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!