Thursday, January 24, 2008

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.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

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.

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

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.

Monday, January 07, 2008

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.