The Newest Teenager.....and More Snow!

Happy birthday Logan! This is not the way the week was supposed to go, but this young fellow is a gem! So cheerful and never whining though he has cause to do so!

We made Chocolate Lava Cakes to celebrate the day.

With a little cream to top them off.

He is somewhat of a chocaholic, wonder where he gets that?! He is without doubt the cutest 13 year old I know [there is no prejudice at all there! ]

We sang Happy Birthday and then enjoyed the lava cakes, two DGS on the right and their friend on the left.

We awoke this morning to a major spring storm and it snowed all day depositing another 2-3 ft. of the wet white stuff! As I write at 10.30 pm it is still snowing!

Two big boys went over to Telluride and snowboarded all day, we visited neighbors this afternoon and after two hours this is what the Avalanche looked like!

DH had to park the car about 100ft. from the neighbors house so we wouldn't get stuck so we wore boots and carried our shoes. It was snowing so hard it covered our footprints within a minute, I dropped a shoe on the way back to the car and by the time I trudged back 50ft. to look for it the snow had covered the shoe! And it was so deep my boots were full of it!

I took pics with the zoom lens from the neighbor's house of the snowplow clearing our drive but by the time we returned home there was another foot of snow.

A really gigantic storm and since it's still coming down we hope the plow comes by early in the morning to dig us out so we can head back to AZ.

Sunday:

PS. the plow came in early and we drove slowly most of the way to Cortez over slippery, black-ice/packed snow.

Long day but we made it safely to AZ.

Finished For Friday-The Dresden Plate Flimsie

Well, finished to flimsie anyway, it still needs to be quilted but getting this far was an accomplishment because hand sewing is not my forte and this required a bit to get it to this stage.

Yesterday at Huggy Bunch I worked on putting the blocks together and today got the border on this vintage 30's quilt. Thirteen came already hand appliqued along with another 5 pieces of muslin and a half dozen or so extra "plates" so I hand appliqued another 5 to make 18 for this on point setting.

Wait a minute, I had that all nice and flat Button! It never fails when ever I lay one of my tops/quilts on the floor Miss Button has to park herself on it! It's as if she is saying "Yeah Mum, this is a good one ."

Client quilts of course never touch the floor, they just go on the LA, but I often toss my own in- progress tops down to see how they look and before I can say a thing Button appears from nowhere and walks over and lays down to give them the nod! On the rare occasion these days that I hand bind a quilt she likes to come lay on the part that hangs off my lap! Dogs are so strange, don't you wonder what goes through those little heads?

I am loving this quilt and it's a keeper-I bought the blue replica fabric for the setting triangles and border and I think it complements the old fabrics in the plates quite nicely. I want to use wool for batting and muslin for backing and I'll quilt it with feathers. Can't wait to get a few other tops done so I can quilt this!

If you'd like to see the other Friday Finishes you can visit Litandlaundry who is hosts this celebration!

A Broken Arm!

This is Thursday I know but the item I wanted to show for VTT is currently unavailable for photographing!

Instead you get a few pics of my brave wounded snowboarder, who now misses out on his Spring Break snow-sports due to a broken arm. Bummer!

Monday GS#2 fell while snowboarding. X-rays at the Medical Center confirmed the injury and the arm was splinted with instructions to see the orthopedist today to get a cast. So he has to hang out with Grandmother the remainder of the week and as some compensation, Tuesday we went into Ouray while the others went to the slopes. We love this little mining camp town with it's quaint architecture and laid-back lifestyle.

After Lunch and a visit to Mouse's Chocolate Shop that of necessity involved the consumption of chocolate, we found him a cool new hoodie. Unfortunately our other favorite stop, The Toy Shop, is closed on Tuesday! Double bummer!

Here he is with Button.

He chose a green cast for St. Patrick's Day.

He really is a cheerful uncomplaining chap about the entire unfortunate incident and the proof is in the picture!

For all of this and more-the cuteness factor alone-he gets his own blog day!

He will be a teenager on Friday!

Wordless Wednesday, Spring Snow

Ridgway, Colorado

Snowy Sunday

We drove into Ridgway yesterday evening with clear skies and mild [for here] temp. of 30 degrees.

We did not expect to awake in the morning to this!

Another blizzard.......

that darned old Gorebal warming!

The guys have been over in Telluride snowboarding............

so I have had a quiet day.

I had planned to take Button on a long walk but not in this blizzard.

As if a day on the slopes wasn't enough with Daylight Savings Time they have an extra hour of light so to top it all off the boys are now off on the snowmobile!

And sledding!

Here's Button watching over the snow plow!

I made crockpot lasagna -if you haven't tried it I doubt you'll ever go back to the oven kind once you make it this way. Everyone loves it and it is so easy, perhaps the best I have ever had!

And did I say easy? And no crusty pan to scrub either.

Yum!

Here's my version of the recipe, it's great for a hungry crowd it makes a lot. Six hungry guys ate large portions [and some had seconds] and yours truly, and there's a large portion left. So I figure it feeds ten adults. I use low fat ricotta and mozarella so it's pretty healthy too and economical! What more can you ask?

1 lb. ground meat browned- I use turkey

28 ozs. jar of your favorite spaghetti sauce

1 cup crushed tomatoes or tomato puree

1 tsp Italian seasoning

10-12 lasagna noodles uncooked- I use whole wheat

32 ozs. carton ricotta cheese

1 cup fresh grated pecorino or Romano cheese

4 cups grated mozarella

handful of parsley, chopped

1 egg

1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper

Mix lightly beaten egg, ricotta, chopped parsley, S and P and pecorino or Romano cheese. Set aside.

Mix browned ground meat, Italian seasoning, spaghetti sauce and crushed tomatoes[or puree] together. Spray the inside of crockpot with Pam, then cover the bottom with a few tablespoons of the meat sauce.

Break up noodles to fit and place a layer over the meat sauce.

Cover noodles with a layer of meat sauce, then the ricotta mixture then a cup of mozarella and continue for another couple of layers until you run out of ingredients, usually about 3 layers depending on whether your crockpot is tall and narrow or short and wide!

I finish with a layer of noodles, meat sauce and mozarella.

Cover, cook on high for 30 mins, then another 3-4 hrs. on low.

The noodles will be cooked and the result is delicious!

PS. In case you really don't trust that the noodles are cooked through, take a long skewer and poke it down through the layers and you will see that it is indeed done! That's what I did the first time I made it, LOL!

Finished For Friday

Yesterday I put this sweet little girl's quilt on the LA to try and get it done today before we head off for another week of snow with the GS's and a friend.

I had removed the last quilt and decided when I looked at the tops awaiting quilting that I wouldn't put on another and have to leave it half quilted. But then I got Andee's quilt and it was just the right size to get done today so I got a good start on it last night and just now finished it- BJ will deliver it for me tomorrow at the AZ. Quilt Show.

The pics. turned out different colors because the first I took with the flash and the second without. The color is more like the first pic, pink, but brighter. That's why it's good to take your quilt pics in natural daylight you get truer color but not sunlight, that can wash out the colors too . Of course if you have a fancy camera and/or great photo software skills you can overcome all those issues! Me, I am pretty much a point and shoot!

This quilt top is all batiks but the backing is not. I know some quilters have problems with skipped stitches and other issues on batik quilts but I am fortunate with the A-1 machine to be able to get them done usually without any issues and this one was no exception. Occasionally I have encountered some thread breakage when both top and backing were batik, I think because those particular fabrics were especially dense. On one Kaffe Fasset quilt I had trouble every time I encountered two particular fabrics and I decided that they were much tighter weave, so I tried to slow down and quilt as little as possible in those areas!

I quilted Andee's with that beautiful King Tut variegated thread from Superior, it's the best thread, and about the most expensive quilting thread, I wince when I order it!

The backing is a cute girly print, the bobbin thread is Superior Bottom Line that works so well when you don't want obvious stitching to show, I used a medium pink.

So it is finished for Friday and you can see some other bloggers finishes at Lit And Laundry

VTT Vintage/Antique Gold Marcasite Watch

Last week I missed VTT, I have been quilting a lot, and this week I am setting up my Etsy shop. As many quilts as I give away I still accumulate a collection that haven't found a suitable home so I decided to see if they would be a marketable commodity at Etsy. I'll let you know how it goes, it would be nice to help support my habit, LOL. If you would like to take a peep at what I have up so far I have posted a link in my sidebar under my profile. If you have a critique please email me, I haven't ever done anything like this before so I am open to any suggestions.

This week I am running late to post for VTT so I will show just one item, a watch that is very special to me

It's very unusual, gold marcasite. Most marcasite I see is silver and the only gold I could find was "gold tone" or "gold overlay". This dainty watch is 14 or 18 carat gold [and I can't remember which] but it was made by Olymp, a watchmaker that seems no longer to be in business!

It belonged to a favorite aunt who was very good to me and, very sadly, died of Alzheimer's disease. It hurt to see that clever, witty lady lose her mind and her life to this terrible disease.

Aunty Al [Alison] was a school principal, a pretty, petite maiden lady, handicap golfer, avid gardener and a real fashion plate!

My Mum and Dad gave her the watch around 1952, and she wore it almost constantly for the rest of her life. When I received the watch about twenty years ago I took it to a jeweler who restores antique watches and he told me that the tiny workings were so worn as to be beyond repair. Rather than wear it only as an ornament I had the jeweler replace the worn clock works with a tiny digital one so I would have a working timepiece.

I dearly love and treasure it beyond the actual monetary value and wear it regularly, remembering the one who owned it and those who gave it to her.

Now please visit our hostess Colorado Lady for a list of other VTT bloggers and their vintage thingies!

Quilts For Dolphin House

As of yesterday these three flimsies are quilted. They were sent to me by a new quilter, whose "name has been with -held to protect the innocent", LOL.

They are part of her learning experience as a quilter and are destined for Dolphin House , a safe haven for families escaping abuse.

There is always a need for quilts and my quilt group in Montrose, CO. is active in supporting this organization as part of their community outreach. One of the group will bind and deliver them to the Dolphin House.

They are each about 50"x60", cheerful and warm and will be a comfort I hope to children recovering from traumatic experiences. I used the new [to me] Quilter's Dream Green batting, made entirely from recycled plastic bottles. It's light and sturdy and will stand up to repeated washing very well.

They are quilted with edge to edge freehand designs, the first with a square spiral and the other two with different swirly patterns.

One more top was also quilted yesterday, the strip scrap quilt that I made recently- I will photograph it as soon as the binding is done.

Today I have the beautiful baby Matthew so I don't plan to accomplish much else than spending time with him! He is too cute for words [IMHO] now saying dadadad though I wonder if he knows who that is! No park today it's mostly raining and chilly out.

Baby Matthew loves his own remote control-an inoperable one without batteries- heaven help us, are all males born with a magnetic attraction to electronics?! He goes after every phone, camera, remote or any other electronic-looking device!

It should soon be time for a nap [for the baby!] and maybe I can get the strip-scrap quilt bound while sleeping babies lay!

AWOL!

Having been AWOL [ Absent Without Leave] this week from blogland, I will keep my Saturday post short and sweet! No reason in particular for the absence, just family and life you know?

Today I met up with some quilty friends I have come to know mostly online- we visited a new [to me] quilt shop in Tempe and chatted loooong over lunch with some show and tell to enliven the event!

Andee has posted a pic over on her Facebook page.

This afternoon I finished Andee's Christmas Lights quilt, a Bonnie Hunter Mystery from 2009 Quiltmaker Magazine. I had hoped to deliver it today but just couldn't get done in time.

Fortunately Andee probably won't need to use this quilt now till next Christmas season, plenty of time for her to bind it.

Another spectacular scrap quilt with some very unexpected colors! Up close and personal with this quilt I was surprised to find purple-can you find a purple piece? In person it looks much more festive, I think the camera has washed out the colors a bit, even so I love it.

Nice work Andee!

This evening DH and I dined bountifully at the Ocean Club with oldest DS & DIL. Dined [as in past tense] the wonderful food had been eaten and table cleared for coffee and port. You can take my word for it that Ocean Club is a fine dining experience for a special celebration, the Seafood Tower is a gourmet delight.

Now I am off to bed since I am unable to type without constant errors, that means I am beyond weary!

Rita's Quilt

Here is the finished quilt all ready to offer some comfort I hope to a lovely lady.

In case you don't recognize my odd arrangement of the blocks this is actually the BQ2 pattern!

It was an experimental setting that really didn't impress me but I didn't have the mojo to unpick and re-sew, 'nuff said 'bout that!

An added border makes a generous lap size to wrap up in, about 65"x75".

During the first couple of steps I made a major booboo in block construction and in the interests of transparency, LOL, I will reveal my "misstep" - I made twenty 6.5" blocks instead of twenty 9.5". What to do? Hmmmm, quilts have lots of seams, they have many small bits sewn together to make larger bits and so on, who is to say one cannot join up the smaller blocks to become bigger blocks?

So I did!

If you zoom on the quilt pic. you may be able to find some of those pieced blocks combined with some that were the correct size in the first place! Good luck though, they blend in very well.

Now if I had not told you would you have ever noticed? Probably not.

It's a quilt.

I love the colors and I quilted it with an all-over folk-art sort of flower resembling the flowers in the Valori Wells focus fabric. The binding was left over from a project about 18 months ago when I made way more double fold bias binding than I needed- would you believe about 12 yards more in fact, and there's enough left of it still to bind one more quilt!

The backing is a cheerful beachy print from Bernina Connection, 75% off and I have yet more of it because I purchased the end of the bolt.

Everything came from stash, happy dance!

Oh, I have to make a label yet!

Andee's Christmas Lights is next on the LA- I am playing with baby Matthew most days this week so quilting takes a bit of a back seat!

Quilting Again

The drive from CO. was a bit slow, the first couple of hours it was snowing and the roads were slick. This pic I took soon after we left the house. Once we left Cortez the weather cleared but there was more precipitation around Mt.Humphries, north of Flagstaff when we came by there.

With all the snow and family visiting you might well assume I wasn't even thinking of quilting, but I am always thinking quilting!

At Huggy Bunch Wednesday I bound 4 little blankies for the Humane Society from the small quilt "sandwiches" I keep by the side of the LA for checking tension and trying out new ideas etc. I use up strips of left over batting and fabric and instead of throwing them away I hem or bind them for the stray/lost critters, so much nicer than the floor of the cages they are kept in.

On the drive from CO. today I finished the hand applique on the center circles of the vintage 30's Dresden Plate blocks, all eighteen of them and for someone who avoids handwork that was quite a commitment! Now I can complete the top and add it to my stack of flimsies!

After we got into AZ this evening I began to cut the fabrics for a new project-my dear kind friend Rita has BC; she has completed the first round of chemo and has surgery March 19th. then more chemo and possibly radiation. I want to have a quilt ready for her when we return to CO. in a couple of weeks so I must get busy, no letting the grass grow under my feet,LOL!

These are the three fabrics I chose from my collection for the top........

and I have a really pretty beachy fabric for the backing. It will be a cheerful, spring-like quilt and hopefully a cuddly comfort for her recovery. No decision yet as to borders, I'll see what I have left once the rest is done and what other appropriate fabrics I can find in the stash. It's great to have a collection of fabrics to fall back on, now I rarely run to the QS and buy specifically for a new project, though I am not averse to purchasing additional pieces to complete a quilt if there is no other option!

No idea how I will quilt it, it's my first BQ2. Friend Loretta gave me the pattern a year or more ago and I am finally making use of it. The large floral focus fabric I am using is from one of my favorite designers, Valori Wells. I can see quilting some leafy wreaths in the large [9.5" ] blocks and perhaps leaves in the narrower strips.

The plan is to make this top then get busy on the longarm for the next week or two, I have a pile of tops waiting to be quilted.

VTT

We are packed up to return to AZ for a couple of weeks but not wanting to miss out on VTT I will quickly show a couple of vintage Thrift Store bargains from the Humane Society here in Ridgway.

The first this bowl with the lovely flower decal and gold rim, I use it a lot to serve veges- it reminds me of those that were popular in my youth. No marks on the bottom so I have no idea of it's origin but I thought it was pretty and I think I paid 50 cents or a dollar for it.

And two handy sized little Pyrex bowls, I had nothing like them so I snapped them up for a dollar or two and use them almost daily.
I can't imagine why anyone would give away these treasures,
Can you?
On closer inspection it looks as if I need to soak this to remove whatever is adhered to it- the dishwasher doesn't do detail work!

I photographed the letters from the wrong side, but I'm guessing this indicates the size of the bowl?

And do you find it odd that some of us are so enamored of these simple old relics of a bygone age?!

For more vintage devotees and their treasures visit Colorado Lady's blog.

Wordless Wednesday

Pygmy Nuthatch.




The storm has passed.