Well I'll be...

....notice the leaves aren't even done changing colors....

Yesterday, Meghan saw a flock of turkey's walking up our neighbors driveway.

I took this picture from the front door.

Here's the same shot today. (just a little wider one)

******

I've quilted the Quilts for Kids tops-no pictures yet will take when their bound.

I've quilted for others too.

Libby's

and today if I can get my butt in gear I'm going to sew the binding on the Christmas sampler quilt. It's been sitting on the back of a chair waiting patiently for weeks now....

I do have the most patient quilts.

 *wink*

Libby and I had a little quilt shop retail fun on Thursday. 

 I was bad.  

I read this post and fell in love.  And then forgot about it.  Until I saw 

this book...the only copy...I flipped through it, my heart still did a little skip when I got to the St Nick quilt....I put it down, I shopped around....I came back...flipped through it again.  I looked around,, no quilting police to be seen (to arrest me for even THINKING about starting another project). 

 I brought it home. 

 I shopped my stash, which is sadly lacking in plaids.

 I will be needing to go here real soon.  I've been wanting to take a little trip to visit Farmhouse Fabrics for a while, this is a good excuse reason too.

****

I'm still hobbling  more of a limp but not as bad.

 I will survive. 

And probably be able to predict future weather events, perhaps even like an inch or so of snow on October 29th --who knows. It will add to my character for sure!  

fun times, fun times...Life is Good.

PS:  I get a kick out of little things, like just now I hit the spell check button, scanned this post and lo and behold not a yellow highlighted word to be found.

I am the queen of the misspelled word; rare is the post without at least 3-4 mistakes.

Yep, it's the little things.

Block-a-Days

On the left are Feb 21-28th and alone on the right is Feb 29th.

Yesterday I went over to Libby's (no blog) and we had a 'sew/gabfest'.  Fun, fun.

Wednesday was hubby's birthday.The kids came over for dinner and Meghan was off work!  It was 1st time we've all been together since Christmas!

The M. compass is getting quilted today (or at least a good start on it)! 
Thanks to all for the lovely comments from my earlier post.  I found my information on this quilt and was aghast that I had started piecing this in June of 1994.  OMGosh! In my notes I wrote: "I started this just to see if I could make this challenging block. I'm hand piecing the compass's but am adding the 4 corner pieces to make the compass square by machine.  It is very tricky and I am really excited that I can do it!" 

I remember using what seemed like 50+ pins for each block when I did that step. Here's a picture of the back of one of the blocks.

I finished piecing the 25th block in 1996. In Feb of '97 I started sewing the top together and on 5/13/98 I added the final outside border and I wrote  "it took 4 hours!" to sew that border on. 
I adapted the pattern from the book Scrap Patchwork and Quilting by Marti Mitchell--published 1992.

PS.  It's snowing again...a lot.  I wasn't believing the forecast of 3-6 inches by tonight, but from the looks of things out the window it's going to need shovelling later.  I do believe a couple more weeks like this and I too will be pining for spring. 

One T-shirt quilt

I quilted #1 t-shirt quilt today.  I loaded it last night, but was tired, wanted to watch the Olympics and frankly was a little concerned with how it would quilt. 
I had no trouble with it at all!  I used
Superior's King tut thread on top and Sew Fine in the bobbin. I just did a big meander on it.  A few of the blocks, I outlined around a motif but not much of that.  The only problem I could say I had was some of the seams were so bulky, I did have to really go slow and push down the top at the seam to get the hopping foot over without causing a wrinkle.  I tried to press all the seams open but some of them flipped during loading (or I sewed them wrong when I was assembling top).

On the snow front, well it finally seems to have stopped. And the sun has come out.  I think it has made the top of the snow nice and crusty and Otis can walk on it, Annie too, but she sinks a bit. 

 It was the first day in weeks that Otis ventured off the deck.  Annie checked out the entire yard and discovered that the snow it piled higher than the fence.  UH-oh.  She tried to jump out but I was watching and growled at her so she backed off.      

  I'm standing at our sidewalk--behind me the longer part of the driveway and around the back is a lovely cake frosting smoothness.  They say we got about 22", that might be the official totals but the picket fence around the driveway is 3 1/2 feet high and you can only see the top 6 inches...2 feet, 3 feet what ever it is-

it's a lot of HEAVY snow! 

Tomorrow, as long as I can move, we will dig out the lower 40!

****** 

I did sew this afternoon and I'm going to do some hand stitching tonight unless I fall asleep. Zzzzzz.


Edit:  Paul did finally get home this evening about 6pm!  He had to work  Friday night and then got stuck there, as the roads were so bad. 

The view from my deck door

It's a lot of snow when you have to start shoveling the deck!  Mr. Otis stopped when I opened the door for him and gave me a look as if to say "it's deeper than me; I think I can hold it".  So I got the shovel and made him a path to the steps and a path to the birdfeeder...
the path to the feeder is for me not Otis! :)

*******

I get to look at this view when I'm at the computer.  Sometimes when I do I get a thick feeling in my chest; I am a very lucky person.  My life isn't perfect but it's damn good. 

*******

A Winter Wonderland in my own back yard!

 Woohoo it snowed. 

 I got all bundled up and Annie and I went in the back yard to play.  I also shoveled out 3/4 of the driveway, hey, I'm not as young as I am in my head,  and it's a big driveway.  And yes, I took 2 Advil as soon as I came in so I'll be able to walk around later without making little gaspy noises. (With age come a little brains...)
 Paul shoveled it this morning before he left and there was a good 2 more inches when I did it.  No pictures of me, Annie is a worse photographer than I! 
But here are a few of her having fun.  She's going to be 9 this summer, which gives me a lump in my throat to think about.  We've had some great dogs share our lives but she is the best. 

Oh how she would love to run free in those woods, so dark and deep.  But see that spanky new fence, no more running free for her.  It also deters the deer, they can still jump in and out easily to get to the apples from our trees, but at least this fence is sturdy and they have to go over, not through.

And the kids rope swing.  Paul put it up a few years after we moved in (1989).  I still take a swing occasionally in the summer--one of these days that rope is going to give out.  And boy, is Paul going to have a good laugh...after he makes sure I'm OK, of course.