Hit With YET Another Cold

This is getting a bit out of hand now!!! For the longest time I never had an ounce of a sniffle, cough, flu, cold or otherwise. But over the last few months I have obviously been making up for lost time! I am yet again SWAMPED with another cold!!!!!!!! And when I get them, I am hit hard! I got this little darling when I woke up Saturday morning past. Friday night I felt GREAT! Mum and I went to the annual Christmas Craft Fair in Mount Pearl, got our little supply of 'to DIE for' fudge, then came home to play with my new toy (to be discussed in a minute). Saturday morning I woke up with the feeling that something was brewing. By that evening I was a victim!

I have been off work since. I managed to crawl my sore achy dead body to the doctor's office yesterday evening and he checked me over. I am happy to report that I haven't grown a wiggly tail, snout or started squealing, so I'm swine flu free. However I got me one dooozy of a cold. The cough is so intense that my entire body feels like it's been through hell and back! He gave me a note to take the week off work and to rest and drink lots of liquids. And I've been doing just that. I almost have a 2 litre carton of orange gone all by myself! I'm starting to get tea'ed out and my organs are floating in a sea of water! Every muscle in my body hurts and aches from all the coughing, but hey I'm still kickin'!

I haven't been able to get the energy up to sew for the last few days and I have been suffering withdrawls. I did manage to crawl down to the sewing room today to try a bit more embroidery work on my crazy patch blocks just to keep my sanity.



As for my new toy I mentioned about above. I brought home a new baby for the sewing room Friday after work. Please welcome "Jenny", my Janome 350E Embroidery machine to the family!





I have been oogling and drooling over this machine for about 3 years now. I decided I would start saving all my Loonies (Cdn $1 coins), Toonies (Cdn $2 coins), all my loose change as well as taking a portion from my teaching and sales money to buy this machine! And now she is finally home!!!!!!!!!!!! I've been wanting to play with her more this week than I have already, but due to this @#($*#($* cold, she had to be put on hold. I hate having to neglect her already. But I will make it up to her very soon!!!!

I have sooo many plans for "Jenny". (Yep, I had to name her... seems I know other die hard quilters/sewers who name their machines too, so it's not just the cold sickness coming out of me)!! LOL

Friday night and Saturday morning I played with two designs. There are sooo many embroidery design websites online that I don't know where to begin!!! I'll be going into overload, not to mention I need another project like a need a hole in the head!!!!!!!!!!





Well I'm off to get a bit of supper (non fluid this time), rest a bit then try a little more sewing. Hopefully I'll be back to regular posting soon after this cold goes away!!

Quiltingly Yours
Andrea

I Am Slowly Going Crazy

So that is pretty much how my weekend started! To begin, Saturday morning I started with teaching my Sampler Class that I teach here in my home. One of the two blocks taught that day was the Crazy Patch block. I figured, hmmm the best way to really learn how to make this block is to demonstrate by making one myself.. Welllll that one block ended up turning into 12 15" x 15" blocks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yep I told you I was going crazy! I decided I would make up a crazy patch winter themed lap quilt. The main focal fabric has all kinds of different colourful mittens on it! I have the blocks made, I now have to sit down and machine embroider all the pretty stitches with my embroidery threads. I think I will do that on Thursday night.


I will use all these crumbs another time for a Christmas/winter quilt!


On Sunday I managed to both play in the kitchen and play in my sewing room. With the help of two kitchen timers, set up by my sewing table, I managed to make 2 chocolate zucchini cakes, one loaf of raisin/oatmeal bread, classic potatoes au gratin, and a tuna casserole. While things were cooking and baking I cut the remaining 3 Christmas tree skirts and started the initial assembly of them and I cut out 8 sets of binding for the 8 tree skirts I'm going to sell this year.





Tonight, I had my kitchen timer set up again while another loaf of bread was baking. This time I made a cracked wheat loaf. I think I'll make a dried cranberry/almond bread tomorrow evening. So while the bread was doing it's thing in the machine I managed to bind the remaining 2 of the 4 pumpkin/rooster placemat set I am keeping for myself AND I started quilting the first tree skirt.



WHEW!!!!!!! I'm poooped and I think with that I am going to call it a night!

Tomorrow I will try to finish quilting 2 tree skirts.

Til Next Time

Quiltingly Yours
Andrea

Moving On

Since Saturday, Mum and I have been going through the healing process. Every now and then we catch ourselves either looking for Missy or expecting to see her coming around the corner looking for her tuna supper. For instance, last night Mum and I were to sit down to watch The Tudors on CBC. I wanted to do some hand sewing while watching the show, but thought the only source of good lighting is the chair that Missy sleeps in, so I wouldn’t be able to sew. Then it dawned on me….. right…..she doesn’t sleep in that chair anymore. It’s amazing how much these little furry family members become part of your life. In the almost full week since Missy headed to Kitty heaven, we are doing well. We still have our little sad moments, but we also remember all the happy and funny moments with her too.

Tonight is our weekly Thursday Night Sewing Group. I have two more placemats to finish binding for a customer and then I can give them to her tomorrow.(She will be getting the placemat set out front, the rust and print with falling leaves) I will then either work on my four placemat set (the one in the back with the pumpkins and roosters), or start doing the machine quilting on some tree skirts.

I am also hoping to get a start on Trevor’s parent’s Christmas gift this weekend. I plan to make them a set of chenille pillow cushion throws for their living room.

I am also happy to report the living room curtains are………….. FINISHED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Woooooooo hooooooooo!! Okay so it took almost 8 weeks of procrastination at different points to complete the darn things, but I am sooooooo glad they are done! Now I want to get started on my dining room curtains. They will be the same as the living room style and fabric, but much much MUCH smaller panels!!! I really love how my living room curtains make my room look so much more cozy and warm and the room has really come together more!

There was no cake decorating course this week. Last night we had a nasty nasty wind and rain storm. We had over 50mm of rain fall and winds up to 120km/hour!!!! At one point we even had a bout of wet snow!!!!!!! UGGGG SNOW in the middle of October!! WRONG!!!!!!!!!! Soooo wrong! We had no damage to our house or backyard. In fact at times while looking out my kitchen window at suppertime, I saw my trees bend at a very unhealthy angle and thought for sure I was going to lose a tree. Thankfully all trees this morning are intact and funny enough even the little bird feeder that was hanging off the eave of our shed was still in place this morning. There are reports on the news of damage around the city and in fact the province. Some people lost trees and fences and patio furniture they forgot to lash down. One very sad story that came out of whole weather mess was a 49 year old man was killed when a garbage truck tipped over!!!! What a horrible accident! I’m sure we will hear more news reports supper time when we watch the evening news.

Today, on the other hand, the sun is out and it is beautiful. The temperature is much cooler now, but it’s a beautiful day. I hate the thought how it will soon be time to take out the winter boots. I started wearing my heavier coat and scarf to work the last couple of days and I found my gloves this morning. Sigh……. I suppose winter has to show it’s nasty head eventually right?

Quiltingly Yours

Andrea

In Fond Memory - RIP Miss Mew

It's actually almost 1:30am on Sunday morning now, but yesterday Mum and I had to do a very hard thing. We had to take our dear little Miss Mew (Missy) and send her to kitty heaven. Missy lived to be 16 years old and she did not give us one single ounce of trouble or health issues. The last couple of weeks we noticed she was starting to lose alot of weight and she was losing the strength in her hind legs. During the last couple of evenings she had no balance, and could barely walk. She never ate for a couple days and was just taking a bit of water from time to time. It has not been an easy day. It is a bit strange not to see her in my Mum's place (my basement apartment).

She will be deeply missed. We got to spend her last moments with her before she was put to sleep. Mum and I cried and cried when we were with her. It was so hard to leave her there afterwards. We made sure she was wrapped up safely in her little quilt Mum made her years ago. I am crying now writing this cause she was such a wonderful puddy cat. She was our official quilt inspection and always gave us her "paw of approval".



Tonight Mum and I tried to keep ourselves busy and our minds active by doing some sewing and quilting. Missy loved to sit with Mum or I while we quilted in our sewing rooms. I did manage to get 2 sets of placemats quilted and the binding on, well by machine. I still have to slip stitch the other sides. I am keeping the dark pumpkin/rooster set, and the other set is for a customer.



The sewing did help a bit tonight and kept our minds busy. We did talk about her while we sewed and all the good memories she shared with us. Alexi also kept us company and tried to do some quilt inspecting of her own with a tree skirt being prepped for machine quilting.



Tonight's blog post is devoted to our little girlie girl Missy. For those of you who have those special furry friends in your life, hold them tight to you and show them love every single day. You never know what may happen tomorrow. Our legged family members worm their way into our hearts so very easily and it is soooo hard and tough to let them go.

Missy would inspect our quilts top to bottom as well as underneath to be sure all our seams were the correct size




She loved a good sun beam


I hope to bring better news on my next posting. I just needed to do this tonight.

I wanted to share this special little ball of fur with you all.

Quiltingly Yours
Andrea

Thursday Night Quilting

Not a heck of a lot to report today. I had a great evening with the Thrusday Night Quilting Girls this week. I got back to working on a Christmas gift and got a lot of it done! Hopefully I will finish it this weekend. I just need to hunt down a d-ring to complete the project.

I also have every intention (even if it KILLS me), to get cracking on my Living room curtains again! I mean I started the darn things 7 weeks ago!!! I am so close to finishing them! I have to hem baste one more panel and I can hang them on the rod. If they both hang at the same length, I can sew them up and they are done! If I play my cards right I might actually have those curtains done this weekend! Stay tuned!

Today we worked on Class #3 of the Sampler quilting course I am teaching this season. The girls are doing GREAT! They learned how to paper piece.

Ooh I graduated from the Wilton Course #1 of Cake Decorating! Wooo hooo!! I even have a certificate to prove I survived!!

LOL The next course starts up next Wednesday. This is also a 4 week course. We only make one cake this time round and it will be in Class #4. This time round I make both buttercream icing and royal icing. We make up all different types of flowers which will eventually be decorated on the cake. In the meantime, I brought my last cake into work yesterday to share with my work mates. By 10:30 that morning, half the cake disappeared!! Da vultures! LOL ahhh but I love making up treats for my friends at work!

After work on Wednesday, Mum met up with me and we went to Fabricville. They had a nice little sale on and I picked up some more fabric pieces for a few more Christmas gifts. This morning while the girls were working away on their paper piece blocks, I too made a little paper piece block to work along with them and to show how it is done. I made mine in Christmas fabrics and now have a little pot holder! I just need to hand stitch the binding around it.

So has anyone out there in Quilting blogland started their Christmas gift making yet? How big is your list?

Ohh I had one more thing to mention to you all. My new blogging friend Mandy has a quilting magazine giveaway on her blog. If you like a chance for free things like I do, then go by her site and say hello!

Quiltingly Yours

Andrea