Lovely day. took an hour to go tooling about looking for views and photos for the grant project. Had a nice time. It was warm enough that my pile vest over a long sleeved shirt was good enough - chilly at first, but ok in the sun. I **MUST** remember to put boots on before doing any more "off-roading." Of course, I was walking in a few places today where I thought - if I go through the pack, I'll be up to my hips and might be here til spring REALLY comes. Speaking of which - Happy Spring!
Tonight was East Side Quilters' meeting. We had a special show and tell of first/early quilts and current quilts. I didn't bring my newest quilts - they see those on a regular basis. I did bring photos of two quilts made for previous boyfriend. And I brought the quilt I made during my engagement (quilt as you go attic windows) and my danish cookie tin quilt. Pat recalled our strange field trip to a quilt show in Ocean City NJ. We were new at this then, and when I was asked to display this little round quilt as an invitational there, we took off. Stayed at a great little B&B, found a great quilt shop. The show itself was a guild show and to amuse ourselves, we went around and privately judged all the quilts. That was actually a good experience for us.
It was valuable for me, as I told the East Siders, because I thought I'd made this superlative quilt - WAY outside my box and experience. And I lost to Charlotte Warr Andersen. Who? Well, I got to see that quilt in person. Wow. 1990.
Well the big accomplishment today was getting cat fud for the cats, specifically Bill. He seems to have turned a corner - - still needs soft food but needs more of it. Right now he and Mrs. Bill are curled up together fast asleep. Anyway, with seven cats you go through a lot of food and litter and paper towels.
Other than that, I sort of poked around. My tripod account got reinstated towards noon which was nice. No official explanation of what went wrong, but my guess is new authentication db meets abuse software. Oh well.
Tonight I went looking for a stack of black print fabric and found:
my new cutting mat that has been missing a couple weeks
my box of rolls of film that I bought at Target a few weeks ago
some fabric that I'd gotten in that time frame and thought I'd put away....
So what does this tell you? My sewing room is a mess.
And to add injury to insult, while I was putting away some of this fabric, the new winter quilt fell down. The wooden bar that it's pinned to clocked me on the top of both hands, leaving a bad welt on my left hand. That HURT. I'm icing it now, but I bet it's ugly in the morning.
Sometime during the night, weather started happening - rain/sleet/ice - so when I got up this morning, it was quite icy. Road didn't look too bad. I figured I wanted to turn the car around at the least, since it had been sitting for a day. Took it to the post office and then up the hill past the Columbia county line (towards Old Chatham). From there, I had a view of a big puff of smoke north of rt 20. Guess that's why all the fire trucks were scurrying around.
After that, I parked back in the driveway and walked down Kinderhook Lane. There wasn't much to see actually, except for a few bushes that had inch long drops hanging from them. OK, icicles. But they really were drops. And similar drops were falling off the trees which made quite a bit of noise.
Had a nice visit with my folks today and even got dinner. After dinner we had a little appleworks tutorial.
When I came home there was a nice message from my friend and former co-worker Julia - a little pep talk re job searches. Julia is going to walk in a 60 mile walk to help fight breast cancer so maybe I should be giving HER pep talks! Thanks Julia.
Yeah! All the cats went skittering off this afternoon, although I hadn't heard anything yet. Lo and behold it was the UPS man with my camera, back from being repaired. I of course had to test it out. I updated the winter quilt and to give some balance, took some pictures as a gift for you
Tonight we're supposed to get mixed precip with the emphasis on ice. Glad I don't have an early commute, LOL.
On that topic, still sending out resumes and going on interviews. Broadening my search as it were, but still trying. Got a call from a company today and in my brief phone interview was asked the human/technology ratio I'd prefer. The opening they had she said was only 30% human interaction and she was pretty sure it wouldn't suit me. She was probably right! Interesting question though.
Really pushed on getting the bar quilt done AND rummaged around in the stash until I found a couple of things that would work for the backing. Well. I'm not sure anyone will ever be able to sleep under this quilt. Be sure to check out the "ugly" backing. Now back to the regularly scheduled programming -- aka - the winter quilt.
Good thing too since we're having, all together now, the "blizzard of 2001." What a fizzle so far. All these schools and businesses closed down for a big few inches of snow. we were predicted to get 24 plus inches. It went further north and they got a foot so far. Just avalanched off the roof and sounded like 24 inches though. Guess I'll be shovelling out my car tomorrow.
Wow, time flies when you're having fun, eh? I have actually been working at various things. Even managed a bit of housework!
I planned out, bought for, made sample for and packaged up a whole lot of "kits" for the 2002 NYQ! raffle quilt. 20 kits for border blocks and 5 kits (needed 6 and made one) blocks for the center. That took several days.
I looked at and poked at and re-pinned a bit the winter quilt which is ready to applique a bit, add the borders and layer for quilting.
I filled out and sent in my quilt registration for the Vermont quilt festival. Didn't have a plain ol' photo and sent them a rather nice print out of a digital image (Elegy - one of the mourning quilts finished last year).
this of course got me thinking about the fact that every year I've "debuted" a quilt at NYQ! and that I found myself with several quilts done but nothing "new" for this year. Despite the fact that I'd planned to debut a four patch bar quilt. Which sat in pieces on my so-called cutting table. I rearranged the stacks in the sewing room, found the stacks of pieces and whomped them together. Now there are five strips of four patches and 6 strips to go around them, and 2 of each sewn together to start the top. If I can keep on this way, maybe, just maybe i can get this layered on wednesday. A girl can dream, right?
Oh, and I've been on a few interviews. One particularly bad one, with an agency - not for a particular job. Very bad. Another one that was rather interesting with some folks that seemed like they'd be fun to work with. More coming next week.
So yes, it's been a busy sort of week or so. More quilting ahead!
