Wednesday, February 23, 2022

WIP Wednesday, 2/23/22

 As promised, I completed two pillows using the Asian Love Banner pattern by Berene Campbell @happysewlucky. Each pattern says "love" in a different Asian language. 

Filipino:

Vietnamese:


I was able to deliver each one yesterday. The first one went to my oncology physical therapist, Michelle. I see her once a month post breast cancer treatment to keep the cording from my lymph node removal and lymphedema in check. She is amazing, and if I have to see her once a month forever, I will not be sad.

The second went to longtime good friend, Jane.

I've been working on the Double Ruby Ring during the evening and completed two in the past week. 

Don't they look pretty together? 

This one was completed last night. After I finished, it seemed that the chartreuse block stuck out like a sore thumb. But I'm not going to pull it out quite yet. My friend Carrie @gotchacoveredquilting suggested I wait until some more blocks are done. If I add a pop of chartreuse in a couple of other blocks, this one won't stick out so much. Good advice. 

That's it for this week. Off to work on my second pineapple block. I made a silly mistake on the first one--I forgot to sew the last ring of the dotted fabric, but then sewed three strips of scraps in each corner before I realized what I had done. Ugh. So then I had to un-sew each of the four corners and correct my mistake. (Posting the picture from last week so you can get an idea of what I'm talking about.)

Having to a correct a mistake from either foundation paper piecing or English paper piecing is definitely not fun. But sometimes you just have to do it. I always try to learn from my mistakes and not repeat them. It's quite possible that I will manage to make a different mistake but hopefully not.  So fingers crossed...


Tuesday, February 22, 2022

Really Random Twosday: 2/22/22

Thanks to my friend, Valerie, who said posting "twosday" memes on Thursday would lose some of their impact, here we are, two days early.

Today's date is a palindrome, but also interesting in that it falls on a Tuesday. 

If you are in New York City, you might be seeing this floating in the East River. Charmin says on Instagram that they want to cover "all the number 2's"--haha.

Since I'm writing two days earlier than normal, there is not much to report. Yesterday Mark and I treated ourselves to lunch at one of our favorite restaurants as they were serving a Presidents Day brunch. On the menu was avocado toast, which oddly enough I have never tried, even though I love avocadoes. It was delicious.

Because it was such a nice day, Mark and I went for a ride in search of blossoms. Many orchards with white blossoms were in bloom, but the pink ones are still slow to open. We will try again on Sunday.




I continue to read a lot. The weather is getting warmer, but this sounds perfect to me.

I just finished this one. I have always been fascinated by resorts in the Catskills and the tradition of families spending summers there. Things are so different from the 1960s, of course, and this is the story of two families who owned a resort together. Over the years, it has gone downhill and reservations are low. Now is the time to make some decisions about what changes need to be made. I really enjoyed this book and have already found another by the same author.

I also finished the third volume of the Ruth Galloway series, which I am enjoying very much.

One of Mark's brothers sent him a family picture the other day. I cropped it in closely--Mark is 13 or 14 in this photo. 
Then I did a side-by-side with Levi, who will turn 14 next month. See the similarity?

Do you do this too? This is totally me.

And that's it for this Twosday. Hope your week is a good one.

Thursday, February 17, 2022

Really Random Thursday, 2/17/22

Thanks to my friend, Jessica (@jessicaquilter on Instagram), I found out that Sarah (@sariditty) was designing something called Geo Names. I would hardly wait to see what "Live a Colorful Life" would look like.
She designed the black and white one, but then said it needed to become a colorful version and wondered what my favorite color was. Orange. Duh. I'm so happy with both of them. I'm thinking of all the possibilities: stickers, business cards, sewing labels. Which should I choose first? 

 This brought me back to when I was in middle school. I did not have a boom box with a blank cassette. No, I had my father's reel-to-reel tape recorder!. It was super clunky. But I would patiently wait by the radio ready to hit the "record" button to make my own playlist. 


Mark thought of our days in college when he read this one. We went to a small college in central Kansas where he played football. After practice, he was still hungry after eating dinner in the cafeteria and we would often go to a place called Lee's Drive-In where they made the most delicious burgers with a slice of cheese melted between two patties. He would order two (because he was hungry) and I would always tell him I just wanted a bite (because I was not hungry). Ha. By the time he was ready for the second burger, I had nearly devoured it. Oops.

Speaking of burgers, we had our usual Valentine's celebration dinner, two days early because he was working a basketball game on Valentine's night. I'm not sure how many years we have had this tradition, but we go to a burger place in a nearby town. It's actually kind of a drive but the food is good. We bring our little jar candle (to add to the romance), and eat our usual cheeseburgers and fries. Do you celebrate Valentine's Day?


Mark sent this to our daughter-in-law.

Did you watch the Super Bowl? You have to look closely at these Google search topics.
I left in my friend Maggie's comment, because it just adds to the humor. :)

It was just the two of us watching the game so we didn't have a lot of junk food--just homemade guacamole and chips.  But Mark made the most amazing dinner--chicken cordon bleu and asparagus. It was SO good!

I'm not sure that the Swiss cheese in the chicken was actually "entertaining" but it sure tasted good.
I finished another book, about a library slated to be closed because of cutbacks. It was light reading and I enjoyed it.
Each of these made me laugh.


This is absolutely me...



I know you're laughing too, because of this. Am I right?!

Until next week...

Wednesday, February 16, 2022

WIP Wednesday, 2/16/22


This is about the only thing that used to happen to my scraps. They would get dumped on the floor by these cuties (circa 2016) and then I would have to stuff them back into the bin because it was not nearly as fun as dumping them on the floor.

Well, as I mentioned last week, I went through my bin, sorted the scraps, and made my first pineapple block, using the foundation papers by Amber Johnson of @gigis_thimble.

I'm using my long-hoarded Firefly fabric from the Hello Bear line by Bonnie Christine as a consistent background for the blocks and I'm really happy with it. It was a very slow process making this first block. I think I have found my groove and hopefully the next ones will be quicker.

I'm still up to date with the Riley Blake block of the week challenge.

Sundial designed by Christopher Thompson of @the_tattooed_quilter.

Scrappy Churn Dash designed by Sandy Gervais of (@gervaissandy

I began making two of the Asian Love Banners designed by Berene of @happysewlucky, but they are not far enough along to show yet. They will be completed for next week, as well as another Double Ruby Ring block. 

Happy sewing.


Thursday, February 10, 2022

Really Random Thursday, 2/10/22

Slow week. You get a meme dump from my phone. I think I can even break them down into themes.

Trying to get fit. (Side note: I keep thinking with all the extra time we have had at home since the beginning of the pandemic, I should be in the best shape of my life! Sadly, that does not seem to be the case.)



We will remember 2022 as the Year of Wordle:




If you sew, you know.

Are you spending your evenings watching the Olympics? Yes to this!


This one made me laugh out loud.
 
I

I'm married to a Spam lover. Maybe because he's from Minnesota, where they even have a Spam museum!



Something that's not a meme--This is book 2 in a series about an archeologist in the UK and the mysteries she helps to solve. I had read book 1 a year or so ago and enjoyed it. I guess I did not realize it was part of a series. I really enjoyed this one (listened on Audible), and as I love a good mystery series, I will keep going.  4+/5 stars.

I finished this one last night. I would rate it maybe 3+/5 stars. Mystery is my favorite genre and I'm not quite sure why I didn't like this one more than I did.

I took a zoom class on growing dahlias. Two years ago, Mark and I threw a bunch of unidentified tubers into the ground and ended up with some beautiful flowers. Last summer, after spending much time researching and carefully planting our dahlia bed, we got one tiny flower. In retrospect, we now know that our biggest error was planting too late (May 1 instead of some time in March), so our plants did not have time to get established before the temps got higher than 90 degrees. That, and we should have used shade cloth to shelter them from the many 100+ days we had last summer. This class (by Garden Bee) was packed with helpful information. Highly recommended. We have ordered all new tubers and are going to start afresh.  Fingers crossed.

Mark and I don't really celebrate Valentine's Day, although we have a tradition of going out for hamburgers in a nearby town and bring a little candle along for ambience. But if Mark were to ask what I wanted, this pretty much covers it.

I'll close with this. After school on Tuesday, Ella and Gabe decorated little Valentine's houses. I didn't take pictures of the completed houses (why not??). After they were done decorating, I "glued" them together with the remaining white frosting, and they took them home. 


I had mentioned to Christa I had never ever decorated a gingerbread house. So when I texted to ask her to kindly take pictures of the houses, she said they did not survive the ride home. I'm an inexperienced "builder" and they were clearly not up to code. But I think they had fun decorating them anyway, and I was able to take my own pictures yesterday when I dropped Levi off.  And maybe the best part is eating them. There is nutritional information on the side of the box. There are 20 servings in a house, each totaling 130 calories. I can think of better things to eat...



Happy weekend.