Blizzard 2011 and Other Musings

They predicted, and they predicted correctly. I think the official total for our area was 18", we haven't seen that much snow at one time for about 12 years.

Of course, I don't want my loved ones stranded out in it, but with the predictions as they were, many businesses in the area were shutting down early on Tuesday and already shut down for Wednesday as the storm moved in late Tuesday afternoon.

My family was no exception...my husband was sent home after half of his shift (he works 2nd shift, so was home early evening,) my son was sent home a bit early as the work they needed to do for the day was finished anyway, our married daughter (she's a nanny) was also sent home by late afternoon and was safely tucked in her apartment around the corner from us, her husband already on his way, too.

The only one in our family hugely affected by the storm was Rachel. She was due home on a flight from Paris Wednesday afternoon, which was pre-emptively cancelled Monday evening.

She had no way of knowing and no way to get in touch with us to let us know what was going on.

So she flew from Ouagadougou to Paris, her group all separated to catch flights on other airlines or to go explore Paris, and she went to her airline check-in only to find that her flight had been cancelled. (At right, she is with part of her group, in Africa.)

She arrived in Paris early Wednesday morning (Paris time, Tuesday night our time), with no way home. She tried to find people from her group, to no avail, and then went to book her new flight home. We found out Wednesday morning, through the organization she toured with, that she was on a flight from Paris to Dallas and would have to spend the night there as no flights were expected to fly into Chicago on Wednesday.

I stayed up until 3am Wednesday morning, partly hoping she could find a way to contact us, but mostly to enjoy the storm. I love these kind of storms and watched as the snow fell and drifted.

When she called Wednesday around dinner time, she had gotten her luggage, gone through customs, reserved a hotel room and was waiting on the shuttle bus. My baby is all grown up!

She didn't know until she arrived in Dallas why her flights had been cancelled (her Thursday morning flight had been cancelled while she was in the air, she had to re-book that as well.) We took pictures so she could see how everything looked before we dug out.

Rachel's car was all but buried in it and drifts left huge piles in some areas, but not so much in others.

I was intrigued by the snow that curled over the railing and hung there for days. It shrunk some a few days later as the weather warmed and some melting began, and Jonathan cleared it all off just this past weekend.

Mike and Jonathan spent 3 hours shoveling on Wednesday morning, we were thankful the storm had ended by then, it was predicted initially to continue on into Wednesday afternoon.

Ruthie and Lucas very much enjoyed the snowstorm, Ruthie watched as the snow slowly buried our table and flowers on the porch (first picture) and periodically would call someone to the window to look with her.

I spent quite a bit of time working on the Posies and Celtic in the last few weeks, as well as working on some of my patterns.

We have a busy weekend coming up, we hope, the newlyweds are supposed to be closing on a house on Friday so the weekend will be spent helping them move.

Joshua (oldest son) will sublet the apartment they are vacating and spend those few months looking for a place to go to after that, probably with a friend. That means he will be moving this weekend, too, so it will be a crazy one!

Ruthie continues to do well and has most definitely come into her own. Still still loves to have her picture taken, which has worked out nicely for Joshua's girlfriend who is an art major with an emphasis on photography. She has taken many, many pictures of Ruthie, who is even starting to take some direction for more specific photos. It's really fun to watch. And really, who can resist that face?

The days now are busy ones, and even those that I plan to be quiet seem to fill themselves up pretty easily. It's a nice kind of busy, though, mostly low stress and enjoyable.

Once these moves for the kids are over, I hope to settle into a good routine for my quilting and pattern work. Hopefully there won't be anything else big in the works for a while!

Hope this finds you keeping warm and happily busy!

Sue

Flying

The days seem to fly by. There never seems to be enough time to get in the things that I want to finish each day. I'm getting more diligent about making daily lists and bought a planner book for that purpose. It also holds the many schedules and events that need to be worked around. My book shows a week at a time, with nice lined sections for each day, it seems like I turn to a new page far too quickly.

Rachel is doing a different flying, she left yesterday for Paris to meet up with her group and is, as I post, on her flight from Paris to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, Africa. At left is her visa picture, she was not thrilled with it but the smile tells it all. This is a much anticipated and planned for trip and my hope for her is that she finds it all she expected and more. She'll be gone for 10 days, I doubt those days fly by for me, though I'm sure they will for her!

Quilt ideas are flying from my brain to my fingers these days. Each time I wonder if I will be able to come up with anything new, I sit down with my pad and colored pencils and start to draw and one or two more ideas come flowing out. I feel like my brain flies a mile a minute while I try to put all the different pieces of this venture into some semblance of order. At left is a peek at one of the new designs.

In addition to working on new patterns and tops, I'm hand quilting on the Celtic and Posies. Not only do I want to finish this one, hand quilting time is really good thinking, praying, and meditation time for me. It's so relaxing for me to hand quilt that my jumbled thoughts have time to sort themselves out. I lot of ideas and solutions to problems have come to fruition while hand quilting.

Ruthie continues to "fly" as well. She strings more and more words together, is nearly always able to easily communicate what she wants and can be quite bossy at times. Where words used to be great effort for her, they come much more easily now. She used to never react verbally, the words didn't come quickly enough, but now we hear "oh my" or "donnit!" (darn it) and other various comments on things happening around her. She loves to sing, though it's still very rudimentary, few words, mostly vowels and not really in tune, but she clearly has the idea of her voice moving up and down for notes. This is a skill we'll work on as it will provide her much pleasure. Very few activities these days don't include a lot of chatter and she'll call out to anyone passing by her to tell them what she's doing. She likes hiding and will climb into boxes, the pantry, under blankets and then call out for someone to come see while she pops out.

She's doing more counting, identifying colors, starting to identify letters, and her problem solving skills continue to improve. Her smile lights up the room and she still garners attention everywhere we go.

Life is good! And I hope the same for you.

Happy Quilting!

Sue

Updates and New Beginnings

Happy After Holidays! I LOVE the holidays and this past holiday season was a particularly joyous one for us. After many years of financial struggle, things seem to be looking up and we had our least stressful holiday in a very long time. We still have a ways to go, but feeling like we're making progress, and not peddling in vain, sure helps a lot!

The newlyweds are doing very well and are hoping to close on their first house early next month. Brian was able to find a job in his field so reluctantly left a job he enjoyed, but didn't pay very well, for one with better pay and a brighter future.

With the lease not being up on their apartment, an opportunity presented itself for Joshua, our oldest, and he is going to sublet and spend the next few months looking for a place he can afford with a friend who will be needing a place to live. It will be a big change, but one he is ready for and quite excited about. It's a little easier to see your kids leave the nest when they are staying in the same tree! Both the new house and the apartment are within a couple of miles of our house.

Rachel took some classes at the Community College last semester and is taking a full load during the one coming up. Before she starts that, she'll be taking a 10 day trip to Africa with an organization through which she's sponsored a child for almost 3 years. She will get to meet the little boy who calls her his "Jesus mother" and spend a day with him. She can hardly wait. My little town girl is flying on her own to Paris to meet up with the group that will leave from there to go to Africa. She's well prepared and so looking forward to this adventure.

Jonathan and Lucas are also doing well, they are keeping busy with schoolwork and friends. Jonathan and Joshua went winter camping this past weekend, on one of the coldest weekends we've had this winter, and enjoyed themselves thoroughly. Lucas will often don shoes and coat and run around outside all by himself, tossing a ball around, practicing his juggling, looking for ice patches to break up and generally just wiggling off some energy.

Ruthie is doing wonderfully. She loved "mismas", is getting more and more verbal, and has found her sense of pretend, which is a hoot and is also developing a sense of humor. She keeps herself busy from the time she gets up until she goes to bed at night and we are all excited and entertained watching her learn.

As usual, it's rare for me to go a day without quilting. I worked on Rachel's quilt (pictured at right) up until 3:50pm on Dec 23rd, she got home from work at 4:00. She had no idea I was making the quilt and was so very surprised when she opened the box. The kids were most excited to see that gift opened, I think, they were all in on it.

The Christmas quilting was followed by a quilting job that I got a few weeks before the holidays, which just went out in the mail this morning.

I also got a baby shower invitation just after Christmas, the shower is this Saturday so I've been hard at work finishing a quilt for that, it's pictured at left, still in the hoop and on track to be finished for the shower.

Once the baby quilt is finished, finally, after a couple of months of delays, I can get back to work on my new venture. A series of events, many of them precipitated and/or encouraged by Bren have led me to designing patterns and also taking in quilting work. A new venture means a new blog to focus on it, this one will remain predominantly about my family and personal quilting...though I'm sure there will be some crossover!

Visit me at Quilt in Piece Designs and hopefully watch me grow from the ground up. And I do mean ground, it's quite empty over there!

It's rare for me to be without something in my hoop, so once the baby quilt is done, the Celtic and Posies will be getting some attention.

I also have to quilt the "Tablecloth Quilt", but have decided that will make a better anniversary gift than birthday one, so I have some time. I do plan to mark and baste that one in the next few weeks.

So that is my very long update. There is a lot going on right now and I look forward to each day!
Happy Quilting!
Sue

Quilting...and other busy-ness

I've been really enjoying quilting on the Celtic and Posies. Two blocks are quilted and the sashing surrounding them is done as well. Block 3 is in the hoop and ready to go, possibly a few stitches will be taken yet tonight. I could have more done except there is A LOT going on here these days. One of the biggest things is the ramping up of the wedding plans for our oldest daughter. They aren't officially engaged, yet, but that is really just a formality. They are figuring out exactly what they want and the engagement will likely bring with it an announcement of the date, most likely some time this fall.

It will be very much a homemade wedding. After seeing veils at the bridal store we visited, we decided we certainly could make one. We bought a piece of tulle and some beads and we picked a zig zag formation for the beads and she's been practicing getting them on without pulling too tightly.

I'm sure there will be much more to tell as the weeks go on.
In the midst of it all, my husband is job hunting. The company he works for now has been underbid and it's likely the current employees will lose their jobs. We need that income, and our insurance is there, so we're in a bit of a mad scramble to find a way to replace that job. We're sure all will work out for the best in the end, but in the meantime, it's quite nerve wracking!

Thankfully we have our own personal hair stylist! Ruthie wants her hair cut whenever the haircutting supplies are out. Since Rebekah does hair out of our house, poor Ruthie would be bald if we obliged. She did need a trim, though, so she got that last week.

Here she is, discovering the wonders of Easter chocolate. She's not much of a candy eater, usually we give her a small toy and some snack crackers or something in her Christmas stocking and Easter Basket. She does enjoy an occasional piece of "chokuck" so had a few among her Easter goodies this year.

Lucas was practicing roller blading with a helmet and pads, so Ruthie had to have some, too. She wore these for quite a while and grinned the whole time.

The quilting updates will be slow in coming these days, all the projects are big and have a lot of handwork, though I will have a wedding quilt in the works before too long.

Hopefully we don't get too much terribly hot weather or it will be hard to keep a big quilt in the quilting process!

Keep cool and Happy Quilting!

Sue

Long Update

It's been a while! I'm still not used to being able to post more quickly and tend to put it off longer than I should. I'm hoping to change that with more frequent updates so they aren't as crazy long as this one is!

Rebekah came to me a couple of weeks before Mother's Day and asked what I wanted...though before I could answer said they had an idea. The "they" was she and her boyfriend and their plan was to replace my favorite tree, which was dying, with a new one. We planted this tree when it was barely more than a stick. It started out green in the spring, then was covered with beautiful white flowers (though they stunk!) and then the leaves turned purple for the remainder of the summer, new growth coming out green and then also turning purple.

It got a fungus several years ago and we didn't realize what it was until it was too late. My husband wanted to milk it along for a while, since the fungus wouldn't spread to other trees and the tree was still looking passable, but I thought he might go for this new plan. He did, and the next day the cutting began.

Here the main lower branches had already been cut off. Brian (Rebekah's boyfriend) enlisted the help of a couple of our boys to help him take down the tree.

Here more of the branches are down, they are nearing the end of what can be done with it still standing.

Lucas was thrilled to be included and spent his time taking any branches he could carry to the garden, where they stayed until Jonathan was able to move them to the woodpile up by the back of our house.

Brian and Rebekah got a dog last summer. She occasionally comes for a visit when they are here so they can stay longer. She loved the activity that day, watching all of the neighbor dogs and giving kisses to the kids when they would get close enough.

The trunk was cut into usable sized pieces and branches all hauled to the garden. Lucas continued to pick up smaller pieces so the mower wouldn't run them over.

He came back a couple of days later to work on getting the stump out and took me to pick out my new tree. They had picked out a few different ones, the final choice was mine. It's a flowering cherry and should have beautiful white flowers in the spring. I can hardly wait. It seems to have "taken" well and there is some new growth at the top. It's supposed to be a fast growing tree so hopefully it won't look so little and lost among the rest of the trees and shrubs!

Mother's Day was great. It doubled as Rachel's birthday dinner day. We made dinner together and afterward went to do her birthday shopping. She wanted me to be able to shop, too, so got everyone together to chip in instead of picking out gifts. Ruthie and Rebekah came along, too, and we had a wonderful time, ending our shopping trip with ice cream at Oberweis.

During the course of those few busy weeks, I finished up the border of the celtic and posies. This past Monday I got the muslin needed for backing and started basting that evening.

Here it is in the hoop. This one will take me a while, but that's ok, I'm really enjoying quilting on it, even the difficult middle section where there is so much quilt to move around.

Here it is during the basting process. Every so often I go on a baking binge. I love to keep baked goods around, which is no easy feat with my hungry group. Sometimes rather than baking every couple of days I bake several different things in a day.

This time is was a Swedish Flop. The cake is a rather stiff, yeast cake. The lemon filling is the same as that in lemon pie. The white layer is a cream filling. So good!

Even better are the Kringles. There is a bakery in Racine, Wisconsin that makes these and I found a recipe online. I was amazed at how close this recipe comes to the original and it has quickly become a family favorite.

They are oval shaped, the recipe makes two and I halved them to fit them on the platter. The filling is butter, brown sugar, and walnuts. I've also tried apple, peach, and chocolate chip and nut, but this one is far and away the favorite. The pastry is soft and light and the powdered sugar icing just finishes it off beautifully.

Ruthie continues to do wonderfully. She loves the camera and we've decided that she needs to have her own for her birthday (which isn't until November.) There are a couple of disposables floating around here and she seems to lose some of her shyness when she has one in her hand. This may be just the thing to bring her out of her shell some when other people are around.

In the meantime, she'll enjoy getting her picture taken. She can be in the worst of moods, but mention taking her picture and she's all smiles. Here she is sitting on the back of the little couch in my sewing area.

This one was taken with my phone camera, so the quality isn't really good. She asked to ride the horse at Meijer, which was a first and was thrilled to have her picture taken on it. They have it rigged so no money has to be put into it, but she didn't like when it moved so we won't be pushing that button again for a while.

She can still be found sleeping sometime in the afternoon or early evening a few days a week. She loves that little spongebob, I used a bit of my Mother's Day money to buy it, she entertained herself for quite a while with it in the store while Rachel tried on clothing, so I didn't have the heart to leave it there. Notice her painted toes, too. Rachel and I both bought new sandals on Mother's day, so we painted our toes that evening. Ruthie was not to be left out. She comments on her pretty toes daily.

So there it is, the very long update. I'm spending a lot of time sewing and quilting these days, but all of the projects are big so there really isn't that much to report. The warmer weather is slowly making it's way here and I've enjoyed the extended cooler spring weather that we've had.

All in all, it's been a good spring. I hope the same for all of you!

Happy Quilting!

Sue

Welcome Changes...and Quilting Update

It's been an interesting couple of weeks around here. In an attempt to cut some expenses, or at least get more for the money we're spending, we're making some changes to our wireless services and launching ourselves into the 21st century...well at least taking some baby steps in.

The biggest changes for me are a cellphone plan that allows me to actually talk on it, LOL, (I had one that I only used when absolutely needed) and a wireless internet connection rather than the archaic dialup. Don't get me wrong, I was content with the dialup service, but being able to shift expenses to include wireless internet is wonderful.


With the change to wireless, my computer desk became movable. I was limited to where I could put it when it needed to be near a phone line, but now that it doesn't, I did some furniture moving as well. The computer desk used to be where the bookshelf is and vice versa. I also swapped the tables, putting my sewing table in our dining room and bringing the dining room table into my sewing room. This opened up quite a bit of floor space and, so far, seems like a really good change. I took the leaves out of the table to fit it nicely in my sewing room and can put them in when needed, for now, I'm adjusting to less table space and hoping this makes it easier to keep it cleared off.


I took a short break from my challenge to make this baby quilt, which Bren's mom bought from me and gave to a neighbor. These are so fun much to make, I've done a few of them now in various sizes. Tone on tone fabrics with quilting motifs done in colored thread, they are easy to get to the quilting stage and quilt up quite quickly in spite of the amount of hand quilting on them.



I'm getting anxious to get back to the posies and celtic quilt. I haven't done anything on it in quite a while, and the plan is for it to be the next one in the hoop. I'm appliquing on the border, have the posy sets chosen and ready to applique along with more bias made and ready to sew on.

The Oriental Roads quilt is moving along well. I'm on the outer row of blocks and hope to be quilting on the borders by Easter weekend. I don't know how realistic that is with all else that is going on here this week, but that is the plan.

Ruthie loves to have her picture taken and this one was taken just after her bath. Her hair is still wet and she's all snuggly and quite mellow.

I have mixed feelings about the warm weather coming, I do love when the windows can be opened, we can take walks, and sit outside. I'm not a warm weather person, though. The hand quilting may have to take a back seat on the warmest days, but I have plenty of hand piecing waiting to keep me busy! I'm already starting my list for next year, which will start off with whatever doesn't get done this year (I really think I've bitten off more than I can chew this time.)

Nothing will get finished if I don't get to it, so it's time to go!

Happy quilting!

Sue

Hunting Weekend....sort of. And a Challenge Update

My husband and two older sons are on their way to where they meet up with a few other guys for their 6 hour drive north.

Unfortunately, my husband isn't able to go with them and is dropping off our sons and coming home. He decided quite some time ago that going this year is probably not going to be possible (not enough money, nor enough people to cover his work while he's gone) and, though he's disappointed and I'm sure wishes he was going with them, he is excited about the list of projects he has in mind to do because, you see, though he is unable to make the trip, he took the usual days off his second job anyway. His last evening (he works second shift) was last night and he doesn't go back until the Monday after Thanksgiving.

Which means *I* don't get hunting weekend either. I think I'm taking it worse than he is, LOL.

Hunting weekend for me means as little cooking, dishes, and cleaning as possible, combined with as much sewing time as possible. It means stretching out in our big bed instead of being scrunched on one side (my husband is tall and restless when he sleeps) and it usually means staying up until all hours of the night sewing and watching movies.

This year, it means projects that my husband decided to do that he will inevitably need me to help out with, cooking regular meals, and not really getting a break. I told him that, while I'm really sorry for him that he can't go, I'm a little bit sorry for me, too. He told me I should sew as much as I want to :) So we'll see how the weekend goes. I'm glad to have him home more for the next week and a half, that's for sure, but launching into the holiday season without my little 5 day respite makes me sad.

BUT, I'm a cup half full kind of girl, the emotional adjustments have been made and I'm sure we'll have a wonderful time (except when he's frustrated when a project isn't going just as he planned *snort*) We're going out to breakfast tomorrow morning with Ruthie and Lucas so that should be a good start to our day.

Amvets is coming tomorrow so we cleaned out a bunch of closets and drawers. The big project of the weekend is redoing our closet. The organizer is falling apart (it's 25 years old) and he's basically pulling everything out, repairing or replacing what he needs to and then putting it all back together again. I actually went through a lot of my stuff already and hopefully by the end of the weekend we'll have a more functional closet (I've barely been using it for some time now.)

I did try to plan easy-ish meals which will buy me some quilting time and I don't sing this weekend which means no practice Saturday and not getting up extra early (I'm NOT a morning person) on Sunday.

As for quilting, Debbie's quilt is done. It's actually been done for a couple of weeks already and, though it wasn't really fun to work on, I do love how it came out. I'm thrilled to have all the big Christmas projects done before Thankgiving!

Here is a closeup of the quilting.

With Debbie's quilt done, the Flying Geese quilt is in the hoop. This one is really enjoyable to quilt on and I love how it's coming out. So far a single geese strip is quilted, as is a double and the connecting border strips. I'm on another double geese strip now. This one will go quite quickly, it seems.

Usually I plan a special project or two for hunting weekend, so decided to abandon quilting on the flying geese quilt for a few days and to focus on the posy and celtic quilt. I may spend a little time on other challenge quilts, too, but I don't multitask with my quilting as well as I used to and do better working on one thing for at least several days at a time.

After sewing some of the posies onto the border vine several weeks back, I decided to match up the rest to make sure I didn't end up stuck with too many of the same color at the end.

Here is the posy basket, holding all the matches, some of the leaves (there are still more to be cut), and the threads needed for sewing.

I've finished sewing on a posy set and now am on a set of leaves and hope to settle in after dinner for an evening of hand applique.

Here are Rachel and Ruthie, camped out watching a TV show. See the grin? She knows the camera is out, the little ham. She loves this little couch, and often settles on it later in the evening when she's getting tired. She also goes running to it whenever Say Yes to the Dress or So You Think You Can Dance are on the TV.

Ruthie turned 5 this past Monday. We had her family dinner on Sunday (though some of the family had previous plans, they gave her due attention on Monday) and we decided on ice cream instead of a birthday cake as she's not a big cake eater. At first she was hiding her face until we said we wanted a picture, then the smile came out.

All in all, life is good. Everyone is happy and healthy, we're headed into this holiday season much less stressed than the last couple of years and for that I'm very thankful!

And now it's time to run, my sewing is calling me and I need to take advantage of every minute I can find.

Happy Quilting!

Sue