post-thanksgiving

So, how was everyone's Thanksgiving? Mine was blissfully unproductive. I visited my parents and sister in TN, and I spent the whole weekend snuggled up in my parents house. Even though it's not the house I grew up in (I have to stop and think where to get a glass or plate or silverware), it still sort of feels like home for me.

On Thursday, I alternated between helping my mom fix the big dinner and watching old home movies. My dad bought a dvd recorder, and he is in the process of transferring our VHS tapes to DVD. Unfortunately for him, my sister was quite the entertainer as a child, so he has quite a few hours of dances, piano recitals, and choir performances to watch.

On Friday & Saturday, we slept in, ate leftovers, and put up the Christmas tree. Oh yeah, and my nephew "made me pretty" with VCR sticker labels.

We opted not to hit the shops on Friday, some of which opened at 4 a.m. None of us are really early risers, and dragging everyone out of bed to go to a crowded store before the sun even comes up is not our idea of quality family time.

This is one of my new niece's rare waking moments. I suppose she's like most babies - only wakes up to eat or soil her diaper. But we sure think she's pretty special. I can't remember what she was getting ready to do in this picture, eat or soil.

Not too much happening on the craft front for me right now. I've been spending lots of time catching up on longarm quilting. I do have a few gifts to make before Christmas, so I've got lots to keep me busy. If you are looking for ideas for handmade gifts, hop on over to the Sew Mama Sew blog and check out their Handmade Holidays posts. Lots of good stuff.

It's a girl!

My new niece, Eva Ryanne (pronounced "Ryan" - it's my sister's middle name as well), was born at 3:50 this morning! Finally! She weighs 8 lbs, 6 ounces, and mom, dad, and baby are all doing well. Tired, but well. I can't wait to see her! However, I do need a few more days to whip up a quilt-y gift or two. I'll be sure and show you what I decide to do.

I don't have any pictures yet, but here's a dose of cuteness courtesy of my nephew. It's one of my favorite baby pics of him. I'll meet his sister next week when I visit for Thanksgiving. See ya then, my new homegirl!

Of course 5 minutes after I posted this, my dad sent me some pictures. Here she is!

How many UFOs can one girl have?

Seriously. I must be a glutton for punishment, because I can't seem to stop myself from starting new projects. And to make things worse, I have plans to start even more quilts to give as Christmas gifts. I started mentally counting my UFOs, but I couldn't finish that either. If I had to guess, I would say I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to 20 unfinished projects. That includes quilting and crocheting, but I don't think that excuses me from the scolding I've been giving myself.

For instance, exhibit A:

This poor quilt only has borders on three sides. Why? I don't know. I must have been distracted while I was putting the borders on. There is one more border to add after this one, and then this top would be done. It's so pathetic that the only thing standing in the way of this quilt's completion is 5 more strips of fabric and four cornerstones.

Moving on, here we have exhibit B:

A friend of mine brought me a baby afghan book to look at, and I couldn't help starting another afghan. This one is pretty fun to do b/c it isn't just the same stitch over and over. It looks much harder than it really is, which is nice.

Add to the list this afghan, my project for this class, another crochet project, my redwork blocks...you get the idea.

Something I have accomplished over the last few days is longarm quilting this stack of quilts.

There are more tops to quilt where these came from, so I'm going to get back to it. Hopefully I'll have more finished projects to show you very soon!

Frenzied

That's how I'm feeling right now. With Christmas looming not-so-far in the distance, I'm longarm quilting like crazy and trying to stay on top of my own projects. It doesn't help that I keep starting new ones...I just can't help myself! Every time we get in a new shipment of fabric or a new magazine, I dream up yet another thing to occupy my time. So my goal for the rest of the month is to finish up what I've got before I move on to anything else. We'll see how that goes.

Here's what is going on with all of the red and white circles I appliqued last weekend.

This is my very first stack-n-whack quilt. The stack-n-whack blocks were suprisingly easy to put together. If you look too closely, you'll see that they don't line up perfectly, but you can't tell from a normal viewing distance =). I've got the fabric up on the shop's website, with the kit for this quilt coming soon.

Last week I had to make an impromptu trip to Wichita to have my longarm machine serviced, and I just happened to need some ribbon, so I stopped in Micheal's. While I was there, I took a spin through the yarn aisles and found Lion's new organic cotton yarn. This stuff is sooo soft. There are all kinds of free projects on the Lion website, but I decided to start another afghan.

The pattern is simple enough. It's single crochet, working in the back loops. It's going to be so snuggly when it's finished. However, the yarn was $6.99/skein, and it doesn't go very far. So this one will be snuggly but small. Maybe another afghan for my sister's newest addition to the family (any day now!). The quilt in the background is a Turning Twenty that was done in the Scrappy Dots line from Judy Rothermel...still one of my favorites. I love polka dots. In fact, I just got some new ones in the other day that are a-dorable...more on that in my next post.

Free piecing

Here's something I finally got a chance to start on. I think I've mentioned before that I'm taking an online class from Tonya on free piecing. I haven't quite decided exactly what I'm going to make, but one of the first assignments was just to practice making letters. So I started with my name. What do you think?

If you want to try this technique, there are lots of tutorials at Tonya's pages at Quiltville.com.

Happy Halloween!

Well, here are the Halloween costumes.
This picture wasn't taken until after we had been sitting for a little while, so I'm a little wrinkled, but you get the idea. My dress really went together pretty easily after I got over the initial problems. I put a zipper in the side of the dress, but I failed to make it long enough. Luckily, I could just barely get the darn thing on and off. My husband's costume was pretty easy also. The cape just had to be hemmed at the bottom and pleated a little at the top. His "man skirt," as he calls it, was a wrap around. The only snafu we had there was that the sticky-backed, heavy duty velcro I used for a closure came unstuck towards the end of the night, leaving him standing there momentarily in his boxers. Lucky for him, we had an extra safety pin, and I don't think anyone saw except a few close friends (closer now, I guess) that we were sitting with.

My Saturday evening and Sunday were occupied by hand applique-ing sixteen circles. I used a CD as a template, which worked better than I thought it would. More to come on this project later. I'm also in the process of attaching a scrappy binding to my Afternoon Tea quilt made from Heather Bailey's Freshcut fabric. Lots of hand sewing to do...perfect for a chilly Halloween night!

"If I knew you were comin' I'd a baked a cake..."

Yep, I baked. Just a regular ol' cake mix - nothing fancy. The Halloween sprinkles and cupcake papers are to blame. Who can resist sprinkles?

After the sprinkles and cupcake papers made their way into my shopping cart, I got the bright idea to make orange frosting, so I picked up some food coloring. The back of the box said to make orange, use 6 drops of yellow and 2 drops of red. To make a long story short, I would say about 600 yellow drops, 200 red drops, and 30 minutes of stirring later, I finally had orange frosting. I had no idea it was going to be such an ordeal.

I also frosted half of the cupcakes with chocolate, but there was a bit of an incident on the way to the car this morning, and the chocolate-frosted cupcakes are in no shape to have their picture taken.

And because I have nothing better to do (ha!), I started another ripple crochet project. I was going to teach myself how to knit, but I wasn't in the mood on Saturday night to learn anything new. I was, however, in the mood to crochet something, so this is what I started. I had put in some rows in other colors, but after much discussion my husband I decided I should just stick with blue & brown.

I was very excited today when the UPS man brought me this:
It's the new Sew Girls line from Loralie. I can't wait to make a bag or sewing kit or something out of this stuff - I think it's just hilarious. My favorite are the tomato pin-cushion and button bras. They're available in the shop's website, along with the You Golf Girl! panel.

Last but not least, I finished sewing down the binding on a quilt last night during Monday night football! I'm pretty sure I've shown you this quilt before, but that's when it was just a quilt top. I'm usually not a very flowery person, but I love the borders on this one. And the gingham in the star points.

While I was baking up a storm and cursing at the frosting last night, my husband was busy making chicken & wild rice soup. I didn't get a picture because it disappeared so fast. We were hungry, and it was good. I got the recipe from a recipe notebook I got as a wedding gift. Knowing that I'm not much of a cook (although I'm trying), my friend's mom (she's an amazing cook) put together a 3-ring binder of quick & easy recipes for me - everything from appetizers to desserts. So without further ado, here's the soup!

Chicken & Wild Rice soup:
1/2 c. shredded carrots
1/2 c. chopped celery
1/2 c. chopped green bell pepper
1/2 c. chopped onion
1 c. half and half
1 c. water
1 10oz. can condensed chicken broth
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1/4 cup flour
1 1/2 cups cooked wild rice (I got the kind you just microwave in the bag...it took 90 seconds)
2 tbsp butter or margarine
2-3 cups diced cooked chicken (I'm guessing here... we added this to the recipe).

Melt the butter in a large saucepan, and saute the carrots, celery, green bell pepper, & onion for about 5 minutes. Stir in the flour, salt, & pepper. Add the half & half, water, chicken broth, chicken, & rice. Bring to boil. Turn down the heat, and simmer for about 15 minutes. Delicioso!

This recipe says it makes 5 servings, but I would say it's more like 4. We're going to double the recipe next time, because we ended up using half an onion, half of the bell pepper, and (wait for it....) half of the half-and-half. Which felt like a waste. I always make extra anyway so we can have leftovers. I wouldn't want to have to cook two days in a row...