Fall is in the air...

Oh well, not really, but if I turn the A/C up high enough and put a college football game on TV, I can overlook the fact that it is still summer here and PRETEND that it is fall. Which makes me want to knit. I won this yarn on Eireann's eBay auction. It was donated by lulubeans and this is the hat I have started to make with it.

Of course, it will never be cold enough in Houston to wear it, so I will give it to Kate to wear in Minneapolis. Hopefully winter will wait to arrive there until AFTER the wedding, which is three weeks from yesterday!

Life in the tropics

Okay, technically we are only sub-tropical, but coming from the upper midwest, 82º and 71% humidity at 8pm in the middle of September sure FEELS tropical. We have tried to make the best of the climate here and when we had our backyard landscaped three years ago we added a bird of paradise plant. We both love their blooms. We have kept it in a pot...they are supposed to like being root-bound, and we wanted to be able to move it inside (the garage) on the rare occasion we have a frost. Well, the plant has done well, but despite these efforts and fertilizing it I thought the damn thing would NEVER bloom. We were doing some gardening on Sunday and I noticed this...

I got so excited...Mike couldn't figure out what I was carrying on about!

Well, today THIS is what it looks like (and I think there is another bloom about to emerge :-)



I have no idea why this decided to bloom now (higher than average rainfall maybe?) or how long the flowers last in 90+º weather, but I am going up to Minneapolis for a wedding shower for Kate this weekend...I just hope it is still in bloom when I get back, after all this time waiting.

Invites are in the mail...

So...these are what we have been working on for the past month or so. I think they turned out very nicely. The sealing wax was put on using a glue gun and stamped with a overlay of silver ink.

Finally!

The quilt top is done! Putting on the borders took longer than I expected, and I also had to piece the backing (it is the striped fabric peeking out from behind). We are off to the quilter today...yippee!

It's (almost) done!

Hurray! I finished piecing the quilt top today! I still need to put on the borders, but I hope to get that done on Thursday, and get it to the quilter's on Friday. I just couldn't wait to share, though, so here is a picture of it. I decided that hanging on the line was the best way to photograph it.

What happened to July?

Gosh, I can't believe that I haven't posted for over a month. Hmmm...maybe it was because I was gone for almost three weeks. Of course, it is always my goal to spend as little time as possible in Houston during the summer. I was in Minneapolis for the first week of July, visiting my daughter. She and her fiance have just moved, and I went up to help them get situated (and clean the old apartment...like I said, anything to get out of Houston!) I was home for a week, then took a trip to the Jersey shore for a long "girls' weekend" during which I gave my friend Nancy this Susan Branch table runner as a birthday present.
I got the embroidery card when I bought my Bernina but this is the first time I have ever done anything with it. I was pleased with the result. After I got home from New Jersey I managed to get in a few work days, and then my brother and sister and their four kids came to visit. We had a great time, went to Schlitterbahn in Galveston and the Houston Museum of Natural Science, where a butterfly landed on my hair (when did I get those fat rolls on my neck?)

The day my siblings and their families left, Mike and I flew to Minneapolis. He had a two day meeting at the Saint Paul Hotel, where we spent Friday night, and then we moved on to our old standby, the LeBlanc House B&B, in northeast Minneapolis. We had a wonderful visit with our kids and their SOs. We ate at a great regional restaurant, Heartland, and Kate and I made some great progress on the wedding invitations at the Paper Depot. I picked up my dress at the Wedding Shoppe and Mike got fitted for his tux, so things are falling into place. We left on Tuesday, the day before the bridge collapse. What a horrific event...how fortunate is was that more lives were not lost.

Well, I have FINALLY finished piecing the blocks for the wedding quilt. I found that spending a long time at the sewing machine tended to really tense up my neck and shoulders. I remember seeing several elaborate and expensive devices at the quilt show designed to tilt your sewing machine towards you so that you don't have to lean over it. I remember someone suggesting to me that you could do this with rubber door wedges. Well, it works like a charm...puts you in a much more ergonomic position...give it a try! So now I am really psyched to assemble the quilt top, but I am working full time for the next three weeks. Oh well, there is the wedding thing to pay for...

The bounties of summer

Despite my best efforts, I have had NO luck growing tomatoes in Houston. Fortunately we have Central Market where I bought these lovely home-grown Texas tomatoes...
What I CAN grow here is herbs, and basil does very well. I picked this bunch last night...
Also at Central Market I had picked up this wonderful fresh mozzarella...
The highlight of last night's dinner was the caprese salad, with balsamic vinegar and olive oil imported directly from the Fiesole farm of Paola Scaravelli and Jon Cohen, authors of Cooking from an Italian Garden.
I also cooked these lovely green beans, one of my very favorite vegetables. I made an oven roasted pork tenderloin as well, but I don't think we would have missed it, the side dishes were so good!

Decisions, decisions

Mike is at a meeting in Philadelphia this weekend, so I have had some time to work on my quilt. I have 21 of the 81 blocks pieced and hope to get some more done tonight during A Prairie Home Companion. Now I have to decide on the layout I want. My original inclination was to go with the diagonal, but they all look so pretty! Let me know what you think...


Number 1:
Number 2:Number 3:
Number 4:
Purrkins and Graycie kept me company by the sewing machine.

I LOVE Mike Peters...

http://www.grimmy.com/editorials.php

2008 is too late

Wow...this full page ad was in this morning's New York Times. It lists the horrible things "W" can still do in the next 18 months...scary! In the ad it says: "People who steal elections and believe they're on a 'mission from God' will not go without a fight" and goes on to list reason why Bush & Cheney should be impeached for war crimes. If only people thought that fascism was as bad as consensual extramarital sex...
www.worldcantwait.com

June brides

Okay, I will admit, that last post was kinda scary. So...here is a pic of Miss Revlon in her handmade satin wedding dress with the hand-beaded seed pearl bodice, fashioned by my dear mother in 1957.

And here is a pic of my daughter Kate trying on her wedding dress for the first time. The pearls belonged to Mike's mother.

This says it all...

http://www.worstpresident.org/

My latest project

What you say? A new project? I thought your wedding quilt was the ONLY thing you were going to work on, and get it done and to the quilter. Well, yes, that was true, but when I went to MSP to visit Katie for Mother's Day, we bought the paper and stuff for her save the date cards (apparently a "must" for weddings these days). It quickly became apparent to me that this was going to be a major undertaking. So, being the good mom I said, "Gee, sweetie, you are working 50 hours a week and training for a triathalon...I have plenty of free time...I will make them for you." Anyhow, they turned out to be a much bigger project that I anticipated...printing, cutting, pasting, stamping, addressing, and who knew it was so hard get photos printed in a square format? I remember when that was how photos came! Well, they are in the mail, phew! And I have discovered that with trying to work more to PAY for this wedding, I really DON'T have that much free time. I need to discipline myself and get back to the quilt!

Not soon enough...

Adieu Miou

Sadly, last Monday we had to have our almost 18 year old cat, Miou, put to sleep. She had been diagnosed with liver/kidney/spleen cancer over two months ago, but had been doing well until late last week, when she started to deteriorate. By Saturday she stopped eating and drinking. It was very hard to do, but we couldn't let her suffer anymore.

This picture of her was taken in March of this year. We got her as a kitten when my daughter, Katie, was seven. She named her after a character in a favorite book, In the Castle of Cats. (Our 3 year tuxedo cat, Purrkins, is also named for a cat in the book.)

Wedding quilt...work in progress

So...here is what I have done so far. These are 162 of the 243 strips (3 squares per strip) that will ultimately get sewn together into 81 blocks. I am trying to keep them as random as possible for the most color diversity. The dark brown triangles are the unifying theme. Once I get the blocks pieced, I will then have the challenge of arranging them. Right now I am leaning toward this type of layout, which gives you those visuals diagonals.Of course, I did need some immediate gratification and sewed this block together just to get an idea of what one would look like.

And while my Bernina was smoking, Miss Graycie found a new spot to nap, on another work in progress...perhaps to remind me that this sweater is almost finished!

More doll and food pictures

Here is Miss Revlon ready for Easter in her pale blue gingham shirtwaist dress trimmed with matching baby rickrack.

For some reason, the idea of edible flowers has always appealed to me. I recently planted two nasturtium plants...this is a picture of my first harvest :-)

Wedding quilt

I am making a quilt as a wedding gift for my daughter, Katie, and her fiance, Kyle, who are getting married October 19. These are the fabrics I am using. She chose some of them from the Hancock's of Paducah catalog when she was here at Christmas, and I added some to have enough variety. This is the pattern I am using:

Even though fabrics are for the most part contemporary, I wanted to use a fairly traditional pattern. Some of the fabrics are Amy Butler, some Moda and I even snuck in an April Cornell. I will post a photo of work in progress when I finish piecing the 486 half triangles together (did I mention I'm making a king-size? :-)

Miss Revlon in another outfit

My mother made all these fantastic doll clothes for Christmas, 1957. I am the process of photographing them all to post on the Yahoo! GlamourDolls board, so I will be sharing them here as well. This is Miss Revlon in her black velvet slacks and a red top...a very elegant 50s look.

St. Patrick's Day dinner

...was corned beef and cabbage of course. It looked so nice that I had to take a picture!