Thursday, January 15, 2015

I'm Back.....

And you didn't even know I was gone!  I went to Charlotte, NC with my daughter for a few days.  It was a leadership conference for Tastefully Simple leaders/managers and Steph is one of them.  I went along just to get away and I was hoping for warmer weather.  However, it was not all that warm -- 30's a lot, occasionally 40's - but at least there was no snow.  It was -30 wind chill here when we left!  
Anyway, while Steph went to her meetings, I stayed in the hotel, either in the lounge, or in our room and read and appliqued! 
This is the first Bunny Hill project of her free 12 month bom.  I finished the embroidery after I got home, and I haven't stuffed it yet - will probably do that after I have them all done.  It took no time at all and was a nice way to while away the hours!  I also worked on my Merry, Merry Snowmen block.  (We also celebrated my baby's 39th birthday on Saturday! - boy do I feel old - but we had a great time with some of her friends from TS and had a great Hibachi dinner at a Japanese restaurant in downtown Charlotte.)
Before I left, my hot water in the kitchen froze again - and once after I got back!  But I got it thawed with no problems and did what my plumber told me to do:  turned off the water line and opened all the faucets before I left -- and had no problems. I stuffed some leftover batting back behind the pipe in the basement to see if that will help block the cold air - it seems the wind swirls in the corner where the pipe comes up, and there isn't enough insulation in the basement there.

While I was gone, I downloaded a book onto my Kindle - for free.  I've decided it's high time I started reading the classics (I loved Grapes of Wrath in college -- looking forward to re-reading that one) - so I'm reading Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham.  I am kind of a tv junkie, but I'd like to get to the point that I'm reading more and watching tv less.  I have tons of books that I haven't read already on my Kindle, not to mention the hard copies of a few I haven't finished!  I am enjoying Of Human Bondage, btw.

Until next time....blessings!

Tuesday, January 06, 2015

Hot Water

So, plumber came out this morning as I didn't have hot water in the kitchen again. (I did open the cabinet under the sink last night, Mary - didn't help). He had to use my hair dryer to thaw the pipe in the basement, under the ceiling tile. So now I need to keep the ceiling tiles open the rest of the winter! While he was here, I had him install the new faucet I bought yesterday.
This is going to be another long winter!  At least I have a sprayer on the faucet now! LOL
Nothing else has gotten done today.  I have the feeling not much will get done the rest of the day either! 

He did tell me what to do if I ever go on a trip - even in summer:  turn off water to house and open all the faucets in the whole house.  Can turn the knob to "vacation" on the water heater too, if you want to - probably won't make any difference as the water will be turned off anyway!  Good information to know anyway! 
Until next time....blessings.

Monday, January 05, 2015

5 days and I've already negated one goal!

But, I just couldn't resist: Bunny Hill is offering a bom starting now for 12 months. I love, love, love her designs, and who can resist free? And yes, I may not be able to do these, but maybe I will. I cut out all 24 hearts from one fabric this afternoon and prepped this first block. I said I wasn't going to do any small blocks/quilts this year - ha ha ha!  We'll see.
Anyway, today is just getting back to normal day -- even though I don't work, the holidays is a little down time, a little different daily stuff.  So, started laundry, then went to rinse my coffee cup and the hot water in the kitchen didn't work.  I checked the rest of the house, all the hot water in the bathrooms and in the basement work -- just the kitchen faucet.  It's on the same line as the washer, but I was washing in cold water, so couldn't tell if that hook-up worked or not.  Looked online, found that if there's no hot water in the faucet, it means the faucet needs to be repaired.  So, decided to go buy a new faucet -- this one is old anyway and doesn't have a sprayer, so bought one with a sprayer.  Got home, started calling my plumber, turned the hot water on in the kitchen and it works!  Hung up before the plumber answered!  I suspect the hot water line might have frozen, but in the process of checking in the basement, I left the door to the back storage area open where part of the line goes up to the kitchen and also left the door to the laundry closet open.. either of these might have been the problem, or whatever was clogging the line fixed itself!  Life around here is never dull!  So, now I have a new kitchen faucet and when it is time to replace it, I will be calling the plumber and telling him I already have the new faucet!  And, while we are experiencing below zero wind chills, I will be leaving the doors open to hopefully keep the line from freezing again -- just in case!  FYI:  I hate dealing with stuff like this!  My husband would have taken care of the problem, and I would have loaded another quilt on the longarm today!  Oh well.
Until next time....blessings.

Sunday, January 04, 2015

And on the 4th day...

It snowed! My deck and trees in the backyard. It didn't snow for Christmas, so as far as I'm concerned, we don't need it the rest of the year, but obviously I have nothing to say about it!


I did manage to go to the sewing room though! My goal each month is to cut five kits for the sewers to work on at our sew-in.  Today I managed to cut 6-1/2" squares -- we try to make easy things for them to work on!  I also cut the rest of the halloween strips to make a 6-1/2" sq rail fence:
I print out a picture that I made in EQ so whoever gets this kit will know what to do.  I try to make it as easy as I can for them -- and it must be working because they keep coming back every month and the ones that take them home in between our sew-ins love to report their progress!  Isn't it fun teaching someone to quilt?!  Only 3 more kits to cut.

Until next time.....blessings.

Saturday, January 03, 2015

3rd Day....

Third, fourth, and fifth shelves. Before:


And, after:
And, I have 44 pantographs that I will sell, if anyone is interested. I paid $15-$16 each for them. All 44 for $300. Pick 12 for $100 + shipping. Or $10 ea. That's what all those rolls are on the 4th shelf!

It feels good to finally have this mess cleaned up, but:
Now I have this mess on one end of my antique table to take care of.  This is lots of smaller pieces of fabric, some orphan blocks, some fabrics already cut into squares and strips.  So, I'll be working on this mess as I start making kits for the homeless quilts.  I started cutting some strips this afternoon while I quilted another one.  I found a bag of 2-1/2" strips my girlfriend gave me of all halloween fabrics, so I'm cutting them to make a rail fence quilt - and planning on using a lot of the stack of halloween fabrics I found as well!  It's amazing how inspired you can be when you actually can see what you have!

Until next time...blessings.

Friday, January 02, 2015

2nd Day, 2nd Shelf

Here's the before on the second shelf in the cabinet:

And the after:

I added fabrics to the first shelf and moved some out from behind too. I also pulled a stack of fat quarters from the second and third shelves and stuck them all into a plastic drawer - well, actually two plastic drawers -- apparently I have a few fat quarters that I've never washed and added to the stash!  The rest of my stash gets washed before it goes into the cabinet.

It's called progress!
And this is the finished quilt top of the kit I found from a few years ago.  It'll go on the "to be quilted" stack now!  This wasn't all that hard to put together -- don't know why I put things off except that I probably had plenty of other things going on, or that I was already working on!

Until next time.....blessings.

Thursday, January 01, 2015

First day, first shelf

So here's a close-up of the top shelf in the fabric cupboard - before:

And here's the after!:
I have a couple of stacks of fabric behind those in the front row, but hopefully as I do each shelf I'll be able to have just one row on each.  I found a couple of more kits to work on when I have time.  I found fabric I didn't know I even had, and I'll have to change my statement of yesterday - I did buy quite a bit of fabric last year and the year before because I did Jo Morton's Little Women Club at Quilters General Store the past two years and had to buy Jo Morton fabric.  So now I have a whole bunch of Jo Morton fabric to use up!  I have a whole stack of mostly Halloween fabric - and I don't make Halloween specific quilts - well not for myself anyway, but I have a friend that does Halloween well!
I have tote bags filled with fabric on these shelves also -- just more to clean out.  I also found a stack of flowered fabric - enough to cut up and make a quilt kit for my sew-in people to make into quilts for the homeless, so I left that stack out.

I finished quilting another homeless quilt while I was cleaning and folding fabric today - I love my Statler - only have to be close enough to change the bobbin and roll the quilt and handle any longarm emergency, but still have hands free and time to work on other things while it's quilting!  I pieced more of the quilt kit I dug out the other day too.  Just need to sew the blocks into rows and the rows into a quilt!

So, revised goal:  I'm not going to buy a lot of fabric this year -- only what I absolutely need and I'll be working a little harder to use up the Jo Morton fabric!

Until next time....Blessings.