KNOCK......KNOCK

who's there? ORANGE>...ORANGE WHO?

Orange you glad we are doing squares like this?

Ok, it's lame but this is my square almost complete for the quilt a long on Pat Sloan's blog.

I have yet to pick the colour for the outer corners as I am in a dilemna wondering if I should add more of the orange that is in the centre.

I might. I like the idea of white sashings to really pop this quilt which will be about 50 X 50 a bit bigger than I originally thought. But I have quilte a bit of this fabric. It's supposed to be a triangle on the outer corners so I must decide soon. I also thought of yellow, but that would be adding another colour. I think the orange will be the one I choose.

The weekend is almost here and I am not doing too much on the weekend, so I might do some more of this just for the fun of it. Since the weather is so cold, I might just as well sew this one up.

Remember the white quilt? well I have the last of that fabric made into a top. I have yet to choose the trim, although the blue looks really good, but I used pink in it to give it another colour choice for borders. I really like pink.

I really like the stippling. I read that the more you practice the better you get. Well the better one gets, the more one likes the stippling effect. Gosh, last summer I had the hardest time doing it and now it's one of the things I look forward to when quilting!

The Obama visit which was huge news here in Canada yesterday is still being touted as a successful visit and I certainly hope that the President of the United States is made half as welcome when he visits other countries. He even visited a cookie shop here to bring some home for his girls. The secret service must have been going nuts, but he is such a people person and the cookie shop was totally over whelmed by it all. Very very sweet of him. It doesn't matter if one is Republican or Democrat, when that guy smiles and turns to the people, it's just the most incredible feeling as told to those that only saw him for a minute! Imagine ! He has the charisma that has been lacking in leaders for a long time. He's not like Kennedy because this is 45 years later. He just seems to like people! And they in turn feel it!

Enjoy your weekend.

LOOK WHO CAME TO VISIT?

Wasn't it great to have the President visit us on a cold February day?

He has such high approval here in Canada, over 80% which is unheard of in this country of a quiet and staid peoples.

There looked to be about a thousand people on Parliament Hill just to catch a "glimpse" and I mean a "glimpse" of this man who continues to give us hope.

One of the reporters to the CBC Tv station was overjoyed as she turned to the camera and shouted "I saw him, I saw him!" and then she just looked so excited and laughed and said it again. it was so cute!

Ok, on to more important issues than the President visiting, I am doing a quilt a long tomorrow with Pat Sloan and the colour of choice is orange with something else.

I am not sure what I am doing, but I LOVE orange and have lots of it. So I am in for a pound as the saying goes.

I just checked "Getting stitched on the farm" blog on my list of favorites and the lambs have been put out of the kitchen...lol. And this morning the lambs got out of their pen and all came to the kitchen door baaaaing and wanting breakfast. Have a look and a great smiling face when you read the blog.

WHAT TO DO, WHAT TO DO

Boy oh boy, as the saying goes, I've been given a quilt to try and restore. It's about 40 years old and VERY well worn. However, as the story goes, my grandmother who made quilts for all of her family gave this one to her youngest son and his wife for a wedding gift.

Well I don't know if there is a rule about use, but if there is....well they did it. It's very thin, frayed and because of the sentimallity of the piece (did I spell that right), my aunt wants me to try and fix it. I looked at the squares closely and the middle ones looked like they can be saved.

Here's what I'm thinking, cut those out, repair as best I can with the left over squares and make it a smaller quilt. The saved original squares would be the centre foundation and then I would work around these to give her back a finished quilt of a lap size I should think.

I took some quilts to Montreal (previous post) and they loved the stipple look of my quilts. I am wondering if I can stipple these repaired squares and stipple them. Would that make it stronger do you think?

The posted photos don't actually show how thin this quilt is. I wonder if I use fusable web to the squares and then put that on a backing if that would help.

Just a bit of a problem here today.

Oh well bridge is waiting for me.

MONTREAL WEEKEND.

Do you remember this quilt? I made it last fall and took it with me to Montreal this past weekend. My Uncle Robert died last week so most of the family journeyed to Montreal for his funeral service and remembrance of life reception.

My Uncle Bob loved a good party. He would have loved this one in his name at his son Paul's house.

I took some of my best quilts to show my relatives who travelled from afar, so that I could show them what I have been doing and in doing so realized that my cousin Robert and his wife Debra were expecting a baby girl the end of March.

So, off this one went to a happy home. Deb had a hard time picking from three that were children quilts. She will let me know the name of her baby (a girl) and I shall embroider a patch to send to her so that she can put it on the quilt.

Although the journey was one of sadness, there is always a rainbow at the end for our family of a lot of Irish descendents...we like to gather and tell tall tales. So lots of tall tales were told, some of my uncle Bob and some of the others in the room told great funny stories of life. He really would have loved it and his children did well in their choice of service and reception.

It was really cold in Montreal compared to Toronto. And the city has so much more snow. You know it is a different culture and life is a bit different than here in Ontario. It's always good to go there.

We are relaxing today which is family day in Ontario and we are tired from the travel, the talking, the laughing, and sleeping in strange beds for a few days. So today is a nothing day.

DEER ME!

Ok, this may be the last photo of winter that I post. I could not let this one go. I received this last night in an email. Unbelievable shot I think.

Can you imagine looking for food through this amount of snow for these poor souls.

Isn't it wonderful that those of us who blog and visit blogs find such diversity in our writings and thoughts?

If you look to the left Karen Quilts has interesting articles about her mugs collection which all have an interesting story to tell. She has quite a collection and the stories that come with them is so interesting.

Over at Mary Quilts, she does long arm quilting for heartstrings charities and has taken up photography as a hobby. Her photos are quite well done with her posting each new technique that she experiments with. She was, don't remember how that happened though, one of the first blogs I ever visited when I started quilting.

It's the differences in us all that makes blogging and reading of same my coffee time in the morning fun.. Just like popping in for a short visit to a friend and not overstaying that welcome.

THE LOONS

Have you ever seen a loon? Have you heard them sing? They are quite facinating to watch and to hear their cry is wonderful on a quiet night on our lake in the summer.

These are amazing creatures. They live and breed in freshwater lakes but migrate to saltwater areas in the winter. We have a few hundred of these birds on our lake and it's such a treat to see one come along the shore about 50-100 ft out and then dive and come up so far away in such a short time.

The loons come north early in the spring and seem to know when it's time to leave in late October or even early November if the season is mild. The loons just seem to know when the first ice is going to spread on top of their lakes. They make nests along the shores of our lake, their young being so different in color sort of brown and fluffy. Sometimes they sleep on the backs of their mothers. Very very cute!

There are a few quilt patterns of these loons, but the best is done with a photo transfer I think and it would have to be a pillow size if I did one. But you know there are times when just seeing the real thing just makes my day!

We live about 6 miles out on an island in the summer and since our lake is very deep it can get rough and windy out that far so the loons don't come unless it's a calm quiet day and the lake will then echo with their calls. Sometimes we see all the young males in a group swimming along and since they don't have mates, they stick together for social time I think.

I have tried to take many photos of loons, but a telephoto is best because when we get too close they dive away. I will stop the motor and drift along and wait till the boat drifts closer to them. It takes so much patience and I am short on that, but the loons and hummingbirds are fun to watch as the hours go by on a lazy summer day.......Am dreaming again!

Oh and did I tell you that they like fish? I got this one from somebody who didn't take this photo, but it was sent to them. I can't believe it's real, but they are fearce fishers!

Enjoy your day.

BLOCKS AND WHITE QUILT

When I did the cut outs for this quilt, my original thought was to put them with nine patch squares of all the colours that you see here on this quilt. Well when I started to put the pieces together, it looked awful. Really awful.
So I changed plans and made the little white quilt(see side bar) just to see how it would look. It's only about 36 X 36 and looked really good.

So..... on to this one of using 6 1/2" squares with 2" white X 6 1/2 to border it and 4" white strips on the sides of each strip. It looks really good and Wilson just had to get into the photo and was very curious to see what I had put on the floor.

I am really pleased with the results and the quilt is about 60" square, with the striped blue and white on the back side it looks really good. I made diagonal binding again as it just finished this project. I had a hard time matching the diagonal pieces to look like the stripes were all going the same way. I think it's because I folded the fabric so some of the stripes are backwards to each other you know what I mean? Anyhow it still looks good.

Last night I watched the Grammy awards for the first time in years. And I mean years. I loved the show! Truely talented night of entertainment and I loved the combination of all the singers doing stuff that they don't normally do.

I loved Kid Rock's number and he was really a rocker as the saying goes. I must find some of his stuff in the next couple of days. Robert Plant and Alison Crouse were deserving of their award. Two really different people who came together and had incredible success.

Even the rappers didn't turn me off because they did entertaining (with me in mind) for masses that don't normally listen to them. Not that it made me change my mind about rap music, but it seemed that whoever was planning the show thought of how to best use the entertainers.

Coldplay had been on 60 Minutes last night and I had no idea who they really were and it certainly gave me an insite on this group. They are also good performers and then of course Sir Paul did his show and the place just jumped! He still has it and all the performers there loved his classic rock.

When the show finished, I had finished the hand sewing of the quilt. A good night.

A LITTLE BEAUTY

Just a little blog on this Saturday afternoon. My nephew and his wife presented me with my first grand niece. This is Kyla. But the biggest reason for posting her photo is that they are using the quilt I made for her when she was born. I worked hard to make it what her parents would like and to have received a photo of her on the quilt made my day.

For those of us who make quilts for love and affection and then pass them on for someone else to cherish, well a photo of the quilt with the person says it all.

For those of you who read this blog, look over on the left and go visit "getting stitched on the farm". I visit this blog daily to see the happening there on their sheep farm. You will love the comments and the photos too that accompany the blog. Christine, who writes so well, is a knitter and her farm and sunflowers have been in a couple of US magazines. I learned that a lot of the magazines that we love are called "shelter" magazines as they deal with the life of homes and families. Interesting. Read the blog, it's really good.

We have balmy weather today. I mean warm and the snow is melting. Please let it melt for a few more days. Please keep it warm for a few days too.

YOU CALL THIS SNOW?

Ok, I got some more photos of snow and I think that they were taken in northern Quebec. I don't know why but that's my thoughts from some of the shots.

I can't imagine this amount falling in Ontario even the north part of it, but some parts of Quebec do get humungus amounts and that's my story and I am sticking to it.

I had so many responses to the snow photos that I thought I would post a few more since I am working on a quilt and it's not ready to post as yet.

Imagine having to just throw the snow up over the snow bank and the path to the house is amazing. I do have one of the snow which blocks part of the window in the house. A later posting if possible.

So, for this Friday afternoon, with the temperatures becoming absolutely balmy, we are going into the plus temps by tomorrow and to almost 40 degrees F, and 6 celsius till Tuesday or Wednesday, I'm sure there will be flooding because we have snow everywhere.

Enjoy your weekend.

NOW THIS IS WHAT I CALL SNOW!

I feel we have this much snow! Well almost anyway. I received this in an email from a friend. Can't even imagine how it's done, but that is winter snow!

The kids would love it! Very funny too. So for the bloggers in Australia and New Zealand that are complaining of high sweltering heat.......tough is all I can say!

We have had the best couple of days! Sunshine, no wind and just freezing temperatures, It feels like spring, I'm telling you!

Ok, I finished another quilt. It's not very big, but I love the colours in it. I wanted to give it to a friend whose daughter is having a boy in a couple of months, but Jerry is loving this one a lot and sees it on a bed at the cottage. I don't know what I'll do. It has rocket ships on it and is just a young boy's quilt I think. Time enough to think about it though.

I had to take some of the stippling out as I had a dull needle and it was awful. A lesson learned for me. I really like the look of this quilt. I am learning a lot about colours I choose and I know that white is might when it comes to quilting. I also like the look of it.

The back of the quilt is a small checked fabric that looks very green when it's turned over.

I've been tagged by http://michiganquilts.com and am flattered, however I don't know how to add all the things I am supposed to do with it.

Maybe tomorrow I'll try to get it done.

SULKY KK 2000- WHITE QUILT

See this little can on the right? Well all I can say is WOW! What a great product! My sweetie
bought this for me in my bag of goodies for Christmas. I looked at it and didn't give it too much thought, well actually thought that the quilt store just gave him a sale for stuff they didn't sell much of.

Well I tell ya, (Sarah Palin style) it's the best little product! I used it sparingly, have done 2 quilts with this and still loads left. It went on so smoothly and I had lots of work time with it and was able to manoeuver the fabric as I smoothed the quilt. It saved me about 2 hours of basting, which is how I put a quilt together. My fingers weren't sore.
Enough shmooshing of this product. It does say that you must work within the 24-48 hours of spraying, and they mean it as I found out, but that's for another day.

One thing though, I changed needles in my sewing machine to do this. It worked much better with a new sharp needle.

So here is this little quilt. It's small and I just love it.It was supposed to be 48" square. But when I had cut out the corresponding 81/2" squares of all these colours, well it just looked like a dog's breakfast!
OMG it was awful is all I can say. So I got out the white and the little flowered print and took apart the combinations of the large squares and the nine patch and started all over again. Isn't this just the cutest little thing?


I just love the look of it with the white making the nine patch look so amazingly crisp. I know now that some of the problem with me doing quilting is that I just need to simplify my work and have much more fun with it.
Here is something else I learned. Try a new
needle for hand sewing. OMG (again) it made
the work so much easier. I do not have sore fingers from hand finishing.


So I posted the third photo to just show some of the
squares. I have of course so much fabric cut
out, but not to worry. I am going to do stacked
coins with it.

I do not remember being so sick of winter as I am this year. So much cold. Never mind the amount of snow that we have had! Its the cold that just gets to my bones even with a downfilled coat to walk my little westie. He wears a coat and loves to walk, but usually the wind just gets to my face and we must turn around.
It looks wonderful from the back patio doors though and very pretty to look at.
I am imagining the spring meltdown. There will be flooding for sure in some areas.
I've not been posting because Jerry has been working on the computer and he starts early in the mornings. I'm sure I'll get some time next week though.

COTTAGE DREAMING AGAIN!

This is a partial photo of the old kitchen at the cottage. The brown is the panelling that was there and Jerry is doing a primer coat of Freshstart from Benjamin Moore on it. It's the best to cover panelling.

We then painted it a soft creamy yellow. Everything else is white in the old cottage so this really freshens it up. We lived with the kitchen for 8 years before finally doing it up. We bought Rona kitchen cupboards and Jerry put them up, with my supervision of course (oh yeah I am good at supervising). I handed the tools, held the cupboard against the wall and just oohed and ahhed at the work.

And here is the kitchen completed. We bought the new dishwasher at Home Depot. It's a lot lighter than the one we have at home, but goodness a dishwasher at the cottage!

We justified it because we live there for 6 months of the year. Kelly lost her job as chief dishwasher!

It was so exciting to have the drawers on the right there to put utensils without having to yank at the drawer to get a knife. The window looks out into the great room which Jerry also built from the bottom up. That's another day's postings.

On the left is the other end of the kitchen which before had the fridge and stove, with an old cupboard on the left to just hold pots and pans.

Now, it has pot drawers and the top drawer is for 'junk' can you believe it!

The fridge is from Sears that we bought when we built the great room and had the barge come across the lake, and at $1,000.00 for the day, at that time, we used it for everything. Looked like the Clampets on that day I tell you. We got the new fridge which was the largest we could find and the stove with self cleaning oven and as few gadgets as possible due to power surges we can get there. It's better than the fancy ones I have at home. Really!

On the right is the brown panelling that was painted a soft yellow and see below for what it looks like now. So different when painted.

You know, I probably said something about this kitchen before, but it's been so long and I am anticipating going back in April/May when the ice goes out on the lake, we leave to go to this place

The table is an old table that was at the cottage when we bought it. I think it's the only thing remaining of the original stuff that was there. Jerry took the old warped top off and built a new one in about 45 minutes! I waited 8 years for him to do that! Not like he wasn't busy in the meantime, anyway, the top I stained with puritan stain, painted the bottom a soft black and voila! It looks amazing. All the cheers of joy from Kelly were worth it as she had given us the art frame for Christmas to go in the place where we put it.

See what a difference the art work does. It was just what we needed to finish the kitchen. The flowers are real! Our new neighbours at the cottage live on a farm. They grow veggies and their neighbour grows those flowers. Each week I am presented with this beautiful bouquet of flowers. It always this big too! And the kitchen is just perfect!

I love the way the whole plan as they say came together.

I'M DREAMING AGAIN

Ok, so because of this unbelievably cold winter, I put myself on this beach in the Virgin Islands. Doesn't it just look inviting today? It's 6 degrees above zero F. Now if that isn't cold, and bone chilling I don't know what is....

This beach is Smuggler's Cove and they made a couple of old movies there, one being the Old Man and the Sea and another that had Anthony Quinn in it and friends actually had bit parts in the film. when you see the movie, it doesn't look like Tortola at all. Oh well, that's show biz.

I'm trying to rectify a bunch of fabric that was cut up to supposedly be a quilt. I gag when I think of how awful it looks. I have discarded the plan of making another ugly quilt. Too many colours. I now realize, I must simplify my quilts, and I think I'll have more fun that way. I love white and notice on some of the blogs, and flickr that white makes colour stand out. I've been using toooooooo much of the colour and not enough of the white.

So, today or tomorrow, when I get my mojo working to quilt sew again, I'll post the corrections and the quilt as corrected.

When the pattern calls for 14 fat quarters, I think that's where I get lost. Too many for my liking and so many patterns. So, I am just not going to do that for a while.

THE BIG DAY FOR AMERICA!

Ok, it was a big day, I watched it most of the day. I switched between CBC and CNN then later added ABC. Honestly most of the CBC one was much better talk and I actually hated the CNN stuff about the graphics that John King kept going to to show us over and over again the people, the places etc. But the rest of it was pretty good. Sometimes just too much little bits of too much information.

On ABC, well I love Diane Sawyer anyway and her smooth delivery is always exceptional. George S. was also good, but sometimes they also delivered so much of "too much information" and it sounded a bit like announcers do at ball games....

I thought also that Obama delivered a sober speech after being sworn in and if his daughter thought it was "good job dad" then it was. What can he say....the world economy is in crisis and we must all do our share whether we are Canadian or American or whatever.

On a lighter note, I kept wondering how come Michelle wasn't cold in that lovely outfit. She probably is the type to say that she just doesn't do cold.....And she walked and stood on her feet for soooooo long. Honestly, in heels too. What a woman. All I kept thinking was that my feet would be killing me and she walked up that street like she was just going for a walk.

Oh and I loved Jill Biden in her red, red, coat and simple hair style too. She looks great in red and her ball gown, which I would have posted here had I been able to see one suitable for here, I would have.

Michelle's simple gown is perfect for her. She's a big woman and exudes the self confidence to wear what she wants and all those people that think she should be thinner....oh yeah, just watch and see it coming ......I say leave her alone. She is a woman with curves and she looks GREAT.

To see the faces in the million plus crowds, to hear the joy in their voices, and the hope in their eyes...lets hope that it continues.

Oh! I forgot to mention Linda Johnson the former President's daughter who spoke with Diane Sawyer and Charlie Gibson (good by the way) and told little stories of being in the whitehouse and tales of growing up there for those few years...very poignant. A lovely speaking voice she has too.. 61 years old now and very gracious.

Good for America.

Ok, back to the day after... today is Bridge day and the girls are off to lunch as one of the gals is leaving for 2 months in Florida. It's gotta be better than this, my god the snow...ok all I say now is that it's about 8 weeks till warm weather because it sounds better than 2 months.

SNOW STORM FOR JANUARY

It's not often that I post on Sundays, but today is an exception! Look at the snow! It's been snowing since last night, still coming down. It does look like a wonderland out there, but it's still only 12 F this morning, but supposed to warm up later on today. Still very cold though.

In fact the wonder dog won't be able to go out till we shovel a path for him in the backyard.

See this? That's where he is supposed to go out to. Well it's not going to happen as far as he is concerned. It's 9:15 and I must get dressed and shovel a path for him to do his business.

There is nothing moving in the area and it's so quiet out there. Now this snow isn't heavy! There's just so much of it again. This is the house where Quincey lives and they are usually up and moving early. No sign of them either.

Oh and he got a hair cut. Remember him? He's the puppy that I posted earlier this year at 10 weeks old. Well, we still puppy sit him and he's had his first hair cut. Mary brought him over for us to take a shot of him while he was still neat!

So of course this is a day for doing not much except snow removal. I must get the guy who does this up and at the task. Maybe we'll call the neighbours with the BIG snowblower, bribe them with a great brunch and have a snow fest!

Doesn't that sound like a good idea?

Speaking of fests! I have been on Facebook and posted a whole batch of black and whites that I found in one of my mom's photo boxes. It's quite a collection and all the younger (?) cousins have surfaced and we are all connecting up again. It's quite the thing to see my cousins who are really all younger than me. I am number one! Anyway, some of them have kids that are grown, off to university etc and still some of the second generation of these have kids, just a wonderful lovein that we have had for the past week. I actually talked to a cousin that I hadn't talked to in 30 years...so it's a good thing as my friend Martha would say.