Monday Miscellaneous

New Year's Resolutions:

Nothing quilty to show again this week, although I am making progress hand-quilting the Scrappy Star.  At this rate I'll have to re-name the blog.  Change it from the Prairie Quilter to Whatever Strikes My Fancy.   However, I have made a quilt-related New Year's Resolution:  to give more thought to naming my quilts.  Yeah, I know, I'm really knocking myself out with this one.  It sounds like a rather weenie resolution, however, I have discovered that naming quilts really is not my forte.  So I'll turn my attention to it this year.

A Special Birthday:

You've met my cousin Lori.  I may have mentioned we share the same birthday?  (I know I've posted this picture before, and I'm posting it again because it makes me happy.  It captures how we are together. )
 

Due to the time of year our birthday comes, December 30th, it often gets overlooked--even by ourselves.  Who needs another holiday between Christmas and New Years?  Our family made sure this year that did not happen.  Bless them.

We got time away from our responsibilities to buzz down to Wichita and visit Hancock's and Hobby Lobby.  How cool is that?  It was interesting to see how much Lori's crafting overlapped with my quilting.  Then we had a quiet lunch together.

Time spent with her is a like a balm on my soul.

Oh and then there were the special t-shirts:  Birfday Twins.  Thank you Eric!

Nobody believed we'd wear them outside of the house.  HA!  We did one better, by adding the fleece boas that Lori made, before heading out to eat Mexican food.  We got a few stares.

(I cut myself out of this picture because I looked like a total dweeb--eyes closed.)  I couldn't believe how warm those fleece boas are.  Better than a knitted scarf, in my opinion.

Our birthday was in a word:  AWESOME.

Fun and Games:

The rest of the week had its share of silliness.  Newton is home to this blue sky sculpture you see in the background behind me.

And these two..., (I'll refrain from using the word art) figures.  Eric and I couldn't resist having a bit of fun:

Apologies:

I hate to think of all the wonderful posts I've missed.  And I apologize.  I am so behind on my blog-reading, I fear I may never catch up.  (But hey, partying like you're 47 eats up time!)

Monday Miscellaneous

Slack Before Christmas:

It's been an entire week since I last posted.  I'd love to regale you with stories of pre-Christmas busyness that interfered with my posting, but the fact of the matter is I was just not feeling well.  Picked up some mild bug somewhere.  I'm still shaking off the effects.

Photo by Clara S.

Christmas:

Christmas proved to be a restful day, here at the Prairie Quilter household.  A much needed reprieve from painting and feeling that we simply had to be productive.  So we lounged around, except for making the pancake brunch that the four of us (my grandparents, mother and me) enjoyed.

Also we were preserving our strength.  My cousin, Lori and her family are here, arriving yesterday, the 26th.  While a visit from my cousin is always an enjoyable occasion, the thing that will make this visit special is that we will celebrate our birthday together.  Lori is two years younger than I am to the day, both of us born on December 30th.  This will be the first time we've celebrated together as adults.  In fact, it will probably be the first time either of us has done much celebrating in years.  Having a birthday stuck between Christmas and New Year's is really rather inconvenient.  Most people are just happy to have made it through Christmas and are hoping to regain enough steam to push on to the New Year--myself included.  But with the two of us together the formula this year has changed.

Photo taken and modified by Eric H., Lori's husband

This Year in Review:

I don't tend to be an overly prolific quilter, and this year with all of the turmoil, it was particularly true.  Still, I'm proud of what I did finish this year:

Robynn's Quilt

From The Prairie Quilter

The Teddy Bear Quilt

From The Prairie Quilter

Matt's Quilt

From The Prairie Quilter

Sunshine in Winter

From The Prairie Quilter

I need to work on my quilt-naming skills, don't I?  Sunshine in Winter isn't bad, but the others could have been more poetic.

Food for Thought:
(Snagged from One Piece at a Time)



Blog Schedule:

If you don't hear from me again before next Monday, don't worry.  I'm just out with my cousin having fun.

Monday Miscellaneous

Quilters Know How to Spoil Other Quilters:

And spoil me, P. from The Way I Sew It did!   I was the lucky recipient of one of her adorable little clutches.  We've all been admiring the pictures of her clutches, but seeing first hand all the work and care she put into these, well it's just darn impressive.

See, even the inside has such nice detailing.  I love the musical print she used for the inside (I don't know if she remembers, but I happened to send her this one--how cool is that?).  And it's got pockets for carrying your driver's license and credit cards.





Since the purse I use isn't much larger than this it will be easy for me to make the switch.  The clutch is so pretty, I almost hate to use it, but then I've had people say that about quilts, and I really want my quilts to be used, so I'll be using this clutch.

And pillowcases!

I love the way she made the edging on each one from a different fabric.  Such a delightful bit of whimsy. 

Lighting:

In the sewing room, it's so important to have the light right.  We've been struggling with that.  The house came with these light fixtures.  They're pretty, but the frosted glass cuts out more light than one would expect.  The fixture holds two bulbs.  We tried changing the two bulbs to brighter bulbs.  Not good enough.  We tried changing them to CFLs called "Daylight".  It's bright, but weird.  Kind of like the light you would expect standing next to a blue O class star.  Made me feel creepy.

Then we decided to change out the light fixtures.  There are two in the sewing room and we managed to get one done.  This arrangement is much better:  3 bulbs, uncovered, and we can point them any direction we'd like.  It was our first time changing out a light fixture, and I must admit to feeling a bit of accomplishment.

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand:

Every once in awhile I get it into my head to read a novel considered classic instead of my usual mystery or sci-fi genres.  Apparently Ayn Rand has somewhat of a following.  People either really like her work or really hate it.  Their opinions seem to be based on some philosophy she is supposedly promoting through her novels.  Eric, my cousin, and I had neither one read any Ayn Rand, and so he bought The Fountainhead, read it and passed it along to me.

I've made it only slightly past halfway and have put it down.  It's looking very unlikely that I will resume reading it.  I can't tell you how rare that is.  First off, if she's promoting any particular philosophy I don't see it.  I'm still at a loss about all the hullabaloo surrounding that issue.  I'd say it was because I haven't finished the book, but Eric has, and he doesn't see it either.  My reason for discontinuing the book is that I simply despise all the main characters.  I've found that I really don't care what happens to them.

Now, what I'm wondering is have any of you read it?  What are your thoughts on this book?

Redecorating the Blog:

Following in the footsteps of others, I've redecorated my blog.  Honestly, I'm not sure I'm pleased with it.  It seems a bit loud and busy to me.  However, I'm also a person who takes awhile to get used to change, so this often clouds my opinion.  We'll see if this remains or not.

Favorite Things Friday--White Paint

Mrs. P. over at Quilting in My Pyjamas is hosting the last Favorite Things Friday for 2010.  So this is your last chance to participate this year.  If you can work it into your busy holiday schedule I urge you to link up.  No worries though.  Favorite Things Friday will be back on January 7th.

My favorite thing this Friday is white paint.  The reason is very simple.  It will turn this:

into this:

Still need to paint the gold door

Until we meet again for FTF in 2011, I hope everyone has a joyous holiday season!

Myra's 2011 PhD (Projects Half Done) Challenge

After reading about Myra's 2011 PhD Challenge over at Quilting in My Pyjamas I decided I'd jump on the Projects Half Done bandwagon.  You see, Projects Half Done could be my middle name.  I've got one flimsy that is probably getting upwards of fifteen years old.  I'm a much better starter than a finisher.  And in the past, I've been a much better piecer than quilter.  I'm trying to remedy the latter by learning how to FMQ.  That said, I'm only committing two projects to Myra's PhD Challenge, as life has a habit of getting in the way of my quilting goals.  Plus, I reserve the right to start a new project and live with the guilt of that fifteen year old flimsy.

PhD #1:  The Scrappy Star.  This project is at least ten years old.  It's now gone through two major moves.  In my defense, this quilt is hand-pieced and the blocks and the inner checked border will be hand-quilted.  In the interest of having this one finally done, I'm going against my obsessive-compulsive nature and will FMQ the last two borders.  At this point, I have 1 1/2 blocks and part of the checked border left to hand-quilt.  All  of the two outer borders still need to be quilted.

PhD #2 is sampler from a block swap.  The swap was called "You Pick" and was hosted by a gal I became acquainted with on RCTQ (rec.crafts.textiles.quilting), a quilting newsgroup.  Each participant chose a focus fabric and sent a 12" square of it to the other participants to make a block.  My focus fabric was a pansy fabric.  I received some gorgeous blocks back.




I have begun free motion quilting the sandwich, and have five of the sixteen blocks done.  I'm doing the sashing as I go.

As you can see since these projects are really more than "half done", I should easily be able to finish them by June.  Now, I only hope that it's true!