Feline Friday - 12/27/19

Happy Last Feline Friday of 2019!!

Sometimes you just gotta get comfy on a Saturday night in and let it all hang out!

No hands were harmed in the rubbing of this belly!

See ya next decade!!

Happy ALL the Holidays!!!

Love Z and Me!

Quiltville Mystery Clue #4 and Shooflies

Clue #4 for this year's Quiltville mystery sewalong came out on Friday and I finally had a chance to work on it Sunday afternoon. I was surprised at how quick it came together.

The clue asked us to cut HSTs and QSTs from strips of blue and aqua, keeping the sets together. I'm not sure my aquas are just "right" (in person there is less contrast) but it's what was in my stash so I'm hoping it will look acceptable when the quilt top is together.

And here is my paltry little Jolly Green Giant box of clue parts. You can see that I have the approval of my little furry photobomber. What he isn't telling you is that I knocked over a half glass of cranberry ginger-ale getting the box out of it's storage space. And I was even clever enough to knock it over in the perfect spot so it dribbled into 3 drawers of paper and fabric supplies and then on to the carpet. Z investigated the spill but knew it was better to stay away from mum when she was sputtering naughty words...

I also finished 8 more shoofly blocks this weekend. Only 70 more to go!!

I've cut sufficient green squares to match the pattern. When I start laying these out I'll decide if I want to make it a wee bit bigger. Bigger could mean more blocks or it could mean a panel in the middle. If I find a panel it will need to match the 115 green squares and Let it Snow green border fabric I already have, which could be difficult.  Right now, I just need to keep plugging along on the shooflies I have kitted...

As I was proofing my post I also thought it could just be fun to have some of the let it snow fabric be a "panel" in the middle. Only time will tell what other fancy ideas pop into my head at the weirdest of times...

Happy Day before the Day of the Night Before Christmas and Happy Hanukkah!!

Feline Friday - 12/20/19

It's hard work taking care of Momma:

I make sure she doesn't eat alone.

I check on her in the shower - yes, I jump in the shower with her.
You can thank me later for not taking THAT picture...

And I taste test the tree. It doesn't taste great so I drop the "needles" on the floor but I keep checking cuz another part of the tree might taste better.

I also periodically (like every 15 minutes) ring the bell to ask Momma to open the door so I can go out and check the weather. If she opens the door and it's too cold, I growl and hiss to alert Momma that she shouldn't go out.

I've worked hard this year and been a very good boy so I hope Santa is good to me next week!

Wednesday Weather Report #13512/18/19

One of these days I am going to remember to not leave things to do until later. Later can be in an hour or tomorrow morning. And that's because plans change - especially when the ambulance siren goes off at o-dark-thirty and when you get home there is only time to shovel part of the driveway and clear the car before a shower and heading to work.

So, now you know why I am behind on my hexies. I thought I would finish it this morning. I nearly finished it at lunch but I'm a paper short so that will be finished tonight.

December 11 - 17, 2019
29 - 27 - 45 - 38 - 33 - 32 - 28 F

And I swear my car was cleared off not 10 minutes before this selfie was snapped. It was a lovely, light, fluffy snow so easy to clean up both times. I met a "new" neighbor on the rescue call and another new neighbor while shoveling. It was a good morning!

Quiltville Mystery Clue #3 and Tiny Trees

I spent a lovely day in my quilt lab yesterday!!!

I had planned to also spend some time making Christmas cookies and quick breads (intended as gifts) but the main/good wall oven decided to give up the ghost before I even got the first tray in so I guess it's time to rethink those baked gifts...or at least rethink cookies that need multiple trays in and out of the oven when I am reduced to the smaller/annoying wall oven.  

As I've said before, I'm only making about half of each mystery clue. I slightly overshot this week's number of HSTs but I wanted the variety of blues so I was ok with making "extra". We can always make extra HSTs into something, right?!

I still don't think we've made many parts and pieces yet. This Jolly Green Giant box is only about an inch high and about 9x12". I'll have time this weekend to play in the quilt lab so if Bonnie is planning clues according to my schedule, I'm willing to make a bunch of hard bits this weekend!

I also made a lot of progress on my Temecula Tiny Tree sew along. The green rows are all together so tonight's goal will be to start adding the neutral background pieces. Several of these are intended as gifts and I'm going to be cutting it short given that I have Christmas party/meetings the next 2 nights. Maybe I just need to focus on the gift I'll need for Friday and then move on to the others for next week. Yeah. That's what I'll do. Focus Sarah!

Happy 9 days to Christmas - no pressure!

Feline Friday - 12/13/19

¡¡Hola!!

¡¡Me llamo Zorro y este es un enfrentamiento mexicano!!!

That would be a Mexican Standoff in English.

Momma doesn't want to put any ornaments on the tree until I've 'inspected' the tree.

I don't want to waste my time so I'm waiting for the ornaments before I inspect the tree.

Who do you think will win and how long do you thing the standoff will last??

I have my own theory...

Wednesday Weather Report #134 - 12/11/19

Zorro was sooo pleased that I had some couch time last night that he just had to snuggle in himself.

The photo is awful since my beloved Ott light totally blew out the pic but the adoration was too good to not share.

This morning I tried for a better shot in the fresh snow.

December 4-10,  2019
35 - 30 - 33 - 29 - 39 - 41 - 34 F

This photobomb represents his paw of DISapproval on the snow. He didn't growl or hiss, like normal, but 30 seconds to look over his 'hood was enough before he went back inside to hold the ornament boxes hostage again.

Hexie Club always does a mug rug swap for our Christmas in December Party. We also have a Christmas in July Party but no mug rug swap. Hahahaha. Maybe we should fix that...

I don't seem to have a photo on my phone of the "penny rug' style rug that I won but it was impressive with all that buttonhole stitching.

I made this hot air balloon. I have more cloud fabric but if I make another I'll use a better basket fabric.

This is from a couple weeks ago... Apparently if the temperature is just right, you can see the insulation pattern under my cars hood. One of my coworkers is a mechanic and he's never seen this before, nor have I, but my car did it two days in a row in different weather situations. I'm looking forward to seeing if it happens again.

For it to happen again, tho, we will need some snow. Once again we have been issued a winter weather advisory for today but it's currently full sun and blue skies and we only have about .5" of the 7" predicted. Enough with the crying wolf and issuing advisories for every single snow flake and lets stick to only notifications for extreme weather. That's my 2 cents and I'm sticking to it!

Tiny Forest

I have been very guilty of Procraftinating lately. How about you??

Last night I only had time to cut out the Tiny Tree blocks for #3 thru 6. I hope to get them stitched tonight! And then, of course, it's on to block 7 that came out this morning...

I "borrowed" Barbara's idea of placing rulers over the layouts in
case a friendly feline flies up onto the cutting table. Barbara would
love that alliteration!

You might be able to pick out the hand pointing to a green fabric that reads Let it Snow. That's my border fabric for the tiny shoofly blocks.

Quiltville Mystery Clue #2 and Tiny Trees

Bonnie's second clue for her annual mystery quilt was released Friday morning. I had our annual Hexie Club Christmas party Friday night and an art fair to vend at Saturday so that left Sunday to spend in my Quilt Lab playing catch up.

As in the past, I am making about half the number of required units since this allows me to keep up better with the weekly clues.

When I put my paired berry/neutral rectangles into my Jolly Green Giant box, it looked like a paltry little pile of units. I know it's only about half what the pattern calls for but I'm thinking we'll be getting socked with tons of hard blocks any Friday now...

Next up I wanted to play catch up with Temecula's Tiny Tree blocks. The pattern calls for making 1 block a day for 2 weeks but I figured I  might as well make 5 as make 1 and then I'll have 4 gifts :)

First I did block #1 - Friendship star

Next up was #2 - Broken Dishes

And that leaves me with just 3 more to catch up plus today's block. Easy Peasy, right?! Except for all those tiny HST that can drive a person insane. Thankfully I had already bit the bullet and bought a blockloc ruler to assist with all the trimming on my shoo fly blocks. Little did I know how much I would use that little ruler.

2 more things:
First, Janet and I discovered that she has only worked on hexies this week and I have only done machine work, on tiny blocks, this week. It's generally the complete opposite and was a little strange for both of us.

Possibly the best part of the whole day was someone near and dear to my heart actually asking for attention. Yes I quickly put the rotary cutter away and then offered lots of smooches and cuddles, right there on the cutting mat. Wonder how long before this happens again...

Feline Friday - 12/6/19

Momma still hasn't put my CatMouse Tree up.

I'm holding all the birdy ornies hostage safe & secure so I'm not sure what the hold up is...

Wednesday Weather Report #133 - 12/4/19

November 27 - 30, 2019 :: 57 - 34 - 28 - 28 F
December 1 - 3, 2019 :: 32 - 30 - 31 F

It was encouraging to start December with a few inches of snow!! We won't discuss the ice under the snow from Sunday, just the snow!! It was heavy and wet and accumulated on top of everything making for beautiful pictures. Luckily not too many trees were damaged.

After work Monday - I love how the neighbor's Christmas
lights lit up the trees when it was otherwise so dark.

I woke from a creepy dream Tuesday at 4:30am and looked out the front window to a view of shear beauty that I just couldn't get a decent photo of: jet black sky filled with stars and the street lights lighting up the snow laden trees.

Across from my office Tuesday morning

The Masonic Temple

North Main Street, Perry, NY

We are now getting Winter Weather Advisories for another 5-9 inches today. Since when is normal winter weather a reason for advisories? A simple heads up is nice but not email after email after text after weather app alert.

The Bibliophile Files - 12/3/19

First I'm pleased to say that I finished my first challenge of the year on 11/22/19 by reading 74 books where one word in the title is also one of the words that spell the months of the year.

The next challenge to complete is to finish a total of 90 books for the year and I have just 6 books to go. Woohoo! Goodreads claims I am actually 2 books ahead of scheduled, which is hard to believe after a year of being several books behind schedule every month.


FINISHED
      Private Down Under - this is a new to me series that open private detective offices in various cities around the world - a fun way to learn about different countries
      Notes from a Young Black Chef - I enjoyed the book other than the constant "woe is me" stories. To learn about someone learning to be a chef and try to run a business and then look up videos of the chef online was educational for me as someone who has done catering and just plain likes to cook.
      The Golden Day - eh.. just eh. Sorry.
      Spill - I'm generally not for sound effects in my audiobooks but this was different. This was a LA Theater recording and I just happened to be in my car when the oil rig exploded in surround sound. I white knuckled the rest of my drive home that night...
      Erotic Stories for Punjabi Women - this book is hilarious but I don't recommend listening to it in public for obvious reasons.
      Firefly Lane - A memoir of 2 girls who grow into women as friends but who don't always treat each other fairly. I can't wait to read the next book.
      Murder in the Reading Room - A good book, a little hoitey toitey, but the murder referred to in the title was such a small part of the book, it was misleading.
      Mean Streak - a fantastic book that I had not expected the twisted ending.
      Chocolate Fever - Yipp, a quick kids book to up my numbers. I admit it but I had fun doing it too. It was encouraging to know I'm not the world's worst chocoholic.
      The Wright 3 - another kids book. They referred to some kids toy a lot. They were apparently 3D and had letters on them to build words or shapes. It was a little distracting to the rest of the story, especially since I had never heard of the toy before
      Escape from Mr Lemoncello's Library - a fun educational book about libraries and there are several more in the series!

IN PROGRESS
     on my iPhone - Beartown
     on my home stereo - Lousiana's Way Home

I've got another challenge lined up for the new year... I call it Spell that Place. It's a very long name of a "farm" in South Africa so I'll be looking for books that have a word in their title that starts with any of those 40some letters. If anyone wants to play along I am happy to share my Place.

Let us know below what you've been reading! Anything counts: novel, magazine, quilt pattern or cereal box.

Quiltville Mystery Clue #1

Sadly, Bonnie is not going to host the weekly Mystery Monday linkups on her blog the same way this year. She's using Instagram, which I don't plan on getting an account for as I don't need yet another time suck on my phone :(

Anywho...Clue#1 came out on Black Friday and after forcing myself to do my usual chores first, I got stuck in to making those 4patches.

At some point, Chantal asked how many I had done and I took this photo of the paired twosies I had just loaded on my ruler to carry to the sewing machine. Now, I carried this around 2 rooms trying to get a better photo (no dice with no sun) and it wasn't until I was 12 inches from my sewing machine that they all slid to the floor. I might have said a few naughty words...

In the end I got them re-paired, sewed, pressed and spinned the center seam.

As with the past couple of years, I am making "half" the number of blocks needed for each clue. What that generally means is that is I cut a bunch of strips in the needed sizes to make the units, cutting more strips as needed until I am close to the halfway mark. I clearly overshot the strip cutting this time as I have way more than half the number of 4patches. They can always live in the orphan bin if I don't later decide to make more than half of the mystery quilt, this is just a good way for me to keep up with the weekly clues.

The 4patches didn't allow me much reason to work on my shoefly leader ender project but I did spend a few hours kitting up the rest of the blocks that I'll need. Now I'll only have to struggle with not just stitching more and more and more shoefly blocks, especially since I had a $10 coupon and treated myself to a blockloc ruler. The ruler is a little fiddly but much easier than not having the ruler.

This weekend Mom gave me the jean jacket she wants me to hexify as her Christmas present. Only a nonquilter would think I can bang out a jacket in 3 weeks when I spent months doing my own. She may get a box with the jacket and a bunch of hexies under the tree if I'm not inspired soon. Wish me luck...

Feline Friday - 11/29/19

This is why Momma leaves a space on the end of her plant table!!

Woulda been a better picture if Momma had washed my window...or if the sun was actually shining.

Wednesday Weather Report #132 - 11/27/19

Just in case you were wondering how I kept myself on track when I don't always stitch every day - this is it. I print out a calendar and write down the daily temps. Eventually, I transfer these temps to a spreadsheet with one month per tab. I'm such a weather nerd!

November 20 - 26, 2019
39 - 44 - 35 - 40 - 42 - 50 - 54 F

Feline Friday - 11/22/19

Ahhhhh...this is the life. Sunbathing and enjoying doing absolutely nothing while the staff caters to my every whim.

Oh sorry Momma - were you  trying to use the cutting mat?

Those are some tiny pieces. I bet we could both use the cutting mat!

Yes Zorro - but only if your tail stays away from my rotary cutter!

Wednesday Weather Report #131 - 11/20/19

November 13-19, 2019
22 - 36 - 34 - 25 - 40 - 41 - 39 F

My next Underground Railroad block: halfway done!
Woot! Woot!
I may catch up yet...

Feline Friday - 11/15/19

Mom!! You parked 5 minutes ago.

What's taking so long? I'm hungry!!!

Clearly these photos were not taken this week, after the snow. I haven't done anything this week except cuddle with Momma and really, who wants to see an old man sleeping over and over again?

Wednesday Weather Report #130 - 11/13/19

Thanks to the cold weather, I've had some extra snoopervision lately. I'm not so sure he's been checking on the quality of my work as gaining (stealing?!) warmth from being in my lap =^..^=

November 6 - 12, 2019
42 - 31 - 26 - 35 - 42 - 29 - 20 F

We were soooooo close yesterday to adding a third new/colder color (violet) in just 12 days. I'm sure it'll happen soon enough and then I'll wish it would go away. We had a decent amount of snow on Monday but we didn't break any local snow records whereas there were several neighboring towns/cities that did get ~10", which broke records. Thew snow is still fresh and white, meaning I'm enjoying it. I won't have the same response in a month or so...

Feline Friday - 11/8/19

No feline in their right mind would take a selfie of themselves with the first snow of the season and send it to their furreinds.

Therefore I needed to steal the selfie Momma took yesterday to send to her friends. I will tell you that it was a very purrrty day yesterday but today is the first dark purple day of the season and it was too cold (26F) to stay out so I'm inside where it's warm, sleeping on Momma's stuff.

Clearly Momma hasn't used her Bernina in a while despite the project piles with newly cut fabrics.

She threatened to move the piles so I couldn't play Where's Waldo? any more but it hasn't happened just yet...altho she needs to make some bizarre items this weekend...

Wednesday Weather Report #129 - 11/6/19

I think our weather is becoming more and more what I expect for late fall/November. Today is full sun but with a definite chill in the air. We've been told to expect snow several times this week and I saw beautiful big flakes for about 5 minutes on Sunday. We shall see if the rest of the predictions come true...

October 30-31, 2019 :: 53 - 60 F
November 1-5, 2019 :: 37 - 44 - 41 - 49 - 40 F

Recently I've been trying to catch up on my Underground Railroad BOM from hexie club. We handed out the 12th and final pattern back in September but I've just completed block 5 and my sixth is about 3/4 done. Not bad for not working on it at all while I completed Mr Serious.

Our plan is to show the quilts at our next Art Council exhibit in 2021. It will be fun to see the same quilt in so many different fabrics and layouts. I am actually thinking of a triple sashing to make the quilt a bit bigger and to use a touch more of my batik fabrics. I made my quilt in batiks to use up some of my overflowing stash but that was quickly followed by purchasing some more neutral batiks and the orange shown below. I don't think the box is anymore empty than a year ago!! Hopefully I can rectify that "problem" with fancy sashings and borders.

The Bibliophile Files - 11/5/19

There are 2 things I'm going to tell you right off about this month's book report because they are not obvious to anyone who's not sitting here next to me. I thank my vacation (hmm...didn't post any pics yet) for getting me through 4 or 5 books making the list twice as long as it could have been. I'm also nearing the end of a personal challenge for the year and that means it's been slim pickings to meet the requirements. I can't believe some of the books I've read but desperate times call for desperate measures. Why do we do these things to ourselves? Motivation and so we can conquer it!!!! Woot! Woot!

Challenge #1 for the year was to spell out the months and read books where one of the title words began with the same letter. Ex: J in January was Johnny get your Gun. Of 74 books, I need to finish just 3 more. Woot!! Two are relatively short or close to finishing but I think there will be another substitution on my "U" book as the one I have been avoiding is long and I would like to finish the challenge sooner rather than later. I'm open to suggestions! No worries, I found one already - and it's a new-to-me series as well.

Challenge #2 - this is the same challenge I do every year: read 90 or more books for the year. So far I have finished 73 books this year which only makes me 3 books behind schedule. Maybe once I can chose a book cuz it sounds good or is available today instead of needing an impossible letter I can make some headway.

FINISHED
     Unbound
     My Year of Rest & Relaxation - Please! Can I just slap the main character? Please?!
     The Job
     Ella Enchanted - Cinderella re-imagined
     The Art of English Murder
     The Mars Room - thumbs up
     The Last Romantics
     Us Against You - looking forward to reading the rest of the series
     Every 15 Minutes - loves me some good suspense
     The Witch Elm - it was suspenseful waiting for the suspense. LOL

IN PROGRESS
     on my iPhone - Private Down Under (I admit to finding 3 different names for this book on 3 different websites but I'm going with the one I need. Wink)
     on my home stereo - Firefly Lane

And now it's your turn! What have you read lately? Anything counts: novel, magazine, quilt pattern or cereal box.