Missing In Action

I often forget I have a blog and need to post to it every now and then. I should try to post something every day, but not sure people really want to hear all the boring details of my day.

I have been busy, most days I'm not sure what I'm busy with, but I seem to be busy so at least I know I'm still breathing!

Quilting should take up more of my day than it does, yet slowly I am finding myself able to spend more hours in front of the quilting machine and less sitting down.

I also like to putz around a lot and am easily distracted by shiny objects so I usually can find some crazy project to work on during the day. Right now I am spray painting pinecones, not sure what for but Christmas is coming and glittery pinecones could be useful. We had our youngest granddaughter again for a weekend this month so I didn't get much of anything more than cleaning up Cheerios and changing diapers. I know why they give us kids when we are young. I wish I had a 10th of her energy!

It stormed over the weekend so we had our first snow, a nice change from looking at the dry prairie, but I am just not ready for the cold and ice again. The snow inspired me to try a dying project using dye and snow, I think if I had used some different racks to set the scarves I dyed on, it would have been a bigger success. But it was something different and something I want to try again. You placed dye ready fabric on racks inside tubs, piled snow on top of the fabric, then poured dye over the snow and left it over night until the snow melted. The one I placed on the more open rack seemed to work better.

Working on a wall hanging for a friend. I had to quit today when I got the hiccups, I will have to do some seam picking tomorrow! :)

I wish I could figure out how to label my photos, but on my phone my options seem to be limited. I also can't seem to figure out how to reply to comments, so thank you Heidi for the compliment on the scarves :) I will have to send you one sometime!

October

It's been another busy month here, not sure where the days have gone but they are going fast! Today is already the 25th and I don't even have my Halloween decorations dug out if the closet yet.
We took a quick trip last weekend down to see our grandson, Trey, he is our little red headed bear cub who will be two in a couple of months. They all grow up so quickly! His mom is part of my quilting crew and so we spent Saturday morning in the quilting ships looking for fun ideas and spending way too much money. In a crazy moment I decided we needed new curtains in our living room, and I decided I could make these curtains. My sister is a seamstress so she came along and helped figure yardages and supplies. Now almost a week later I am sitting here with 6 panels cut out wondering where my sister is to sew them for me. I should have gone to Target :) oh they will be good enough.
I have quilted a few lap quilts for people this month and also finished a quilt for my brothers birthday, of course I didn't take pictures, and I'm not sure why I didn't. I am taking a star quilt class this month from a lady who is teaching the class without any pattern. She has it all in her head, precise measurements and all. Somehow she thinks she is going to get all that info into our brains too. We are learning but we are slow. I am excited to see how it will all come together, I used some pretty non-traditional star quilt fabric. I call it my Norwegian star quilt.
Working on scarves again and hope to get a bunch more steamed this weekend. We have our harvest festival at church and I told them I would bring a few for the auction. Planning to get a couple of table runners done before Saturday too. I am the queen of procrastination. This month marked the first month of what I call the never ending hunting season. Every weekend we will have hunters of some sort hanging out, and telling hunting stories. I really don't mind, but do have to admit that it gets old after about the 2nd weekend. This weekend our son and one of his friends will be out, they both like to cook so at least I won't have to worry about feeding them, and I can hang out next door if I need to escape the hunting chatter. Well the coffee is on and these curtains won't sew themselves! :)

Scarves

Just some of the scarves I have done this summer. These started out as easy cheap Christmas gifts to give to friends and family, they have evolved into quite a little business. I enjoy working on them when I am quilting and need a break to sit down for awhile. Right now I need to be doing scarves full time, but need to be quilting instead. Hoping one of these days to be able to combine the two.

No Rest For the Wicked....

It has been another crazy month here. I thought I was going to do some really constructive work, but once again all I have done is run around the country and have fun. I took my mom last weekend up to see our oldest daughters new place in ND. It was a short but sweet trip, had a good time seeing their new community, checking out their new church where my son in law will be interning this year, and hanging out with the Grandkids. We stopped half way home to see the remodeling my youngest daughter is doing at their place, and of course saw the grand baby. Who will be ONE this coming weekend! So off on another road trip to celebrate with them tomorrow, then Sunday we head in the opposite direction to celebrate my father in laws 95th Birthday. In between all my running around I have actually done some quilting, finished quilting a table runner yesterday, cleaned and oiled the machine today and have another lap quilt ready to go when we get back this weekend.
I also steamed scarves this morning and will drop them off tomorrow at the little shop that has been selling them for me. I wanted to have more done, but I think I would have to stay home in order to accomplish that. Ya think?
Earlier this summer my son helped me refinish the old rocking horse we had given our daughter for her first Christmas, last night I finally got a tail and mane put back on it, and tomorrow we will give it to her daughter on her 1st Birthday. I love re-gifting, especially if it means my closets get cleaner! We gave our grandson his Dads old bear for his birthday last year, and now the rocking horse. I'm trying to decide who might want the cat. :)

Monday

I was going to write about all my summer adventures, but the husband is yapping about his pneumonia and the dog is in the garbage, so thinking straight just went out the window. I thought I should at least say I'm back, not back to work yet but getting there. Spent the past weekend at our Annual Prairie Strippers Quilt Retreat. Had an amazing time, met some new people and enjoyed spending the weekend with good friends & family. My sister and her two youngest daughters, my youngest daughter, my daughter in law, the daughter in laws, sister in law slong with her two girls and one of my cousins:) were all here for the weekend retreat. What a crew! We shared a room, sewed together, came back to the ranch for another night together and we still love each other! Now to clean up the debris, put my purchases away and organize my thoughts before August is over and September is here. Looking forward to doing some quilting this week and have a few other fun projects I want to work on. Here is a picture of some of the quilts that were on display over the weekend.

Pity Party :)

Every once in awhile during a lull in my day I will have a mini pity party and think "why me?", then I get back to whatever project is occupying my day and just say "Thank You"! :)

Today I had one while I was on the floor under the quilt machine checking thread tension, my hands are numb all the time and I sometimes can't feel the thread on the underside of the quilt, so I laid there today and thought about all the things I could ,to feel sorry for myself, numb hands, my bum knee, a year lost when I did nothing but lay on the couch and look pathetic! Then I thought if I died now, how long would it take before my husband found me under the quilt batting like the wicked witch! LOL

So I stayed there for awhile and enjoyed the coolness, and the sound of the birds, got up and got back to work! I had to pick out about 8 inches of quilt when I did an oops and didn't catch it! Instead of tightening the tension I loosened it and didn't catch it! I was annoyed to say the least.

I worked for a couple hours, put some scarves an the stretchers to work on this evening, and decided I needed to head home to do some "Housework", there is never ending laundry and the cat box needs cleaning:( but I think my husband picked up lunch in town so at least I won't have to cook!

I ran through a pin that was hiding in the quilt batting, which scared me almost as much as the hawk that hit the window an hour later! I was surprised the needle didn't break!

Here are a few photos from the current quilt project, it's coming together better than I thought it would. The bobbin thread is such a close match to the back fabric it almost looks invisible ( it was not fun picking it out!) if you look close you can see where I picked!

Back to work!

I took a few days off to do yard work. After a year of neglect, I felt a real need to try and get some order back in my yard and clear out weeds and overgrown bushes. It's a slow process but it's looking so much better! If there were two of me and we both moved faster I could really get something done! It's probably a good thing this has been a dry year so I can keep up with the lawn mowing. I have two lawns to mow, one here and one at CowTown, both huge, with a lot of weed eating. Both take a good day to finish! My veggie garden is next door and the rabbits have discovered the green beans:( trying to decide if I want to put up a fence or just get rid of a few rabbits. We have 3 big lazy barn cats who I think could help out a little, but they seem to work only when they want to!
I put another quilt on yesterday and painted a few scarves. It felt good to be back to work in the quilt shop, but I was tired last night! I am sure the creeping Jenny in my flower beds was glad for a chance to take over again.
I am concerned about this quilt, there is a huge size difference from one end to the other, and lots of ripples and waves. I had a hard time rolling it onto the machine and I am worried about keeping it all straight. I started quilting and will just have to see how it goes!
When I get past the first border I will have to post some pictures, it's a beautiful quilt and I love the colors. If I can work through the ripples I will be happy! :)
So off to town to run errands, catch up on gossip, and then back to work!

Sioux YMCA Camp Leslie Marrowbone

Doesn't this make you want to spend a summer at camp! Beautiful! I will be spending a week here in August and I can hardly wait!

Oh Holy Cow...

I am tired of slow Internet and have been posting through my phone because it is faster. Today I decided I would get out the laptop so I could actually type instead of peck along with one finger and try to write my thoughts. Now that I have waited for 10 minutes for the window to type on to open, I have completely lost my train of thought!

Apparently they are mapping the area to put in fiber optic phone cable and in the FUTURE? (whose? future is the question) we will have high speed Internet. By that time I will have given up on technology all together and won't even care :)

Today I am hoping to get more done than I did yesterday. I spent two hours in a conference call about an Art Camp I am helping with this summer. It was good to connect with everyone else involved and to meet them over the phone, but by the time we were done I was in lazy mode and didn't feel inspired to do more than read and look up ideas on-line...which of course was slow, so that wasted most of the evening. It was windy again yesterday and once again today (imagine that!) so doing anything outside was not in the cards. I am hoping we will get some more rain today, it has been so dry and we need water in the dams. But at the same time I wish it would clear up and quit blowing because I do have things I want to do outside!

I have become fascinated with Prayer Flags this summer and hope to work on a few of those this week. I was given prayer flags last summer by my family as a healing message for the journey I was on. They inspired me to find out more about Prayer Flags and the messages they carry. I have discovered a lot of information about them and also some wonderful projects that people are doing with them. One of them can be found here: http://theprayerflagproject.blogspot.com/  So now that I have a new obsession I can add them to the list of things I want to get done this summer :)

Well if I plan to get anything done today I better keep moving! I plan to put the star quilt on the machine today and get it started, crossing my fingers it goes smoothly and there are no major glitches...

Sunday

I finished the quilt I was working on last week and I think it turned out pretty fantastic! The binding took 4 hours to sew on, which was a long time, but this quilt is huge! 104x114 inches! It was like trying to wrestle an alligator:) now I need to trim threads and get it delivered.

I plan to get over to cowtown this afternoon to oil my machine and get it ready for the next quilt that is waiting. This one is another large quilt, a Lone Star quilt which I am a little nervous about quilting, but excited at the same time. Star Quilts are such works of art and this will be the first one I will quilt for someone else. It helped that the quilter spent some time going over ideas with me and gave me her vision and her blessing before I started.

Yesterday I took a day away and helped the local Sioux YMCA staff clean their summer camp and get it ready for the kids who will spend the summer there. What a wonderful day we had! The camp is located on the Missouri River out in the middle of nowhere, a few outbuildings and a handful of teepees, the river on one side and miles of grass and sky all around. There is an enthusiastic staff of 7 young people, some local kids, and a couple from as far away as NY. I enjoyed the day so much and wanted to pack my bags and stay for the summer. Of course I forgot my camera but I am hoping my friend Carla got some good pictures and I can post some this week. I am spending a week there in August for their Arts Camp and plan to teach a natural dyes class and we will create a wall hanging. It should be an interesting week!

No Time To Putter Around!

The wind finally went down in the night, no rain but there are clouds so maybe that will come!
Finished getting some flowers into pots around the yard then headed to CowTown to hopefully finish the shell quilt today. Of course I had to come home for lunch and now I am puttering.

I actually took a hoe and weeded the garden this morning, which doesn't sound all that exciting, but for me to be able to be in the garden, and have the energy to hoe was like being in heaven! It is exciting to see everything coming up, now if we could get the rain.

So back to work, otherwise I will end up napping or finding some other time waster. I should run to town and get my drivers license renewed, but my extension doesn't expire until the 16 so I would hate to get in a hurry! :)

(swear word) WIND!

The wind has blown all day. Not just a breezy wind but a gale force wind. Annoying to say the least. We have two trees in our yard but it sounds like we live in the forest as it whips around the eaves and corners of the house. One of the -not so- joys of living on the prairie. I spent part of the morning here at home, cleaning up and putting things away after two days of canning rhubarb & strawberry jam, and preserving a number of fresh herbs(photo below). Then I headed to CowTown and spent the rest of the day over there working on a quilt, organizing bills, and cleaning over there, and listening to the wind. Even the quilting machine didn't drowned out the wind today, I thought about putting some music on, but between the fans, the machine and the hurricane, I decided music would be a sensory overload! Here is the quilt I am working on right now, the colors made me think of the ocean so I tried to incorporate shells into the design. I have about two hours left to quilt and then the binding. I am anxious to see how it comes off the machine, it had some issues, so far it seems to be ok, but I am worried about puckers on the back. (photos)
When I got home there was coffee waiting and we both decided ice cream with fresh strawberry topping was a good supper for a miserably hot and windy South Dakota day!

The Last Day in May!

What a crazy busy month, I think we had company every weekend, a few much needed days of rain and more trips out of town than I wanted to take. Not a lot of creativity happened next door, but we had two wonderful weekends of grandchildren and that more than made up for it! I did put together a fun little quilt for a friends baby shower, made a dress for grand-daughter #2 and cleaned up more of my stash. So it wasn't a completely lazy month! I am now back at it and the quilting machine has been humming along this week. Of course now with summer right around the corner...I know I will find a few more distractions:)
Here is the baby quilt I created~ the colors don't show very well but the zig zag border is bright purple with a green/white zebra stripe. The backing fabric I LOVE! It is called mythical horses, and I need to find more of it! I had a charm pack (also pictured) that was my starting point, then I just dug through the stash and it grew from there. I quilted it with a bright purple thread. Most of the fabrics were batiks and I had some trouble with the thread wanting to loop, something I need to work on, but I think slowing down and changing my needle often would help.

Rainy Sunday!

It's Springtime here on the prairie with a much needed rainy day. The heifers with their new babies are all snuggled in the tall grass doing whatever cows do when it's cold and rainy! I plan to tackle the binding on a few quilts and work on some other sewing projects. It's a good day to hang out in the sewing room.