Seeing Circles

I have been giving some serious thought to joining in on the Yo Yo Quiltalong (see button on sidebar).  Do I need another challenge?  I probably do not, but my 30+ years of guilt are beginning to take over.

You see, I have a bag of yo yos.   These were lovingly made by my husband’s maiden aunt and I inherited them.  I am sure she had grand plans for them as many are assembled in settings of four already.  I just do not know what her plans were going to be.  Thus, the dilemma.  

Also included in the bag was a good amount of pink polished cotton fabric.  I am sure that must have been needed for the project, but where????  It has a very interesting stamping on it.  I am thinking that perhaps this was originally purposed for curtains and never used.  I am just not sure about the color.  Maybe the pink is what made her give up on the project.  What do you think?

Has anyone ever seen a pattern that would use the yo-yos in this manner?  There are seven of each block and fourteen (I believe) of the solid blue.  I have 952 yo-yos sewn together and then a whole bag of separate yo-yos ready to go.  As well, you can see the cardboard pattern for cutting them out.  The yo-yo size would match the Clover large tool with each yo-yo measuring 1 1/4 inches.  How many more yo yos do you think I will even need?

I had them stored in an old cedar chest along with so much more that I will share in future posts.  I literally have not opened the chest in years.  There are several vintage quilts, blocks and unquilted tops as well as lots of beautiful embroidery and lace edgings.  This was another piece in the cedar chest.  I have no idea who did the needlepoint, but I hung it up in my studio.

DH had the day free yesterday so we took a drive up to the wine country.  One of the more beautiful wineries in the area is the F*ess Par*ker winery.  Do you remember Davy Crockett?????  Same guy!  Here are some pics that I took of the winery he built.

They say that roses are planted at the beginning of the rows of vines in the same colors of the grapes.  The reason for this is that the roses will get a disease before the vines will.  Thus, if the rose gets a disease they will then treat the vines for it as well.  Interesting.

I always bring some hand work for the car rides (no sense in wasting a little free time).  Yesterday I brought along my June Birdie Stitches block to finish it off.  I think I have the Bermuda Triangle in my car.  I had my cute little embroidery scissors with a fob attached to them.  I went to use them and they slipped from my hand.  I heard them fall and have searched and searched for them.  They are literally NOWHERE to be found.  Even DH looked and he couldn’t find them.  I have no idea where they could have dropped.  I know that someday they will show up, but I just do not want to dismantle the whole front seat to find them.

I had to resort to using my garden clippers that I keep in the car.  They were a miserable substitute.  I finally gave up and finished the project last evening.  If you notice, my June block varies from the one we are suppose to do.  Terry  (http://terrytreasures.blogspot.com/)  had a design without all of the words and I did a take off from her design.  I think the wordy one will make a nice label on the back.

We watched a couple of little ones this week and I will close with these photos….such nice sharing!!!!!!!

GO, Go, Go

The first day of summer and we actually have sunshine and temperatures into the 70s.  It is heavenly.
The week was filled with lots of activity with out of town company, not a lot of sewing and not too many pictures.


Joanne (http://joanne-threadhead.blogspot.com/) provided us with a wonderful quilt along earlier this year and had a giveaway for those who sent her a photo of the completed project.  Not only did a have fun completing the quilt, but I was her winner of her favorite quilting items.  They arrived in the mail this past week and I could not be more pleased with what she chose as her favorite things.  Just look at all these goodies.

She included a stack of Apple Core blocks that she cut from her Accuquilt GO.  The fabrics are perfect for my décor and although I was a smidge intimidated with all the curves, I thought I would give them a try.  They went together so much easier than I thought they would and I am pleased with what will be a table topper.  There is no way I would have ever cut these out by hand, but for you with the GO cutter, you should give this die a GO.  Thank you, Joanne.

    

     

I am participating in the Mug Rug 2 swap and finished my mug rug for my partner.  I thought it came out so cute that I made another one for myself.

That was about the extent of my sewing this week other than 18 bean bags that three of the granddaughters and I made this morning.  The girls are riding their bikes over each Monday to “hang out” with me during summer vacation.  We are really having fun together.  Can you imagine that they want to help me clean??????  They love cleaning and helping with the laundry.  How do I keep them permanently?????


The other exciting news is that Momma tortoise started digging her nest to deposit her eggs.  She is about a month late this year and I think that is due to our wet and cool temperatures.  She dug five hours yesterday and another three already today.  They do NOTHING fast which is probably why they live to be 125+ years old. 

We had a wonderful Father’s Day here as we celebrated all of the great, loving, and dedicated dads in the family.  We heated up the pizza oven and everyone had fun making their own pizzas.  I don’t have a lot of pictures because the wives were too busy waiting on the guys!!!!

 

It sounds like it was a pretty boring week around here, but it was truly just go, go, go.  I just don’t have pictures to show for it.  It is nice to have a semi normal week this week to get caught up with all that did not get done last week while entertaining. 

Bits and Pieces

It seems the week has been in bits and pieces this week with lots of starts and stops.  I don’t seem to have accomplished much, but I do have a decent excuse.

We had four of our grandchildren with us for several days while their folks managed to get off to Palm Springs for some R&R and a little sunny, warm weather.  Of course we had a wonderful time with the children as well so it was a win, win situation. 



Do they look sad leaving their children?????

On one evening we took the little ones to a BBQ and carnival.  They had lots of rides and games, but we were fascinated with the balloon artist and the face painter.




This fellow could make anything.

I think this was Luigi.

Help...there is an owl that landed on my head!!!!

A green frog is better than that silly face stuff for this guy.

Is it crawling up my arm?

Totally hot with flames.  That ought to impress the girls.

As was to be expected, the following day was filled with laundry and cleanup so sewing was placed on the back burner until yesterday.  I did manage to finish up the quilting and binding on my last PhD project – ahead of the end of June deadline.  Whew!



The D9P red and aqua swap from last year.

I am also caught up with my Civil War blocks.  These are the most recent ones.



Most recent ones that I haven't shown lately.

A few weeks ago I won a giveaway hosted by Niki at Butternut Street.  It was a delicious four yard bundle of Sweet Nothings by Riley Blake from Raspberry Creek Fabrics.  These are sooo my colors.  I just love them and will have to come up with something special to do with them.  Thank you so much, Niki.



Sweet Nothings is appropriate for this line of fabric.

While most of you seem to be very selfish about keeping all of the warm weather for yourselves, I believe we are still in the winter months.  If any of you feel so inclined, please send a little our way.  It still hadn’t reached 60* by noon today.  So much for sunny California.

So…that was my week – other than my oral surgery on Thursday.  Now I look like I am storing nuts in one cheek.  At least my frown line on one side of my mouth has disappeared.  Always something good to balance the bad!!!!

I’m Still Here

It has just been a little busy around here and I haven’t had much of a chance to consider blogging lately.  So sorry.  As well,  everyone seems to be noticing the problems with Blogger of late.  Thanks to Terry(http://terrytreasures.blogspot.com/), I unchecked that little box requesting that I stay logged in and I am now able to leave comments once more.  My apologies to all those posts that I could not leave comments.
Here is a bit of what has been occupying my time of late. 
Our DIL threw a 40th birthday party for our son.  His birthday gift was a dog which he has wanted F-O-R-E-V-E-R.  The dog was not born yet, but was due last weekend, Needless to say,  the gifts were all dog related.  Unfortunately, the mother dog had one puppy that was dead at birth so they are once again in the hunt for the perfect dog.  It will be fun for him to help in the search so that is the positive side of the story.



He even has his dog named already.

Cousins "hangin' out" together.

40 candles in one blow....I kew he was windy.

Monkey see....monkey do????

The following morning we left for Orlando for a business meeting.  I am always amazed when I look out at the terrain and the flatness of it all.  We are so used to having our views interrupted by hills or mountains, but you could see for miles.  It was hot and humid for them and the downtown historic area was packed with the media crews covering the Ca*sey Anth*ony trial going on there.



Isn't there a song about seeing forever?

Returning home, we had a busy Memorial Day weekend with two grandchildren graduating to high school.



Notice the three year old in a stubborn spell???

Mom and Dad with the graduates.

This week has had some wonderful celebrations in our family.  Dh and I celebrated our 42nd wedding anniversary on the 31st and today is our son’s 38th birthday.  In a big family there is always something to celebrate.




Birthday boy.

I received the most wonderful surprise squishy in the mail.  It came from Linda (http://straystitches1.blogspot.com/), a fellow blogger and friend.  If you do not know Linda you must check her blog out.  She is an amazing daily blogger and you will find yourself educated, inspired and uplifted each day by reading her posts.   She accomplishes more in one day than anyone I know!!!   She is my morning wakeup and I feel as though I learn something with each cup of morning coffee and her reads.    I do hope to someday meet her as she lives just a few hours away from me.  But…look at this wonderful pincushion she made.  I LOVED it from the moment I saw it on her blog.  Thank you, Linda.

Although I haven’t had a lot of machine time lately, I have been doing a lot of hand sewing while we were away or spending time in the car.  I finished my Lil’ Twister table runner and love how it turned out.

I also got the binding on my Raggedy Ann quilt that Mary quilted for me.  She did such an amazing job on this quilt.  I tried to get some details of the quilting, but my pictures do not do it justice.  Please go to Mary’s (http://quilthollow.blogspot.com/)  blog (if you are one of the few who do not follow her incredible work) and see the pictures of the quilting that she did on it.  Thank you so much, Mary.  I just love the work you do.

We have a darling couple with three children who live next door.  They are wonderful neighbors and Monique has always admired the Christmas stockings that I make for my grandchildren.  She wanted me to teach her how to do them since she does not sew.  That was about 12 years ago!!!  She got the kits, started one and gave up.  Each year I ask her if this is the year she will finish them.  Well…I finally talked to her DH and asked him if he would be able to find the kits without her knowing.  He did!!!  I completed the stitching on the first one in FL and am working on the second one now.  I think she will be pleasantly surprised when Christmas rolls around.



Christmas in May?

Whew!!!!  Are your eyes glazed over by now?  I’ll try to do a better job of posting so it isn’t all in one loooooooong post next time.  I’ll leave you with this since I am having some oral surgery next week.



Brush, floss, brush!!!!!

P.S. I see that I cannot add the links using blogger.  I did my post with Windows LiveWriter, but the photos are blurry when enlarged on Blogger so what is....is!  Sorry.