Saturday, October 20, 2007

Out of Office

Will return shortly.

Please do not adjust your set. Normal service will resume shortly.

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep

457 days

Monday, October 15, 2007

Hmmmmm... Interesting.





Sewmouse

- a dash of confidence
- 1/4 cup of loyalty
- a pound of honesty

Combine in a blender until smooth.
'What is your personality recipe?' at QuizGalaxy.com

Grazillions of Grackles

Mondays aren't really my favorite day of the week. Especially rainy, gloomy, dreary mondays, and this one started out like that. Fall is definitely in full swing, the chill in the air of a morning makes me want to burrow back under the quilts - not toss them to the side and leap into action.

This morning I opened the back door to head to the car and heard the most amazing sound - it was the soundtrack to Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds". Amazing that someone would be playing that at such an ungodly hour...

And then I saw them. On the TV antenna of the house opposite... 20 grackles, at the least. And on their roof - at least 2 or 3 dozen more. A chorus of birdnoise from behind caused me to whirl about and see in the tree behind our fence another group - hundreds of grackles... grackling.

I made a break for my car - all the while listening to the scratchy cries of the birds - hoping they wouldn't attack and peck me to death. The noise of the Grazillions of Grackles (exact number) was loud enough to drown out the sounds from the expressway nearby. Every single TV antenna, all the roofs - much of the shrubbery and all of the trees - covered in Grackles.

Damn that lady across the street and her stupid bird feeder!!!

462 days

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Mystery Quilt 2007 - Part 10

Part 1.....Part 2.....Part 3.....Part 4

Part 5.....Part 6.....Part 7.....Part 8

Part 9

Today is the day - we're going to take all the leftover cut bits and finsih the top of our quilt! Grab the 5 rows of squares that you assembled last week, and the six very long strips of Color A.

Take one strip of color A and sew it along the long edge of one of your rows of squares. Do this to each of the 5 strips.

The next part is to attach the 5 strips to one another, keeping an "A" strip between each of the rows of pieced blocks. You will want to make an effort here to keep the squares in line with one another. The blocks should look as if the pointy bits of each triangle-mini-block are pointing to the ones in the next row. We strive for Symmetry. The lovely part about using these intervening "Sashing" bits (the long "A" strips) is that if you are off by a small amount, it's less noticable.

Sew the final "A" strip to the edge of the pieced blocks that doesn't have one - and you should end up with a lovely pieced quilt-top that looks like this:



For those of you who have made quilts before - now is the fun bit - you know how to finish. For those of you who have not - I'll begin next week with the basics of how to assemble the quilt and turn this pieced top into an actual blanket.