Story of my Life -- Catching Up

Catching up: First I've not posted in over a week -- but I've been busy. We went camping last weekend! Yup, our first campout of the year. I know, here it is with the last "official" weekend of summer fast approaching. Well, every now and then life gets in the way. On the plus side the new refrigerator in the bus works! On the negative side, the current extra battery only lasted 23 hours for the refrigerator. :-( But, a new one will be installed this weekend, prior to our 4 day jaunt to the Re-Union gathering in eastern Oregon.

I did get some knitting done. This is the beginning of yet another pair of sox. Ok, so I love to knit sox. This pattern is from Wendy Knits, Seaweed Socks. I love her patterns. She's a very prolific sock designer and has a book coming out April 2009. I'm looking forward to it.

Meanwhile, while watching Olympics and trying to "baby" my neck and shoulders I got a lot of hand work done. I can't show you here, it's part of the QB Christmas Challenge. I even got a little of it done while camping.

I did spend one afternoon quilting this week and got the blocks put together for the next QOV. I just have to wash the border fabric. My plans for the next couple days involve finishing the quilting on the wedding quilt. It's been loaded on "Bessie" for several weeks now. Hopefully I won't do anymore frogging on it.

I Did It!

I FINALLY finished something!

Ok, so it's not quilt related, but at least it's a Finished Object. I've only been working on these sox all summer. They're just a simple variation of stockinette stitch with every other row being a straight knit.

As for quilting, I'm still trying to avoid it and give my back/neck some more healing time. 8 years ago this month I managed to fall off a bicycle at the coast, while camping. I ended up with several stitches in my nose, two black eyes and two cracks in my humerous, right at the shoulder socket. Naturally the lengthy healing led to a frozen shoulder. Months of physical therapy and massage therapy broke it free. One year later, I ended up with whiplash from the go-karts at the Family Fun Center. Ever since then, I've had problems with my neck and back, specifically upper back and shoulders. It means that I have to be careful quilting and I definitely can't do any marathon quilting sessions. :-(

This past week my neck has really been bothering me. So, I've been doing some hand work and watching a lot of Olympics coverage. If ONLY NBC would show something other than beach volleyball. Thank goodness we get CBC, the Canadian broadcast.

On another, totally unrelated subject, we have been plagued with a very smart mole(s) this summer. We've never had mole problems, probably because Sneakers, our old girl, would never have allowed it. She was our huntress extraordinaire. No wild critters were allowed in her yard. Arlo, on the other hand doesn't seem to have inherited that gene. All summer this mole has been busy undermining our entire back yard. We have tried everything from flushing the holes with water, filling them with yard clean-up from Arlo, a hot pepper, bone meal mixture "guaranteed to rid your yard of moles", Juicy Fruit gum etc. Finally I decided it was time to step up the attack. Since I'm reluctant to use chemical warfare because of Arlo, I bought a mole trap. We have been diligently digging holes in his tunnels and placing said trap. The mole either ignores the trap, by-passes it, or tunnels under it, setting it off, but not getting caught. Yesterday I'd have to say he blatantly thumbed his nose at us. When we lifted the bucket off the hole & trap we were confronted with a nice, new mole hill. Buried in the mole hill was the sprung trap and yup, you guessed it, no mole! This morning I looked out, there are 2 new mole hills. I don't even want to look under the bucket to see what he's done this time. So, if anybody has any SURE FIRE, GUARANTEED methods for getting rid of moles, please feel free to share them with me by leaving a comment. We're at a loss and our back yard is in danger of caving in from the network of tunnels once it starts raining.

Lost Week

Wow! One week since I last posted. Well, I have been busy even though I don't have any pictures to show for it. First off, all the blocks for the jelly-roll QOV have been completed. Now I just need to sew them together.

Secondly, I have FINALLY settled on a plan for the quilting on the much delayed Wedding Gift quilt. After doing more than my fair share of frogging, I think things are finally settling into a groove. I definitely need to look into some classes at Innovations that will help me get over this "Stand & Stare" at a loaded quilt trying to fingure out how to quilt it.

Last week 3 of the Tuesday, now Monday QB's made a pilgrimage to downtown Seattle to the APNQ Quilt show. This show is held every other year and is a juried show. What a feast for the eyes. Lots of wonderful quilts. This year it was held in a new location, the Washington Trade & Convention center. Wow! It really was a great place for this show. Lots of space, lots of good lighting, and, most important, way more restrooms than previous locations have had.

Other things keeping me from quilting, helping DH rebuild our fence. It was way past it's lifetime and I'm surprised it has held up through the last couple big storms. But, now the two worst sections have been replaced. Much to Arlo's dismay there are no more big cracks or knot holes for him to use to peer out at the neighborhood. Now if we can only get him interested in catching that darn mole! We've NEVER had mole problems before. Probably because Sneakers would never allow wildlife into her yard. Arlo has a prey drive, however it seems to be directed at prey that he will never catch, i.e. squirrels. He did, briefly dig at a fresh mole hill one day and I cheered him on. However, his attention span is quite short. I've always said he's my ADD/HD dog.

Hopefully my aching back & neck will start to get better enough that I can get back to some more serious sewing. Meanwhile, I'm enjoying watching the Olympics. For once there is more than one channel to view the games on.

Quilt on!

Pictures

Here are some pictures from the projects I mentioned yesterday. For some reason Blogger kept giving me an error everytime I tried to upload any additional pictures. :-(

Moda Jelly Roll QOV

Crumb Chaos Blocks

This is the bin of scraps that have been trimmed into strips for crumb blocks - they've barely made a dent in the scrap basket. At this rate I'll be making a LOT of crumb blocks.

I still need to take pictures of the split 9-patch blocks and the string blocks I worked on today. Both of those are for QOV's also. So, I may not be making a whole lot of progress on any one project, but I'm certainly not bored working on the same project every day! Now if I can only get some of them finished.

Sidetracked Yet Again

I don't know what it is with me lately, but I can't seem to stick with one project. I keep getting sidetracked. First there is the wedding quilt. After finally getting it loaded on the "Bessie" (HQ16), I started quilting the top two rows, both different, and decided I HATED what I had just done so now I'm picking it all out. Long sigh....it seems like I was just here with the last project I tried quilting.

Meanwhile, I've been reading a lot of other quilting blogs. On Patti's "Quiliting is my Passion" she has a wonderful tutorial on making Crumb Chaos blocks. Considering that I seem to save every little scrap of fabric, I thought this would be a good way for me to use up my scraps. So, in between frogging the wedding quilt, piecing the next QOV I'm now sorting through my enormous basket of scraps and starting Crumb Chaos blocks. I think that once I've sorted through my scraps and gotten a handle on them, I'm hoping that I can continue to cut up the scraps as I generate them instead of throwing them all into the basket for dealing with "Someday". I'll let you know how it goes.

And oh yeah, I forgot to mention the other QOV that I also started playing around with. That's what I get for playing around in EQ after a friend tells me about a block they saw on Fons & Porter. That makes 3 QOV's that have been started: jelly roll rw&b, strings & split 9-patch. Sheesh, I'm beginning to think I have ADD.

Friday Catch Up

Bad me -- it's been 2 weeks since I've posted. But, I do have something to show for it! Completed quilts include QOV, baby quilt & the "secret surprise" quilt. Plus, many more blocks on the OBW.

Today I was distracted by the overflowing pile of scraps and started sorting and cutting them down to uniform sizes for specific projects. It's tiring work but I'm always amazed at how quickly the time goes while I'm listening to a good book. The current book is Jodi Piccoult's "Change of Heart". If you've never read/listened to any of her books, you're missing some great stories. She has a way of taking a controversial subject and turning it into a very thought provoking story. Try one of her books -- I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.