Birthday Girl

Faith will be two years old tomorrow (the 13th) and she is such a delight!

I went to a local Christmas Show and saw a very cute shirt. I wrote down the saying and came home and stitched it out with my domestic embroidery machine. I tried to get Faith to pose with her shirt.

Here she is after I asked her to smile. Great expression, but you can't see what the shirt says.

So after many attempts, I finally got her to stand still to get the front of the shirt.

She was a little less than excited about standing still and straight.

"Who needs Santa I've got Grandma!" Feel free to steal the idea and stitch it out (or paint it on)for yourselves, I did.

And after all that hard work of modeling, it's a great reward to play with Pop Pop's pink pigs! Especially the one that oinks out "We wish you a Merry Christmas" and then squeals at the end. Any respectable BBQ household wouldn't be without one.

New Fabric

Yes, I'm still kicking around. We've had several life events in our family and it's kept me busy for sure! I have finally been able to squeeze in a little dyeing. I was trying to get some pieces of sort of solid fabric to go with a piece that I'm going to cut and actually make into an art piece. With the leftover dye I made these. (Note some are dark in real life and if they end up being difficult to see, that's probably correct.)

This one I did a couple of weeks ago. It's made from a mixture of the Earth and Basic Family (for Carol Soderlund students). It was wrapped around a pole, scrunched down and secured by rubberbands and the dyes poured on. Then the soda ash was added afterwards by pouring it over as the pole lay in a wallpaper tray. The fabric batched for a couple of weeks just because I had so many interruptions. It's quite bright, but very nice though. 1 yard.

This one I did last week, it only batched about one week, which means I didn't have as much interruptions, just Thanksgiving festivies. It was also wrapped around a pole, scrunched down and the dyes poured on. It was done with just the Basic dye family. I'm not sure how the stripes turned out so pronounced. I again laid it in a wallpaper tray and poured on the dye, then the soda ash was poured on after that. I really don't love the stripes, but I like the fabric and think it will be improved with cutting it up.

Actually the previous piece and the following piece are much darker in person, so the stripes aren't quite as strong. The next piece was done with the Earth family of dyes. Made as the previous two. It's very nice, with very rich colors.



This was done with the very last bits of the Earth and Basic family. It was just scrunched and put in an 9 X 11 rubbermaid contiainer and the dyes poured over and then soda ash added after that.

So I'll keep working and see if I can get something finished before the local quilt show deadline.

Hard Work Finally Pays Off!

For those who may not know, my husband's hobby is BBQ. That's a noun, not a verb and it's slow cooked meat that usually is smoked. For lots more information than you probably care to know go to KCBS for details.

We cook in several contest each year, but Shelby, NC is our favorite contest because we have many friends and family members in Shelby and they all come out to support us. I think it was the fan club's support that has helped us out so much for the past two years and this year was especially wonderful!

Yes! We won a plaque and some money! Actually we won two plaques and two checks. Our first call to go up and collect an award came in the Pork category.

Here we are accepting the handmade plaque and the check!

Then we got called to come up again to receive a plaque and a check for 5th place in brisket.

To say we were in shock is an under statement. I almost didn't recognize our name when they called it the first time and certainly not the second time!

Last year we won some money, but only the top 5 places get plaques and that didn't happen. We were thrilled to get plaques this year! The BBQ contest is sponsored by home builders, cabinet makers and contractors and the plaques are one of a kind. I was thrilled to get the plaques and the checks didn't hurt either! I think we may have actually broken even for this contest.

The best part came at the end. We found out that for the second year in a row we were fourth overall. That was fourth out of 55 teams this year and 63 teams last year.

I think cooking in very very cold temperatures may be our speciality!

Art Class Update

Warning - lots of Grandchild pictures to follow.

Today was are last day of this art school session. We'll be going again for 6 weeks after a week break.

Here we're glueing fabric on a huge fabric coat for the class.

Then we painted a picture of a jacket. If the activity includes a paint brush, Faith loves it.

Faith has her Grandma's technique for holding two pencils in one hand while drawing in her book with the other.

Faith is sewing on buttons to a piece of fabric while Grandma holds the end to keep them from falling off before we get the string tied.

The most important thing about art is that it's the process, not the product that matters and we both have loved the process!

Flower Shopping

After art class, Faith tried to get Grandma to pick some wildflowers along the parking lot (lots of high weeds) and not where Grandma wanted to venture too far. So Grandma decided to reward all of Faith's careful obedience at art school with some potted flowers. We stopped and did a little flower shopping. Faith loves to pick flowers, but after careful instructions that she could touch the flowers and smell the flowers, but not pick the flowers, she was off to find just the one she wanted.

Faith carefully smelled and touched each one and never once attempted to pick any of the blossoms.

She carefully inspected and named each color of each one she saw.

And then finally settled on the "Purple" even though Grandma was suggesting the red. Faith knew what she likes and besides the Purple smelled the best!

Note: That white on her arm is paint -- after all we just came from art class!

MY Name Tag

I belong to a couple of Quilt Guilds and each one insist on having us wear name tags (to the point of making us pay a fee if we do not wear one.) I was given a blank fabric quilted name tag at each guild and told to write my name on it. I hated wearing these. Not that I didn't appreciate the guilds efforts, they just weren't me.


So it's been on my list of "To Do's" for some time, but not until the most recent guild meeting where I had to drudge back to my car to get the old name tag did I vow to get a new one made.


So I used an old paper stick-on name tag as my template and a scrap of my own hand-dyed fabric. I then used my embroidery machine to embroider my name and for added touch my city, just in case anyone wanted to know. That looked a bit plain, so I dug out some beads and added those to give it a surface design feature in honor of the surface design group that I belong to. Finally I added the zig zag border. On the back I enclosed two small round magnets between the batting and backing fabric before I stitched the border. I've got two more magnets that I can now use to wear it on my shirt without worrying about a pin poking a hole in my clothes (another reason I didn't like any of the old fabric name tags.)

Here is the result -


(I tried to get a close up, but it made it a bit blurry in parts. I'm not an expert on photography or photoshop, so forgive the novice picture here.)

Fun at the Lake

Faith had her first summer of fun on the lake.

While she loves swimming, her main interest is playing in the sand and riding in her Pop Pop's boat. She's gotten really good at asking for a boat ride.

To view the slideshow in a bigger version, double click the picture and a new window should open. Click the green arrow "slideshow" and it should open the same slideshow. Also here you can click the plus symbol at the bottom to slow it down so you can read the captions.

June Beach Trip

As summer begins to wind down here in the south, I'll recap some of our fun.

We took the family to the beach back in June for a couple of days. It was lots of fun to watch our granddaughter play with shear delight. She loves the sand and could dig and dig for hours.

Here she is with her Pop Pop as they play in the sand.

And after lots of playing, all girls have to take a break to relax.

The Day After the Wedding

Our flights home were set for Sunday, August 3rd so we had all of Saturday to spend in California. So we headed to the local Orange County Fair. It's a fair that runs for about a month, which was amazing in itself. Each of us found something to catch our interest.

First, me with the quilts in the Arts and Crafts building.

The quilts were hung very high up and therefore it made it difficult for quilt enthusiasts to really enjoy them. This wasn't a quilt show, where quilts are hung at eye level, but rather lots of various different crafts. In fact there were many "collections" displayed at eye level and who knew that folks collected such oddities. Sorry I didn't take pictures of the collections.




There were several huge cookers that were being used by various food vendors to cook mostly chicken halves and ribs as well as fajaitas. Those cookers were fairly typical, but then as we were leaving we came upon this cooker that was being used to cook huge hunks of beef that caught Don's eye. We took lots of pictures in case he ever decides to build one for himself.


Besides all the typical rides found at fairs, it also had livestock on display and various food competitions.

Wow they sure can grow huge lemons in California! The largest was a big as a grapefruit.



But they can't grow pumpkins as big as North Carolina. I've seen bigger ones at the local pumpkin patches here in October.

The Wedding

On Friday, August 1st, we attended the wedding that was the reason for going to southern Californaia. It was a beautiful day, sunny and actually not very hot at all, which was a surprise for me! I was expecting it to be much hotter and since it was breezy and dry it was very pleasant.

Here are Tommy and Libby McCraw, they are our good friends and parents of the groom.

This is the mother of the bride, Pat Tingwall being escorted by her son.

The bride, Amy being escorted by her father, Jerry Tingwall.

The bride and groom, Seth and Amy McCraw being presented as husband and wife. (That's Matt Bolinger in the background, the pastor who married them.)

This is Stacy, sister of the groom and her husband, Nate VanWassenhove. This shows what the attendants wore. Each girl had her choice of the style of the top. Nate was also a groomsmen and had on the designated tuxedo.

This was their cake, it was carrot cake. A very nice cake topper of their new initials and a bride holding a key and a groom with a black ball on his leg was at the bottom and interesting.

The wedding and reception were both held at a country club. The wedding was outside on the patio overlooking the golf course. The reception was just inside, behind the patio. That made it very convenient for us out of state guest.

We were treated with a fruit platter and various appetizers as we waited for the wedding party to have their pictures made. Then at the reception we had all previously chosen between filet mignon and either chicken or salmon. The chicken came with mashed potatoes and the salmon had rice with it. Everyone got the filet mignon as well as mixed vegetable medley. This was after we were each served a salad and rolls.

Mr. and Mrs. Seth McCraw making their entrance at the reception, which was filled with lots of music and dancing.

The couple headed off to a honeymoon in St. Lucia in the Caribbean.

California Trip Update

The wedding that we came here to attend is tonight. We did go down to Newport Beach yesterday and had a very nice seafood lunch. We had very delicious shrimp in the shell appetizer and Don had the "World's Best Clam Chowder" both were very good. Then Don had a combination seafood skewer with rice and cole slaw. I had crab cakes with potatoes and sliced tomatoes. All of it was very good, but a little high priced. Oh well it's not something we do everyday. Then after all that fun, we went to the rehearsal so Don could get his video taping instructions and then on to the rehearsal dinner at the local Outback Steakhouse.

Here I am at the end of the Newport Beach pier with the beach in the background.

Definitely too many people for me. But they do have a nice paved strip along the top of the beach for people to ride bikes, skate, walk or whatever. Something we see on television shows.

Then this is where we had our seafood lunch.

Here we are at the wedding rehearsal with Seth McCraw, the one who's getting married that we came to see.

Now off to the wedding at 6pm on Friday, August 1st.

California Earthquake!

Yes, if you've read the post for the last couple of days. I'm in California on a trip to attend a wedding. Don had to come out on business so we combined the two trips and are staying the whole week.

We changed hotels today, up until now we were closer to downtown LA. Today we've moved over to Buena Park, CA which is near Disneyland and only about 3 miles from the wedding location. As we were walking into the hotel to check in we felt the shaking. I was slipping and sliding and trying to keep my balance. I saw the trees shaking and asking Don what was going on. He said it was just wind and really wasn't surprised. I was scared and then just as we approached the hotel door we saw the staff and people inside running out the back door and a guy hopping over the desk counter. That's when we figured out it was an earthquake and walked back out to the parking lot. Overall, it was very short in duration, but very strong. We waited until we finally saw some of the staff walk back into the hotel. The housekeeping staff was very afraid to come into the building and even after we checked in, they still were refusing to come back in.

Here's a link to a news article, but I'm sure it's on the national news. Earthquake News Article

Now after the fact we're hearing on the news that it was a 5.4 magnitude earthquake with the center about 20 or so miles about northeast from us in Chino Hills. The news keeps talking about after shocks, but so far we haven't felt any of that. Lots of people who were driving at the time didn't even feel it. There are so many bumps in the road I guess it's hard to tell the difference.

So I can definitely say I've had my full California experience and the earthquake is a deal breaker for me. I'd hate to live here with this threat looming. There is absolutely no warning, not like our NC storms with all the warnings on television, etc.

So all seems to be well with us now.

The Promised Pictures

This is me taking a look at the Silent Oboes that Myra Burg makes.




And here are the Oboes close up. Amazing work, wonderful idea and workmanship.



This is Don sitting on the quirky bench just so you can tell it's a bench.

And here is the Dale Talley bench without him sitting on it. It's hard to see all the amazing details. There's an embedded heart shaped cupcake or jello mold in the back blue slat and on the side a little cabinet that opens. Just very unique... He make mailboxes, I'd love to have one, but ours gets knocked into or bashed by teenagers quite often so I don't want to risk something so expensive getting messed up.

For Sunday and Monday evening meals, this was what we saw as we sat outside the Cheesecake Factory and ate. Yes, we there both nights, but we at least had different food and split a different flavor of cheesecake slice each night.

California Trip

We arrived in California on Saturday and the flight was very uneventful, which is what you want with air travel these days! Don sat in first class and I had a very roomy seat in the regular class section at the exit row. We even had a proper lesson on what to do if an emergency required us to open the doors. So with an uneventful flight our service was not needed, but we still had plenty of room to stretch out our legs. Don sent back half of his lunch to me (the attendent said "I'm not suppose to do this" as if she'd get fired and thrown off the plane at any moment, I guess throwing it in the trash is much more acceptable.) Anyway, Don was very careful to only eat half and then share with me. That's a very thoughtful husband. When we landed, we found our hotel, a very nice Hilton (Don's company is paying) and then went to the nearby Macy's to purchase our wedding gift for the wedding we're attending this coming week-end. Then it was back to the hotel and early to bed, with a three hour time change it was about midnight eastern time.

The next day, Sunday we hit the road. We boiled down our choices of activities to a Salsa Festival up in Oxnard, CA or going to the LA zoo only a few miles from the hotel. We decided on the Salsa Festival and headed off. It was nice. Definitely a cultural experience. Lots of hispanic flavor with a live salsa band and lots of folks dancing. There were lots of hispanic style vendor's booths scattered around and then an official salsa sampling tent. For $5 one could purchase 10 tickets and a small back of nacho chips to try the participants salsa. Don did just that and he loved it. One salsa was is favorite, made from very fresh ingredients that meant we'd have to keep it refrigerated so we didn't buy any to bring home. Then we had real mexican tacos (different from those in NC because the meat is not ground up, more like small stew beef). Then we headed out and drove over to the beach to follow the Pacific Coast highway back down to LA.
We got to Malibu and saw signs for an art festival. So from the Salsa festival to a very high end art festival, we stopped.

I'll have to post pictures later (Don has the SD card that we used) but here are some of the links to some of our favorites.
My favorite and someone I've admired from the Fiber Arts magazine was Myra Burg (click to view her artwork) Her work is amazing and she was so friendly and very interesting to talk to. I'd love to have some of her work, but my budget won't afford that now!

Then another artist that we both thought was neat was this guy, Dale Talley (click to view his work, then click portfolio). He makes very quirky, whimsical, and fun looking furniture art. I've got a picture of Don sitting on a really unique bench (not shown on his website.) I'd love to have the bench at our house to have folks come over and have their picture made sitting in it. It's hard to look at it this guy's stuff and not smile.

So pictures to follow. We finished the Art festival, didn't get anything to eat since you have to buy food tokens, and I hate that system. We were about to get some kettle corn, but the sample didn't impress us so off we went. We drove down to Santa Monica and the crowds and traffic was awful! My goodness, cars all over the place. I guess I don't need to complain quite so badly about our crowded lake.

We then got back to our hotel and went to the bar for appetizers. Don is an Honors member with Hilton since he stays so much with them during the year. It's nice to travel with him, especially when he's on business. His status with USAirways got him the first class upgrade (forgot to mention that, it wasn't that he bought first class for himself and not for me.) Since he had to do computer work, it made sense for him to sit in first class, and no sense neither one of us enjoying it, and he did after all send back half of his lunch, a sandwich and fruit.
So here at Hilton we get a free breakfast buffet each morning and a free appetizer in the evenings. The first evening we sat and listened to a live Jazz band and had mini burgers. (We're getting our cultural fix of music this summer, Missouri - blue grass music, then Jazz and a Salsa band here in CA.) Last night we had gourmet potato skins with a choice of toppings, ours was gorgonzola cheese with bacon, and BBQ glazed chicken wings.

After waiting a couple hours while Don did some prep work for Monday morning's work, we went out for dinner. We came across a very nice open air type mall in Glendale fairly near our hotel. It was very nice, sort of like Birkdale for those familiar with that shopping area. Only more upscale shops, but still a Barnes and Noble, and a spectacular fountain that I absolutely love! I love fountains anyway and this one was computer programmed to shoot out various combinations of water sprays. Then about every 1/2 hour our so a special show comes on with a very elaborate water spraying configuration, special lights and music. Really impressive! We ate at the Cheesecake Factory and that was a first for me. Don made sure that we were outside and on the fountain side. That really made it very special! It was funny though, we were both not very hungry and couldn't finish our food at all. We did save room to split one of their delicious cheesecakes, for us a chocolate coconut cream slice.

Ok, so if you've made it this far, you've got to be ready to quit reading. I promise pictures later.
Today, Monday, Don's at work and I'm mostly staying up in the room watching a Sign Language video to get CEU's for upcoming licensure renewal in NC.

Oh and a footnote. The zoo or Salsa festival decision turned out to be a good one. When we got back after dinner and turned on the news it turned out that there had been a fire in Griffith Park next to the zoo and everyone in the zoo was evacuated. So while the zoo wasn't touched by fire and it's reopened today, Monday, it was a very good decision not to go there after all!

Easter 2008

Ok, so I've received complaints (mostly from one person, Mom) about not seeing any new postings of my granddaughter from Easter. There were lots of cute pictures and it was hard to pick just one or two which I'm sure most readers would prefer. I knew there was a way to create a slide show and post a link on the blog, but it's taken me this long, about a month, to figure out how to make that work. YEAH!!! I got it to work. So for those of you who use slide shows often, go ahead and click. Those not so familar with how it works, here's what I know. While you were reading this this paragraph, hopefully the pictures were scrolling on there. That was them loading on. Then a green arrow appeared and that's what you click to get it started. The pictures will be small, but if you double click the pictures I think it will appear bigger. I added captions to help give the pictures a little flavor. Don't worry if you can't read all of that, it's just for fun. Ok, I think I stalled long enough. The green arrow should be there by now and enjoy. I hope it works for you! If not, send me an email and I'll see if I can help you through it.

Valentines Day Flowers

My husband has found the key to my flower preferences and also the key to lasting appreciation. He buys me orchids. I have always preferred living flowers rather than the cut variety and with the orchids they last a very long time. I have a rather large orchid collection, (Fay knows, she helped me gather them in when she was here and we were having a surprise freeze.) Orchids thrive off of neglect I think, because I really don't do too much with them. There's a baker's rack in my kitchen where they stay for the winter, and then when summer comes they all go outside to spend the time under the trees in the shade. Thanks to my good husband, they do get watered automatically for 30 minutes everyday and I'm sure they are thankful to him for that, because otherwise the water would be sparse. (We're on a private well system for those concerned about our drought and water restrictions.)

Sorry for the rather dark picture, but the others had terrible shadows and I was busy with other projects, so not enough time to photograph them again at this point.

The purple one to the left is one of the new ones that he gave me this Valentines, well actually a week before. It is one just like one that continuously bloomed for almost 2 years, it had flowers the entire time. He was very happy to get his money's worth out of that one. The small yellow ones are 2 of the ten that my mom bought me two years ago at the Southern Spring Show that comes to Charlotte every year. Ten small orchids that didn't even have pots. Just picked out and put into paper bags as I remember. I came home and potted them up myself and have watched them carefully. Now after only two years they are blooming. There is a third one that is getting ready to bloom, purple it looks like. The other big orchid on the right is a repeat bloomer. Don gave that to me for some previous occasion and it's blooming again. It's always a big deal for me to have an orchid bloom again. And especially this much. It's yellow with magenda strips so it gives it a peach color. Very nice. Plus, now my husband gets the appreciation for his thoughtfulness all over again. So much better than cut flowers.

Then also for this valentines he gave me this as well.

It too is an orchid, Cymbidium I think it's called. Very showy, but the blooms don't usually last as long as the others. I took it outside to photograph in natural light.

Surface Design Group Challenge

WARNING: Lots of Quilting Details below. If you're not a quilter, just look at the pictures and skip most of the writing.

I belong to a local Surface Design Group and last year our challenge was to pick a random paint chip from a bag and make an 8 1/2" x 11" piece based on or featuring this color. We could pick two and of course I did.

The first color I picked was called "Blackberry Harvest" a very dark purple.

The second color was called "Tutti Frutti" a very pink pink.

I immediately knew that I'd dye up the fabric I needed and do a value gradation with it.

I did that back in the summer, and then I had to let the fabric age (not really, but it sounds good.) The pieces were due on January 20th and I was cutting and making the two pieces on January 19th.

Here's what I came up with.

This first one is called "Tutti Frutti Bubbles"

I cut strips from the gradation fabrics (very pale pink to a very dark pink and about 7 or 8 shades in between). I pieced them together and then sliced them up in the other directions, shifted the strips and pieced those together to get one inch square checker board grid. I was going to sew circles all over it to make something that resembled bubbles, but it was very boring looking and also not wide enough, it was suppose to be 8 1/2" wide, but all I has was 7 inches and anything I tried to come up with just looked like it was slapped on to make it wider, an afterthought. So I did something very daring for me, I drew circles on my checkered board and cut out the circles of various sizes. Then I attached those to a darker boarder with applique zig zag. I was then much happier with that result. I gave it a whimsy type quilting stitch (on the advice from my friend Sarah Ann Smith who says stippling can be boring, great advice Sarah!) It worked for this piece do not do the stippling! I may add beeds eventually when I get more time. But the overall effect was to make the view think of a Tutti Frutti Bubblegum or Ice Cream, a sort of Soda Shop type feel.

Here's the second piece, "Frozen Blackberry Harvest" The name comes from the fact that while I was working on this piece the day before it was due the temperture here in the south was rapidly dropping and it was snowing all day (nothing was sticking.) A southern treat I learned from my husband is to pick blackberries in the summer, wash them up and add a little sugar and then freeze them. Then later sometime, they are taken out of the freezer and milk is added. The concoction is stirred together to make a frozen blackberry treat, a sort of ice cream stuff.

This was fused pieced in a Melody Johnson style. Fusible web is first applied to the whole piece of fabric and the paper is removed. (Wonder Under is the best for this process.) Then I cut up the fabric into curved pieces and overlapped them just a little to keep them together. This is all fused to the batting. I used all seven of my gradations values for this piece.

So I got the pieces done and turned in! Yeah for me!!! We're scanning each person's piece and printing them out to each have a book of the whole challenge project.

Next year we're doing a different challenge, this time the piece is something that relates to the theme, "Farfetched" and we're suppose to make one 5x7 piece for each person in the group. If I plan on getting this done my July 31st. Now that's "Farfetched!"

Yikes It's Been a While!

Wow! It's been a while since I posted anything here. Sorry, but it's been busy around here. I didn't promise to be regular about it anyway.

One of the activities that's taken a very high priority is the opportunity to take care of my granddaughter every once in a while. She's walking and talking and lots of fun. She's only 13 months old, but she amazes me each time I see her with her new discoveries.

Everytime she sees me she signs "dog" She loves to go feed my dog, a Springer Spaniel.

So here she is busy at work, our future CEO of some big company shuffling and sorting papers.

Faith is very please with her work for the day. She gets paid with cheese bits or grapefruit slices, not a bad rate!

I know that's plenty of grandchild pictures for one post, but it's been a while and just be thankful I haven't posted play by play pictures of Christmas.