M.O.M.

 

Well, I'm feeling like the luckiest mom ever as I've just had a very lovely Mother's Day with my family. A visit from daughter Zoe and her friend Viv, who were picked up at the most southerly BART station by DH and DS. They picked up a great lunch for us from our favorite sandwich place near my mom's house. Then we all went on a little post-lunch walkabout, including to the Future Farmers of America farm next door to my mom's community where we got to walk through the stalls and check out all the animals, cows, sheep, goats. After a quick jaunt on the freeway overpass and back again, we all inhaled our very tasty Costco Tiramisu, actually speaking of inhaling, watch out for that powdered cocoa on top, several of us had coughing fits, stir it up before eating. We also did some helpful gardening at my Mom's, got her new umbrella set up and the A/C unit put back in the window for the summer. 

Lots of fun and conversation and laughter. Just what I needed. And this picture above is my very favorite present, thanks to photographer, Viv.

Here's to all mothers every where, some great words from the great Rebecca Solnit:

"Mother is both a noun and a verb. Some people had great mothers but lost them, some had or have mothers who never mothered them or stopped mothering them for some reason, treated them as adversaries or as worthless, and Mother's Day can be a punitive day for all those for whom this is true.

The other half of the question of what there is to celebrate is what mothered and mothers you, how you mother yourself, how you celebrate and recognize what cares for you and takes care of you, and what you care for in return....

May you locate the ten thousand mothers that brought you into being and keep you going, no matter who and where you are. May you be the mother of uncounted possibilities and loves."

Chunks of Love

 Happy Valentine's Day! 💝💞💘💗💖💕👄mwah!👄💝💞💘💗💖💕

Details from a Valentine's Day quilt that I made in 2010, I quilted in "All you need is love love love"

Well, here's the Patchwork Palooza quilt, all chunked. Be-Chunked? Chunk-ified? Or just plain Chunky?

Or maybe it's just time for some Chunky Monkey ice cream? (which is gluten free btw). 

It's now sitting up there in just six pieces, all are two blocks wide, three are three blocks high, and three are four blocks high. I'm thinking I'll sew the fours together, the threes together and then there will be one long seam in the middle. And then I have to consider if it needs a 3" or 4" border of the navy blue on the outside. And what to put on the back.

First Clue Cut

 

I got a little time in the sewing room and cut out the remaining hourglass block units for the first clue of the Lupine Mystery quilt

Yes, indeed, our power is out (as of Wednesday 2 AM), so it's a Merry Merry Mountain Christmas! We're having crazy wind, and lots of rain, and today a short-lived Tornado Warning! Thankfully that wasn't an actuality, but there was a super intense burst of hail and then diagonal rain. We postponed having my mom come over for Christmas dinner today and are instead hoping for a Boxing Day dinner tomorrow.

Musical Interlude

 In lieu of any sewing related content, as there hasn't been much of late around here, how about some new-ish (and old) holiday songs I've been enjoying this year:

For enjoying today, (Happy Solstice by the way), here's a great one to celebrate with: Winter Solstice Song by Lisa Thiel.

Leslie Odom Jr. (he played Aaron Burr in Hamilton on Broadway) and Cynthia Erivo (she plays Elphaba in the new movie Wicked), two divine voices on Winter Song.

Somehow I missed this song from 2008, it's The Hives with Cyndi Lauper, A Christmas Duel

I recommend the entire Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings album, It's A Holiday Soul Party, but here's just one of the songs, God Rest Ye Merry Gents. There's even a great version of Little Drummer Boy on here too. 

Tim Minchin's White Wine in the Sun always makes me cry, but it's so very good.

From the Guardians of the Galaxy Christmas Special, the "kidnapped" Kevin Bacon and the Old 97's with a pretty good and new Christmas song. Mostly fun to watch if you liked the GoG movies.

And last but not least, a short history on The Waitresses and their very excellent song, Christmas Wrapping.

Just Barely Festive

 

I made a little Thanksgiving bow for Meg to wear.  That's all the sewing I managed yesterday.

Just a random strip left over from the orange bullseye quilt, the corners rounded and zig-zagged around the edge.

Only just barely festive, as seen here with a smiling DS in the backyard at my parent's house. 

She was on leash because of the coyote pair that lives there. They just cruise back and forth right next to the patio in the unfenced yard, hunting for rabbits and apparently not bothering with the gophers.

Thankful Day

 

Today's the day for us to think about what we have to be thankful for in the midst of Thanksgiving celebrations and all the hustle and bustle that it entails. I'm thankful for everything that's been growing and is now ready to harvest and enjoy.

I'm thankful for the ingenuity of our fellow humans to make bridges and freeways and cars so that we can easily get from here to there and back home again, even in a big wind and rainstorm. And for all the people who work in our various government agencies that regulate all of those enterprises so that our travels are as safe as possible. 

I'm thankful for clever people who come up with new ways to make us laugh in unexpected places, especially when we really need that laugh.

I'm thankful for artists and musicians who continue to thrive and prove that they can still make magic even into their late 70's (the bassist on the right is 78! The other guys are all in their sixties)

I'm thankful for the people who get things done even when it's raining or more than a hundred degrees when I can't really function and help out much. In this picture that would be DH and his big front yard project, ongoing, but nearing completion.

I'm thankful to have the privilege of still being in the place where I had the foresight to have planted a tree years ago and then for the joy it brings us when it finally comes into its own and wows us every fall.

I'm thankful for the bluest blue open sunny skies above, and snakes guarding our oldest dashboards.

I'm thankful the trees have finally turned and the tunnel of green has become the tunnel of yellow and to have the luck and privilege to get to live in such a beautiful forest.

I'm thankful for you reading and I hope you have a great Thanksgiving or a terrific Thursday.

Holidazed

The Holiday Celebrations are continuing apace and I've been feeling a bit like our tree-topper.

Green chopstick to the rescue. Stiffen up that spine and carry on.

Korben decided that the only decoration that needed to be fought with were the Santa hats.

The usual Cioppino for Christmas Eve.

The cats were having fun under the tree so we didn’t put any presents out until the last second.

DS Alex gave us a lovely ceramic skull, almost life-sized.

Korben enjoyed the furry tops of the empty stockings.

Honey baked spiral ham is the traditional Christmas Day feast at my parent’s house.

The other hit present was a new spaghetti strainer (FSM approved), combined here with the skull that probably needs a name.

I made “modern” almond spritz cookies because I ran out of time to cool the dough enough to use in the cookie press.

And now we’re enjoying spending time with my brother and his son at my parent’s house.

Pshew! a lot of fun stuff but not enough time for sewing. Tomorrow hopefully 🤞 

Thanksgiving Report

 

The Thanksgiving Table before picture. We pulled out the extra leaf to make it longer, polished it up, got out the decorations and china.

I spent so much time ironing the napkins and table cloth. Regretting the choice of 100% cotton the whole time but still loving how it tuns out on the table. Next time I'm putting it in the dryer on the steam setting first. 

DS and Korben greeting my parents as they arrived. They hadn't been over since before Covid so it was a big deal.

Here's the three of us, picture credit to mom. My mom gave us these Thanksgiving aprons from a charity that she reports, one a year until we had three. She was pretty thrilled that we were wearing them. The blue thing on the wall is a NanoLeaf which responds to noise/music/etc.

This was the one and only food picture I took unfortunately, but that turkey was awesome. Diestel Farms never fails us.

My SIL's family joined us too and brought their dog, Ginger along. She had a good time running around with Meg chasing the cats. 

The End

Hope your day was great too!

Thankful So Thankful

 

Full of thankfulness today. And soon we will be full of turkey and all the trimmings too of course. 

I'm thankful for so many things, and I was going to do a big long list, but instead I'm going to say:

 I'm Thankful For All Of It

The good, the bad, and the ugly. The sublime, the heartbreak and all the in-between.

Hope that you have a good day whether celebrating Thanksgiving or not. 

Cut On Dotted Line?

 

Oh the joys of fabric panels. I decided to cut the new one up so I could mix it up with the previously purchased panel and see how it went together. Before I got to that point, I realized there might be a problem. Can you can see my issue already? The little dotted lines between the image blocks are placed right on the bottom of the image. If you cut on the dotted line line, as I did with the snow man, then when you sew, you'll lose 1/4" of the image. 

So is it better for these to cut out with a 1/4" around the dotted lines and use those lines as the sewing line? The chances of me actually sewing right on that dotted line are slim. Which would leave little printed black dashes which would really show on that white background.

I had already cut out the previous panel images, all on the dotted lines. But none of those images are running into the same issue, they're all very centered compared to the new panel's images. It's good to see they're really close to the same size, which would make them easier to use together in one quilt design.

I'd forgotten how great these animals on the first panel are, they're really cute aren't they? And peaceful too, somehow.

This is the other fabric I bought to go with the original panel.  A jelly roll of Moda Christmas prints, and a matching red, green and brown. The grey was stored along with it, but I can't remember if that was my plan or not. Probably.

These animals really make me happy. They're stylized in a way that is so simple, almost elegant, but to me they're not too cutesy. 

 Yes, they match pretty well, and I think the background fabric is even close enough for my eye in color. This new panel is also offered on a decidedly off-white background but these are both white (phew). 

It's quite a lot of cuteness but of slightly different types. Instead of mixing them up, I may have the animal panel featured on one side and the snowman/santa/reindeer/polar bear over on the other. I think I'll have to put them all up on the wall together to decide. And then it's time to design a quilt to use them well. EQ8 here I come.

Situation Update

 

We're back to Situation Mostly Normal now. The three weeks solid of rain have finally taken a break. It was gloriously sunny out yesterday. We're cleaning up from the garage flood, which is a lot of bleah work I won't bore you with, but the drier days will help out. The slide on our road hasn't budged, and the trees have gotten trimmed back from the power lines in more than a few places.

Our power finally got restored on Sunday night, so we ran around and did chores like laundry, running the dishwasher, and vacuuming with All Of The Lights On. One of the very rare occasions I was happy to do chores. We also got to turn the lights on our tree back on. 

It was a long nearly two weeks (12 days) of no power, which meant we didn't plug in the tree. It made me sad to have it sitting there all decorated but dark.

It's really really nice to have our tree lit up again. Thankfully, it's still very green even with the use of the wood stove keeping us warm during the power outage so it can stay up a little while longer. 

Happy Solstice

 

"In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer." ~ Albert Camus

Solstice Blessing to you all!

Kitty's 1st

 We finally broke down and got a Christmas tree on Saturday. All because I watched a compilation of cats knocking down Christmas trees and decided I couldn't deprive LeeLoo of her chance at that experience this year. As you can see, she is very fascinated by the garland being put on the tree. 

At first she was just a bit upset that her cat climbing tree perch was moved out of its usual place and replaced with the tree. She watched very closely as we decorated.

She sniffed around the whole thing for a while, as this is a big change in her environment.  When we put ornaments on the tree, I chose to not put any glass or breakable ones on just in case, we still had plenty.

She finally tried to eat a little bit of the Douglas Fir needles, nibbling at the very end of the lower branches. I thought that the face she made was hilarious and I haven't seen a repeat of tree sampling.

Here's Meg making sure that she's okay and not going to actually eat the entire tree. You can see the disaster prevention measures a little better in this picture. We always tie the very top of the tree to the curtain rod, as a previous cat definitely knocked the tree over a long time ago (Zippy, R.I.P.) This year, for some reason my DH put garland on it? Also, the wooden box we set the tree stand on is reinforced by screwing the tree stand onto the box.

She's pretty entranced with the whole shebang, so far so good. I have a feeling it'll get weird once we start putting presents out. I'll have to make her something with catnip to wrap up and see if she can find it.

So that's what I spent most of my energy on this weekend, no sewing happened to report on, just a lot of power outages and an enormous amount of rainfall, nearly 7" this weekend, and 13" this month so far.