ST. Patrick's Day

My family began our St. Patrick's day with a GREEN breakfast........

green scrambled eggs, bacon, green pancakes and we skipped the green milk this year and had OJ instead.

I was asked what the meaning of St. Pat's day was............

HUM?????

My reply was that it had something to do with an Irish Saint named Patrick!

But I began to ponder the real reason so I googled it of course!

It seems that St. Patrick is credited for bringing Christianity to Ireland!

Here is an excerpt:

Why Saint Patrick's Day?

Saint Patrick's Day has come to be associated with everything Irish: anything green and gold, shamrocks and luck. Most importantly, to those who celebrate its intended meaning, St. Patrick's Day is a traditional day for spiritual renewal and offering prayers for missionaries worldwide.

Spiritual renewal?

Most Americans wear green and get smashed! We have an Irish pub a 1/2 a mile from our house. It was PACKED! They even put up a tent in the parking lot. We were lulled to sleep last night by music coming from the pub!

We ended our celebration by having Shepards Pie & bread for dinner and watching one of my favorite movies "The Quiet Man" with John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara.

A couple of years ago while at quilt camp

I decided to try out a new pattern.

I wanted to make a table runner using shamrock fabric.

Now, I'm usually pretty good a following a new pattern, however this time I was enjoying a glass of wine while I was sewing this new pattern.....

I looks okay until you really look at it and

see that it is NOT symetrical.

Then when you fold it in half you can REALLY see that I screwed up!

Personally I think it is a

PERFECT tablerunner for St. Pat's day...........

I made it this way on purpose!

That's my story and I'm sticking to it

I embroidered this apron for a friend for her birthday.

This is one of her favorite expressions. I love it!

Happy Birthday Grandma Lizzie!

Time in a Bottle

So I'm back to the Time in a bottle theme.

There just does not seem to be enough time in each day to accomplish all of the things I want/need to do!
I'll never understand how anyone could be bored!

I"ve been pretty frustrated lately because

I am unable to DO the things I want to do.

Machine quilting has been severely limited due to this latest outbreak of elbow/neck/upper& lower back pain!

I'm down to 1 quilt a week AND it takes me ALL WEEK to do it!

I've been trotting off to physical therapy a couple of times a week and at 2 hours a crack that sure does take alot of time! However I am learning some skills that hopefully will get me back to quilting for more than 15 minutes at a time!

I also spent 25 minutes laying in a coffin this week! (MRI) Let me tell you.........if you are not comfortable in small enclosed places it is not much fun!

I decided to keep my eyes closed and for 25 minutes I just thanked God for all of the blessings in my life.

The small enclosed space, the loud erratic noises of the the MRI machine just faded away and the time passed very quickly.

Now I just pray that they come up with something!

The last quilt that I was able to finish is this

Log Cabin Heart beauty.

I finished it JUST in the nick of time before

it speed off to Oregon for a wedding gift.

The maker was planning on doing the

hand binding while driving to Oregon.

(Thankfully she was the passenger!)

One of the other things I enjoy doing is gardening. I have the brownest thumb that you can imagine, but I do keep trying!

I really want to grow tomatoes so this birthday gift was pretty special. It is a Topsy Turvey tomato planter.

It hangs upside down from a hook.

The plant grows DOWN and the roots grow UP!

The bag is designed to be like a greenhouse.

This is what the plant looked like last Tuesday when it was planted. I'm going to take another picture tomorrow to see what a week has brought.

Happy St. Pats day tomorrow!

50.. Fit and Fabulous!

Well, 50, FIT and Fabulous was what I was shooting for, but I'll settle for 2 out of the 3! LOL! You'll have to guess which 2!

I celebrated the big Five - O on Monday by starting out my day hiking on the mountain with my neighbor and friend Jan. We hiked just over 2 miles and then I came home and did a little work in my garden. So far the day was pretty fabulous! My plans after that were to get cleaned up and then hit a couple of quilt/fabric stores and maybe a 2nd hand store or two. But the day was made even better when my friend Linda called and said that she was going to the very fabric store that I was planning on going to and would I like to go along. Now Linda is also the goddess of 2nd hand shopping! So not only did I get to go to the places I wanted to go to, but I got to share it with a good friend!

The day ended by spending a very wonderful evening at Caramba's with a whole tableful of special friends. Jo had arranged with my bunko group and some of the FNQer's to meet up at Caramba's to celebrate my half century mark. She brought a cake and everything! YUM!

Looks like everyone was having fun!

Jo's dear mother, who has since passed away, had this custom of smearing icing on the lips of the birthday girl/boy. Jo HATED this when she was growing up, but now continues the tradition............

I didn't mind one little bit since the frosting is my FAVORITE part of the cake!

One of the special gifts I received on my birthday was the news that my newlyweds have finally had an offer on a house accepted. They are in their 10 day inspection period. They had a foundation expert over yesterday to check things out since QUITE a few houses in this developement had had problems. I took some pictures while this was happening.

Here is the link to my webshots album:

http://community.webshots.com/user/crz4quilts

If all goes will they will take possesion of the house the first week in April!

Pretty Fabulous DAY!

I've been crazy busy the last couple of days! I was able to spend a very enjoyable weekend up north at Pines and Needles Retreat. It was great for me to be able to take a few days off (and away from the quilting machine) to give my elbows a chance to rest.

Here is a picture of the whole group:

I was able to accomplish quite a bit of sewing while I was there. I put together this quilt top from strips of fabric that were already cut. I had participated in a strip swap awhile back and these were the black and white strips that I had traded. It was great to be able just to start sewing the strips together!The pattern for this quilt is called "Dancing Stars" and it is made specially for 2 1/2" strips.

This quilt is another t-shirt quilt in progress:

These are some of the other projects that I worked on while at camp:

a Greenbay pillow made out of a t-shirt, another pillow made out of a t-shirt (red square) a pair of Micro-mitts, a pillow case and 2 paper-pieced heart squares made from scraps of quilts that I have made and given away.

Before I went to camp I embroidered this Apron for Kim, the hostess and owner of Pines and Needles Quilt Retreat:

I also embroidered this apron for our friend Nicole who used to play soccer on Mike's team. Nicole and her husband Craig just purchased their first home and unfortunately I missed their housewarming party since I was at camp. But Mike and all the kids were able to go, so I sent this apron along in my place!

I"ve also had a birthday since I last wrote, the big Five-O, but I'll save that to write about for another day.

Baccus Wine tasting

Last night we went to Bacchus, a wine bar in Keirland Commons to celebrate the birthday of our daughter-in-law. She really wanted to do a wine tasting and share a birthday cake with the other attendees of the wine tasting.

Last night we did a blind taste test of 6 different wines and we had to guess which country the wine was made in. The person with the most

correct answers won a free tasting. No one at our table won!

Bacchus is a really sweet wine bar with plenty of atmosphere, friendly people and great wine. Here is the link to thier website:

http://www.bacchusaz.com/

I finally got a picture of the t-shirt quilt that I was working on:

This is a 20 shirt quilt done in a Twist and Turn pattern.

One of the ladies that I quilt for got this idea to make pillow shams for her bed that would match the t-shirt quilts that she has made. Here are some pictures of the quilting of those shams-to be:

These shams will match the Patriotic T-shirt quilt.

and the shams below will match the quilt that she made for her daughter.

It is really neat how the quilter matched the t-shirts with traits of the people who will receive the quilt.

I am getting ready to go to Christopher Creek for a weekend quilting retreat! I've been trying to work and get alot done so I can enjoy my time away. We have had such wonderful weather, but they have been talking about a storm coming thru this weekend. Since I will be further up North, there is a pretty good chance that we might get some SNOW up there! What a cool treat for us desert dwellers!

Quilters join the 21st Century!

Extra! Extra!

Read all about it!

QUILTERS JOIN THE 21ST CENTURY!!!

A few months back I wrote about how I hurt my elbows and after procrastinating for some time I finally went to the doctor, who promptly gave me pretty new arm bands to wear, some meds, and sent me to 4 weeks of physical therapy for 6+ hours a week! My elbows improved for a time, but when I returned to my regular quilting work my left elbow flared up again and very painfully let me know it.

In the past at this point I would have just given up and decided that I would have to learn to live with it!

But not this time! I called and went in to see the doc AGAIN!

However I did something a little differently this time...........I took some pictures of the quilting machine that I operate. I figured that he needed to see exactly what I was doing, so perhaps he could better help me!

His reponse AMAZED me!

He immediately started typing away at his laptop.....asked me the name of the machine and said

"I thought that quilters just sat around a frame and talked!"

At any rate, I feel like I was taken a little more seriously, he checked out now only my elbows, but my neck and back as well. I have some new meds, MORE PT, and an appointment for an MRI.

I think I'll take the pictures with me when I go for PT. They could probably give me some pointers too!

But for the record:

Quilters have joined the 21st century!

Secret Garden

Last weekend we had 7 ton of rock delivered to be placed in my secret garden area.

It was really hard work removing the cement divider.

At first Mike was using a sledge hammer and crow bar........

but they finally borrowed a cement driller from our neighbor

and it made the work a little easier.

And hauling all of that rock was no picnic either.

But boy does it look good now!

Future plans include making more flower beds along the back side of the fence. I think that might be this weekend's project. The weather has been absolutely beautiful here, however they are forcasting 90 degree weather for Sunday. NOT the best way to begin March! Hopefully it won't get TOO hot TOO soon!

I've started COMPOSTING!

Here is one of my bins:

This year we gathered all of the leaves that

fell from the trees and have

been putting them into these makeshift bins.

I put all of my kitchen

scraps in here, water it down,

and mix it up from time to time.

I've already used one pile to enrich a

newly planted garden in another area

of our yard.

I've got the neighbor bringing me HER kitchen scraps too!