Hearts for Dawn

Here's my idea of quilting hearts in the sashing strips - pretty easy to go continuous with this design.

Birthday Swap
Mood:  a-ok
I have joined some of my online friends in a birthday block swap. My choice block is the Mosaic 2 block. I wanted to make sure it'd be fairly easy for my partners to do - it shouldn't take them more than an hour. I did ask for greens - and would welcome scrappy.

Now the sad part is that I just had my birthday!! I'm gonna have to wait almost a whole year. Torture. :) But the good news is that my husband gave me permission to go on a spending spree at JoAnn's this Saturday. I'm soooooooooooooooo excited! Must... have... fabric... ;)

Proud of Myself...
Mood:  incredulous
...for not buying ANY Halloween candy!

Baby steps folks, baby steps. :)

Landsakes!
Mood:  surprised
I had no clue that I neglected my blog so much... time flies when you're busy visiting family members. At least I got a great deal while in California. A lot of JoAnn Fabric stores will take Michael Art Supplies coupons and lucky for me, I happened upon a 50% off Columbus day special. Went to JoAnn's and bought all the black Kona fabric they had for $2.00 a yard!!!!!! What a steal!

And now I have more coupons for this Friday's "Moonlight Madness" at JoAnn's. Can you tell I'm gonna be having fun? Not to mention that thread and needles and fleece are gonna be half off. And the very nice thing? I can spend the money guilt free because I helped my parent's with their company for a day and got paid for it! I really want some white Kona fabric now because I joined a batik/hand dyed swap due February 1st, 2006. I'm really hoping somebody in my family will buy me the Dye Starter Kit from Dharma Trading for either my birthday or Christmas.

What I love so much about swaps - aside from getting cool blocks back - they force me to expand my collection. My tulip swap made me focus on finding good sky-like backgrounds. The Christmas string swap made me collect for more Christmas fabrics (I can't seem to stop now!) The jar swap made me work on having more novelty fabrics (bugs, fruit) and now this swap will force (yeah, poor me!) to hunt batiks and make hand dyed stuff. Can you tell I'm always joining up swaps? And my husband is more forgiving about my quilting buys than my book buys because he actually SEES me use my machine/fabric/cutting and I'm always thrusting finished blocks under his nose and asking what he thinks. :)

And today also marks one year of doing Body for Life. I sure learned a lot, especially making wiser choices for myself, but no, my scale hasn't changed. I did see drops as much as 10 pounds from last year's number, but every time I take a vacation, I seem to forget to be so food conscious.

But there's still the positive side... we eat out so much less now. And my husband also cooks more, and he's pretty good about getting the carb and protein balance - doesn't hurt that he's always on the lookout for lower fat stuff too. And I'm stronger. I started with 5 pounds last year, for both legs and arms. Now I'm doing 20 and 25. I dropped almost 5% of my body fat too. And you're welcome to peek into our fridge - much more healthier than last year I'm sure. No more regular cokes, all diet now. More fruits in there too. We went on a cupboard cleaning spree too - dumped out a lot of the unhealthier stuff. Our soups, syrups, cokes, ice cream and even cheese are now saying "98% fat free" "sugar free or sweetended with splenda". Those are just the little things and ways that makes Body for Life really Body for LIFE. I know the way we shop and eat now is going to stick with us - we're not going to go back to those calorie and fat laden meals.

So I'll keep on trying - you should see my wish list - more dumbells, heart rate moniter, body ball, bench, health books. I still keep plowing onwards, still keep trying to fight for a healthier body. At least I will actually use this stuff, so my husband can't complain about it either. ;)

First Katrina Quilt Pictures!
Mood:  happy
Now Playing: Give my love to Rose - Johnny Cash
Finally got my rear in gear and have the pictures ready for posting. The first one is the full quilt top. It was a windy day and it was flapping like crazy, but lucky me, on the very last shot, I got a good half of the quilt. :)

Next is a close up of one 12" block and one 6" corner block. I was insane to try to do 6", but it looks good! ;)

I've had several people declare that they've never seen that pattern before and they would also like to know how I made it. I'm afraid that's gonna be for another post, but it started out as a Leaders and Enders project with the 4-patches.

Good progress is being made on my second Katrina quilt and I'm also slipping in some time to make a secret sister gift for somebody. :)

Toothless Joy
Mood:  don't ask
Well, in less than a week, my husband is gonna be minus his two top wisdom teeth. As most men are, he's not a good patient. And he won't be taking the pain killer pills either. His younger sister just had her wisdom teeth pulled out too, the only advice she gave was not to take the pain killer pills on an empty stomach. She prompty threw up. So that brings me to my real problem... how am I gonna feed him?! He won't eat any veggies or fruit. Well, ok, he eats some of it selectively, and usually it has to be well cooked/sweetened/hidden. Since he'll be pretty sick too, he won't be able to have dairy products. Lets not forget that he can't chew either. I was all ready to run to the store and buy a cartful of baby food. He just laughed and said no way in hell. :) So I'm thinking lots of diet shakes and mashed potatoes. No bananas, he got overdosed on that when he was a kid. And I can believe it, I saw my MIL feed mashed bananas every day to a baby she used to care for... :)

I just hope he doesn't get an infection a week later like his sister... but dang, he does have a lot of gingivitis problems... :(

Moving Along
Mood:  a-ok
This has been a fun week for my mailbox - I got 4 quilt-related items yesterday alone! 3 of them were donations to Katrina quilts and one of them was my Christmas String Block Swap. Believe me, I was grinning like it was Christmas when I walked in with all my packages. :)

I finished the Spinning Spools quilt on Wednesday night. I am gonna have my husband help me take pictures of it tonight when we go over to the in-law's to celebrate my brother-in-law's birthday. So hopefully pictures tomorrow.

I just wish there was a faster way to deal with other people's scraps. Since it's just leftovers, they're not so careful what happens to it, what size it is... I don't mind, but it's a little time consuming to sort and I just wish I was capable of being faster. I only can slave over the iron so much in Arizonian heat! :)

I'm watching 3 Long Arm Machine sales on eBay right now... and drooling a lot. They're priced between $4000 and $6000. One is a Gammill and the other two are APQS. All full sized long arm machines. *droooooooooool* One is in Florida, one is in Minnesota and one is in Walnut Creek, CA. That's just an hour away from my parents! Waaaaaaah. I just had one *tiny* brief second that I wished (but not for real) that I wasn't married, that I was still living with my parents and I still had a bunch of savings where I could buy that machine. Ahh... someday I'll own one. ;)

Scrappy Spinning Spools
Mood:  lyrical
Now Playing: November Rain - Guns n' Roses
My machine has been busy humming today. I had to make some adjustments and cut more fabric, but I'm finally on my way to having blocks done.

Here's a picture of how I trim my HST (half square triangles).

In my case, I started with 4" square blocks. I drew a line in the middle of the lighter block, matched it up with a green or purple block and sewed a quarter inch from each side of the line.

Next I cut the square in half, on the drawn line. Then I turn the triangles over so I can see my thread line better.

Then I line up the thread to the bottom of the masking tape on my ruler. Here's a close up.

For viewing purposes, I didn't line my thread right against the tape, but that's what you should do. Then I trim the two sides (opposed to doing 4, if I had pressed it open first).

Now for the location of the tape: you need to know what unfinished size you want. In my case, I wanted it to be 3.5" unfinished. The bottom end of the tape needs to cross exactly on the 3.5" mark of the ruler. I know my tape's corners are a little chewed up, but if you look closely, you can see it's covering from the 3.5" to the 3.5" mark diagonally. I know the tape doesn't look straight, but that's just an illusion from the ruler's markings. I checked my tape's placement with a clean edge of paper to make sure it was straight.

This method really helps me going through HSTs faster. I used to dread them, but not anymore. I also carefully press them open afterwards, I don't want to distort the bias edges. Gets me a perfect 3.5" unfinished HST every time! :)

Jars
Mood:  a-ok
Finished my jars last Thursday and managed to get them into the mail Saturday. So hopefully in the next two weeks I'll get them back. Well, not MY blocks. :) I made 10 blocks of each jar print for a total of 60. The fruit jars could make nice Christmas gifts for some people's kitchen and I'm thinking about using the bug jars to make a kid's quilt and donate that to Katrina.

Speaking of Katrina, on my Yahoo group, I've offered to put together people's orphan blocks into quilt tops. I'm also taking fabric scraps that are 2 inches by 2 inches or bigger and can make quilt tops out of those too.

I'm currently working on a green and purple Spinning Spools quilt. Don't worry, I've been taking pictures of my progress - will even show you how I do HST (half square triangles) because I'm not lucky enough to own a Wondercut Ruler yet. It goes on my birthday/Christmas list! :)

Old page found!
Mood:  celebratory
I found my old HTML class webpage. It was created Fall 2003. I had to incorporate some many commands and formats, so it's a little junky. Not to mention there's about 10,000 stupid Angelfire ads. But this was just when I started quilting and have expanded so much since. And the good news is that all the quilts tops except the blue and green log cabin have been finished. Whooo!

Take a peek here!

How Small?
Mood:  happy
How small do I go in quilting? One inch by one inch. I probably will go smaller with paper piecing, but the strips will still be cut for one inch.

A picture of a 9-patch log cabin done with only 1 inch strips and squares.

I know the patches aren't perfect, but I'm pretty darn please with it. It's just about the size of sheet of paper.

Gotta go, husband needs me to do some stuff. :)

100 Hearts
Mood:  a-ok
I have this crazy idea floating in my mind right now. This morning I was writing down in my pen-written diary (it gets written in about as often as I post here) and I was trying to write down some goals for myself. I guess I want to see if it's true, that if you write your goals, you're so much more likely to get them done.

So here's a goal: I want to make 100 paper pieced log cabin hearts. By Valentine's Day 2006. And then I want to post them one a day on eBay. Starting at $9.99. I'm hoping I'll get good enough to make a heart a day.

But first I have to finish up my jar swap, due September 6.

Of course, there's other goals - save $5000 by the time the school year is up. Get down to 230 pounds by my birthday, November 12th. Haven't decided if we should move or not. Bleh. So hot to move.

Oh yes, also need to make a Christmas quilt for my other sister-in-law that didn't get one last year.

This weekend's mini goal... don't eat too much while in Phoenix! :)

Growing Scrappy
Mood:  a-ok
I'm expanding my scrappy world in two ways.

First, I finished my Christmas String Blocks. The only rule that I made was that no two same strips could be in the individual blocks, but otherwise, grab from the bag and slap them together. I shouldn't have made 1" strips though, little too tiny. 1.25 to 2" is the best.

The least strips any block has is 6, the most is 10. They will be trimmed down to 6.5 inches (currently 7ish) and finish at 6". I will have a total of 42 blocks. Hopefully I'll get the swapped out ones back by the end of the month.

The other news is that I wasn't able to get my sewing machine cleaned by the Bernina people because of a mistake in the scheduling. I found this out on Friday afternoon, so I bumped my trip to Tucson to Saturday. I went wild at JoAnn's, since they were having a Super Saturday Sale. 40% off on the Keepsake quilting fabrics. I have over 60 yards of fabric in the picture. And I only spent about $140 (tax included) on it all. Me very happy! Husband a little grumpy. :P

My favorite new fabric is the green with cream swirls on the right. I'm so captivated by it... I got 6 yards of it! My new love. :)

Mom's Quilt
Mood:  happy
Now Playing: Only Time by Enya
Up for viewing is the Kaleidoscope quilt my mom and I paperpieced during my July visit. It was taken the morning I was leaving - binding wasn't finished, but I was out of time. She has plans to hang it up above the fireplace, but I'm not sure if that has actually happened or not.

I surprised myself at the energy I had when making that quilt. It's so much easier when you split some of the workload with somebody. I did a lot of the pinning, she would sew the pieces on. I would trim up the blocks and she would iron them open. Teamwork. Quick and easy. Except the work phone kept ringing and she had to deal with any customers or problems. :P

But I really hope this encourages her to do more quilting. She's been pretty much a clothes-making person, but has always enjoyed my quilt pictures and stories.

Way to go Mom!

School Again
School has officially started here. Well, at least for the teachers. The students will be dragging their butts in on Monday the 8th.

I'm kinda glad that school's started. It's not like I'm tired of my husband or anything. Honest! :) It's that he doesn't care for my music, so I haven't been playing it much over the summer. So now I can listen to it for hours and hours and hours! On repeat too! If you go to our iTunes Top 25, ALL the songs on that list are mine or what I like to listen to. Yes, I like to kill songs by listening to them about 40 thousand times over. Don't worry, it's a genetic trait, my sister loves doing the same too. :)

I've also been sewing up a storm these past weeks. I did a mystery quilt on Sunday. I got up at 5am! I wanted to stay with the clues as they came. Before the blocks were even put together, I guessed that it was a Snail's Trail. It uses up a surprising amount of yardage though. Almost 5 yards just for a lap/twin size. I did it in scrappy greens and purple. Yes, I know that it looks pink the in pictures. But really, when I selected the fabric, I had "light purple" in mind. Apparently that means the fabrics more saturated with red than blue.

Now I'm working on Christmas String blocks for a swap due on the 15th. My first time doing string blocks - it's really satisfying seeing it take shape.

I also joined a bug & fruit/veggie swap, due the beginning of September. I want to get those blocks done before I take my Bernina in for a cleaning. I'm hoping to do it on the 13th. That day also happens to be a super-sale day at JoAnn's. I want a few more rulers and lots more fabric! They're having a 40% off sale on their Keepsake quilting fabric. Love it when I can get fabric for under $2.00! :)

Heartbroken
Missy died last night. I cried for about 4 hours until I was just about sick. Whopper headache and couldn't breathe through my nose.

It's so much harder to take her death because in my eyes, she's too young. Only 11! I have a book on dogs that says the life expectancy is supposed to be 12 for Golden Retrievers. I feel cheated... :) I'm trying hard to see the good where I can. I have so many wonderful memories of her. And a couple dozen pictures too.

My mom is also taking this very hard, which is surprising to me. She's never been overly affectionate with the dogs we've had in my life. My dad said he wouldn't be surprised if there was another "family" addition some time soon. I hope so, it'll seem so weird to be at my parents without any dogs there.

A part of me still can't believe that she died. My dad said she died at home and that she didn't appear to be in pain. That's good. That's how I want my animals to die. But just not so soon. Yes, I know she was getting old. But she was gracefully aging. She was never mean or grumpy in her old age. She was pretty problem-free, healthwise. The last time I had to take her to the vet was in December 2003 for a bad ear infection. The time before that was 1997. Oops. Yeah, 6 years without vets or check ups.

So, here's to Missy, March 11, 1994 to July 21, 2005. I hope my heart can say goodbye to her and just treasure the memories.

Poor doggie
Mood:  sad
I got an email from my dad the other day and he said my dog is really sick. When I left their house a week and half ago, she was throwing up and acting over-tired. I was hoping it was just a few-day bug, but it's looking more serious. My mom and sister have to help get up and around, which is very odd. Despite being 11 years old, she has been able to move with minimum amount of pain and no arthritis. Now she's acting like a helpless baby, won't go outside on her own and won't eat. Thankfully she's still drinking. I'm not gonna worry about the eating part too much for now, because she'll just likely throw it up again, and she's about 20 pounds overweight.

Missy is a real sweetheart and I think it's totally unfair that this is happening to her. She's the most gentle dog I've ever met. She thinks any and every animal that crosses her path is a buddy that wants to play. Which would explain quite a few pawed-to-death crickets. ;)

Missy is checking out Bambi the English Lop rabbit - wanna play?

She's very kind to Bambi, never paws him or considers him to be food. She will also not bug him too long if he doesn't want to play. But the second he starts to move, play time!

Aww... guess it nap time now, with a careful eye on Bambi, just incase he feels a spurt of energy. :)

I'm just grateful that this is happening right after my visit with her, instead of before. That'd surely break my heart. Here's to hoping she gets better.

Commercial Reality
Mood:  down
Any of you guys seen the commercial for the Quaker Rice cakes? Where the lady goes on and on about how she doesn't do fads (except for the parachute pants in 1984) and how happy she is to eat the rice cakes because it isn't a fad? Well yeah, that one. Did anybody pick up on her line of saying that she felt like she couldn't go to the gym because she wasn't in shape? Hello?! Point A: you're a slender attractive woman (with probably too much body fat) and nobody would have a problem seeing you in a gym. Point B: I think you just told every fat person that they can't go into gyms until they're of decent size. Whoa. How are you supposed to get in shape?! Point C: You need to be eating some protein with that rice cake dearie! How about having a bowl of cottage cheese in your lap? What about a few cute little rolls of meat on a small plate?

I'm pretty annoyed at that commercial. Somebody is gonna take her seriously. "Wow... I'm not in shape. I can't go to a gym yet. I'll just have to eat rice cakes until I get skinny enough."

*smack!*

*ahem*
Mood:  quizzical
Now Playing: Bohemian Rhaspody
So I'm back from my 2 week visit with my parents. I made a quilt with my mom - she's supposed to be hanging it above the fireplace. I do have pictures, but gotta wait a few days. :P

I also have some very cute pictures of my dog playing with my sister's English Lop rabbit named Bambi. He looks like a fat cat with too long ears. He's also spoiled as my dog and he'll jump up on my parents thousand dollar leather couch... in the exact same spot my dog prefers! :)

The only sad thing about coming home (aside from missing my family) is the heat. It's so cool in the Bay Area! Yes, they're having an abnormally cool summer, but to this un-seasoned Arizonian, it was pure bliss. Any time I was cold I would tell my husband how delicious it was. And I also slept with a blanket ON me every night!!

Now you must pity my husband - he's gonna have to put up with me all week saying how cool it is in California and how hot and cranky I am... and just when he thinks I've stopped comparing the weather, my period will pop up. Isn't he such a lucky guy? ;)

But don't worry, since tomorrow is our one-year anniversary I'm gonna ask my husband for an ice-shaver machine that just needs ice-cubes. I'm not interested in the high-calorie snow cones, but will simply add water and be able to stay cool and get enough water in my system every day!

I also did pig out a bit while I was at my parents house... but according to the scale I lost about a pound since I left. Whooo! Of course running all over my parent's big house and having to walk every step of the way with my scaredy-cat dog so she can go to the bathroom sure didn't hurt my body or heart. :)

Hateful Deadlines
Mood:  don't ask
Now Playing: Help Pour Out the Rain - Buddy Jewel
Gah. What is with people and their money? My in-laws are out of town for a week, and they wrote up checks to be mailed throughout the week. Why can't they just mail them as the bills come in? I'm cranky because it turns out they need to be postmarked the certain days given. There's no room for error. That's just not a smart way to handle one's money.

I got the electric bill in the mail today. A little higher than normal. After watching a movie this afternoon, I wrote out a check and stamped the bill. This evening I hand it to my husband and now wash my hands of that bill... til it comes next month. :) But the whole point is that I don't try to play money games, don't push to the deadline, don't stress out trying to find the damn bill, and best of all, don't have to worry about checks bouncing. Is that so hard to imagine? Being able to write a check without it bouncing? No NSF fees! Or being able to swipe my debit card and confidently know that if there's a beeping error... it's not my fault, but their computer system.

So how do you stand on bill paying? Do you push to the very edge of the deadline? Do you pay ASAP? Do you wait a few days? Do you treat the people how you'd want to be treated? They provided me with electricity daily, what's the harm in paying them back right away? I like money, why shouldn't they feel the same? :)