Tag Archives: dogs

Quilting assistants

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Of course there is Katie, who generally sleeps through any quilting I do (she climbs up on the back of the couch in my sewing room and you should see how misshapen that couch cushion is). I think she started going up there because Toby would sit on the couch itself, and she was trying to get away from him…)

dscf0010 Quilting assistants

This picture is from a year ago, but I’m almost ashamed to admit how many pictures of her in this position we’ve actually taken.

Yesterday, I was trying to take some in progress pics of the quilt that I just finished quilting and unfortunately those pictures didn’t turn out that great, but I did get a really good shot of another quilting assistant:

dsc05351 Quilting assistants

This little guy rides along on the handles of my A-1 Quilting Machine.  He has magnets in his paws.  Mark and the boys got him for me somewhere, but I can’t remember where now.  Isn’t he cute?

I’ll try to take better pictures of the quilt I was working on tomorrow when the sun is shining.  At least, I hope the sun will be shining.  It looked beautiful today, but looks are deceiving:  it was cold and extremely windy.

TTFN-

Suzanne

Heartbroken

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I’ve not been posting, because I haven’t had the heart to do so.

My poor sweet puppy Maggie passed away last Friday morning.

I spent most of the weekend in a daze, at least in part because the vets could not explain why.  It didn’t make sense.  We do now have an answer, and there’s nothing they could have done, nor could they have known this would happen.  I still don’t have all of the details straight, but it was related to her thymus gland.

dsc04495 Heartbroken

I will miss that funny little underbite and those bright shiny eyes.  She wasn’t here for very long, but she sure made a huge impact on us.  I’m trying to remind myself that at least the 2 months she had with us were about the happiest I think a little dog could have had.

And now, I must stop because I’ll start bawling again if I don’t think about something else.

Back soon,

Suzanne

Leap day

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February can’t go away soon enough for me. I have high hopes for March.

School was delayed 2 hours this morning, but that was it. We are over 20 days of no school/early out/delayed start due to weather. Crazy.

Sun is shining today: but it is windy, which means that there is probably some drifting going on.

It’s easier to be cheerful about the weather when it is sunny. This morning the dogs were laying in the sun by the door again and this time, I actually decided to get down on the floor and enjoy some of the sunny warmth with them.  Felt good.  I should do that more often.

The scenery outside my windows is actually quite beautiful to look at today.  Look at the color of the sky.  This is taken out my back windows, which face west.

dsc04848 Leap day

With the sun shining, there is a fair amount of melting happening on my roof (and on the roads, too, I hope).  I need to go check the basement again, to make sure there isn’t any water down there today.  I can hear the water running in the gutters, so I don’t think it should be a problem.

Mark e-mailed and asked if there were any drips in the basement.  I couldn’t help myself.  I told him no:  because he wasn’t down there.

So far today I’ve made good progress on continuing to get my bookkeeping updated, plus some more sewing on my Blooming Nine Patch.  Not much to show, because it doesn’t look like much, but look who was helping me earlier:

dsc04846 Leap day

My sewing table is right next to the couch.  She is half on the couch, half on the sewing table in this picture.    At one point she was standing up on the arm of the couch and getting her nose close to the fabric coming out of the machine.  I’ve sewn through my finger, I would have hated to catch her nose!

Right now, Maggie is curled up in lap asleep.  She’s not going to like me very much when I move here in a minute or two.  It’s time for a break from the computer, though.

Mom and I are going to see the movie 27 Dresses tonight.  I told her I’d go as long as she was willing to watch the boys tomorrow night so that Mark and I can go out on a date.  She didn’t think it was a completely even trade, but she had forgotten WHY we wanted to go on a date.

Sunday is our 12th anniversary!  I’m wishing we were taking a trip and going somewhere warm….

I do know that I’m going to insist that we do NOT do any shopping, or at least not any grocery shopping on our date….

OK, time for a computer break.  Hope are you having a fabulous Friday!

Suzanne

As promised, quilt content

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My assistants were helping me while I was trying to take some photographs.

They were fighting over this bone.

dsc04834 1 As promised, quilt content

I showed a little bit of this quilting the other day, you got a glimpse of how close I had come to running out of thread.

I’m only showing the back, because the front is busy enough that the quilting is really hard to see in a photograph.

dsc04820 As promised, quilt content

Don’t look too closely.  My backtracking isn’t all that great.

dsc04838 As promised, quilt content

This was my second try at a freehand design on this particular quilt, and I wasn’t 100% happy with the choice, but when I realized that I might have preferred something different (namely:  something less dense…), I was really too far along to actually undo the stitching I had already done.

dsc04839 As promised, quilt content

It’s done, now, and that’s what counts.  Well, done quilting, it does still need a binding.

This is a terrible picture, and I apologize  for that.  The pieces are just slapped up on my design wall and it’s not really bright enough for a good picture in there.

dsc04810 As promised, quilt content

For better for for worse, this is what the Blooming Nine Patch is looking like.  The rainbow stripe is from my shopping excursion over the weekend, and the two inner fabrics are out of my stash.  I wish I’d had more of either one of those:  if I had, I would have put things in a different order.

The Nine patches are all made, the plain pieces are all cut:  now to sew it all together into rows.  The original pattern calls for 8 fabrics, I’m only using 7.  I’m not sure how  wide I’ll make the bug border, I just pinned the yardage up on the design wall to give an idea of what it will look like.

My Wednesday piano students are here, gotta run!

Suzanne

At least the sun is shining

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dsc04806 At least the sun is shining
The dogs have found the best spot in the house, don’t you think?

day10 At least the sun is shining

For those of you counting along at home, that would make 10 9 days this school year. They were only at school for 2 hours yesterday, but I’m pretty sure they get to count that as a full day.

(Edited later.  I thought it was 10 days, but my sister-in-law, the school board members, says it is only 9.  We were going to make up a day last week, but it snowed.  That means it didn’t really count for anything since we weren’t supposed to have school that day anyway.)

pixel At least the sun is shining