No, I didn't drop off the face of the earth

So, I haven't blogged in quite awhile, for three main reasons:  I discovered Facebook and I recently completed two very intricate quilts.

The first quilt I completed for my mother's birthday.  She made the top and asked me about a year-and-a-half ago to quilt it.  I was petrified because it just had to be P-E-R-F-E-C-T and I just didn't feel skilled enough ... until now.  I have actually entered this in a national quilt competition coming up next month in Overland Park, Kansas.  Scary and exciting.

The raised areas are trapunto and the swirly background is called McTavishing.

Pebbling and crosshatching in the center.

The other one I'm also taking to the quilting competition in Kansas, but it will be donated for an auction to fund scholarships.  Last year I was the fortunate recipient of two scholarships to this conference and now I'm hoping this wall quilt will bring in a few bucks:

I haven't put the binding on yet, so the edges look rough.  This wholecloth features trapunto and McTavishing also.  It will be hard to give up.

Time to Get Involved

I learned about this society from my sister.  The idea is to craft a small toy, attach the society's note, and leave it in a place where a person could find it, take it home, and enjoy it.  The note references a place for the finder to leave a comment through email and then the comments are added to the society's blog.  This way you remain anonymous but are able to see where the toy went and the person's reaction (if, of course, they respond).

I love the idea of this!  You never know who's day you could brighten.  They have a Flickr group where you can see what other people have done and ideas for places to leave your treasure.  My sister chose the library:

Click here to read more about this toy and her ideas!

Let's all try this out!!!

The Weekly Peeve - February 20, 2009

This is the ultimate peeved expression and it makes me laugh.

I have two this week, both related to grocery shopping:

Peeve 1: When the store doesn't restock their shelves often enough.  I went to Target on Saturday and they were out of just about every store-brand item.  "Okay," I thought, "It was a mistake to come on a Saturday ... they're busy."  But lo and behold, on Tuesday, they still hadn't restocked ANYTHING! 

Peeve 2:  When you can't look inside the packaging.  Chips and frozen chicken come to mind.  I want to know if I'm buying 2 enormous chicken breasts or 7 little ones.  I want to know if all the chips are smashed to smithereens.

Little stuff, I know, but my life revolves around grocery shopping, so I want it to be painless.  An impossible request.

WIP Wednesday - Bathroom redo

Here is my Work In Progress for this week.  The bathroom is 99% redone.  All I have left is to add trim above the wallpaper and paint the cabinet black.  I am very pleased with the results:

Before:

After:

$4 towels from Walmart -- I monogrammed them and trimmed with ribbon.

I took the old pictures apart, repainted the frames, and used scrapbooking paper as my new pictures.

It was fun!

The Weekly Peeve - February 11, 2009

So, I had the flu last week, but this week's Peeve is the same as the one I would have posted last week (and it will probably still be bothering me next week ...)

If you haven't seen Tatiana del Toro on American Idol yet, you must be living under a rock.  Obviously they are keeping her for ratings and I wouldn't be surprised if they kept her for several more weeks ... people will have sort of a weird Sanjaya-ish fascination with her.

Her laugh doesn't annoy me nearly as much as her selfish behavior around EVERYONE else on the show.  It also makes me sad that there are 36 contestants who have made it this far and the show has really only concentrated on about 6 of them.  Last night we caught glimpses of people who have survived the cuts and we didn't even see their auditions! 

Does American Idol really worry so much about ratings that they have to put these tasteless characters in to "spice things up" as Paula put it?