I Quilt So I Don't Choke People

I ordered a t-shirt with this saying on it.

In purple.

In my size.

What I got in the mail was a t-shirt that might fit Thea.  I went sewing at Old City Quilts Saturday night so I could take a break from being annoyed with the twit who thought that this t-shirt was my side, and for myself for being a sucker for a stupid on-line advertisement.

Fortunately sewing was good therapy.  I cut down my purple and blue log cabin quilt and need to make binding for it  I got the basics of the six Cadette Girl Scout vests done and started another strip quilt (google Missouri Star Quilting Company / 3 Dudes Quilting for the jelly roll patten)

Grinching

Last night was the first Saturday of the month, and that means it's time for The Sew Must Go On at Olde City Quilts.  One of the things I live for.  Except last night it was also the Burlington City Christmas parade, so its route, right down High Street where OCQ is located.  Much traffic aggravation, alternate routes, doubling back.

And noise.  Christmas music.  Flashing lights from all the fire trucks (not a good night for a house fire in Burlington. . . .)  It really brought out my inner Grinch.  I get annoyed when Hallowe'een immediately slides into Christmas and Thanksgiving is not given it's proper respect.  Thanksgiving is overlooked in the time after Hallowe'en, and when it does arrive, it's just a springboard for Black Friday.  It's just sad.  Thanksgiving was one of the best holidays when I was little.  Big meal, family, lots of food.  The day after Thanksgiving we would go downtown to see Santa Claus at Garfinkel's and look at the Christmas display windows.

And adding to my Grinch-y attitude, I forget my Saturday Sampler box, so I didn't have what I needed to work on the most.  But I did get Thea's purse fixed and I ripped out all the log cabin squares I had screwed up last month, so it wasn't a complete waste of time.

But it was good to see my quilting ladies.

Now I just need to finish those Saturday Sampler squares before next weekend. . . . 

Countdown to Summer

Countdown to the last day of school:  4.5 days. This week Thea has a trip to the upper elementary school she will be attending in the fall on Monday and the rescheduled Third Grade Carnival on Tuesday, Micah has Sliding into First Grade on Wednesday and his AM Kindergarten class party on Thurday.  So by my estimation, 'school' was over last week and this week is for festivities and celebrating.

And it's the one week that I am working Monday through Friday, and Saturday is my day to work.  I am rather pouty about it, especially since I am usually of Fridays and would be there to pick the kids up from their last day of school.

Since Memorial Day weekend, quilting has gone by the wayside, so I was happy to drag out my bags of stuff and go off to OCQ for Super Sew on Friday.  Instead of working on projects, I once again worked on Thea's Junior vest by sewing on all the event patches that had been removed from her Brownie vest.  This is their final resting place, I am not ripping out all those stitches if she moves up to Cadets.

Then I worked on making scrappy strips for the Foursquare Farmhouse.  I like having a quilt back that has a little interest to it, and it's a great way to not wind up with a bunch of scraps that are too nice to throw away but will likely not find themselves used in a project any time soon.  I think I'm keeping this one.

Friday night I didn't even take all the quilting supplies out of the car since Saturday night was The Sew Must Go On.  Unfortunately, the path to The Sew went through a trip to Parsippany to attend the Practicing Clinician Series 2012 Symposia.  9.25 free CEUs.  To good to pass up, even it means driving an hour at 7 am on a Saturday morning, and then spending 90 minutes on I-78 and the NJ Turnpike to get to OCQ.

I got there a little later than I usually would (9.25 free CEUs), but quickly got up and running  I made a second strip, and then a third scrap strip for the back of the quilt, bought a very wide piece of a light batik and put it all together, then bought the batting and left it there to be quilted.  Estimated time for getting it back is about six weeks.

Meanwhile Steve has gotten memberships for us at the West Windsor community pool.  Not much in the way of grass is growing on the patch of backyard where the pool used to be, but the old pool is not missed.  The kids and Steve went for the first time yesterday., and may go back today. 

Memorial Day Mind Fog

Tuesday morning back at work, and already the weekend has blurred into a foggy blob of what did I really accomplish this weekend?  Not much in the way of cleaning the house or working on the garage.  Too bad.

Thursday was the end of the Third Grade Inquiry project, with the 132 students who stuck it out to the end (or who did enough work so as not be asked to drop out) showing off their work in the cafeteria at Town Center School.  Thea did well, worked without note cards answering questions about what she learned about genes and DNA; we were proud of her and her presentation looked liked she did it.  There were two others who also worked on similar projects - one with a slick Power Point presentation on a laptop (which to me smacked of too much parental involvement).  Thea hasn't gotten the paper back that her reviewer used to evaluate her presentation, but it will be interesting to see.  Particularly since the glue was still drying on the the tri-fold poster board as we were walking in. 

Friday, the car and I went to Honda for a much overdue oil change.  Nice of them to tell me on paper that my tires need replacing, it would've been nice to hear it in person rather than finding it out when I flipped the receipt over one day later.  The rest of the day was devoted to sewing: the two Saturday Sampler squares for PQW, which I usually finish within a day or so of bringing them home, Thea's Brownie and Junior vests and the start of a Four Square Farmhouse quilt top.  I forgot the pinwheel lap quilt top that I was working on so I couldn't put on the trim on the bottom edge - got to dig that out before it becomes a UFO (which translates an unfinished object).

 Saturday while Micah was at his friend Leland's birthday party, Thea and I went to the EMS store to pick up two dunk bags for the Brownies camping trip next weekend.  I remember dunk bags from my own Girl Scouts camping experiences, but instead of plastic, I think it was made of metal.  Then we went to Target to pick up sleeping bags and print up pictures for the troop leader to put in the scrapbook.  Once all that was finished, I could get back to sewing.

Which continued into Sunday, and once I had twenty squares for a lap quilt, making ten more for a twin-sized didn't seem so unreasonable.

But on Monday the two shops I frequent were both closed for Memorial Day so the five light / five dark batiks had to come from my stash and not from fat quarters.  So with a True Blood marathon on HBO and the kids at the Princeton pool with Steve, I made ten more squares.

Which leads me to wish there was an app for the iPad to put in pictures of quilt squares to crop and shuffle into the most pleasing pattern.  Doing this by laying them out on the bed is both time consuming and annoying and makes it a chore similar to working through a GRE question where you have five red books, four yellow books, two green and six red books, the red can't touch the yellow, the the blue can't touch the green, so where does the black book go? Tedium exemplified.

Meanwhile in the backyard, the chemical- and money-sucking cesspit that was the above ground swimming pool is GONE.  Two Thursdays ago Steve mentioned that Thea didn't really care if we had the backyard pool so maybe we should get rid of it.  Somehow I mentioned this in passing to Mike who was at the office to repair the hole in the wall made by one of my patient's who passed out, and he has a neighbor who wanted an above-ground backyard pool.  Reduce, reuse, recycle.  Gone, gone, gone as of Friday when I came back from Honda to pick up my quilting supplies to find two trucks in the driveway and heard the sounds of men doing manly disassembling things coming from the backyard.  I grabbed my stuff and trotted back to the car.

.Now I have my mother telling me that I should use it to plant an herb and vegetable garden.  Like that's ever going to happen.  I am just not the tilling the soil sort of woman; quilting, yes, gardening, big fat NO.  This is not Little House on the Prairie here.

No sewing this weekend:  Brownie's overnight camping trip to a Girl Scout camp in Somerset County and Ying Hua, the last class followed by the end-of-year ceremony.

Happy Easter & Passover

Easter weekend at our house has been pretty laid back.  Saturday night Steve, Thea and Micah went to the seder at Temple Micah; I went to The Sew Must Go On at Olde City Quilts.  It's usually 4 pm until 1 am, but I got there a little late, and most everyone was packing up and ready to head out at midnight.  I finished 32 more pinwheels, whose fate I am still contemplating - and since on a good evening at home, finishing 12 is an accomplishment, it was a good night.

The kids' Easter baskets were thrown together in haste at around 1:30 this morning.  Oma provided a good bit of the chocolate, a patient gave me a pink bunny and a yellow duck stuffed animal and chocolate bunnies for them, so I did next to nothing other than throw a few quarters in the plastic eggs (also supplied by Oma.)

Easter breakfast was the usual three-way split: Thea with her steamed eggs, Micah with cereal and pancakes for Steve, sausages and pineapple for all.

Then the kids and I got going on making food for Steve to take with him when he goes to visit Grandma.  Micah made matzoh balls with me, and Thea was in charge of the potato latkes and was fearlessly flipping them despite getting hit with a few pot shots of hot oil.  She also took on cooking the chicken for the soup without much in the way of supervision from me.  This was one of the first times that boredom didn't get the best of  either one of them mid-project; they stuck with me until the last latke came out of the pan and the matzoh balls were transferred into the soup pot.

Now it's just a question of airing out the house to get rid of the fried latke smell and getting back to trying to get a little bit organized.

Souper Sew

From March 23, 2012 aka Our Tenth Anniversary or the 2nd Anniversary for Micah's Left Ear Canal

Another Friday spent at Olde City Quilts at a Souper Sew.  The crab quilt got a blue border on it and I started putting together pieces of the fabrics that made up the crab quilt into a back for it.  Sewing has turned into my therapist, and it probably costs as much as conventional therapy.  I got to try out yet another Bernina, an Artista 730.  It had a touch screen and chirped much to much for my liking - and amongst all the buttons and icons on the screen I couldn't find the 'mute' button, so I found myself saying "Oh, shut up, will you?" with every beep.

Bits and Jots

Once upon a time, I wrote a blog, not well and definitely not often, but I tried to maintain a chronicle of what was going on in our lives.  Having kids who have school and social lives, plus working full-time, has just about drained my batteries for blogging - and life has just been sort of normal:  no surgeries, relatively few doctors' appointments, no traveling.

But every now and then there is a pang of guilt and today was one of those days.

I now have most Fridays off, which I am loving, loving, loving.  Not that I am actually accomplishing much, but sometimes it's not about how much I get done.

I've gone to a Friday Souper Sew and a The Sew Must Go On at Olde City Quilts, so I am still trying to sew and quilt.  I am also starting a Saturday Sampler at Pennington Quilt Works.  It's $30 for the starting package and then if the month's square is finished by the next Saturday Sampler meeting, the next square is free.  If it's not finished, the next square costs $6.

This morning I went to Ying Hua International School, Thea's alma mater for Pre-K through grade 1, to talk to the preschool class about nursing.  Though it wasn't much of a talk, it was more of a hands-on, let's try out the stethoscope and bandage up the classroom's stuffed animals.  The class was just so cute: there was the jump-right-in-with-boundless-enthusiasm kid, the shy-guy who has to warm up to what's going on, but once he does, he figures out how to disassemble the oto-ophthalmoscope, the little girl who has some mad bandaging skills and does it perfectly the first time.  I don't think they learned all that much about nursing, but I think they had fun.

Meanwhile, the kids are taking skating classes on Saturday mornings.  Thea's taking another trip through Alpha 2 during the next session; Micah is going back on the ice mostly to hang out with his friend, Benjamin.

Thea is in her second year of  Brownies, accumulating a few more patches and badges for me to sew on, selling cookies - it's her one chance to hang out with girls her own age.  We've been having friends from school over: Tommy, Jeffrey, Adam, for Wii dates.  We're lucky because Adam comes conveniently packaged with Veronica, who is in Kindergarten with Micah - and they live right up Krebs Road from us.  How lucky is that?  Thea just finished up her stint on Rainbow Patrol, which is her school's version of safety patrol, keeping kindergarteners from running in the halls.  The Third Grade Chorus is getting ready for the Spring Concert, chorus day is one day we have not problem getting Thea off to school; she already singing most of the spring program.

Micah is a chatterbox, much too much at times. Still needs a lot of working on patience, waiting and taking turns in conversation.  He's starting to read, which is a skill that also seems to require more patience than he is capable of.  Micah has a "I just want to do it, dammit" attitude, which just mesh with patiently trying to put the sounds that letters make into words.  After ice skating, it will be time to decide whether it's Spring Soccer or something else for him.

The 100th day of school has come and gone.  I've got to look up how this tradition came into being, it was not on the school calendar at Lewisdale Elementary School in the mid- to late 1960s.  There was an assembly at school, which Thea found to be too loud.  If the school year is about 180 days long, why would the 100th day be more of a cause for celebration than the 90th day or wherever the half way point falls?

Time to cut and sew. . . .

Quilting Class and Hurricane Irene

Saturday at Olde City Quilts in Burlington, NJ.  I made this!  Start to finish in one afternoon.  It's going to be on its way to my mother so she can have an indoor pumpkin without worrying about when it will turn to mush.  Thank you, Eva, who taught the class and who has the patience of a saint and many, many little tips and tricks that I hope I will remember.

The classroom at OCQ was crowded today.  While the Glorious Fall class was sewing away on one side, there was a group making quilt tops for Quilts of Valor.

My light-bulb moment for today was that quilters are nice people, I have met any surly, evil or mean-spirited people (with the exception of me and my classmates in the Learn-to-Quilt class the night we did machine appliqueing, but we came to class in  good moods) at the quilt shop.  Everyone tries to help each other, share and offer encouragement. 

The tide going out in the backyard.  The water was all the way up to the patio wall Sunday morning.

The far backyard swamp.

Checking out the backyard as the tide goes out.

What bored people without electricity do, manscaping.

Thea's watercolor rendering of her guinea pig, Gallileo

Sunday afternoon walk, something else to do when the electricity is out.

Thea's shot of the backyard Sunday morning, the sliver at the center back of the photo is the seat of a concrete bench.

Saturday night Hurricane Irene took our electricity sometime after 11 pm.  Kids were in bed, I was in the family room with my flashlight (still in its packaging) was on the stairs.  Nothing to do but put the batteries in the flashlight and go to bed.  In the year we've lived here, the power has never been out for very long.  Until now.  We were without power until the early hours of Tuesday morning.  Monday I went off to work with all my devices and their respective chargers.  Electricity, it turns out, is my Achilles heel.  I have a Kindle (with great battery life), laptops (so-so battery life), a Blackberry, an iPad and a camera and I love them all.  No more East Coast hurricanes, for this year at least, please.

No matter, we survived, give or take a few shreds of sanity or a few brain cells hear or there.  Overall we're lucky, I would not want to be living in Vermont right now.  Camp is over, we had a week at work with only two or three providers working, time to welcome the Labor Day holiday weekend.  

I'm an Oma. . . .

. . . to two guinea pigs named Darwin and Galileo.  The brothers formerly resided at Lawrence Day School, which houses Ying Hua.  Micah saw them every day for the two weeks that they were attending Chinese camp.  He said he loved the guinea pigs; Chinese, not so much.  So he began a lobbying campaign that eventually resulted in me sitting down and writing an application to the animal rescue group caring for them (which got a somewhat lukewarm reception which was annoying considering I've owned guinea pigs on and off since 1980.)  Friday the universe came into alignment and I had the day off, so it was guinea pig adoption day.  One trip to Petsmart for a cage, a bowl, water bottle, food, treats, Timothy grass and bedding.  Then a quick trip to pick Galileo and Darwin up at the day care center, and then off to Princeton Friends School to pick up the kids.  When I told them I had the piggies in the car, they were beside themselves with excitement, Micah especially.  Thea fancies herself the pig whisperer, which is good because Galileo is the more skittish of the two.

Micah in his new role, Pig Daddy to Darwin

Micah at PFC's Family Night - BAHA on, for a change

Thea in the Ravens' village at Friends Camp.

Micah at the Cash Bash, August 6, 2001

Thea at the Cash Bash

 We went to see our friends, the Cash family, at Cash Bash 2011.  Rain did not stop this block party, a few tents, a few tarps and it just rolled on.  The kids were soaked by the time we headed home, but they had a good time - and we got to return the bowl, the shirt and the swim vest they left behind when they came to our house in July.

Quilting class is coming to an end.  Two more squares to be done in class (I've already finished one of them), one more to make at home.  I bought the sashing and border fabrics last week.  We had a short lesson in sizing the squares, which I think I'll need to review. Once, twice, probably three or more times.  Measure twice, cut once.  Works for carpentry, works for quilting.

Summer Rolls On. . . .

I just realized that I have two, maybe three quilting classes left - and for my twelve square sampler, I'm supposed to be making three or four 12 inch squares on my own.  I am behind schedule.  Most of the squares on www.quilterscache.com that I like are 'two pins' or require paper-piecing.  One-pin patterns are what we quilting rookies supposed to be choosing from but they are BORING, BORING, BORING, so I picked a one-pin, paper-pieced square to try my hand on.

After a few false starts, this is what emerged. It's based on a pattern called Carol's Star, but my variation on it was not to use my white fabric at the center, but to use my fifth fabric.  It looks like a ninja throwing star. . .or a hurricane, it has motion.  One down, three to go - or four if I decide the nine-patch that was machine-appliqued during the last class is not worthy of inclusion in the final masterpiece.

The kids are finishing up two weeks at Ying Hua.  Micah has declared that he does not like learning Chinese, so he's in for a surprise this Fall because his father is intent on putting him in the Chinese-as-a-Second-Language beginner's class on Sundays. He can register Micah, I already took care of Thea's registration for A07 in June.

Starting Monday and for the next three weeks Thea and Micah are back with the Ravens and Aliens at Princeton Friends Camp, which will mean no complaints about getting up and going to camp - and lots of singing of the groups' theme songs (Who's that coming through the door? Quoth the Ravens, nevermore. . . .repeat a few thousand times, adding a decibel or so each time.)  I still hope that the Quakers will have a civilizing effect on Micah, but he's still in his "I-am-a-karate-guy" mode with all of the faux Bruce Lee moves he can manage.  Both of them want to try karate, so finding a class is also on my to-do list.

Meanwhile I'm buying school supplies (Third Grade list, done; Kindergarten list - just found it on Infinite Campus last week, so it's on the "I'll get around to it" list), registering for Fall soccer, figuring out my schedule so I can use the Friday and Monday I have off to go to Maryland (yippee, I get to work two Saturdays in a row. . . . ), getting the kids' annual check-ups and ophthalmologist appointments scheduled, looking for a trial of ice hockey for Thea  Yes, ice hockey.

And find another quilting class for me. . . . ..

Saturday night, two-thirds completed

Square Number Six, WIP - Part Two

The sewing machine is back from the shop and working great (though the platform that fits over the free-arm is missing.)  The shop put a sticker on it that it was next due for service in July 2012.  It has not been serviced from June 1982 until earlier this month so I'm not sure I'm going to be following that recommendation.

Tonight I finished the fourth square of the paper-piecing lesson.  On my own.  Four days after the class (i.e. enough of a time lapse to forget everything I'd learned.)  And I did it, so all that is left is deciding how to configure them for the actual square.

Yesterday the shelves were finished in the family room.  Major source of excitement in my life - about 22 feet of space for the piles of books that have been stacked and scattered throughout the house.  And there is still one stack left next to the bookcase in the living room.  Now all we need to do is replace the heinous green carpet that was installed by the previous owners (whose taste ranged from sparkly, abalone toilet seats and a navy room with a dried blood-colored closet).

Lastly, pictures of my sand rats from last Sunday:

Thea on the beach, July 10, 2011

Micah in Mantoloking, July 10, 2011

Square Number Six, WIP

News from the quilting zone:  It's a paper-piecing work-in-progress week.  Three of the four squares that will make this square are done and the teacher loaned me the ruler used to cut the stitching lines so I can finish it.  I think she was willing to loan out her ruler because I had the most improved attitude.  I arrived at class early and announced that from what I had seen on YouTube, I'd rather have a simultaneous root canal and rectal than learn how to paper-piece a quilt square.  But using her template and instructions, I completed 75% of the square even with having to rip out tiny stitches twice. I rock, at least in my own mind.

For the twelve square sampler, I need to pick three patterns from the Quilter's Cache web site, but most of the 'one pin' patterns (which means it is for a beginner) are dull, dull, dull.  They all seem to be a re-working of squares we've already done.  I bought the fabric for the back of my quilt, the blue fabric with the whitish coral-like batik print, my tribute to the fabric that just about everyone wanted me to not choose and which everyone seems to like now that it's in with the other four fabrics.

Meanwhile back at the Krebs Road homestead, two floor to ceiling built-in bookcases are being created by Mike, who is also painting the butt-ugly mantel white and re-hanging it (so it's level, which will be a new development).  The progress over the past three days has been phenomenal, from framing on one side with one shelf in on Monday, to both sides done and ready for painting today. The wall behind the bookshelves will be purple.  And once the paint is absolutely dry, in will go all the books that are stacked all over the living room, dining room, kitchen hall and wherever else.  For all the nights I've driven through Princeton looking in the windows of the homes at the walls upon walls of bookshelves, I will have a smaller version that are all my own.  Next the putting green green carpet will be out of the family room and the majority of the ghosts of owners past (and their horrific style) will be gone, at least on the inside of the house.

It's a full moon this week, which explains why the work week seems longer and longer, even though it's more than half over.  The level of neediness and craziness, either together or separate is escalating with each day. 

Square Number Five on July 5

Square 5 of 12, no particular pattern, just squares laid out in a way I liked.

Square of the week, made using an interfacing grid that made all the corners sharp.  It seemed like cheating, at least until I walked out of class early (which was a miracle since I arrived late, had to re-cut my squares down from 2.5 inches to two inches.)

This is what you get when you hear 2.5" instead of 2" (boring!)

 We had a good Third of July with friends from our 2007 trip to China.  Jillian and Micah share a birthday, shared an orphanage for the first 16 months of their lives and share an adoption day which is coming up on July 9th.  Thea and Micah had a blast with Jillian and her siblings - having a family with five children visit is like an instant party: there were games, sword-fighting, swimming and food.  We're very lucky that they were willing to drive down, and we're looking forward to driving up to the 2011 Cash Bash.

Albin and Cash kids, 2011

Albin and Cash kids, this time without Leigh Ann being cut out

Saturday was devoted to doing a little bit of cleaning and shopping to get ready.  The kids spent the entire day in their pajamas or bathing suits, and managed to enjoy a day where we could stay home rather than chasing a schedule.

Four of Twelve. . .

Tuesday was week four of Olde City Quilts' Learn-to-Quilt class.  Ten hopeful quilter-wannabes, one unfailingly cheerful and optimistic instructor.  Week two's square is at the bottom, week three's are at the left and top, and yesterday evening was is on the the right.

I love the one at the top the best, something about it and how the blue and white fabric looks just pleases me to no end.  And that blue and white fabric was the one of the five I chose that everyone was encouraging me to replace with another bolt, so that one is my "take that, haters" square.

It's better than therapy., and probably cheaper, too, and I haven't cut off any of my fingers with the rotary cutter, yet.

The class ends in mid-August, and by then I should have twelve squares done for a lap quilt.

Vacation, in more ways than one

I haven't felt much like blogging since early May.  Too tired, too much to do and left undone at the end of the day.  Just not feeling it, feeling more like a hamster on a wheel.

Meanwhile, we finished the long march to the end of the school years for both kids, the end of spring soccer, the last Brownie troop meeting and making an autograph quilt for the troop leader (yes, smart move, figure out how to make a quilt and then start the quilting class four days later), the second grade field trip to the Philadelphia Zoo, the end of Mandarin Sunday school and its graduation ceremony, an unplanned trip to Dr. Choe to check out Micah's ears, Micah's final IEP meeting of the year, a solo trip to Maryland to see my mother, Micah's kindergarten orientation at Wicoff School, several South Brunswick zoning board hearings regarding the charter school, several birthday parties, the repair of a broken water pipe that sent our water bill sky high, the repair of another pipe in the lawn. . . . not necessarily in that order.  Photos of some of this included in the previous post.

And now the summer starts, with a rotating schedule of summer camp programs:  Princeton Friends Camp, YWCA, WW-P Community Education, YingHua.  To know where they'll be I need to consult the calendar in the Blackberry.

Meanwhile, I started a Learn-to-Quilt class at Olde City Quilts in Burlington.  LTQ means learning to sew a straight quarter of an inch seam on a Bernina sewing machine that is probably worth more than my car and learning how to measure and cut fabric without severing one's digits.  Thus far, after two classes we've made one square for the 12 patch sampler quilt, based on the rail fence pattern, and my fingers are intact.  Tuesday's class is being rescheduled, but whenever it gets rescheduled we'll be making a nine-patch and another patch with triangles whose name escapes me.  Homework is to cut the strips at home for those two pieces.  So far I'm liking it, but whether I'm good at it remains to be seen.