September One Monthly Goal

September brings a lot of new activities here at the farm including showing cows at the local fairs and now, meeting the school bus 2-3 days a week. The little girls and their dad are settling in to living at the farm. Can I set a goal for their quilt blocks? If they get enough sewn together in the next 2 weeks, they can show them in the school fair. I think I will make my OMG goal to help them get their tops sew together.

 How many blocks actually make a quilt top? They each have 80 seven inch pre-cut squares. Earlier this summer the girls went to Fair Camp at our local fair that is 3 km up the road from the Farm. They each made a bunch of crafts so they are ready to enter and win lots of $$$. We will aim for at least 36 blocks each. That would make them 39 inches square. Maybe there should be more. We shall see. After all, they are only 5 and 6 y ears old.

Blessings,
Chris

Newest and Youngest Quilting Students

This past summer has been a joyful, if exhausting, time of all five of the little grandchildren here for sleepovers and adventures on the farm. My youngest granddaughter had been asking me so often to teach her to sew on the real machine. I have two toy machines that all the kids have played with. One of them has a secret compartment in which are an assortment of fun buttons.  I found not one but two packs of pre-cut  I-Spy blocks in the massive quilt cupboard and finally got them started.

 Five year old Devan started first.  Looks like she had her hand placement guiding that block perfect. Look at that right finger. We used the Bernina since it has a quarter inch seam guide and it can be set for half speed. 

Why do the girls all want to trim the threads off the sides before they can start? 

Gramma's hands were close by until six year old Elly  got the hang of it. Then she chain pieced a whole bunch of blocks and told me she could do it all herself now without my help. Okay. 

Putting them onto the design wall is exciting.

So far the blocks are  sewn together in twos. Eventually we will sew four together  then more. 







We did put a large book under the foot pedal so their short legs could reach. And a regular chair. The chair on wheels just rolled them away when they tried to use the foot pedal.

Devan created a "Book" with a whole stack of her blocks so Grampa could read the story. 

Blessings, 
Gramma Chris 

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End of Summer

I opened an upstairs bedroom window a couple of weeks ago and heard crows. Yes Crows. The second week of August. Crows cawing are a September thing here at the Farm. Then the other night there was a cricket in my bedroom. A loud cricket. Really loud. Under my bed. Late at night. Sigh. Our hot wet summer is coming to an end. The nights are cooler. The days are getting shorter. The ragweed and wild cucumber vines are choking out all the flower beds. I guess if I had pulled weeds earlier that would not have happened. The goats do not especially like rag weed or thistles. 

Goats you say. Yes goats. The Farmer's niece milks 400 goats for a neighbor. She rescued a few in the spring and brought them home and had them in a portable corral that she moves around the yard every few days. They cleaned up all the fence rows around the farm house and yard. They were really cute until one discovered she could escape. So she did. Every day. Then the others followed. Nibbling my hostas and rose bushes. She even tried to get into the house. Did not happen. 

So summer is nearing an end. The little boys will be here next week for vacation with Daddy and Mommy. His parents are celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary so we will be babysitting one night. Then they will be going fishing with some friends and the African Lion Safari to see elephants and lions and monkeys. Little David phoned yesterday asking if Grampa will take him on a ride on Gramma's tractor. That's the cab tractor with air conditioning and a radio. He likes that one the best.  

I did not complete any quilts. I did not complete many blocks. I did work on a few and prepped the new Dear Daughter blocks. Another 4 will be released on Sept 1. 

I have been leading a small group at church called Hearing God. We take one lesson each week in the workbook and take time to sit quietly listening to God and journal. It has been an amazing journey. 

I am looking forward to making the 5 hour drive to Upper Canada Village in Cornwall, Ontario mid Sept to a quilt show with my high school quilting friend who went to Shipshewana with me. 

The following week is our Canadian National Guernsey Show and I am going to a ladies retreat and taking my daughter away for the whole weekend. She deserves a treat away from responsibilities.  

Plans are afoot for our Quilting at the Farm retreat end of Sept. Anyone interested in joining us? I have a couple of beds in one of the guest rooms. 

Also, I am working on the details of my ministry trip to India in November. There will be 2 of us going for 2 weeks to encourage women.  

And we have been decluttering and laying a new floor in 2 bedrooms because our son and his 3 little girls will be moving in with us for the coming year. This will be the 4th move in a year for the little girls and they will all be starting in new schools in Sept.

So, summer is coming to an end. I am trying to not make any further commitments and creative plans. But you never know. I made a banana cake from scratch last week and it was so amazing that I plan to make another today since I have some brown bananas. 

Blessings,
Chris 

Mid Summer De-cluttering

My daughter completed  her Master of Social Work in Strategic Leadership and she has taken the little boys home. They will be back with Dad for a week's vacation at the end of the month.

My little sister from China came to visit for a month and after we took a week to visit family in Saskatchewan, she went back home to start her school year as a grade one teacher. I had exactly one day without house guests before the three little girls return for two more weeks. They were here for three different weeks in July. 

For my birthday last month, my daughter and sister gave me a gift of time for a whole day of de-cluttering and organizing. They were relentless. They emptied out two rooms of all the stuff we collect over the years and do not know what to do with or cannot find because of so much stuff. Two ancient solid wood dressers were loaded onto the truck and donated plus many bags of clothing, several boxes of dishes. They kept one dresser, but not sure it will stay. The problem with them, besides being so big, is they were used for many years in houses heated with wood stoves and have a particular fragrance that they generously share with anything stored in them. So out they went.

A new floor is being laid. My son found some flooring on sale for a dollar a square foot. I was looking at some for $3.50. He is laying it in two of the bedrooms and hopefully, there will be enough to do the upstairs hall also. 

So what did I do with a whole day to myself besides drive tractor for two hours? And chase goats out of my yard? And eat ice cream and cookies and made an amazing smoothie? It had five green things - avocado, cucumber, celery, kale and spinach plus apple, orange, radishes, yogurt, protein powder and enough water to make it drinkable. 

I read blogs. Listened to worship music. Read up on facebook happenings and did some correspondence. I washed bedding from six beds and dried it all. I even washed one comforter. It is in the dryer now. No. I do not hang laundry on the clothes line. It is too hard to carry the hampers out and reach up to hang things on the line, then remove them later. So into the dryer they went. I have not folded anything yet. But why fold them if they are all going back on the beds? The little girls return tomorrow. I will get them to help make up the beds. 

But the biggest thing was to pack up, organize and remove at least 15 project boxes and organized four boxes of Go dies  as well as five boxes of children's books I rescued from the little boys a few months ago. We took down one of the eight foot tables and put it out in the hall so I had room to work in here. My sister had been working on her quilt and we had both long tables in the middle of the room for her. 

All these boxes were under the tables. Kind of out of the way. Sort of. But now they are out of the room. All the projects I had been working on over the past few months and many I wanted to work on. They have all been put away. Some in the hall closet. Most in the quilting cupboard upstairs. Well, almost in there. Have to squish some of them closer together. 

What did I keep? Dear Daughter. I am behind on the last eight blocks. Dear Bright Jane 2. I have five orange blocks ready to work on. And the Huguenot blocks. Yesterday I machine appliqued two tiny circles with red silk thread. That's two more than last month. They will get put away tomorrow when I clear all my course work off the card table by my desk. 

While rummaging in the cupboard upstairs, I found two packs of pre-cut seven inch I-Spy blocks. There are 80 different fabrics in each pack. I have this scathingly brilliant idea to help my youngest two granddaughters each stitch up their own quilt tops. After all, Devan has been asking me all summer to do some sewing on the real machine. We will use the Bernina since it has the quarter inch foot with the seam guide and it can be set to half speed. But first, I will have to take out the red silk thread. 

Blessings,
Chris

Encouragement for today.

This showed up on facebook today. 

 

God's timing is always perfect. 

I have been obsessing about what to focus on doing 

in August after the houseguests have all gone home and 

we have the house to ourselves for a couple of weeks. 

So, 

at the Hearing God smallgroup I lead on 

Tues nights this summer, 

I asked the question

and God gave me the simple answer,

"Worship Me".

I can do that. 

And everything else will fall into place. 

Blessings,

Chris

Thoughts in the Night

I was lying on my bed late last night not able to sleep right away. Something about an adrenaline rush after discovering and removing a bat from the living room just after I had turned out the lights everywhere but the living room. There was a large lid within reach and I caught the bat mid air first swing, much to my own surprise, and it ended up outside. We had just had all new aluminum soffit and facia put on our 1840s farm house this past week and only locked in one poor squirrel that did not have the sense to run away while there was still a hole available. Well it made quite a scent when we discovered it a few days later. My sister from China is coming tomorrow for a month long visit and I needed to get the blue guest room ready. It, along with the brown room, are above the kitchen with a separate stairway and a shared bathroom. It is in that attic that the squirrels were visiting regularly. But I digress. 

I was lying on my bed late last night not able to sleep right away. So, I started writing a blog post in my head. At that hour, I come up with most amazing things to write about that I promptly forget by the time I wake up. Some writers keep notebooks by their bed to write down those late night thoughts and stories. I have often done my best writing at 35,000 feet in an airplane because I cannot sleep there either and I usually have a pen and notebook in hand. I will be in an airplane in a few weeks when we fly out to Saskatchewan to meet the newest member of our family. It will be the first flight in almost a year since I went to Africa on a mission trip last summer. But I digress.

I was lying on my bed late last night not able to sleep right away. I had an idea for a blog post about why I blog. Last month I had this crazy idea to write up 31 blog posts about 31 never yet mentioned quilting ufos and so I started no less than 31 blog posts about 31 never yet mentioned quilting ufos. I rummaged through my massive cupboard and located most of them, took photos and started writing about each in order from when they were started. I keep a notebook with every quilt start and finish. I still have more starts than finishes. I just started writing what was going on in my life when I started each quilt. I discovered some very interesting things about my life journey. I have been writing my second book on and off for a couple of years now. I have many pages of notes and journals and research papers in a box, neatly labeled on a shelf waiting for me to take the time to bring it all together in a cohesive format so someone could read it and be blessed. I have many boxes labeled and sitting on shelves. Many shelves. In different rooms. I am doing a big de-clutter here this summer. But I digress. 

I was lying on my bed late last night not able to sleep right away. I was thinking about all the things on my calendar for the next two months and decided that I need to take a blogging break until the end of summer. This means not reading blogs. At all. Did I just write that? Ouch. I did not get my 90 Day One Big Thing done because I spent too much time stitching and blogging. I have not played computer games for more than three months and I am okay with that. Now I need to spend less time aimlessly reading everything posted on facebook. But I digress. 

I was lying on my bed late last night not able to sleep right away. I was thinking about the summer small group I will once again be leading called "Hearing God". It begins a week from tomorrow and will go every Tues night until the end of August. It is going to be good. No. It's going to be GREAT! 

I was lying on my bed late last night not able to sleep right away. I was thinking about my trip to India in November. I have been questioning why I am going since I am rather frail these days with the arthritis and back issues. But God is amazing! I am not going alone. God is going with me. God is my strength. I am going as God's ambassador. That is good enough for me.  

I was lying on my bed late last night not able to sleep right away. My Sweet Farmer and I both have been blessed with a stomach flu and I did not know if I needed to run down stairs to the bathroom again. 

Have an amazing summer, 
Chris

July 2018 One Monthly Goal

My Sweet Farmer and I took a road trip to Iowa this past week to the American Guernsey Annual Convention. We got to meet new friends and visit with old friends. I even met a quilter who reads my blog! Now how cool is that? And speaking of cool, the air conditioning was way too cool for this Canadian girl but outside it was 100 degrees. That's Fahrenheit not Celsius. Otherwise, we would have be boiling, literally.  The highlight has to be dinner on a riverboat on the Mighty Mississippi River. 

I did some hand stitching on an Antique Wedding Sampler block that I had prepped several months ago.

I guess I sewed the red buds on in the wrong place so will have to rethink how this Dear Daughter block will be done. I appliqued some of the leaves and stems.

Its the first of the month and that means all the monthly challenges are up. My OMG will be to keep up with the 4 new Dear Daughter blocks posted today.

The Rainbow Scrap Challenge  colour for July is red . . . of course red. That is the colour on our flag. I have 4 red Bright Jane blocks that were ready last year. They are hard ones. I guess that is why they did not get done. No promises this time.

I have no idea how much stitching will get done this month since it is house guest season at the farm. The little girls will all be here 2 different weeks. One week for Vacation Bible School and another for Fair Camp at the local fair grounds that are just up the road from The Farm. The boys will continue to come 4 days a week until the end of the month. And, my little sister will be here from China. We will be flying out to Saskatchewan next month to meet the newest member of our family - Gus. I will once again be leading a weekly small group for our church for the summer called "Hearing God". The byline is  In a time when many voices are screaming for your attention, learn to hear the still, quiet voice of God.

So, a busy, fun, family filled month.

Blessings,
Chris