Saturday Sock

Another sock finished.

Hope to finish many more by Christmas!

Thanksgiving 2014

It has become my tradition to make a set of BIG potholders as a hostess gift when I am invited to someone’s house for Thanksgiving.

I choose fabrics that best represent the host. I debated between golf and money fabric and chose the money. Everyone agreed I nailed it.

I also made a money bag and in it are two bottles of wine.

Andy hosted the family in his beautiful and comfortable newly decorated home.

Older brother Ted is finishing carving one of the turkeys.

Drew and Sarah were so happy to see each other since Sarah has grown up and moved away.

Sally and her favorite son in law Sean.

One of my goals was to get a good picture of Sally and her three children. It is not an easy task as they all love to act for the camera. So with that being said I’m going to share several of the 10 I took and you are going to have to decide! I will have to say I am laughing as I look at and edit these pictures. And yes, I was laughing as I took the pictures!

Too bad I got Lauren with her eyes closed.

Sally and “the boys”!

More clowning around!

And last but not least Time Flies When You Are Having Fun!

Sally never takes a bad picture.

I enjoyed the company and the meal was absolutely delicious with any food one could want.

I didn’t get pictures of the younger members of the family as they were so busy with their activities.

It was fun seeing the young members of the family as they have really grown up since I last saw most of them.

Family Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was something we had always spent with our family.

52 years ago we lived in Ohio and were not able to make it to visit family in Wisconsin or Minnesota.

We had wonderful next door neighbors, Bob and Jenny Snyder.

They invited us to spend Thanksgiving with their family on her parents farm.

We felt so welcome.

Today I am also spending the day with Ohio friends, but we are all in Florida now.

If you read my blog regularly you know that my friend Sally Rue was the first person I met when we moved to Ohio.

We lost track of each other for over 30 years but reconnected about 5 years ago.

The last time I saw them in Ohio our kids were 3 and 4 years old.

If you look very closely you will see Sally is sitting in the same rocking chair that is on the right in this picture. It has been at least 4 different colors in the 52 years we owned it.

Our son Greg was 3 weeks old.

Their son Andy had not been born. Both Greg and Andy are now 51 years old!

Fast forward to 4 years ago. I spent Thanksgiving with their family at Andy’s house. It was the first time I had met him.

Lauren was 50 years old and had just become a grandma! Where did the time go?

Ted was all grown up but when the camera came out he and Andy became kids again!

We will be spending Thanksgiving at Andy’s house this year. It was also where I got to see Ted, Lauren and Andy for the first time since Ohio when we celebrated Thanksgiving there 4 years ago.

What a fun wonderful family I get to enjoy the holiday with.

Lanai Redo–Finale

I added new cushions to the dining table and chairs we had.

The existing chaise lounge is always a favorite place to read or relax, both for me or for guests.

If you are wondering what happened to the furniture I HAD where the new furniture is, I have done another grouping on the other side of the lanai.

I will probably sell the rattan couch and chair, but for now I am keeping it as I anticipate a gathering of a large group of friends.

Every Florida lanai needs a bar. This is currently not stocked but can be! We purchased this on eBay about 10 years ago and were fortunate it was located only 40 miles from us.

When Andy looked at the window above the bar he said it was backwards. I told him to go look at the other side of the wall and it would be forwards.

So the project is now complete with the exception of a few accessories. I’ll continue to shop my house for them and I have no doubt I will find enough to “make it work”.

Lanai Redo–Part 2

This is the other conversation area. I find 4 chairs with a coffee table a great way to visit with friends.

It was so humid when I took this picture every time I took a step it left a foot print.

I’m still working on accessorizing this area.

I really didn’t expect to love this redo as much as I do.

Lanai Redo

 

After living here for over 10 years we decided it was time to make a few changes on the lanai.

This is conversation area one. Four people can sit here comfortably and everyone has a place to put their snacks or beverages.

This was the first picture I took of it yesterday. The pink lamp had to go! I needed another table on the end of the loveseat on the right.

If you look at the first picture you can see I am shopping my house for accessories.

It is so pleasant and I’ve had breakfast out there yesterday and today.

The furniture arrived on Wednesday in BIG boxes. It all had to be put together.

I had friends who came over 3 different times and by Saturday evening everything was put together.

I really appreciate all their help. I didn’t even need to ask for their help.

Home Made Bread

It has been quite a while since I have made bread so I decided I’d try again.

Somehow when I was baking it the smell must have carried over to Bird Island on Lake Weir.

Within 5 minutes after it was done I had company!

 

They enjoyed the hot bread with butter and some jelly.

Our beverages of choice vary. Drew and I usually are Coca Cola drinkers and Andy’s beverage is normally Vernor’s Gingerale.

Tonight he decided to indulge in a bottle of wine!

In reality the only thing left in the bottle is the little bit you can see in his glass leftover from cooking dinner a few night’s ago.

One of their goals in life is to never have a normal picture taken of them!

He did have a Vernors while he worked after dinner until I spilled it all over the lanai floor.

While finishing up the last few bites of the heel of the bread I think Andy was searching for a way for me to stream the Packer game tomorrow.

After dinner they finished putting the last of my new lanai furniture together. There were 3 chairs left to do.

 

Andy did the construction with Drew’s help when necessary.

Drew also did all the unpacking, took all the protective covering off the pieces and took the boxes out to the garage. He also unwrapped all the cushions.

I feel very fortunate to have such helpful young friends.

Our Line Challenge

Beth Shutty’s quilt featured curved lines both in the motif and in her appropriate background quilting.

Gloria Meachem’s quilt was inspired by a piece of fabric.Her lines are obvious in both the design and the quilting. It is interesting that both Beth and Gloria’s quilts radiate from an off center central point but are totally different in their design and execution.

This is the other quilt Gloria made for our challenge. It tells us so much more about lines with her descriptions and illustrations. Gloria is one of our members who has mastered her sewing machine embroidery and so much more.

Judy Devaney created this with personal heirloom laces.What a great way to preserve the handwork and the memories it evokes.  It you knew Judy you would recognize this as her work as these colors are spot on for her.

She also was the hostess for our challenge tea. It was lovely.

Gladys Tice also used curved lines to emphasize and feature the print she chose to use. The colors also are pulled from the print.

Her workmanship was impeccable …not an easy thing to do with those narrow insets of color.

Beth Sherman’s beautiful sunset landscape uses both curve and straight lines in the piecing and quilting. The quilting is so appropriate to the design and does an excellent job of emphasizing the different parts of the quilt.

In case you forgot my quilt posted earlier on this blog, here is one part of it.

http://quiltspluscolor.blogspot.com/2014/11/chasing-rainbowsclose-ups.html

I have yet to get a good photo of the entire piece. I used a piece of fabric I had dyed several times as the background and created the lines with satin stitching using a color run over the surface.

Scrappy Socks

I just finished another pair of socks. I decided it might be fun to use some of the leftovers from other pairs of socks.

I don’t make my legs of my socks as long as most people do so I always have a lot left.

I completely used up the leftovers from 4 pair and started on the 5th with the blue.

I am not really excited about them as I thought I would be.

I have enough sock yarn for maybe 20 or more pair so why am I using leftovers? Beats me!

I am going to see if I can come up with some other way to use leftover sock yarns.

I’m ready to knit another pair that is ALL one color!

More Pole Rolling Progress

I have spent some time rolling more fabric on these poles.

Some of the poles are full and ready to be dyed.

Others could be dyed now, but I might as well fill the poles with a little more fabric!

I won’t be dyeing for a few more days as our temperatures have dropped and I do my dyeing in the garage.

Rolling Poles For Arashi Shibori

I roll a few poles as time permits and when I have either used all my poles or feel like I really need to see what is going to happen to these fabrics I do the dyeing.
Sometimes I spend a few weeks rolling poles and then immerse them in the vats of dye all in one day.

These don’t look like much right now. I am currently working with fabrics that have either been painted or dyed previously at least one time. I know all of these need at least one more layer of color.  Most of these are cotton but there are also some silks.
I put several fabrics on a pole if I know they will go into the same color dye pot.
It’s always fun to see the results.
I also expect I’ll be doing some ice dyeing soon.

Fast Forward Friday

Yesterday I posted a picture on Facebook for Throw Back Thursday thinking it was my grandson Nicholas.

In reality it was his younger brother Jared. This is not the first time I have confused pictures of those two.

This is the picture I posted.

He was about 2 or 3 and the boys loved catching frogs at Eagle River.

In this picture he is 16 years old. He was the Dancing Ghost in the Adams Family play their high school put on a week ago.

I’m sure you can tell he is the one in white.

Acting is one of his favorite activities. He has attended an acting workshop put on my the Chanhassen Dinner Theater for the last few years.

Chasing Rainbows–Close-ups

On my post yesterday it was hard to see the entire image clearly and you couldn’t see the detail.

I took some more pictures with better lighting conditions to share with you today.

I hope you can see the satin stitching clearly and also follow how the colors progress the length of the quilt.

You should also be able to see the patterns in the underlying fabric more clearly.

I did turn these so you are seeing them sideways!

Chasing Rainbows 2

This quilt was made for our Art Group Line Challenge.

I started with a piece of hand dyed fabric that I had done two processes on.

The lines you see are satin stitching with various colors of thread.

I changed the color of thread for each row of stitching.

It was a very calming process to do the rows of stitching and I thoroughly enjoyed each and every moment.

The binding was done with a companion piece of fabric that was almost an exact replica of the piece I used as the base.

Simply Sparkly–SOLD OUT & Back Ordered AGAIN

Keepsake Quilting made a kit available for the quilt I designed for Robert Kaufman Fabrics.

It has sold out AGAIN and as of right now is back ordered until 11/14/2014

Not only has it sold out,  Robert Kaufman is using it in their ads in quilting magazines.

This has been a big surprise for me as I have not been creating patterns for many years.

But the fabric spoke to me and I couldn’t say no.

Warm and Cuddly

I had a jacket that needed a hat to coordinate with it.

I went to my yarn supply and found two yarns that worked together as one and knit this hat. There was yarn leftover from  both of them so I decided to knit a scarf.

I just knit until I ran out of yarn. I thought it was a little to short for a scarf so I twisted it and joined the ends for a cozy cowl.

I am sure I will enjoy wearing both of these as they are my best color.