New, new, new!

Lots of new things have been happening around here. Some of them good, some of them not good.

Not good? My dad. He's been having major health issues. So much that we know we're going to Michigan (for this third time this year) next week. And we may be going a lot more in the next several months. We couldn't see the logic in spending so much on hotels, etc. Plus, as you may know, we love to camp. Oh, and since RT passed his exam, he got a bonus. So all of this lead to us trading his old car, which was this:

The smallest car GM made that year.

for a new (to us) car, which is this:

Don't think they parked it there accidentally. Clever CarMax!

All so that we can tow this:

It's a popup trailer.

We tow it closed, of course.

Oh, and we're fostering this guy:

His name is Ollie. He is super sweet. He is 100% blind. In fact, he has no eyes, but he gets around just fine. If you know of anyone who might want to adopt him, let me know! He is next to no work. Unlike sighted dogs, he doesn't need lots of exercise or attention. But he loves people! We are still considering keeping him. We'll see how the Michigan trip goes!

I also tried out my gathering foot. Awesome! Who needs a ruffler? Not me!

And last, but certainly not least, I have tried a new pattern. It's Meg's Garden from Don't Look Now. It's part of a bee through the Richmond Modern Quilt Guild. I am close to being ready to fuse it. I have tweaked it here and there since this photo was taken, but you get the idea.

 

Now, I've been told that I am a show-off. That I am a "big spender" and that I parade it around in front of people just to make them feel bad. I would hope that's not the case. RT has worked his ass off to get his Fellowship and he got rewarded for it. That went to the camper. The new (to us) car was a trade-in, and we didn't put extra money down, and now have a sizable payment to make. Rest assured, we are not drowning in money. We are FAR from rich. Our income is probably in the lowest 5% of RMS families. Anyway, I lost a friend over this, but I don't feel that I've done anything wrong. If you think I have, please let me know. I try very hard to not be a braggart.

What I did at work today

I love my new job!

Also, we found a leak in our laundry room that has resulted in this in our kitchen:
Let's hope that insurance covers it all!

Molly's first embroidery

I'll spare you the details of why I haven't been around too much lately. Suffice to say part of it was the loss of both of our pets (we put Snickers down and then a couple weeks later our cat Garfunkel died on her own). My job situation has changed; I'm no longer working at Quilter's Corner, but I am still teaching classes there. I am, however, helping Swirly Girls Design out with their website and I'll be teaching a handwork after school program at my daughter's school. More on that last thing below. Oh, and my in-laws visited and my daughter turned seven.

In absolutely fabulous news, my husband passed his final actuarial exam! If you follow that link, you'll see a snapshot of the grueling exams he's had to take over the past several years (all ten items in the white part of the table at the top, and then the Group and Health track column below). He's now very near the bottom of the chart, working on his Decision Making and Communication Module. He's hoping to finish that by Monday, and get it graded (passing, of course) so he can go to the Fellowship Admissions Course in December. This should be a gimme. In the unlikely event his paper is not accepted, he'll just have to revamp it and get it done so he can go to the March Admissions Course. But of course, he's really hoping to get it wrapped up before the end of 2011. Me too.

So today a couple of my wonderful sewing friends came over and one of them brought her daughter. She got my daughter interested in doing some embroidery. Her first attempt is a really big running stitch, but then this afternoon I decided to teach her the backstitch. Here's how she did!
If you ignore the chocolate milk stains on the left, I think it's fantastic for a first attempt and just having turned seven! Next she'll do the bird at the top in blue. This gives me confidence for my after school program this year.

Anyway, with school starting in a few weeks and some planned sewing time on the horizon, I hope to update this blog way more often.

Okay, so now I have to go work on my round robin block for the Richmond Modern Quilt Guild. The meeting is tomorrow night. Ah, deadlines, how I've missed you!

Snickers

We've decided to euthanize Snickers on Tuesday at 5:30. She has peed in the house several times in the past few days. She's down to 28 pounds (from her typical weight of 55, which itself was on the thin side) and she has a really hard time eating. She is still mobile, but very slow and fairly stiff. She is responsive to us, and of course, that's the hardest part. But I worry that she might fall ill during the night and we don't hear her, or it happens while we're at work and we're not home. So I guess I'm preventing my friend from a potentially agonizing death. On the other hand, she doesn't seem in pain now. Part of me feels guilty because it was her peeing in the house that has made us decide to do this now. Is it just because we are lazy and don't want our house to smell like pee? It is for our convenience?

And Molly said she wants to be there. I hope that's not a wrong decision. Of course, if she changes her mind and wants to stay in the waiting room or the car or anything, one of us will be there with her and won't make her stay if she doesn't want to. But what if she begs us not to do it? How heartbreaking.

The circle of life...

Our cat, Simon, died a couple of years ago. We buried him in the back yard. Molly has been curious lately about what he might look like right now. We've been telling her he'd mostly be bones and some fur (we buried him wrapped in a towel and then put inside one of those heavy duty Harry and David fruit boxes). I assume that's about right. (Anyone know for sure?)

This past weekend we ended up cleaning up the yard. It started with picking up sticks and eventually involved some raking. Most of the leaves were late stragglers that had been caught up next to the fence and house. As I'm raking next to the fence, I kept thinking, "Now where exactly did we bury Simon, anyway? I must be getting close."

More raking; more wondering.

Then, my foot drops about 12 inches into the ground.
Huh. I guess I found out where Simon had been buried. Or, rather, the empty space where Simon used to be before he became fertilizer. The weird thing is, I didn't see anything in the hole. Maybe I had just packed the dirt on top of anything that might have been visible. Whew. Dodged a bullet there. We filled the hole with fresh compost.See it there along the fence?

I'm in love!

This past Friday, my wonderful husband and I went to lunch. I said, "I have no ambition. I think we need to get away." He said, "okay, where are we going to go?" I wasn't really meaning this weekend, but thanks to him, we ended up leaving the next morning and spending a long weekend in Philadelphia! I love that we have a small enough family and a great next door neighbor (who is always willing to watch our pets).

So, Saturday we went to the Mütter Museum. Their website isn't very useful, but it was a great museum to go to. It's full of medical specimens. Have you ever wondered what a 75 lb ovarian cyst looks like? Or are you curious about forensic anthropology? Or the skeleton of a man with a disease which causes his soft tissues to calcify into bone? They have it all. It's amazing. To hear a description, you might think it's like a circus side-show, but it's all presented in an educational, non-exploitative manner. In fact, no photos are allowed inside the museum. So here's Molly outside instead.We also went on a short horse-drawn carriage tour of the Independence Mall area (Molly's favorite part of the trip) and saw the Liberty Bell.On Sunday we went to the Franklin Institute Science Museum. Later that day we drove around and eventually ended up at the King of Prussia Mall. I have memories of going there on band trips in high school when we went to Philly to march in the Gimbels parade.

On Monday, we checked out of our hotel. We ate breakfast at a cute diner called Mrs. K's. We had been sick of eating at the extremely overpriced hotel restaurant (seriously? Nine bucks for a bowl of oatmeal? You're kidding me) and were very happy to have found it. The waitstaff was really nice and the locals eating there were friendly and chatty. And a bowl of oatmeal was only about $2.50. No website, though.After breakfast, we checked out Fabric Row. I only went to one shop and was a bit turned off. Maybe I went to the wrong shop. It was crowded and it was hard to see everything. I did buy a bit of fabric to make a ballet skirt for Molly.

The highlight of the trip for me, though, was a quilt shop we stopped at called Spool. This is why I posted that I was in love. The shop was quite small and didn't have a ton of fabric, but what they did have was breathtaking. No batiks, no blenders, no novelties; just designer prints and some solids (and a few shot cottons and Kaffe homespuns and stripes). But what they didn't have in quantity, they made up for in quality. So clean and gorgeous!First impression as you walk in:This is pretty much the extent of their fabric shelves. The only shelves you can't see here are a couple in the back where they have sale fabrics and some home decs.
Here is their classroom area. So cute with the coordinating sewing machine covers!
Another view of their display (really, their only one).
Their patterns.
Here is my haul. First is a laminate that Molly picked out. I need to make the Amy Butler kids raincoat for a shop sample. So I'll make two, so Molly can have one now!
Here's the fabric I bought, just because. It was hard to stop at five yards. The person helping me, who was super friendly, said that the whale fabric was designed by someone local. There were several of her designs there.
And I bought their two bags of scraps. Seriously, you could make something beautiful out of anything they had there. I figured even their scraps would be delicious. I bought the only two bags of scraps they had. If they had had ten, I probably would have bought all ten.
If you go to Philadelphia, visit this shop. I was blown away. So small, but perfect. Only the best of the best. There's a yarn shop next door called Loop that I didn't go to, but they seem to be connected in some way. If I were a knitter, or if I hadn't already spent over $100, I would have gone there, too!

Camping!

No sewing to show today but my family did go camping for the first time this weekend. Photos!
Campfire!
Beach!Dead horseshoe crabs!Tent!

Paul McCartney

Ohh, it's been a crazy summer, hasn't it? I'm so glad that school has started. It give me time to sew! I don't have photos of everything I've done in the past few weeks, but I'll take and post them soon.

One thing we did in August was go to see Paul McCartney in concert! The day before we left, I found a Beatles t-shirt at Target, but it was in the toddler section. So I got the biggest one I could and made it into this little dress for Molly. If I had had more time and more fabric (don't we all need more of both of those), I'd have made it twirlier. The shirt has Ringo's drum kit on it. The skirt fabric is gray with white polka dots. Here we all are. My friend and quilting student Carrie joined us.
Here's Sir Paul! Yes, he's the tiny speck in the middle of the stage. Thank god for giant video screens.
How irritating are these small photos, anyway? I need advice, fellow bloggers: how do you deal with photos on blogspot? If I upload straight to blogger, I'm worried that I'll run out of space. So I upload to Flickr and then link, but they come out so small. What do you do? I want it all: larger photos hosted somewhere else so I don't have to worry about running out of room. Any advice?

Gosh darn cute

I made this tooth fairy pillow for Molly. I think it's just in time. Her bottom front tooth is awfully wiggly. I got the tooth pattern from Martha Stewart, though I did it differently from her. Mine is two layers of white because I hate when things shadow through. So it has two layers and was turned inside out. Then I topstitched very close to the edge. Then I attached it to the pillow (before stuffing) by just going right over the topstitching in order to make a pocket. I LOVE it!
I also made another shop sample. This one is Fire Escape by, you guessed it, Atkinson Designs. It looks super simple, and it is, but it's challenging to keep everything organized. It's supposed to be a throw size, but it's pretty big. It finishes at 60 x 75 or so.

Trip and row and guitar case

It may be difficult to believe, but I do intend to update this blog more than once a month. It's just been a very busy December. I know, excuses, excuses. But we did spend several days on a trip to Wisconsin. We took Amtrak and got a sleeper car. It was great! No complaints, except that our room was hot, especially on the way out. I'm not a good sleeper, so this mostly affected me. Molly was fine, though. When you get a sleeper car, you're considered first class, which means you get free meals and you get to hang out in the first class lounge for layovers.
I also did a little (very little) sewing. Last Christmas, after a scare, RT bought a Wii. This fall, after I found out about the breast cancer, RT went out and bought Beatles Rock Band. I wonder what I need to do to get a new sewing machine. Anyway, Molly especially loves it and she has become quite the Beatles aficionado. Since we had practically unlimited baggage restrictions on Amtrak (another plus), we decided to bring it. We wanted to transport the guitars carefully, so we went to GameStop and bought a case for RockBand guitars. Unfortunately, our guitars were too big. So, at 5:00 the evening before we were to leave, I decided to make a quilted guitar case.
This baby holds two RockBand guitars, separated by a quilted panel. It's not quite done; I want to add a zipper to the top. For the trip, I had to saftey-pin the case together. It just made it look more badass if you ask me.

Yes, those are little batik rainbow skull and crossbones, thanks for asking!
I also finished my row for my round robin, only a month late. Oh well, as people keep telling me, I have a good excuse.
In health news, I will probably start radiation next week. This is sooner than expected. I'll find out more at my simulation appointment tomorrow.

No photos today

No photos today. I'm starting to pack for a three day quilting retreat. I've never been on one and I'm very excited! I hope to have lots of photos to share with you when I get back Sunday night.

In cancer news, I'm going to the surgeon this morning for a consultation. I hope to have an idea of what my treatment will be after the appointment. However, I go straight from there to school (for Molly's ballet) and then to work, so I won't have much time to think about it. Tomorrow morning, I will take Molly to school, then pick up Amy to go to the retreat.

In dog news, I never did get around to telling you about Snickers's escape. She managed to get out one morning (a Monday). She was picked up by someone who lives in our neighborhood, and was kept in their yard for the day. She didn't have her tags on because she was wearing her Bite Not collar because she's had a lot of itching due to allergies. Anyway, she managed to escape their yard, too, and was found wandering Hungary Road the next morning by some other people in our neighborhood. They took her to a vet's office and then found my listing on Craig's List. So we got our 14 year old friend back. She had some gastrointestinal issues for a couple of weeks (which required two steam cleaner rentals). Recently, we discovered fleas on her and the cat. We must have fallen behind on applying FrontLine to the dog. So, we've FrontLined the dog and put something similar on the cat. They don't seem to be horribly bad, but I noticed bites on Molly's legs. I sure hope we can get rid of them. I've felt itchy ever since this discovery. Any ideas?

Oh, and Brittany loved her quilt!

Halloween and bad news

Molly's costume came out great! She was Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty. I took a few liberties with the costume to make it more wearable for her. Monica from the shop helped me a LOT with the dress and cape.
I've been gone again because it's been busy. I mentioned in my last post something about doctor appointments. I found out Wednesday that I have breast cancer. It's early -- stage zero, actually -- so that's good. I'll know more after I meet with the surgeon next week, but I will probably only have to go through surgery and radiation. I'm hoping for no chemo.

Roll-Up Chalkboard

We have this new chalkboard fabric at the shop. It's great! It works just like a chalkboard, but it's vinyl (I think) so it's flexible. It doesn't have give like fabric, but otherwise you can sew right through it. We also have iron-on vinyl that you can adhere to fabric to make it waterproof. In this case, it's making the fabric chalkproof so it won't get stained. I tested a pattern that we'll have available during our gift fair which is the weekend of September 19th. It has a little pocket on the side for chalk and a cloth to erase.
Eventually it will go to Molly. The good news is that I made it on her first day of school, so it will be a surprise if I give it to her during the holidays. Here's a photo of her when I dropped her off at school. It's her first day of kindergarten, though it's still at the same school (with the same teacher and classroom) that she had last year.

Demo sample making and yummy food

I haven't been sewing much lately. My back has been sore and I was worried about hurting it again. But, deadlines loom, so here we go again! Tonight I worked on a demo piece for the Minnesota Road Show. It's the body of the Farmer's Market Tote. I will essentially stop this one about halfway through, just before assembling the bag, so people can see what the piecing looks like. The fabrics for this one are very different from the last one I made. This one has big, bold prints.
Also, RT made some fantastic shish kabobs last week on the grill. They were marinated sirloin and they looked so yummy I had to take a photo (sorry to any vegetarians out there):

Mending day and a little applique

So, remember the twirly skirt I made Molly a while back? I had bought a white t-shirt so that I could applique one of the motifs onto it and I finally did it! I also applied some crystals, because a little sparkle never hurts. It's a little puckery, but I am too lazy to have used stabilizer, aside from the Wonder-Under that's fusing them together.
She loves it! I also fixed an old Gap dress (from a yard sale) of hers. I swear it was made with the cheapest thread imaginable. I've had to fix nearly every seam on the thing. And I fixed a stuffed animal and a little beanbag. She's happy. You can see part of my stash behind her here. Yes, I have two drawers dedicated to purple. Want to make something of it? And the plastic bin is full of my scraps. It's bursting.
RT even got into the mending spirit. Here he is reapplying a button, all by himself!

Good as new!

Snickers seems to have made a full recovery! We took her to the vet on Tuesday afternoon and she was already perkier than she had been for a day and a half. The vet gave her a once-over and didn't find anything unusual. So, she took blood and we got the results Wednesday night. Everything looked fine, except a few abnormalities. Her liver enzymes (maybe?) were off, but the vet said that can be a result of old age and if anything they were good for a dog her age. And her white blood cell count was up, but if she had some sort of infection or illness, that could account for that. The thing the vet found most alarming (other than our story of her behavior) is that she had lost five pounds. And really, by Wednesday evening, she was more or less back to normal. She now gets some wet dog food (which she LOVES) to help put on a couple pounds again. She's always been svelte and is now looking positively skinny.

So we think that she just got sick and had a much harder time fighting it off than she would have a few years ago because she's older. We'll take her in to get weighed in about three weeks. Other than that, things are fine as far as the canine member of our household. Yippee!