Birthday Celebration for R

We think of you often, R. Sometimes we look at your pictures and wish we could give you a big hug! We love you. G and G.

H A P P Y B I R T H D A Y . . . AAA

It's somebody's birthday ...

HOPE YOU HAVE A WONDERFUL TIME THIS WEEKEND. Wish we could be there. Love you lots! W and V

Getting Ready for Christmas

I dug into the quilt pile and found this one I embroidered with red (except for the Jack in the box balloons!) So--it is called redwork, but I did something untraditional and pieced the blocks together with yellow fabric that has red dots! The blocks are nursery rhymes. One is Mother Goose, the three bears, a tin soldier,and pictured is the Blue Fairy (Pinocchio) and there is also a Santa. The name of this quilt is called "Santa's Parade". Who knows when I will finish.




On Saturday W and I went to a Christmas Holiday Home Tour. It was an absolute gorgeous day to be out and about Abq. An Interior Decorator went last year to the Army Navy game and at half time Boeing presented to the Wounded Soldiers Project a check for $25,000. This lady thought "I can do better than that!" So, she came home to Abq and started organizing her home tour . It was a large group that helped her and they had raised $250,000 even before the tour began! Such a worthy wonderful cause. The homes were great with so much Southwest style in the Christmas decor and lots of beautiful SW art too. I came straight home and got some of my "little Christmas books", Matroyshaka nesting dolls, and red vintage napkins to decorate the entry chest for Christmas.



This is my November block on the Calendar quilt.













These are Penny Pockets. I got the cute pattern free on a blog. I have been making them to hand out to ladies who come to a lesson I teach this Thursday. I am going to put kisses, Reeses peanut butter trees, and maybe more chocolate inside or something else I can find. They are not that big, so everyone will just get a small taste, not an overload.






I sewed this little basket last week. It represents the month of May. Guess I need to iron it before I photo it!

Qualters

J. said V. and G. were "quilters the wilters"--I think they are qualters from Walters.

Oklahoma

We made a quick trip to Oklahoma to see Gramma. Along the way we noticed that much of the cotton crop in Oklahoma is still in the field.



In the early morning it's a good time to walk but it is crisp.

Horses still graze at people walking along country roads.

Slick's cows wait each morning for food.


After V and G sewed a few days, we drove out to E. in Tularosa. In southern New Mexico snow caps a few of the cholla cacti.
If you like pastachios, you might want to visit the Pastachio Tree Ranch in Tularosa NM.

Farmer's Market

October has flown by so I thought I would finally post my calendar quilt block for this month.










I was able to add two more finished baskets for the calendar quilt that I applique from a free internet blog pattern. Can you guess which months these represent? Look at the patterns or colors. Do you like guessing games? Actually, I don't. It is the month of March and July.







Last Saturday we went to a farmer's market in the area called Los Ranchos de Albuquerque. There was a walkathon for a disease I had not heard of. The participants were wearing t-shirts and a large dog even sported one. We also enjoyed the car show and younger son got a breakfast burrito and cinnamon roll that were delicious. I bought this green chili jam from a lady who had won first prize for the last 5 years at the NM State Fair. When we first moved here I tasted it and was not impressed. I think I have finally acquired the taste for all things with a green chili flavor and now I really love the little bite of green chili followed with the sweetness of jam. This is delicious on a cracker with cream cheese. (What isn't?)


I am sharing this cute little Halloween quilt that my mother made and gave to me for my birthday. I love it. It has lots of Halloween fabrics and the black border has the word, boo, written all over it. It fits perfect on our kitchen table.

Goodbye September

September has flown by! Such a great month- first, we heard of the great news of oldest son, dear wife, and youngest daughter's climb to the very tip top of Mt. Kilimanjaro.


Then we traveled to St. G to visit older daughter & C. We ate at our favorite, Rio Cafe, saw Footloose and Aida at Tuacahn with beautiful weather one night and not the other night! I took the dogs for walks, so now I think they like me and I visited the local great quilt shops.






I sewed and sewed (between all the other fun) some hexagons that older daughter found some cute fabric for. She reminded me that September was National Sewing month so it is very good I got some sewing accomplished.







While at her house I celebrated my birthday. She made a white cake and we topped it with some delicious Ut peaches and some vanilla ice cream. Delicious! I remember I use to can the peaches when we lived in Ut.

This is a photo of the Nativity my Mom got me for my birthday a while ago. Now, I set it up in time for my birthday each year.
Oh! also we froze corn for her freezer. We came home in time for the RS broadcast since I was supposed to help with the taco salad dinner, which turned out wonderful. The broadcast was great and the next day I had to teach a RS lesson.




Then we headed out again to visit Grand Canyon. Dad has never seen it before. I had seen it, but could not remember too much. We took lots of photos, but believe me nothing can do it justice. It should be called Grandest Canyon, not just Grand! It was so beautiful.






























On the way home we stayed at La Posada, a restored Harvey House, a main stopover for Santa Fe railroad travelers.
































Somewhere in there we got an itenerary for younger daughter going to Switzerland. ( Did she really have time to wash any clothes before ANOTHER international trip?)

The week after we got home older daughter and C came to see us for a day before they headed off to Boston for vacation.(This was actually in Oct) We waited for the balloons, but it was a very foggy day and nobody flew. I was hoping they would get to see them. The Balloon Festival is always the wekend of Conference till the end of the next weekend.





So we took them to Coronado Monument instead which was not so great except for the preserved mural (fine art) pictures and the beautiful gold trees on the Rio Grande and beautiful fall weather. Then we ate Mexican (what else?) food at La Casita in Bernalillo. Hope they come back again so we can have more fun.


















Now that I look back and have only written the good parts...this was a GREAT month!

September finishes

This quilt is named "Redware" (because that is the name of the line of fabric by Chanteclaire) and was finished in September 2009. (I discussed in an earlier post about when it was started- so long ago that I am not certain) It was entirely hand quilted and measures about 49"X63". It was one of those "$5 quilts" (not counting the backing fabric, batting, and the binding, which actually makes it cost a lot more). I love the fall colors. I love the skinny yellow frame around each block. It is such a sense of accomplishment for me to see a completed quilt that I have actually finished!


Here are some close ups that are meant to show the quilting on each block. The only thing more beautiful than looking at a quilted quilt is running your hands over the quilting on a quilted quilt, but please don't. If it is a quilt that you made then you can give yourself permission, but if you didn't make it, then don't even think about it. When you go to a quilt show then you know touching is not allowed.





At a quilt show all the ladies have on white cotton gloves who hang and handle the quilts if you want to see the back. Everybody has so much oil and dirt on her hands that when you run your hand over the quilting it is like cleaning off your hand with a paper towel and the quilt is the paper towel. So out of respect for all the work involved, just look with your eyes and not with your hands! It will be greatly appreciated.




This shows the back which is actually a light green, but does't look it. The label is a very important part of the quilt which every quilt should have. This label tells the quilt name which is "Redware" and the date it was finished, Sept 2009 and also tells my name (because I am the maker ) and my address. In case it gets lost I hope someone will return it to me!

This is the redwork quilt featuring the month of Aug, which (hee hee) I realized just ended and it is Sept already! Where did Aug go?










These are applique blocks from a pattern free each month. Can you pick out Jan, Feb, and April? Can you see the quarter on the left side of the handle of the left basket?











A close up of the Feb block. I am a little behind on the year. There should be 8 blocks completed by now!












Outside our front window after a big rain storm a couple of weeks ago. It is actually a double.











I went to a Shop Hop of quilting shops last week end. One of the shops had this ribbon tied around their free pattern. Avery appropriate name for a quilt shop in Albquerque, Quilts Ole (with an accent on over the "e")

One thing at a time

The husband who’s tapping the computer keys during an important phone conversation with you, the S.U.V. driver with the grande latte and the cellphone, the dinner companion with the roving eye and twitching thumbs — are not only irritating, they are incompetent.

A team of researchers were trying to find out what unusual cognitive gifts multitaskers possessed that made them so successful at multitasking.

They’re still looking.

“Multitaskers were just lousy at everything,” said Clifford I. Nass, a professor of communication at Stanford and one of the study’s investigators. “I was sure they had some secret ability."

But it turns out that high multitaskers are suckers for . . . irrelevancy.”

Initially suspecting that multi-taskers possessed some rare and enviable qualities that helped them process simultaneous channels of information, “We kept looking for multitaskers’ advantages in this study. But we kept finding only disadvantages. We thought multitaskers were very much in control of information.

"It turns out, they were just getting it all confused.”

To the rest of the world the study’s findings aren’t quite so shocking. A constant state of stress, deluges of ever-changing information, the frenzied, nanosecond-fast hustle and bustle — is bad for you.

“The core of the problem,” Professor Nass said, is that the multitaskers “think they’re great at what they do; and they’ve convinced everybody else they’re good at it, too.”

Yes, they have.

New York Times - August 30 , 2009