Snuggly and Warm

Hopefully this will be the last in my recent series of lousy photos:

This is where-I-go-it-goes quilt. The fabric is Pop Parade from P&B and I used Quilter's Dream wool batting. It's warm and snuggly and happy and bright and all mine. And I made matching pillowcases, too.

I'm working to finish more quilts and will make a serious effort to produce not only beautiful quilts, but maybe some halfway decent photographs.

And the award goes to........

Despite the record-breakingly long title, When You Need a Lift But Don't Want to Eat Chocolate, Pay a Shrink, or Drink a Bottle of Gin by Joy Behar was a fun book to read in small chunks. I wondered, though, when wouldn't someone want to eat chocolate? I also thought about what I do when I need a lift.

My lift: pull out all my scraps of fabric, cut them into useable sizes, and start piecing a scrap quilt.

What do you do?

We Three Quilts, part three

My absolutely favorite Thimbleberries quilting pattern looks like this:

It's been published several times, but I know for sure it's in the Beginner's Luck book. I believe it was earlier published in a book featuring children's fabric, and I think it was re-published last year as a pattern.

The fabrics in my version are from an old line, Christmas in Paris. There are little Eiffel Towers on the binding fabric. I just had to buy this fabric.

I gave the quilt to my Music Pastor. She's French Canadian. Her mother in law is a wonderful quilter, so she definitely understand what all goes into making a quilt.

We Three Quilts, part two

My first time working with subtle Christmas toile fabrics yielded this:



This one was for our youth pastor. I didn't get to give it to him in person, so I don't know how it was received.

And this photo is also terrible.

We Three Quilts, part one

Resurrecting a working on post, I finished this:



I brought the top to my quilting club and asked their opinion on the quilting. They laughed at me, but when I let them knew I seriously wanted their input, they picked a great thread for me from Hemingworth. It's tan but the sheen makes it look slightly metallic. It worked great on the rich Christmas fabrics and made for a very elegant quilt.

My church hired a new senior pastor this year, and this one was for him. He received it wonderfully well. He didn't call it a blanket and even noticed the quilting.

Isn't it great that my son returned home from college in time to hold up my quilts for photography? And wouldn't it be great if the photo wasn't blurry?

Extreme Reading

I'll have to admit it..... I really enjoy Vince Flynn novels. Most of time when I read, I really want to escape and get caught up in a good tale. It helps to keep me working. Really deep and heavy books are definitely worth reading, but during a busy work season (almost done!!!), I need something much lighter.

Extreme Measures by Vince Flynn was something lighter. It was definitely a book with a (pointed?) point and dealt with a very serious subject matter (terrorism), but it didn't make the reader work too hard to find it.

Need something heavier? Read Dennis Lehane. I'm chugging through his latest now. He's always worth the effort, but for me effort is definitely required.

Could it be?

Have I actually finished all of my customer quilts and started working on presents? Why yes, yes I have!

I had a dinner with my quilting group and we exchanged handmade ornaments. This is mine:





Terrible photo, but a fun ornament to make. I received a gorgeous wool santa ornament in exhange. Thanks Sally!

Getting smarter as I'm getting older

I've been trying to read John LeCarre novels since I was in high school. I always get most of the way through and realize that I have absolutely no idea what is happening. I have a mental picture of him sitting at his typewriter/computer, typing away. There's a speech balloon over his head that reads "There, that was complicated. I am smart; people are sheep. They only wish they were bright enough to understand my very clever books." Every time a new book comes out, I dutifully get it out of the library. Hope springs eternal.

Drumroll, please.......

I actually finished a John LeCarre novel AND I understood what was happening. So maybe he writes for the over-40 crowd? I'm not 40 yet, but if you round.......

Notice I didn't say that I liked A Most Wanted Man. I'm mostly meh about the book, but terribly impressed that I was smart enough to finish it.

So how about you? Are you smarter than me? Than John LeCarre? Than a Fifth Grader?

Unexpected Grace

So there's this author named Richard Paul Evans and he's written a whole bunch of books that have sold really well. I somehow had the impression that they weren't my type of books.

Since I'm still in the Christmas Quilt Countdown, I have a stack of books on CD from the library. Grace by Richard Paul Evans was on the top of the stack. I expected light and fluffy. It had much more to it than I expected and I think I enjoyed the tale. I got over five hours of quilting done, too!

I will probably read more of his books, but are they all this deliberately emotional?

I'm in desperate need of another Sookie Stackhouse book or three. That would help the quilt stack go down, I'm certain.

Dear Ms. Harris,
Please write faster.
Sincerely,
A desperate reader

By the time you read this post....

... you may already have seen The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. I haven't*. I have, however, read the book.

Due to the setting I didn't expect it to be exactly uplifting so the beauty of this book caught me off guard. I was riveted and had to read on and on, until the end when I asked my family to finish the book for me and give me the short version of what happened. They refused and I persevered.

It's difficult to love a book with such a harsh subject matter, but it was well-treated and beautifully written. If you get the chance to listen to the cd, there's a great interview with the author on the last disc. I highly recommend listening to it.

______
* I am unable to watch movies about this subject. War movies, yes; movies about the Holocaust, never.

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.