Unexpected afternoon off

Posted on October 5, 2009 by Suzanne

Not sick, no.

Injured by recess football (again).

He got pushed and bit his tongue. I won’t show you the picture, suffice it to say that it is a really big cut and it looks really nasty. So nasty that he’s going to have trouble eating and playing his saxophone for a few days.

Needless to say, he won’t be playing recess football again in the near future. He and his brother both have come home with more than enough scraped up elbows and wrists and knees and…

I find myself being very reactionary about this, and I’m trying to resist the urge too much. ON the one hand, it drives me crazy when we have to stop this or recall that or go all bonkers after one kid got hurt (usually being stupid or not being supervised). This, though. The nurse wishes they would outlaw recess football: she sees a TON of injuries. The 6th graders get to play on the grass. 4th and 5th graders are relegated to the street and the concrete, respectively. (They aren’t allowed to play together because…there are too many of them, and the younger ones would probably get even more hurt…)

Too bad they can’t go play on the HUGE FOOTBALL FIELD that is just steps away from their playground. Yes, I know that would be SACRILEGE, to have the snot-nosed kids WRECKING the pristine grass of the almighty football field.

(photo didn’t turn out very nicely, so I used a Seventies action from Pioneer Woman to make it “look” like it was supposed to be grainy and stangely colored).

The spirit was willing

Posted on October 5, 2009 by Suzanne

But…the technology was weak last night. I wanted to post, but my stupid server was down.

Sometimes technology can be a big old stupid-head.

I’m going to talk about my postcards for the MQR swap, so if you are participating and don’t want to see what you are getting until you get it, you should probably stop reading now.

Continue reading →

Cocoa, an update

Posted on October 3, 2009 by Suzanne

If you come visit my house and sit down, you have to be prepared to have a big brown dog set her big brown head on your lap. And then she’ll stand there for absolutely as long as you can possibly bear to continue petting her head.

She sleeps in our room, and many nights she’ll try to join us in bed. Mark will go sit in HER chair, which usually gets her interest, so she hops down and joins him.

Last night she was sitting on the floor looking at us, and I said something to him about the big brown dog staring at him.

“If you don’t make eye contact with her, she eventually goes away.”

Sure enough, she wandered away after a few minutes.

Sometimes we do let her climb in bed with us, but never if we actually expect to sleep. If she isn’t being petted, she wants to know why not and does her darndest to get our attention, up to and including making use of a really big wet sloppy tongue. And then, when she is getting petted, the big tail starts thumping.

Most of the time, though, she is one of the calmest dogs I’ve ever known, and since she’s such a big girl, that is something I’m grateful for. She seems to have fit into our family quite nicely, and even Katie, who might pretend otherwise, seems to like having her around.

Greetings from the land of the crazy

Posted on October 2, 2009 by Suzanne

So, the next big event around here is the Gals and Pals shopping day: next weekend. Speaking of which, I’m supposed to be a model in the style show, and I forgot to call the clothing store that is doing the style show to make an appointment to get outfitted. Note to self: make phone call.

The key thing to remember here is that I’m prepping my make-and-take project NOW, and not, say, next Friday. (This represents real growth on my part, I think.) I think that the idea is actually going to work as planned, so I’m willing to talk about it. It’s actually Mom’s idea: we are going to do fiber postcards. Really, really, simple, most-of-its-already-done fiber postcards.

I’m going to have the postcards all fused and zigzag the edges, and a bunch of prefused fabric ready for people to cut into simple shapes. No sewing, just fusing shapes in place. I still need to make a couple more samples, but here’s a start:

(the heart cherries are based on something I saw on Tracey aka peppermintpatcher’s blog). The white pumpkin is based on wallhanging I’m working on.

So, the crazy part? Yeah. I need to prep about 75-100 cards. This, my MQResource postcard swapping friends, is why I’m going to be late on my postcard swapping obligation…

After this event, I think the next big thing is my trip to teach at Quilting with Machines*** in Ohio. After that is the high school musical, though, that actually starts in earnest next week, when I get to start going to rehearsals. After THAT, I can’t remember what’s next. Oh! After that is my trip to see my sister and her family for a long weekend… And somewhere in there I have several big customer quilt projects.

Tonight, though, I guess we are going to watch the movie Elf. Mark called and suggested the boys run to the library to pick out a movie. No idea how or why they chose this one, but…maybe it’ll be good for a few laughs??

October?

Posted on October 1, 2009 by Suzanne

I read someone’s comment about wondering where September went. The heck with that, I want to know where AUGUST went.

Today’s weather makes it feel like it’s more like mid-November. Rain (and lots of it), cold (mid-50s), and WIND. Howling wind. Yuck.

On a brighter note, at least it’s not snowing.

Yet.

I really thought I’d gotten an in-focus picture, but clearly I was wrong. This is Checkerboard Stars. I think this is the 3rd time I’ve made it, and this time I went for something that looked more like the pattern cover. I really like this pattern, and have liked each version of it that I’ve made. Though, my Christmas version is my favorite… I don’t seem to have a full shot of the Christmas version on the blog (at least not that I can find in 30 seconds of searching, but this post has a full shot of a patriotic version that I made for a baby, plus a quick look at the Christmasy one.

I was tossing quilts around because it’s time to move things — and generally do a clean-up of the shop in anticipation of the Gals and Pals event happening in town on the 10th. (We did this last year, it’s a shopping/style show/hangout with your friends kind of a day.) I’m way behind on getting my make-and-take project ready and need to get working on that tonight. I’ll share the plan AFTER I make sure the plan is actually going to work.

(If anyone is relatively local and would like more info on the event, send me an e-mail, and I can let you know the plans: suzanne at suzanneearley dot net).

The other shop sample quilt I’ve made recently but not shared is this one:

I can’t remember it’s name. The pattern I used is from Kim Diehl’s book…simple something. The name is escaping me at the moment.

Both photos are slightly fuzzy, and I didn’t do close-ups of the quilting, because it’s just allover textures (done by the awesomely talented Intelliquilter. That thing is amazing. Just sayin’.) The bottom one is a Baptist Fan, I would NEVER do a Baptist Fan any other way.

You’ll note that both are unbound. Most of the shop samples seem to get hung up that way and…they are still that way. I need to find someone around here that really loves to do binding and see about bartering for binding services.

Either that or I need to just suck it up and do the binding. It doesn’t really take that long, especially if I do it all on the machine.