Family Fun!

This past weekend was a special one because all three of our adult children were in Seattle, and that is a rare occurrence.  Jill was here from Chicago and spent the majority of her time getting acquainted with Stella and Max.

Mommy Jill left these three behind, but it looks like they had fun anyhow with the big-leaf maple leaves we sent from Seattle. Can you believe those dry leaves survived the mailing?

As always, Max and I had to catch up on our reading. He loves books, any and all!

He was also quite pleased with his new mittens until he realized it's hard to build anything while wearing them.

In the midst of it all, I managed to finish this hat. Check off one Christmas project! Yay!

And now the challenge is,  as this weekend approaches, to find something to do that will top the past one! Any ideas?
PS ~Check out Patchwork Times to see what others are knitting, and if you like quilts, see my last post.

Lots of Quilt Show Photos!

Block Party Quilters had their annual show this past weekend, and I have a few photos from my morning there. As you can see there were lots of quilts to see.

 I seem to gravitate to the quilts that include some embroidery, however, I didn't find a single Crazy Quilt. This is one of Lynette Anderson's designs which I love.

 Besides embroidery and cute buttons, the squirrel, bunny, owl, and fox were appliqued, in wool, I think.

Aren't the flowers fun?

This interesting quilt was mostly Bible verses.

All that printing must have taken a lot of time and patience to embroider!

I really liked the alphabet on this part.

Our quilt group had two quilts displayed that we all worked on. (My block is the the dog with the pink collar.) We plan to donate this quilt to the Humane Society auction. The pattern is called
"Gone to the Dogs," but I don't remember the designer.

This quilt was my idea from a pack of blocks I purchased in Minnesota.  We all had fun choosing the fabrics.

My block was this one. This quilt will be given to someone at the local Ronald MacDonald house.

Linda from our group had several quilts on display. This lovely one was made for her friend using the friend's mother's antique hankies.  If you double click on it, you might be able to see her pretty embroidery.  Each basket is different, too.

Linda is very good at applique and piecing also as you can see on this quilt! Isn't it cute?

  I hope one of her quilts won an award!

 Isn't this an amazing example of applique?  I don't know who did this one.  Next time I'll follow Deborah's idea and also photograph the information.

The 3-dimensional flowers were so pretty!

I love anything red and white!

Never before had I seen Dresden Plates combined with something else like these stars.

This small quilt has interesting colors and some fun embroidery.

A great fall quilt, don't you think?

So, there you have it, lots of photos from a fun show. The one thing I forgot to photograph was the most unique item at the show, and it didn't have anything to do with quilts at all! A very friendly gentleman was demonstrating his restored antique sock knitting machine; I had no idea there was such a thing, but it must work pretty well because he had lots of pairs of socks for sale. Check the link, so you can see that it looked rather  like a meat grinder!

Friday Ramblings ~~~

I just got home from a morning at the Block Party Quilters' annual show.  Becca and I went together, and we ran into a few others from my quilt group.  Pictures to follow soon. Meanwhile, here's what was on my needles a few days ago.  Since then that pair of mitts is done,  and a second pair in a different color is on its way.  The pattern, a fun and interesting one,
is Point Reyes from the Classic Elite newsletter a while ago.  The mate of the little mitten is one of what's on my needles right now. Check out Patchwork Times to see what others are knitting today.

These Christmas stockings were finished and turned in. Our group along with some others makes the needed 88 stockings each year that are filled and hung on  the door of each family's room at the local Ronald MacDonald House.

Not long ago on a foggy morning, I looked out our second story window and thought my eyes were tricking me. A very crafty and determined spider had spent who knows how long spinning its web way up high. It was only just barely attached to the string from a plant on the patio below that ran up to the second floor.  Don't you wish you could weave like that?

For those of you who've been holding their breath, wondering what Daniel and Sophia wore on Halloween. Here's the answer: (Rumor has it they wore different outfits for their school parties but no photos to prove it!)

Back when we were in Illinois a few weeks ago, Dick and I made our teaching debut in David's classroom.  I read part of a story about the Wright brothers

and Dick talked to the kids about how airplanes fly.  Everyone then had a lot of fun trying to fly their paper airplanes out in the hallway.  One plane went 34 feet!

Ginger could care less about all this.  Ah, the life of a cat!

Happy Halloween!

Wow, the past several days have been really crazy!  We had a day-long choir workshop last Saturday and then went to see a play in which a choir friend was one of the 4-person cast members.  I counted 43 seats in the theater and needless to say, each seat was a good one.  The play was a new one called Mirror Images,  and we enjoyed it.  With a choir rehearsal on Tuesday because of Halloween, a couple of days helping out our daughter and our usual Tuesday volunteering, it's been hard to remember which day was what!  Despite our weird schedule, I did manage to finish a few projects.

Sothia is done!  Remember when I sought advice on how to finish the ruffle? As you can see I decided to repeat the beige since I had plenty of it.  Thanks for the encouragement.  That ruffle took forever, but I'm happy with the results.

Kathy pointed me to this pattern and it sure looks cute on Stella. Attaching the hood wasn't the most fun I've ever had, but that was the only really challenging part.

October is the Purple Crying Campaign and since the UW hospital participates, I finished a few little hats.  The hats are given to new parents along with information about the crying issues many tiny babies have.

My laugh for the morning came in the form of an email.  David dredged up part of an old costume I made years ago for his mom and created the "Viking Chicken".  Interesting bird, eh?

Haven't yet heard what these two are wearing, but they sure have fun with their guinea pig Amy!

Last we heard, this little guy was quite please with the idea of masquerading as Tigger.

And as for this little lady, perhaps she'll sleep through the whole celebration?

Hope you all have a fun Halloween!  I'm off to empty the dishwasher........

Home Again!

We've been back from our trip to the Midwest for over a week, but it's taken us a while to get organized and back to our normal routine.  It was a fun 10 days and included a quick trip to Door County in Wisconsin.

The trees were just starting to turn colors, and we had some lovely Indian Summer days. There was lots of boat traffic at Sturgeon Bay.

We were on the bridge twice when it opened.  When that barge came through, we were on foot!

After driving all over Wisconsin's thumb, we met my sister and Ted for brunch in Green Bay. They were heading home from their 6000+ mile Canadian odyssey, and we were heading back to Illinois.

More pictures later after we plant the tulip and daffodil bulbs, but I did want you to know that the sweater fit Sophia.  And she approved of the color which is NOT cucumber, it's TINKERBELL green. Whew!

A Little Stitching and a Little Knitting.

A little bit of stitching happened this week on block #3 of Verandah Views.  I haven't finished the second block yet, but I did fix one spot where I used brown instead of green.  That's a very large frog, isn't it?

Today I finished up the cucumber sweater.  Soon I'll know whether it fits.  It looks kinda iffy to me, but I have my fingers crossed!

Look who's modelling one of my summer projects!  It does fit with room to grow. Yeah!

She's eight weeks old; can you even believe it?

Stitchin' in the Rain!

Today's paper declared September 2013 the wettest ever, the recent 6.16 inches beating out the 5.95 record set in September 1978.  And guess what?  It's still raining!  Besides that, there was a tornado early yesterday (very rare here) in Pierce County and snow in the mountains!  So, what to do, but stitching and knitting? (Of course, I could do some housework. Not!)  At the moment, I am stitching on a Block of the Month started in 2009.  It's called Verandah View from Willowberry and  will eventually be a small quilt.  Block one is all stitched.

And  I've got a good start on Block two with only eight more, plus the rest of this one, to go!

From our veranda (er, patio) all you can see besides raindrops and soggy plants is our fall blooming clematis, which has finally produced some blossoms and

the strawberry-like fruit of the Korean dogwood.  The birds and squirrels usually make short work of them, but I guess they are taking shelter from the rain also.

On the knitting scene, I'm part way up the right front of the cucumber sweater and hoping to finish that soon.  It's about time though to head to the UW hospital to knit with the Antepartum patients.  Have a nice afternoon!  See ya later!