If I could keep a day in a bottle......

After leaving my lungs in Baltimore, I went home long enough to do laundry and then back in the car for Nashua, NH.

More details about that trip on my other blog.

I don't like English Breakfast, either

Confession time.... I am not in love with Sex and the City. I saw parts of a few episodes and discovered that they were not exactly my cup of tea.

I did, however, read One Fifth Avenue by Candace Bushnell and am mostly neutral about it. Positive: it resolved well. Negative: one of the characters often referred to Sex in the City. Isn't that like having two imaginary friends who start talking about you behind your back? It just felt a little off to me.

I left my lungs in...

Baltimore!

If you have the chance to go to Baltimore in the fall, jump at it! The weather and scenery were fantastic, but the trip overall was a story of good news/bad news.

Good news: I stopped at the Baltimore Museum of Art on my way down.

Bad news: It cost $7 to park

Good news: The museum was free!

Bad news: I only had 3 hours

Good news: They let me take photos!

Bad news: There were so many gorgeous mosaics from Antioch and the museum is hundreds of miles away.

Good news: I still have the photos!

When I saw the mosaics for the first time, I actually cried. My heart was pounding wildly at the thought that I was going to have to leave and not see them again for a very long time. I stopped hyperventilating only when I found out I was allowed to take photos.

Bad news: The traffic was insane

Good news: I began a brief yet passionate love affair with lettuce wraps at The Cheesecake Factory.

Bad news: The traffic was still insane

Good news: The hotel was really, really nice

Bad news: Apparently the hotel room air conditioner had some mold in it. When I returned home and went to the doctor, he actually said, "Good news! It's not Legionnaire's Disease." It was, however, the renewal of my acquaintance with asthma.

Good news: After a month, the medications have it mostly under control.

Bad news: It's still not much fun.

Good news: I taught at a really cute shop in the Historic Savage Mills and met some really fun quilters.

Bad news: I didn't have extra time to check out all the shops.

Good news: I did see a gorgeous painting in the hallway from one of the galleries. It was a painting of Peruvian musicians and it was the first time I've ever wanted to purchase art.

Bad news: I didn't buy it, and the lung issues were beginning to make me very, very tired.

Good news: I stopped in New Jersey on the way home to go to church with old friends.

Bad news: I won't see them again until spring.

Good news: I didn't get stuck on the George Washington Bridge

Bad news: the whole "I'm coughing" thing didn't get stuck on the bridge either. It followed me home.

Good news: Other than the whole sick thing, I loved my trip to Baltimore and hope to go back in the spring.

Because one can never have too many vampires

When planning my recent trips I prepared folders of hotel reservations, directions to quilt shows and quilt shops, airline reservations, local attractions and addresses of local restaurants. I also went to the library and checked out all of the Sookie Stackhouse novels in paperback.

That series by Charlaine Harris is like candy. I kept a book tucked into my purse at all times and instead of dining alone, I dined with Miss Stackhouse. Argue with me if you must, but after reading all of her eight books in a short time, I decided she should definitely stay with Bill.

I read on Ms. Harris' blog that her books were made into a series on HBO. True Blood. Even though we recently subscribed to cable television, we did not subscribe to HBO. But, good news! I spend a lot of time in hotels and hotels usually have HBO, do they not? I looked online and saw that the series is aired at 9pm on Sundays. I made a mental note to turn on the television in hotels on Sunday nights. Since it was a mental note and not an actual note on actual paper filed in my oh-so-organized travel files, do you think I remembered to tune in? I forgot the first Sunday night. And the next. I remembered the following one, but that hotel did not have HBO. What the heck?!?!?!? And the Sunday night I spent in Houston? Once again I forgot.

I will have to wait to see Sookie on dvd. I'm not terribly interested in watching the series. (Reference Dexter and Edward). I am just astonished by the casting choice of Anna Paquin. I liked her somewhat in The Piano, but have pretty much hated her in every role since then. I think I just wanted to see her try to be Sookie for 2 minutes so I could continue hating her, this time for mis-representing my beloved dining companion.

Has anyone actually succeeded in watching the show? Should I stop fretting about seeing the show and continue hating her now? Or might I be pleasantly surprised when I finally watch the dvds?

A list of cities

that might explain my absense from blogworld.

In early October I went to Salt Lake City for a week. Since then, I've been to:

Baltimore, MD
Nashua, NH
Portsmouth, RI
Charlton, MA
Houston, TX
Monroe, CT

and probably a few other places that I'm not remembering right now. It was a weird month full of fun places, but I'm glad that I'm going to be home for a while now.

Now that I've officially started the annual "Twere the Quilts Before Christmas" countdown I don't have tons of time for blogging, but I hope to tell fun stories and share photos from my recent adventures in the near future. Due to the countdown, I'll be listening to a lot of books. Plan on a few book posts as well. Quite a few book posts. Like a book-a-day book posts.

Oh, Edward

I have to admit it... I was suckered into reading Twilight. Pages turned and then I had to read another. Then another. Then I had to wait a long time to read the last. I finished just in time to see the movie trailers FOR A MOVIE I SHALL NOT SEE! No offense to anyone who is excited about the movie, but Cedric is not my Edward.

After I saw the disappointing trailers, I read another Stephenie Meyer novel, The Host. It was nice and long.

Any rumors of another Stephenie Meyer novel?

Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated

Not dead, just blindingly busy. New posts coming soon!

Just back from Utah

I spent a wonderful several days in the company of some of my favorite people in Salt Lake City, Utah last week. I took a photo of the Handi Quilter building, but the sun glare killed it. I really need to learn how to take a proper photo, but that won't happen for quite some time.

The sun didn't kill the photo of the business down the way from Handi Quilter, though. Jack Black, anyone?



Wow, I just noticed that I'm in that photo. Blue sweater, brown handbag, black pants. Ever fashionable am I.

Mondays are for food

Working weekends has definitely helped in my quest for organization. Every Monday morning I go grocery shopping and spend until noon cooking for the week.

Today I cooked up 10 pounds of chicken yielding many cups of cooked chicken for the freezer and a gallon of broth. Once that was done, it was easy to whip up 3 chicken potpies (now in the freezer).

All that yummy chicken and broth reminded me of the lettuce wraps I had last week in Salt Lake City (can't remember the name of the restaurant, sorry), so I made chicken lettuce wraps and vegetable lo mein. We ate it tonight and it rocked!

I also chopped up all my vegetables for the week and cooked up a bunch of pasta. The daughter usually zaps some after school for lunch.

Since I'm out of town a lot, I cook many meals ahead. I wouldn't want my two nearest and dearest starving in my absence.

A full freezer makes me happy.

PSA

If you ever fly cross-country, take more than one book with you. If you choose not to take this advice, you will only be able to read 190 pages on the way to Utah and have to save the other 190 pages for the flight home.

Another hint -- if you only take one book, make sure it isn't Sinner by Ted Dekker. In a word.... meh.

Working on....

This WIP (work in progress) won't be finished any time soon. It's name is Ping and it was a block of the month from Pinwheels. I am absolutely smitten with Daiwabo fabrics, and this uses hundreds of different ones. Bliss! It is English paper pieced and very time consuming, but it's been a great travel project. A week's worth of hand work can be transported in a small zippered bag.

Here's one star:



Those stars will eventually be appliqued onto larger squares. I have 11 of 20 stars pieced.

Here's the 12th star:



And the 13th:



This WIP may show up in "working on..." many more times over many more months years.

Gee, I love Philadelphia

Once upon a time, I had a dear friend. We were pregnant together and both had little girls. We kept each other sane. One day, the big bad company transferred her husband thousands of miles away and my friend left me behind. We kept in touch and visited with each other whenever we were in the neighborhood. Unfortunately, that wasn't very often. Several years later, the big bad company tried to redeem itself by moving my dear friend back to my time zone. We still see each other whenever we're in the neighborhood, but that's much more often now.

Last week, I was in her neighborhood and we went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art to see the Quilts from Gees Bend. They were beautiful in a different way than the quilts I see every day in my job. These women used whatever they had and didn't stress over perfection, but they were beautiful anyway. Even though I don't think I'm going to stop using precision quilting techniques, there are things I learned from these quilts that will enhance my own quilts.

Since I couldn't take photographs of the quilts, I took one of my lunch:

When in Rome, right?

Still in the neighborhood, I stopped in to visit with my aunt and uncle:

I haven't seen them since my wedding. We had a lot of catching up to do!

Toot! Toot!

Check this out.

Scroll down to "Contents". See that Christmas bed scarf? I quilted that.

I'm done tooting my own horn.

You meet the neatest people

when you blog.

I posted about a Jodi Picoult book a few weeks ago and Kelly Simmons left a comment. Kelly suggested that I read her book, Standing Still. Ever the obedient one, I did just that. I started it while working in Philadelphia last weekend and finished it at home. As in, I started reading it the minute my eyes opened and was late for church because I couldn't not finish it.

This is a book that made me go "hmmmmmmmmmmm". Have you heard the description of an iceberg where 90% of the ice is below the surface of the water? Well, 90% of the story took place outside of the book. I think I really, really like that.

For other obedient ones just waiting for instructions....... GO READ THIS BOOK!

Finishes

Notice I didn't imply that I finished anything. These are some the projects the gals at my quilt retreat last weekend were working on.

The fabrics in this evening bag are so yummy you just have to touch them:





I think this bag is going on a trip at some point. Maybe it's large enough to smuggle me aboard?



A strip swap from a previous retreat finally got finished:





My favorite lawyer and I started this quilt 18 months or so ago. Mine's in pieces in a box. Here's my friend's:




She's such an over-achiever! (And I love her even though she can't comment on my blog)

We clucked away all weekend making chicken blocks:





They grew up and turned into this quilt:



The retreat ended Sunday afternoon. The quilt was quilted, bound, and delivered to the intended recipient by Wednesday. Apparently there's more than one over-achiever in the group.
I managed to piece a simple scrap quilt:





This will be a wedding gift for another of my daughter's teachers. He's getting married in October.

And I miss my A number-1 quilt holder upper. He went back to college.

If you give a moose a muffin....

.... he'll want some jam to go with it.

If you give me a muffin, I'll eat it just the way it is and be extremely happy.

Mmmmmmmmmmm. Fresh chocolate chip muffins. I also made fresh strawberry-orange muffins.

Bliss.

______

to my new best friend: Lie to me and tell my that my photos are crappy because I use a really cheap camera instead of my extreme lack of skill. See you Saturday!

Working on....

This was a strip club quilt from a year or two ago. The light in my dining sewing room doesn't do the fabrics justice. They are gorgeous!

I love quilters!

So much so that I spent a whole weekend with them, just hanging out and sewing (in our PJs most of the time).

The view was incredible:



Even though that picture doesn't capture the mist over the river in the morning, the blazing sunsets, or large ships sailing by.

We were well fed:



That is just the snack table. The kitchen was also full, and more food showed up at mealtimes! There was even a really cute bagel delivery boy......

We enjoyed luxurious accommodations:



It was a good thing though. Who wants to sleep when there's quilting to do?

We stayed toasty warm:



Several of our women were expert fire-tenders and keepers of the hearth.

So, basically, we had a blast!!!! When's the next getaway????

________________________

note: the bagel delivery boy may or may not be married to the founder of our little group.

Deal Maker

I have a crush on a man named Myron. I just finished reading Deal Breaker by Harlan Coben and am shocked that I haven't heard of this book before; it was fantastic. I was in suspense until almost the end, but the wit and style carried me through the book easily. Please oh please let there be another book featuring Myron Bolitar and Co.

Martha has a blog?

She most certainly does! See? And she wants to see your blog, too. Leave her a comment and she may check out your blog.