Final challenge report, not so good :0(

Well, I had good intentions, and though I didn't knock the challenge out of the park - I did get organized and finish some more quilts than I would have.  Right now my board is in very good shape.  I actually have a very reasonable few months ahead of me, with only about 3 quilts in Oct. & Nov.  And only one in December, leaving room to get one done for Marci for Christmas!  I have told people that I'm currently booking January, and no one has complained, so Hip Hip Hooray!

Last weekend was the guild's quilt show.  I pushed to get a new whitework quilt done.  I had about 36 hours of quilting time in it.  The "Polly Pocket Quilt" I made from Adam Chenovert's class and a purse were entered as well.  The Polly Pocket quilt won first place in the "Special Techniques" category and the newer quilt was second.  Most exciting though, the Polly Pocket won "Best Machine Quilting" overall for the show!  Woo Woo!!!  I was surprised and so delighted.  I received a lot of good compliments from folks who attended the show and it was really sweet.  Overall it was a great show, the guild got lots of positive comments about the quality of the show and the beautiful quilts.  Folks are looking forward to the next one in two years!

I took some pictures, but have to find the camera to post, LOL!  Those crazy weekends can be like that!

Marci first 8th grade football game!

Ugh!  Looking at the calendar, the challenge is over half way done, but only a few quilts to show for it.  Must get in gear. 

Of course, with school going now, the kids' activities have picked up and I'm losing a fair amount of quilting time to that.  Last night was the first football game for the littlest DD who cheers.  It was fun.  They looked great in the new uniforms and pom poms.  It was along night, with two games to cheer, and they were beginning to look a little worn out by the end of the second one, poor things!

Got some good photos:

The girls were glad as shade spread over their side of the field! 

This next photo is a fun one.  We didn't know that when the football team scores, the cheerleaders have to do pushups - the same number as the score.  So after the first touchdown & field goal it was 7 pushups, after the next, it was 14 pushups . . . . . good thing it's Jr. High and the score doesn't get into the 40's very often, LOL!  Needless to say, the pushups were her sister's favorite part of the whole night!  The announcer and crowd count for them and cheer them on, it was really fun.

Wednesday progress report & stay away kids!

Let's address today's post in reverse order:

It has come to my children's attention that I have a blog.  Middle DD is searching the web for it (found her scribbled note of keywords) - I will shut it down rather than have the kids read it.  Reading this blog would be the same as me searching your room for your journals and reading them.  If you think THAT'S ok DD, then read on, but do not ever get on your high horse about ME invading YOUR privacy.

Hopefully, this has been addressed and we can continue on to regular programming now, LOL

Progress on the challenge:  One quilt almost done.  I'm on the last sections and they are going pretty fast.  Though I have to pick more blackberries tonight and process them, I think I can get the quilt done by bedtime.  YIPPEE!  Then I will load this customer's other quilt, which she wants only and E2E on, and finish it quickly too.

I have a couple of pix of the quilt in progress, but I"m on the wrong computer to post them, have to do that later.

Max almost got his windshield replaced yesterday, but there was a glitch, so the fellow will be out today to finish the job.  Poor guy, he had his work van all opened up to get to tools and such, and one of the newer red hens climbed right in and took her sweet time searching all through it!  Climbing in tool bins and everything!  Man, these three reds are way, way too curious.  They must have some cat in them somewhere!

Progress report, sort of ;0)

So here's my tiny bit of progress.  I did finish the baby quilt for the shower on July 28th.  It was pretty simple, just pieced yardage from Hobby Lobby and a minkie backing.  I didn't even use a batting since there was flannel and chenille in the top and the minkie was fluffy too.  Quilted a meandering feather all over it.  The first picture still has my blue washout marker marking the spine so I had a guide.

Next, I knew I had to change the ceiling fan in the quilt room before I could make any progress on the challenge.  There was a short or something in the chain pull for the ceiling fan light.  I know this and use the wall switches to turn it off and on, but Mr. Calico came through and used the chain pull to turn it off at some point, and after 500 + pulls over the course of several days, I couldn't get it to come back on (yeah, I'm a touch stubborn, LOL)

SO - out came the tool box.  Luckily I already had the new ceiling fan on hand.  It had been bought on clearance some time back, as a discontinued sample . . . . . just never got around to putting it in.  Gee, I hope others have that problem too, I'd hate to be the only one!  Once I took the old (heavy) fan and light down, I was reminded that I never finished painting the ceiling a few years ago . . . . . . ran out of paint and time, never got back to it  *sigh*  I'm seeing a pattern here!

And it was such a small patch of ceiling too, only about 1/4 of the room.  I quickly threw some heavy fabric over my shelves, found some ceiling paint in the cellar and drug out the ladder.  The new fan base was going to be much smaller, so I was going to have to do this anyway.  Might as well dig in.  The trim at the ceiling needs done too, but that can be for another day, LOL.

So after I was done and put the paint stuff away, I waited to the next day and tackled the fan.  UGH!  It wasn't as easy as painting!  Couldn't for the life of me get the silly light to work.  The fan worked fine, but no light.  Checked and rechecked my wiring, but nothing.  So I went to the hardware store to ask the guy some questions.  And we decided my course of action would be to take the light kit apart and check the wiring inside there - maybe it got jiggled loose sitting around in my quilting room.  Well, I did that and would you know?  The light kit had never been connected to the fan base!  Gee, I fiddle farted around for a couple of days checking and rechecking stuff, changing light bulbs, getting zapped by the electricity a few times -- thinking I was doing something wrong when NOPE!  Even making a trip into town to consult with Mr. Hardware guy -- and It wasn't me at all.

Finally got the fan and light in and working - Yeah!

Then MIL calls to let me know the blackberries are ripe and oh, there are plums too.  So that meant another pause in the action to pick fruit, process it and make jelly.  We are picking berries every three days, and plums every two days.  I manage to get a batch of jelly done by the day after picking.  This picture is from a few days back, there are even more jars now.  So far we are at 18 jars of Blackberry Jelly, 24 tiny jars of Plum Jelly (for teacher, mailman, propane guy, etc. gifts this Christmas) 10 jars plus two tall jelly jars of Plum Jelly.  Today is the day to pick blackberries - so expect 6 more jars of that by tomorrow.

But all that put a crimp in the quilting plans.  Plus a friend came over to use the machine so I unloaded the quilt I was working on, and we did hers that evening.  The SUPER DUPER part of that is, a friend came over  . . . . . . . that means I had to tidy the house which really needed it!  But I lost the morning to tidying and laundry, and the afternoon/evening to helping her quilt.

SO -- with renewed vigor, I set myself back to the quilt challenge and hope that life doesn't interfere again!  I still have 33 days - that's a lot of quilting time.  For today my goals are to get the darn berries & plums picked and processed, and then finish up the main body of the charity quilt and one border.  That will get it ready for turning and finishing the last two borders tomorrow.  Wish me luck (and send me Diet Coke for energy, LOL)

My own Longarm Quilting Challenge!

Ok.  Take a deep breath!

I've been inspired by Jenny, another longarm quilter who had a backlog of customer quilts.  She gave herself a 31 day challenge to finish the 30 quilts she had on backlog.  She didn't make the goal, but she DID make significant progress, I think the total was 19 or 20 -- WOO HOO.  Granted, all but 3 or 4 were simple all overs, or all overs combined with a couple of borders.  But the point is - it got her committed to getting it done.  And even she said that it kept her focused on going back and quilting after getting interrupted/distracted.  She knew she had a goal to meet and so she knew she had to go back into her quilting room and get started again no matter how many times she got interrupted.  And she has kiddos younger than I so this gives me encouragement!!

I've already discovered books on CD's and that has gone a long, long way in keeping me from getting distracted and off the task of quilting.  Plus, I don't like stopping in the middle of a CD, so I'm likely to "keep going to the end of this CD."  Which gets a little more and a little more done.  Baby Steps you know!  So with a challenge commitment, I think I could make some amazing progress too!

Right now I have:
3 calls to make for setting intake appointments.

2 Queen/King & 3 Full size quilts on hand (one is for heirloom/custom, the other four are med. quilting)
2 Quilts of Valor - one done, one to go
2 twin size - one will be EZ boards, one light custom
1 Full/Queen - med. custom (to match one done before)
1 Wall hanging - round robin from guild yrs ago, custom/heirloom (will likely be mine to keep once done)

My Queen round robin from the MOL group - heirloom/custom, would like to finish for guild show
Plus one Queen size for mom.  She could be swayed into hand quilting it I bet, but parts of it looked like fun for me to quilt - maybe I quilt some and baste other parts for her to hand quilt??

Piecing (and then quilting):
1 T-shirt quilt (need to try one so I can do an up coming one for customer)
1 Twin (Marci's pink, black, lime quilt - I want to include this because it needs to get done!)

By FAR the most intimidating is the one for Martha.  She's a friend of my mom's (pressure to do well) and the last 2 quilt I did for her won ribbons at our last guild show (more pressure) AND I've had the top for just over a year (more more more pressure!)  I really feel like if I can get it moved out, I'll feel a great relief and the others will flow more easily.  But it's a big one, with, I kid you not -- 24" borders on the outside!  Yep, it's an embroidered table cloth and she bought yardage, cut it in half down the fold, then cut it to length and slapped it on the 4 sides of the table cloth!  That has had me stumped and intimidated for most of the year, LOL.  I do have a plan to do large swags and try to break up the area into more manageable strips, but still, 24" is a lot of length, and a lot of area to fill up, LOL.

So here's my challenge - a Labor Day Challenge - if I start counting Saturday, July 21 - that gives me 45 days till Labor Day.  My challenge is to complete all of these quilts and get them returned to their owners by Labor Day.

Now, mind you, I'm doing these numbers from work.  I've not included today or tomorrow in my 45 days so I can go home, sort and tidy my quilt studio and get ready for the attack.  That means that when I go through my stack, the numbers might change if I've forgotten about one here or there (always a possibility with my middle aged brain, LOL)  edited to add: yep, just remembered one I'd forgotten.  Updated the totals above, not suprised ;0)

Jenny was great about posting almost everyday, but I'll likely only update Wed. through Fri. when I have WiFi at work, with Dial-up at home, posting and pictures would be a drag.  Although, if I can figure out how to do it easily with my phone, I'll be accountable every day of the 45 days.

So there you go.  I'm committed, it's out there.  Abolish my backlog of customer & charity quilts and complete a few of my own that are most important.  No taking it back now ;0)

RRGGG! Why is iTunes so hard to learn??

Seriously, I'm a bright person (ok, mostly in a book learning sense, not common sense, but that's not important here!) so why can't I get this iPhone and iTunes thing working? When I plug the phone into the computer it wants to sync everything - NO! It's the work computer, I don't want all my apps on it silly.

And then, when it's done syncing - the new music I downloaded isn't even on my phone - sheesh! That was the whole point of syncing silly! The local library offers 3 free downloads from a song library each week, but they are not transferring from iTunes on my computer to my phone. Off I go to try again. *sigh*



Ah, the key was to go online and do a search for my problem.  And of course, it boiled down to . . . . I was doing it wrong, LOL.  It actually is pretty simple, when you do it right.  Now my free downloads from the library are on my phone - happy day!!

Oh woe is me. . . . . apparently.

I usually let Tim handle the political stuff for our household, but today I'll be on the soapbox. 

There's an article in our local paper today about folks taking a "Food Stamp Challenge."  As I quote from the paper, "From Saturday through June 8, participants will learn whether it is possible to eat healthy on an average food stamp budget by surviving on a weekly allotment of $32.91 per person."  That works out to about $1.50 per meal.

So being the number geek that I am, I crunch the numbers.  Um, for a family of 5, that's a weekly budget of $164.55.  Wow, such poverty and starvation!  Pay attention people, my grocery budget for a family of 5 people, one large dog and 4 cats is:  $150.00 - that's food, pets, toiletries, paper products - everything we buy at the store in a week.  My outrage is that the article makes it sound like such a sacrifice to drop down to this $32.91 weekly budget.  I want to know what the participants were buying and spending prior to the challenge.  My goodness, if I got to spend that amount on only food - we'd be living like kings!

One of the participants "has a plan" the article said, "She plans to eat three meals a day throughout the course of the challenge, relying on rice-based dishes and basic salads with homemade dressing to get her through the week".  This same participant is quoted as saying that coffee and cheese are expensive, "It's interesting to see what you will skip"  It's quite simple miss participant, you skip the luxuries and the wants, you purchase the needs.  If you keep that in mind, the $164.55 will be plenty.  It's just that the country is awash in rampant consumerism and no one can even remember the difference between a want and a NEED. 

We buy store brand and generic foods with very, very few exceptions.  We only buy a few convenience foods - I keep one frozen family meal on hand for days that go crazy and dinner plans have to be changed to quick and easy.  I also buy three small frozen entrees to take for my lunch at work.  I buy our meat marked down and use it or freeze it quickly - and I usually only put in half the meat required for a recipe whenever  can get away with it (obviously, meatloaf wouldn't work for that, but any noodle or rice dish is a perfect candidate.)  We plant a garden and can/freeze the harvest.  We eat leftovers and I cook meals from scratch mostly.  Summer vacation is harder though because the kids are home from school.  That means I need to provide easy things for them to make for lunch.  I have splurged and bought Pizza Rolls for one of their choices.  But I also told the that this is a splurge and if they are all gone in one or two days, or if one person hordes them - I won't buy them again.  There is ham, turkey & bologna from the deli for sandwiches, and soups & ravioli in cans.  Of course there is always peanut butter and jelly, with lots of choices of home canned jelly flavors too!  No one will starve, they may complain, but they won't starve!

I plan to follow this story in our paper and read more about what the participants have to say after completing it.  Then maybe I'll gather up a month's grocery receipts and compare my observations with theirs.

Frankly, if we quit allowing food stamps to be used in convenience stores like Circle K for candy bars and soda -- forcing them to be used for GROCERIES in a grocery store, that might help a lot.  And of course, we could drug test those who apply/receive food stamps (that could save us millions right there!)  But that's a whole other soapbox, LOL.

Remodeling news!

Hard to believe, but true! I'm finishing up a remodeling project at home. I woke up a few weeks ago and realized that, this summer we'll have been in this house for NINE YEARS! How did that happen??? And there are 11 rooms, plus a small mud room and a basement/cellar. In nine years, I've only managed a handful of unfinished projects. Not one single thing is complete.

The evidence: Ellen's room got the walls painted. The dining room has ONE wall painted (in my defense, I decided I didn't like the color. . . . . . so I stopped . . . . . . . . and forgot to restart in a better color, LOL) - heck it still has tape up on that wall even! The foyer is the closest to really done. It just needs new flooring to qualify as "complete". But at least it HAS flooring - the downstairs bathroom got a big remodeling - that's where I learned to plumb after all. Pretty new cabinetry, new light fixtures a washer & dryer and I had to re-plumb it all because I relocated everything in the room to a better layout. But it stalled out at about 90% done - with plywood for flooring and no trim at the baseboards or door. Gee, that was several years ago, and now it needs a new coat of paint on the ceiling and maybe the walls - so it's down to about 80% done. That's just sad. The quilting room got some paint on the walls, but the base of the wall (about one foot) didn't get it's coordinating color finished, and the ceiling is not finished (really sad, you can look up and see old yucky color on about a quarter of it, and fresh pretty white on the rest - sigh) The trim never got done either. I'd say that room is about 75%

SO! In an effort to change this, I set about remodeling the upstairs bathroom (yeah, don't finish one you started, start something else . . . . .that makes sense!)

Over the last week Ellen & I have installed new fixtures for the tub/shower and after nine years we have a working shower in there! She only got sprayed in the face once when a valve didn't seat properly in its' base - and even she agreed it was pretty funny! We ripped out the old carpet and the linoleum that was under it. Max helped haul off the toilet and vanity to the dump. And I took the light fixture down.

We're keeping the (ugly) wall board 'cause we can't really afford to replace it - and besides, that gives me something to remodel in 10 more years!

Max helped me put down new linoleum. We cut it all in one piece - no seams, so hopefully no opportunities for leaks and damage to the floor. And we installed the new toilet last night too. Our old one was stained blue from somebody using the wrong chemical to clean it a couple of years ago (no one ever fessed up, but it sure was a mess.) I couldn't bear the thought of a beautiful new bathroom, and a scuzzy, never-come-clean-toilet (ladies will understand) it just ruined the whole vision.

Tonight I will install the new vanity and maybe the new light fixture. I still have to paint all the trim, but I'm going to do that slowly over the next couple of weeks - being careful not to get any paint on any new stuff of course - and then put down quarter round trim around the whole floor to hide the edges of the linoleum. A new shower curtain and I can pronounce one room in the house absolutely completely remodeled!! Whoo Hoo!! I can go in, shut the door, look around and pretend my house is beautiful, LOL.

Actually, it has been a fun process too. I knew I could do plumbing, from all the re-piping that was required in the downstairs bathroom. But to find out that laying flooring was possible is pretty cool. Granted, this is a cool linoleum- it's glueless and held down by pressure. Easy peasy. We just had to be super careful of corners as we were getting it into place and I made the trim cuts - it wanted to tear easily at those corners. In the end there was only one tear - and in the worst possible place of course: right where the tub and wall meet (at the faucet end of the tub, where water always spills over to the floor, GRRR!) But I'm hopeful the quarter round will cover it, and we're going with a fiberglass quarter round, not wood, so that may help cut down on any water damage too.

Picked up a really cool tip from a customer in Menard's as I was getting the flooring too. He said to take a strip of the plastic corner trim that is used to protect corners of drywall from knicks and dings (you know, like in a doorway, where the drywall meets up at a 90 degree angle.) Cut it to fit the length of floor beside the tub. Run a bead of clear silicone along the seam where the tub meets the linoleum/floor. Then turn that trim upside down - so it nestles against the floor and tub (where they meet at a 90 degree angle) and press so the silicone and trim make a good seal. That will help keep moisture out of there and maybe make the flooring last longer. Will try to get pix as we do this, since it's hard to explain with words.

And here are the pix:

The new (smaller!) vanity that allows the door to open all the way.  If I close my eyes I can still hear the sound of the door banging into the old vanity, LOL

New (smaller also) toilet.  The lighting is bad for the next several pix, it was night and the lightbulbs cast an orange/yellow color.  But it's really white.

Really love the shower curtain from Bed Bath & Beyond.  It has a nice Folk Art look with the flowers, but adds white to the room.  The blue is not an exact match to the wall board, but pretty close.

This is looking into the closet (crazy old house!  There's a window in there too, LOL)

LOVE the new faucet!  Those white knobs are a favorite, I have the same style downstairs in the kitchen.

New faucets in here are pretty boring, but THEY WORK which is better than the old ones!

And the light fixture.  Would have preferred it to point down (collects less bugs on a summer night - no screens in windows upstairs) but the vintage medicine cabinet from the old house would have been in the way.  There's a little damage on the wall board where the old vanity was caulked, but hope to sand and maybe touch it up with paint so it's not so noticable.