March Break

Yes. It is beginning to look and feel like spring is going to arrive this year. The sun is shining profusely and the air has lost its bite. At least for this week. It is March Break here and that means the schools are closed until Mar 18. And, lucky me, all 5 grandchildren are here to spend their time at the farm. I have been able to block time on my calendar this past week and get some serious writing done on SMOWJ. There is still a nice snow cover and tobogganing will happen. That means Gramma has to put her books aside and turn off the computer. But she has plans.

I pulled out the Beyond the Cherry Trees project box that was in time-out this past year as my hand applique focus was on Dear Daughter. That one is still at the machine being quilted.

I have 21 completed BTCT blocks and only 4 to go and 2 of these are half done. I will be prepping as many little bits as I can so  they are ready to travel to Shipshewana with me next month.

I had intended to work on this Hexie Stack-N-Whack as a hand piecing project this year, but as I looked more closely, I realized that I already did all the piecing that can be done and the next step is to decide the layout and start putting it together.
I recently saw a unique layout option. Not sure I can find it again but it has me thinking.

 And aren't those the most yummy flowers ever printed onto cotton? My mind is racing with ideas for my Morrell quilt which I will be taking to the retreat with me. Five whole days and nights to quilt to my hearts content. We will be driving out on Monday and the retreat room doors do not open until noon Wed. And then, of course, there will be shopping.
I plan to machine applique all the Broderie Perse blocks I have prepped so far.
Also, I plan to take one or two ufo's that are simple machine stitching. Don't want to have to think too much.





In the meantime, there will be much indulgence here at the Farm as the girls are learning to "cook". At least learning how to use the can of whipped cream and the chocolate sauce.

Blessings,
Chris
Had a dream last night that I went to a quilt retreat and forgot to take my sewing machine. 

To Do Tuesday

I have not been writing posts about to-do-tuesday. Just sort of forgot to do it.
But I have been making to-Do lists and To-Don't lists and To-Done lists.

Today I spent a few minutes blocking time on my calendar for writing. I got 5 pages written today. Not bad with all the interruptions of a home-sick from school grandchild. She washed the dishes this morning, dried them this afternoon and made milk shakes not once but twice. They were yummy. However, I am working on clean eating right now and dairy in shakes is a no-no. But yummy nevertheless. I am writing about my journey with anger and para menopause. SMOWJ for short. I am so glad that is in my past. One reason because I no longer live there. The other reason because I can share my journey and victories with others.

But I still want to get Dear Daughter quilted. Gay at Sentimental Stitches is offering a new BOM called Cheddarback. It will run for 14 months with one 12 inch and 4 five inch blocks each month. No applique. Just some interesting blocks and a very unique setting from an antique quilt from the late 1800's.

I am determined to not start anything new this year, until, at least, I complete my doctorate and finish writing my book. Got 5 pages written today. Wait. I already said that.

My to-do list this week is:

• block out two 3 hours time spots to write
• write for 3 hours twice more this week
• get ready for all 5 grand children for March break
• eat clean
• turn the clocks ahead on Sat night - at least the computer will do that by default.

Blessings, 

Chris 

2019 UFO Challenge

Judy at patchworktimes has posted the ufo number for March and it is #4. But I did number 4 last month instead of #10 so I should do that one this month. I wanted something that did not take much time since I was working on lots of other things including 6 snow days with little children. It has been nearly 25 years since I had to deal with little children and snow days. But I survived and so did they.

For my Feb ufo I hand appliqued the last few bits onto this Antique Wedding Sampler block. I finally found the missing blue leaves and flowers among the stuff as I was looking for something else.

The Shipshewana Quilt Retreat is fast approaching next month and I am starting to prepare  my project boxes. I am hard pressed to not just start working on some of blocks but I am writing and anticipate having the first draft of my new book before I take the 7 hour drive to Northern Indiana.  That has not stopped me from putting blocks up on the wall and dreaming. But then I get so distracted looking at the design wall and trying to figure out how I would put the thing together or quilt it so I have taken everything off all 3 design walls. It looks so bare and boring but I need to focus on my writing.

Number 10 on my list is the Stack-N-Whack Butterflies. The focus fabric has very fine body lines in different colours. I could just add these with a pen. And I can make the antennae with a black pen. Easy peasy. I worked so hard to get all those points to come together. It would be a pity to cover them all up with a thick appliqued body.

I have seen so many new quilt-a-longs that I would have liked to join, but I determined not to start a new project this year. Two months down and only 10 more to go.

Blessings,
Chris

March 2019 OMG Goal

It is March 1 and such a beautiful winter day greeted me this morning. The sun is shining profusely and the ground is covered in a sparkling blanket of fluffy white snow. This after a few days of freezing rain, high winds, much rain and more snow. We had yet another snow day with little girls. This makes 6/7 at the Farm. Good thing they brought Netflix with them. The cleaning lady did her magic yesterday and the garbage got taken out this morning before I got up. Nice.

During the snow day I finally got Dear Daughter layered and ready for machine quilting. The 90th birthday part was 2 weeks ago and I took the top and had family sign it. It was my OMG for last month but did not get complete. It will be my one-monthly-goal for this month.


Blessings,
Chris

Crocheting Reminds Me of Morning Sickness

This week in Jenny elefantz book-study the topic is about colour. I am such a coward when it comes to selecting colours for any project. I do not trust myself here and probably end up  missing out on so much fun. And yet, I love colour. The predominant colour theme in my 175 year old farm house is earth tones. Often lots of earth. The living room is the only room with carpeting. It is an earthy butternut colour. The colour of sand.  The pine floor boards in the original 9 rooms and 2 hallways are 2 inches thick and 7-7 1/2 inches wide. The back kitchen and 2 guest rooms above the kitchen have 1 inch thick boards. These 3 rooms were added to the original house in the 1880's. The kitchen and back kitchen floors are hardwood maple milled in the 1930's from the maple bush by the swamp. This is where our farm name, Maplehurst came from - as well as lots of maple syrup over the years. We used to boil down the sap collected from the massive majestic maples lining our long laneway. We set a couple of large pots on the stove in the kitchen and let them simmer for days. The kitchen door open so the steam had somewhere to go besides on the ceiling and walls. The last time we made it was at least 25 years ago and I determined never to repaper the kitchen again. I had stripped the layers of paint from the 6 doors and 2 windows - coffee cream over dark brown over lime green over a bubble gummy base that took a lot of patience to remove. The new wall paper was a naturalistic Glen Oates green and gold maple leaves and stems. I love it. It will stay on the walls as long as I live in this house.

As I started to say, I have a hard time deciding on colors. That is one of the reasons I have purchased sosososososososo much fabric to make quilts. Jane Brocket, in her book The Art of Gentle Domesticity, talks about her journey of processing colour. She crocheted a rippled blanket from many bright colours.

Now I learned to crochet in the first trimester of my second pregnancy. It was going to be a red sleeveless sweater but nausea and red just took the joy away from finishing it. Dang! That is another thing I started and did not complete. Sigh.

Instead, I just gave my mother some yarn and she made me several afghans. I found these in the time out closet under the stairs the other day when I was looking for something. They do not match any of the earth tone rooms.  I also gave her yarn to knit things for my children. Now I do know how to knit, but why bother when she so enjoyed doing it for me and she finished things.  I miss my mother who died nearly 20 years ago. I am thinking I might put revisit knitting on my 2020 goals list.

Jane likes the bold brilliant colour styles of Kaffe Fassett. All those bright colours squished together gives me a head ache. Seriously. I started my second Dear Jane Quilt in brights on a crisp white and recently decided to stop making any more blocks and complete the thing with an original layout designed by my creative grand children. Stay tunes to see what we finally come up with.

Blessings,
Chris

btw - I did not complete my one-monthly-goal for February. 

Domesticity in Books

We had had no less than 5 snow days in the past 2 weeks and a PA day where all the school children stay home and the teachers go to school. Today we have the little boys here for the week along with the snowbound little girls. My first wake up came at 3 am when 5 year old Devan could not find her hippo stuffy. It was lost among the mere 6 blankets she brought to my bed to sleep with me until we can finish removing the wallpaper from her bedroom. I found the stuffy and settled her in again until the next wake up call at 6 telling me all schools were closed today because of the snow storm and Dad was going in to work since he is the foreman. Elly came next at 6:20 saying she could not find Daddy and the radio was on in the kitchen. That was to listen to the storm reports. Elly has a birthday next week but we celebrated last night with the traditional pizza and cake. We went downstairs to turn on a show and I thought I might sleep a bit longer on the couch, but little 3 year old David and 4 year old Jonathan showed up around 7 and joined us under the quilt. Eleven year old Ava came down at some point and we were only missing the sleepy Devan who came in at 7:30. I got up and made milkshkes for breakfast. My blender had given up the ghost last week so my son brought in his Ninja cement mixer. That thing is serious about blending frozen anything. And it has a 2 liter capacity. We had strawberry banana with French vanilla ice cream and the last of the whipped cream from both cans. Yum. Official breakfast was cereal at 10:30. The snow has let up but the wind is still howling out there. 

Two weeks ago, Jenny of elefantz  asked the question, "What book have you read in the past which still holds an emotional connection for you? In what way? This is part of the reflection on Jane Brocket's book The Art of Gentle Domesticity.

I read Anne of Avonlea last month just because it was laying here near my desk, but I really should have been doing coursework. (By the way, I dropped a course that I hated working on and picked up another about healing of memories for my doctorate in Christian counseling.) 

As I was saying, I re-read Anne of Avonlea. I have a fragile hardcover copy printed in 1944. I think it has been at least 30 years since I last read any of the 8 books in the series. I had the complete collection in my cart on Amazon for many months and finally purchased a hard cover set last week. I have loved this Canadian author since I was in a one room elementary school in rural Canada in the late 1950's early '60's. Our teacher, a 20 year old single fella who boarded at a local  home in our village, read out loud to all the grades every week. I recall him reading Anne of  Green Gables. Later in high school I read Anne's House of Dreams so knew that Anne and Gilbert got married even though there were still 3 books to be read before that one. I finally visited Green Gables in Prince Edward Island a couple of  years ago. It turns out that the hard cover "set" is really one very large hard cover book with all 8 novels in it. I arrived yesterday damaged so I will be returning it.

I actually was intending to write about the Little House on the Prairie series. I read my first one, Farmer Boy, in grade 5. And just tonight as I was starting to put the little girl grandchildren to bed, the 2 little ones were playing school and fighting over 2 boxed sets of books. One was the Little House set. Interesting that Laura Ingals Wilder, the author, opens the first story with butchering day on the farm in the 1860's. My father was a butcher and he raised a few pigs along with cows and chickens. The girls were never allowed out in the barn on butchering day. But his smoked Kalbasa was the best I ever had. He told the story of meeting my mother for the first time in post war Germany. He was a young Polish soldier serving as a cook in a British battalion delivering some of his amazing Polish kalbasa to a refugee camp when he first saw the beautiful young Polish girl who was his wife for 54 years. 

It appears that I copied a line from another blog post but cannot figure out how to return to the regular printing here. Oh well. Live and learn.

Blessings,
Chris

OMG February 2019

My one-monthly-goal for Feb will be to quilt Dear Daughter,

 bind her and gift her. 

I think I will do a simple scribble of hearts of something where I do not have to do straight lines (not good at that) or start and stop a hundred times ( too much work too little time). The backing and binding will be the same blue and white Sturbridge Village reproduction print (since I still have about 5-6 yards).

Blessings,

Chris