Sketchbook Project

Tonight I got out the paints and fired up the creativity and thought I'd start experimenting. I think once I decide the direction I want the book to take I'll be able to make faster progress. After a long day at work, I am happy with my small triumph tonight. I can tell this is going to be a FUN project.

I'm experimenting with fabric and Peltex. The colors are a lot more vibrant than what is shown here. I will be adding these to my sketchbook and drawing the face, hands and feet. It's all experimental right now so bear with me.

All Things International

This has been a relatively productive week at work. And while I'd rather be somewhere else creating and working on pretty things or funky things, I'm learning all about Transfer Pricing. It's really pretty interesting, but I'm sure I'm going to run into snags shortly. This is the end result of what started with my trip to Portland a few months ago. I still have not received all of my information requested from my "friends" in Portland, but I'm plugging along none-the-less. I still hope to take this Friday off for my 9-80, but we'll see how much progress is made tomorrow.

This weekend I will be making some more of my fabric bowls. I'm going to try and make some that are only about 5" big to hold the handmade chocolates I bought in Wichita over the holidays. I will be giving these out to my fellow co-workers for Christmas. Since the chocolates have a shelf life of three weeks, I will be passing them out next week when every one is in town. If any of you are extreme chocolate lovers, try out Cocoa Dolce at http://www.cocoadolce.com/. You will LOVE it!!! My brother introduced me to this place and I came back to Houston and did some research on the owner. Seems she followed her heart when she was nearing 50 and became a master chocolatier. I like the sound of that. Actually though, I'm using her as inspiration to work on my quilting dream. I think I'm holding myself back for several reasons, the big one being insurance. Even though I don't look or act sick, I am and I need insurance. Oh, well. It's a good thing I like taxes also!

I also read an excerpt today from Steve Pavlina's new book, Personal Development for Smart People. Even though the information is common sense, it's nice to get a jump start on thinking about improving a person's life. He speaks of trying something for 30 days as a trial. I think that I will do three different things in the next 30 days: 1) cook a new meal or bake a new dessert each week (I already cook, but this must be a new recipe), 2) quit drinking Dr. Pepper, and 3) I'd like to say that I'll give up chocolate, but we are in the holiday season and I do plan on baking this year, so instead my third item will be to make handmade Christmas cards and send them out before December 25 rolls around. That one is going to be the toughest. I am notoriously late each year in mailing out my cards. I think that the problem lies in the fact that I cannot just sign my name. I insist on writing to each person even though that is usually not reciprocated by my friends or family (except Mom). It takes a long time to write even a short note to each person. Maybe the trick will be to weed out extraneous people and send to the bare minimum number of people. Kidding!!

Doggie and I went for a nice jog after work. I didn't get home until after 7 p.m., and even though it's hard to run in the dark, we had a very good run. I'm definitely getting better. Next month, I will set a goal to run a 5k and lose weight!!! I'm looking forward to it. The last of the fabric shelves have been built and installed. Don't they look great?!!! B also cooked a nice chicken marsala dinner tonight. Yummy. It's been a good day.

Countdown to Turkey Day

This will be a short week for me. I'll only work Monday and Tuesday before I take off for the Thanksgiving holiday. There won't be many people in the office this week at all so it's going to be quiet. Hopefully there are no major emergencies that will need to be taken care of. I kind of wish that I had taken off Monday and Tuesday, but both the Senior and the other Manager are taking off, so I guess just being gone on Wednesday and next Monday will be okay.

Today I quilted E's quilt. It turned out great. I now need to go make some binding and sew it to the right side. If I don't get the hand sewing to the backside done, then I can finish it on the car ride. B finished another of the fabric bookcases and we unloaded another seven boxes. I used more of the new fabric for the backside of E's quilt. It'll be interesting to see how this quilt washes up as all of this fabric except for the green on the back was not pre-washed. I always pre-wash my fabric, but since I started out with a charm pack as the base, it would have been hard to pre-wash.

Doggie and I went for another long jog today. The weather was gorgeous. I can tell the dog is getting a little bit slower as he was not pulling his leash very much at all. On the contrary he was running in front of me to the point of me almost tripping on him several times. I don't want my doggie to get old. I love the dog.

My Stash is Probably Bigger Than Yours

I have always wanted my own fabric store and now I have one. Granted it's small and right now it's in a spare bedroom, but hey, it's a fabric store and I am very happy! I see many, many different things when I look at the fabric. Not only do I see quilts, but I see kid's clothing, aprons, purses, art work, etc. I'm glad I'm able to afford to buy these things. I managed to survive the stages of living from paycheck to paycheck. My shopping binges aren't for clothes or shoes and apparently right now they tend toward fabric and expensive sewing machines! My next purchase may just have to be the Bernina 8 Series. That machine is SWEET! The shelving was designed and built by my sweetie who puts up with my fabric fetish. I'm pretty sure he secretly wants to pull out a bolt of fabric and get out the rotary cutter! He's a keeper! The door to the spare bedroom was used as the blueprint for the shelving. Ingenious! This was the prototype and now he's building two more to house the rest of the fabric.

Tomorrow is Monday and back to the grind I go. It is my 9-80 though so I'll have a 4 day week and then next week I'll only have to work 2 days as it's the Thanksgiving holiday. The end of the year is deceiving as we get all of these days off for holidays and then wham, we're hit with year end work that must be done fast and furiously. I'm not looking forward to that at all. I'll be doing the foreign accruals and even though there are only three foreign companies that I need to do, the workpapers are like a foreign language and no current employee has ever done the foreign provision. I don't mind except for the fact that the provision has to be done in 2 days. That's going to be tough as I think I'm also responsible for at least two domestic provisions also. I may not get much sewing done during that time frame!

Well I'm off to dream about my new fabric store! And a world where everyone has a brand new quilt!!!

It's A Small World After All

Sometimes things happen that just prove how small the world really is. Back in the late 80's I moved to Boston and worked in a public accounting firm. Now I live in Texas and this week I picked up a file for a company we purchased and lo and behold the first thing I see is the letterhead from my old accounting firm. And then to my amazement the person who signed the return is someone I know. The funny thing is that I wasn't the one who was going to the work on this company. I volunteered to work on it as I was waiting on other information that was slow in getting to me. Chances are good that I would never have seen these particular files even if I was involved in prepping or reviewing the returns next year. Small world I tell you.

So, since I took I stroll down memory lane, I started googling people at the firm to find out where they were and what they were up to. I found quite a few of them and they are all doing well. Then I googled myself and I'm not out there yet! Hmm . . . I think that's a good thing!

Today's project was working on E's quilt. It's turning out beautifully and I think she will really like it. I better get my butt in gear and finish up some quilts. Thanksgiving is in less than two weeks and I'm off to see my relatives and hand out some quilts. I have three (maybe four) to give away this time and they all are in various stages of completing the binding. I better ramp it up this week.

Fabrics Galore!

On Saturday the last of the packages with my new fabric purchases arrived. Yay! B is busy building shelving to house all the beautiful bolts. I rummaged through the boxes looking for the perfect fabric to go with my new quilt. Above are Version 1 and Version 2 of the quilt. I think I'm going to go with the offset quilt. I found a lovely brown to use for the triangles in the corner. It is not the brown that is shown in the picture. The center diamond is made from Moda's Urban Couture collection. I really like all the fabrics in the charm pack, but I opted not to use any of the blue fabrics in this particular quilt. I think I'm either going to make and keep this one to go with the brown leather couches we purchased earlier this year. Or I'm giving it to my niece, E, who said she liked the earth tones. I have enough fabric to make another one so maybe we'll both get one. Of course, I do have two couches so . . .

It was beautiful here today and doggie and I went on a jog along the bike path today. We didn't go far on the bike path before we ventured back onto the neighborhood streets. Doggie really doesn't get that he's not the only one on the path. He definitely doesn't understand bikes and I really didn't want to be the cause of taking one of them down. We stayed on the path for a 1/2 mile and then did the next 1 1/2 miles on the streets.

Last night I finished sewing the binding on the new baby quilt. It turns out I will have a new grand niece or nephew in June so perhaps this quilt will be earmarked for him/her. I have plenty of time, though to make other baby quilts so I'm thinking I'll have plenty to choose from when the time arrives. In my dreams I'd like to make a quilt a day, but in reality I work 40+ hours each week, so I'd be happy with 1 or 1 1/2 quilts a week. I was looking at the e-bay fabric stores today and I'm not sure that that is the way I want to go. I guess I need to do some more investigating. It just doesn't seem very pretty and all the stores look the same and there are a gazillion of them. Does anyone make money with these stores???

The pictures aren't uploading tonight so I'll try again tomorrow.

National Fabric Day!

Today is my own National Fabric Day. While I was at work, five of the 19 boxes of fabric that were shipped arrived at my door. Tomorrow I should get the other 14 boxes plus 3 more that were shipped Priority Mail on Monday. It's Christmas here! My dream of owning my own fabric store has come true. The fact that the "fabric store" is in my spare bedroom is just a minor detail. (contact me if you want to purchase some lovely fabrics!) I would like to stay home tomorrow and go fabric shopping, but I must continue on with the day job that allows me to purchase such large quantities of fabric. Hopefully I will have an Ebay store up and running soon.

I loved this quilt at the quilt show. There were tons of awesome and gorgeous quilts, but for whimsy, I choose this one.

Well, I better take one more gander at my new "stash" and then off to bed I go. Nice quilty dreams tonight, I'm sure.

Fright Night

Last night was Halloween and we had quite the gang this year. Last year we had no one come to the door for treats. This year I recognized a handful of the neighborhood kids and the rest were carpooled over. I didn't really care as we had all this candy and I wanted to get rid of it anyway. Since we never know if we'll have trick or treaters, we always stock up in anticipation.

We took a break from the Quilt show today and we will go back tomorrow for the last day. Featured above are the purchases I've made so far. This is what $300+ will get you at the quilt show. Yikes! (The cutting mat is mine and was purchased years ago.) Sometimes on the last day, there are even better bargains to be had. So maybe I'll be a little bit poorer after tomorrow. Today I made a baby quilt out of the charm pack fabric I bought yesterday. It's cute. Luckily I had some matching fabric I can use for the backing. Tonight I made binding for B's cat quilt and sewed it to the top side. B is going to do the hand stitching to the back.

Today I received the tracking numbers for 19 boxes of fabric shipped on Wednesday. I went to the web site to see where the boxes are located now, but there's no information. I hope I'll know before the day they get here. Since the boxes have a signature requirement, I don't want to miss the delivery. It's all very exciting.

This morning dog and I went for our morning jog. I hadn't been able to go for a couple of days so it felt pretty good this morning. We will jog again tomorrow morning and then B and I will head off to the quilt show. It's been a good vacation so far.

Girlfriend

Today's project included my new quilt that I designed while I was napping yesterday. I'm still working on it, but it's turning out okay so far. Tomorrow I have someone coming over to learn how to use my longarm machine. I met her over a year ago, but I didn't hear from her until Friday. Now I'm not so sure I want anyone else on my machine. It's sewing beautifully for me and since we both work full time, we'll be needing the machine at the same time. I think she only has a few quilts she needs quilted so I guess I can live with that.

I had a nice jog this evening after the rain came and went. Usually the rain would be followed by humidity, but tonight it was pleasant and I had to run without the doggie because his right paw is hurt right now. I took him out for a walk this morning and put the bootie on his left paw. I was commenting about how good he was walking when I noticed I had the bootie on the wrong foot. Oops. I got the bootie on the right foot for his afternoon walk. My bad.

Tomorrow morning is the spin class from hell. Just kidding Melanie. Your class is great, just really, really tough. I've been going to her class for over a year now. No results in body shape, but hey, I'm working on it. Last week I did her spin class and then took the dog for a jog. That was tough. I don't know how triathletes do it. Today I watched the women's Olympic marathon. There was no US contender, but I enjoyed watching the women run. Right after that was Dara Torres silver medal win and then another silver medal win in the relay. I think they said she's won 11 medals, but none of them gold. I'm not sure that's true. And then there was Michael Phelps' 8th gold medal win. That was awesome. He seems like a really nice kid too and the rest of the American team was very gracious.

Here's today's project. Enjoy.

New Projects

Note to self: Do not click the "X" box in the right hand corner until the post is published! So frustrating to have to rewrite. Oh, well.

Today's projects included adding a bit more quilting detail to M's quilt. After that binding was made and attached to the front side. Tonight I have stitched approximately one third of the binding to the backside. Tomorrow I hope to have everything finished before I lay my head on the pillow at day's end.

B started a new project today also. The picture holds the first clue. Here is another quilt top ready to be quilted on the longarm. I thought that I would do this today, but then I had a better idea . . . NAP!!! That was nice.

The Package has Arrived

Yesterday I got home from work and there waiting for me was the box of beautiful fabrics. I'm pleased with my choices. The pastel striped fabric will be used for the back of a child's quilt. The black fabric with birds is going to be incorporated into my Aunt and Uncle's memory quilts. The fall colors I think are just beautiful and I doubt I will have any problem finding somewhere to use them. Now if only I could stay home today and play.

But, alas and alack I must get out of my jammies and think about going to work. Ugh. It's going to be a busy day, but I will try to get something creative done on top of the usual workload.