box spring. Tony designed this and built it all by himself. I am so proud of him and I love it!

While we were pretending to be carpenters Jeremiah decided to try out his cousin Dana's bike! He did really well and was able to ride it! AND managed not to run into our car!

Stitching away

I have been stitching and stitching away working on some bags to sell in a local store. I am almost half way done with the bags I need to make. Pretty good progress considering we were gone most of the day today, away from my sewing machine. I did take my knitting and work on the hat for a guy Tony works with. I got it almost halfway done. See a pattern emerging here?

When Diantha was here the other day she helped me seperate my batik scraps into like colors. For want of something to put them in I grabbed up a couple Kroger bags and sorted the fabrics into them. I've found that bags I make in semi-solid colorways sell a little quicker than my really scrappy bags. While I was stitching last night on a regular sized aqua/greeny/blue bag, Hannah was being such a good helper by dumping out several of the bags and chewing on the bits. I took the pic and then, have no fear, I took the plastic bag away from her. And scooped up the scraps altogether. Scrappy bags here we come! So much for organization!

And now tonight, though as I write this it's already tomorrow (which has always confused me, even as a child when Mom would say it) I have 3 finished bags to show off. 2 regular size, one pink and one aqua and a small knitting bag in the same aqua colors. I really love the vintage buttons on the aqua bags, they are from my great-grandmother's button box that I inheiritted for Christmas. I put the pics of the front and back of the knitting bag in the same picture.

I have the front and back of an orange bag pieced, which hopefully I can finish tomorrow. Tony has to work 4 hours over tomorrow night and in the morning we have a couple errands to run. Eventually I have to try to vacuum my living room too. : ) I am so very behind on my block a days, I made a couple blocks last night to try to catch up which left me 2 days behind but then I didn't do today's block either. Maybe when I get these few handbags done I can spend one day making different blocks. I'd like to get that little green quilt finished soon.

We had so much fun at the pottery place yesterday! Jeremiah painted a little racecar figure and I painted a 4" square tile I can use as a spoon rest for now. When we get a house, whenever that may be (but probably not in the near future) I want to tile a backsplash behind the stove and set my tile in it. Since my kitchen is done in cherries I of course painted cherries with a checkerboard border.

I can't wait to see Jeremiah's race car once it's fired and glazed. His room is unofficially done in racecars and Cars (disney). We did his room in the disney cars colors with posters on the wall that can be changed out when he outgrows it. We figure he probably won't outgrow the red, blue and green colors though. I wish I had remembered my camera so I could get a better pic of Jeremiah, but here is the one my brother Artemas took. Basically you can see his fluffy curly hair and race car in progress.