My husband just left for his trip to Oregon. I will miss him but I am sure the time will pass quickly. My youngest son was sick all day yesterday with a stomach virus. It is really hard to watch your child suffer. He was in a state of dehydration and also running fever. He could not keep anything down and very weak. It must have been a 24 hour thing because he is better this morning. On the road to recovery. I'm sure he will have to take it easy for a couple of days though.
I am taking easy myself today. Not having gotten much sleep for two nights is taking it's toll. I'm off to catch a cat nap before breakfast.

Quilt til your arm falls off...

The Harvest Moon

Tried to take some pictures of the large harvest moon last night (tonight it is even bigger and more beautiful). The pictures don't do it justice. It was just my regular digital camera but I had to try.

This one my husband took. The reflection of the moon is on the hood of the car (he was supporting the camera on it).

I was awestruck. How wonderful it was up there in the sky. So bright, it lights up the yard. It really feels like fall now. November is around the corner and then Christmas. Why does it all seem to go so fast these days? When I was a kid it all went too slow. Now I can't slow it down. I've tried. Trying to enjoy every moment as it comes, not trying to rush things too often, nothing seems to make it go slower. Oh well, at least I can try to enjoy the seasons (the only thing that seems to come slow around here is the spring time when you have had too much winter and cold weather).

I got a little sewing done today. I started and new project. A quilt for my friend that cuts my hair and her Step Mom. They are both really upbeat and happy people. Always encouraging, asking how things are going with family and my quilting. I always feel 10 times better after I have talked to either one of them. They are special people. So, I decided to make them each a quilt. I am hoping they will be done for Christmas but if not that is ok, they don't know about it and I can give it to them later.
I will try to take pictures of my progress tomorrow and post it.

Quilt til your arm falls off...

Good eats and favorites...

I thought I would show a picture of some mirlitons (vegetable pears) that my Dad gave me last weekend. I don't think these are a familiar vegetable. They are a member of the squash family. When you peel them they ooze a sticky fluid that gets on your hands and makes it look like your skin is peeling off (remember in grade school when you would spread glue all over the palms of your hands then when dry you would peel it off? Well, its like that. What? Don't tell me I'm the only one that did that.) Anyway, I peel them and take out the seed in the middle, chop them up and saute them with ground beef and onions and bell peppers, add cooked rice to make it like rice dressing. Yumm... We also cut them up raw and put them in jars with a hot pepper then pour hot vinegar and water mixture over them. Put them in the frig and in about a week they are pickled. We call them cor-ne-shaw-ns (its Cajun French-don't try to pronounce it!) We cut them up in our rice and gravy or add them to the bean pot. Good-Good.

I also wanted to show you pictures of my favorite thing in my home (other than my sewing machine). My dining room table. My husband made it for me. We saw a similar one in the furniture store in our town but it was not large enough, expensive and cheaply made. My husband said "I can make one like that". I said "Get to it". It took him three tries. The first batch of wood he bought from Lowes- warped. The second batch from Home Depot -warped. He almost gave up and so did I (I was anxious for it). So he ordered some baltic burch wood from a place here in town. It has more plies than the cheaper wood so it made it more stable. It did not warp. Yeah!

It originally was supposed to be all black and distressed but after I saw the wood grain I could not paint over it. He suggested staining the top and painting the rest black and I love it!

It has two leaves in it. With one leaf it measures 5ft x 5ft. That is how I leave it set up (we can also take out both leaves and make it rectangle when it is just him and I. I joke and say that we will do that when he is retired and we live alone. Will that ever happen? Probably not.) With the two leaves it measures 5ft x 6-1/2ft. That is how we have it for the holidays or special occasion parties.

Here he is staining it in his workshop. Woodworking is his hobby. He likes to work in wood. He is checking into some woodworking classes in Pennsylvania for next year. It is a week long class and very intensive. I said "Go for it!" He would say the same for me if it was quilting. I'm sure I can find something to do in PA. while he is in class, right?

Quilt til your arm falls off...

New Favorite Thread...

Just got this shipment of thread in this weekend. I like it. It is thin and strong. Good for piecing. I haven't tried it for quilting yet but I bet it would work really good. It also doesn't lint a lot. I ordered neutral colors for piecing but they have some wonderful variegated threads. It is available through Connecting Threads if anyone is interested in checking it out. (I do not work for this company, just like the thread and thought I would let others know).

Quilt til your arm falls off...

Here are the wind chimes my daughter made a few years ago. They hang out side under our carport. They are beginning to get rusty. She used coat hangers and fishing line to make them. I love the sounds they make. I can hear them from my sewing room while I quilt.

Quilt til your arm falls off...

I'm still here...

There was nothing I really felt like posting about and I needed the break. But yesterday my daughter, her husband and my youngest son went crabbing on the beach. They caught crabs!
This is before. The blue point crabs are a lovely color but...

after they are boiled they are a beautiful shade of red! Yum, doesn't that look delicious. They were so flavorful.

This is the mess during and after. But boy is it worth it. UMMM..UMMM...Good!

This is what you eat when you don't like crabs. My daughter doesn't care for seafood much so she has to take what she can get at Mom's house when everyone else is eating crabs!

This is what my daughter likes about the beach. Seashells. She said they were all over the sand. She scooped up alot of them because she will make some magnets and jewelry and maybe some wind chimes like she did last time. I will take a picture later of a couple of her wind chimes. They sound so good when the wind is slowly blowing.

The closeups show how wonderful some of these shells are. The last picture has a couple of pieces of petrified wood. They don't look like much but, I guess she thought they were interesting. The shells have really good soft colors in them. Aren't they lovely.
Well that's it for now.

Quilt til your arm falls off...

I just finished quilting the hearts quilt for my friend. I did a curlique meander with hearts. I will be seeing her tomorrow and wanted to finish it today. I can mark this off my to-do list. Below is what I played with last night. At our woolie group one of the ladies brought over her Needle Felting Machine and some wool roving and silk roving. It was so much fun. (Are you listening my friend-you know who I mean. You would have had sooo much fun with this.) It was quick and easy to do. I could see making several gifts with this toy. It was a Baby Lock machine. I may have to put this on my Christmas list. All you did was separate the roving and laid it down on the background where you wanted it then used a stilleto to hold it down while 6 needles sewed it down. You moved it around like you were free motion quilting. What fun. You can use wool, cotton fabric on wool, lame fabric on cotton, whatever, it attaches it all. She had several books for us to look through also. I think if I would not have sat at the machine and did it myself I would have thought it was hard to do and not worth purchasing. I will have to think about this.

Quilt til your arm falls off...