Hurrah!!

Hurrah!! I finaly got the patio cleared off. (Check the post for Jan 13th and you will see my progress). The things under the tarp on the table will go Amvets tomorrow. I know the pitures and text will come out all over the blog, but I don't know how to fix that. I hope you will be able to follow along. The first two pictures show my fountain working and the patio all cleared off. I have alot to do here yet. This week I want to get some flowers and fix the patio up nice. Ingrid and Marlene will come on Thursday for a day of stitching, so I want it to look somewhat nice.
Next week someone will come to move the pool filter and pump and my son Randy will seal the leak in the garage and then I can arrange things in an orderly fashion in the garage.
Randy is on his way to Montreal, Canada for his work. He's going to freeze his tookis off. He talked to one of the ladies in Montreal and she asked if he had boots and gloves, he said"No, but I have shorts and sandals. " She just laughed.

The third picture is of a book I picked up at Tall Mouse yesterday. It has some wonderful motifs for CQ and very good instructions. It's put out by Leisure Arts and was written by Donna Kooler.
And it was only $10. Now that's a bargin. I also purchased Pam Kellogg's ( http://kittyandmedesigns.blogspot.com/ ) book on using Waste Canvas. She has some really
nice seam treatment patterns, so Ihave to stop browsing in the books and stitch something. Maybe I'll do a waste canvas treatment on my needlebook for the Piecemakers class or stitch a motif for the Memorial quilt. You'll have to check back in a few days. Now that will make me get busy and do something. Hope you have a wonderful day and that the weather isn't too bad where you are.

Something different

We are having a new baby in our family in a few weeks. So this is what I have been working on. The large blanket is Swedish Weave. It's 45" square. The receiving blankets are also 45" square.

I could never figure out how to wrap a baby in one of those rectangular things. I found the bib in some things while I was cleaning out the garage. It's one of those pre-stamped CS ones.

Tomorrow I take my Lilli for tooth surgery. She's 13 now. Getting up in years for a Cocker. I'm really concerned about her and me. I've never had a sick puppy before.

I'm not sure what to work on next. I do need to get back to my memorial quilt.

Ruching

The class at Piecemakers this week was on Ruching. Not my favorite thing. Sitting there taking tiny running stitches on silk ribbon. But here is the result so far. The white flowers in the center of the ruching are French Knot roses. These were fun to do. I wanted to get a motif worked up before posting this picture, but since it's been awhile since I posted I thought I would show what I have so far.

I'm finding that the colors of this block are very hard to work with. I think I like the darker color backgrounds better.

Well, enough for now, I have get Lilli to the groomers and Hopefully the guys will come with the garage door and I have to clean up this mess I have in my kitchen. It's raining here and some of my STUFF is getting wet on the patio, We managed to get almost all of it into the garge last weekend, but this sorting through stuff. Not looking forward to that. Have a good day and where ever you are stay warm, except those of you might be from down under, I suppose you are warm this time of year.

What did I get myself into???

Our garage was 3/4 office for Karl and 1/4 storage for me. So I decided to make the office back into a garage. So here I am. This looks worse in person than it does in the picture. In the first picture you can see in the background some gray file cabinets. There are 5 of them. Each has 7 drawers that are about 11" x 28" deep. Karl used them to store his philatelic stamps and supplies. I have coveted this drawers for awhile and now they are mine. So now, after they get done remodeling the garage (it's 2 car by the way) all I need to do is put all this stuff back. Anyone want to come and help? I might not be doing very much stitching as this will keep me busy for awhile. And on the day that Ingrid and I spend together, we will be going to the "Road to California" quilt show in Ontario.

In this mess I found a tray that I have been looking for for some time. It's one of those wooden ones that has a place to put some stitching. So I've ordered a CS pattern to go in there. I also found a picture of my girls from 1970 something. They were in their Camp Fire Girl outfits and stitching on a quilt. I think this was taken for some newspaper. Guess that's all for now. I do want to post some more pictures of the "Garden D'Lights", but that will have to wait for another time.

Trip to Washington

I'm waiting for Ingrid to come today so I may have to cut this short. But I wanted to show you the pictures of the Garden lights in Bellvue, WA. We went to this botanical Garden Where they made all these vignettes of flowers from the tiny christmas lights. It was the most amazing thing. If you can imagine taking a string of lights and turning it into a flower, or a peacock or a swan!

The Seccond picture is of the part of my family that was with me. The guy in the red jacket is my son Randy and with him is his wife Virginia. They live close to me here in Victorville (about and hour away). Above Virginia is my oldest Wendy, they live in Tacoma. I won't go into all the rest right now because I want to concentrate on the lights. The third picture was an open area and there was a lot more to it than in this picture. Now the last picture. IF you can inagine this was on a lawn. Again, all I could say was AMAZING. I have a few more pictures I would like to share, but I will save them for another time.

I wanted to get a picture of Mt. Baldy ( a ski resort near here) covered with snow, but it's hiding today. I'll keep watching and maybe I'll be able to get a good picture later. The snow should be up there until sometime in Feb. I have some pictures of the snow on our way up to WA. But, I'm sure all of you in the east would rather not see more snow. I have a few more from the garden, one is of a spider and a fly. Just a teaser. More later.

I'm back

It's a new year and a new life for me. First I must apologize to all those on the
'Around the Block" for not changing my posts. Susan was kind enough to put me on vacation, but now that all the rigamarole from Karl's passing is over I will try to post at least once a week.

The picture is from a class I'm taking at Piecemakers with Ingrid. She can get me in more trouble. I can't take credit for the block. I purchased it from Pam Kellogg's Etsy shop awhile back.

I love the beaded leaf design. That's a beaded berry in the center. You could also use a button there. The fly stitch leaves on the spider web roses are done with one strand of floss and one of Madera Metallic Col # 424. It's a thread with black and gold wound together. Very effective.

We've had a lot of rain here in So. Cal. over the weekend. We had six inches here at my house since Friday. The sun is out now and the mountains are gorgeous. My car is in for service and I don't have any other transportation, but I will try to take a picture tomorrow. I'm sure the snow will still be there.

Well, I guess that's all for now. I hope you all will be ok with the strong storms across the U.S. I have lots more to share with you so maybe tomorrow. Sorry for the yellow. I used spell check and it won;t go away.