Together!

The top is together and not a minute too soon! Now that it's more than a stack of uneven blocks, I have more faith that it'll all work out in the end. I've got a couple of backing fabrics to choose between, then it's on to the quilting. On my Janome, because there's no way I'm trying to square this up for the longarm. Thin batting because the top alone is heavy.

This is the type of quilt that makes my heart go pitty-pat. A single page of extremely vague instructions and lots and lots of scraps. I didn't cut more than eight wedges of any single print, so there are more than eighty different fabrics here.

headed for disaster

My own personal train wreck is getting closer and closer.

These donut blocks are not square. Or the same size. They aren't flat either. I've known this for weeks, but now it's time to actually actually get it together and stippled to within an inch of its life.

My goal was to see if I could actually trace and cut 640 little wedges and get them together into a pretty utility quilt. I'm soooo close to pulling it off. I should've had the top together months ago. I'm tired of waiting.

Wish me luck!

What sound does a unicorn make?

My littlest boy was drawing pictures this morning. He'd draw something, show it to me and either proudly tell me what it was or why it had gone wrong and that he needed another sheet of paper. When he got to the unicorn at the end of the rainbow, I asked him what sound unicorns make.

You know that Mom-is-so-stupid look that your children will give you when you ask them something obvious?

"Unicorns go BING when they're fighting with their spiky things."

Silly me, I thought unicorns probably sounded something like horses.

I'm obviously not the creative one around here anymore. It's starting to scare me just a little.

By the skin of my teeth, I managed to accomplish my goal for the week and get the last of the Grandma's Donuts blocks appliqued. I could've had them done much earlier, but I'm still spending my free time curled up in the corner of the couch knitting hats and booties. The only reason I got them finished at all was so that I post that I met my goal instead of posting that I'd spent the week avoiding it.

Next week's goal is to get the blocks squared and assembled into a top. And to get the binding for my courthouse steps quilt sewn down.

I'm jealous!

Today was one of those days that you know well in advance is going to be a total mess. Two doctor's appointments, four hours apart and in two different cities, with four kids in tow. Under the best of circumstances, I dread the doctor's office. Too many bad things tend to happen there, especially when I'm not expecting them.

Because we were going to be out and about anyway, I checked Yardsale Treasure Map for fabric and yarn. I'm always intrigued by the ads that start "Estate of ---- " Is that a new thing, or just something they do down here? Is it advertised that way so that someone who's always envied her china or furniture can swoop in and buy it now that she's dead?

Edna G's estate was a treasure trove and they were trying to sell absolutely everything. I thought I'd seen it all, but today was the first time I've seen home canned peaches and other unidentifiable fruit priced for sale.

My first thought was "Who would be crazy enough to buy food preserved by a complete stranger at some unknown date?" But then I decided that it was soooo cheap and those peaches were so pretty I could see someone buying it to use as decoration on a kitchen shelf.

I bought myself a three dollar apron --



Who could leave those smiling flowers behind? And it's cut wide enough to actually fit me well!

I also found a fantastic overnight bag for a buck.



I've got a strong feeling that my father's mother had one just like it. Now I'm wondering if she actually did have one that I saw as a child, or it's just from her time period.

I also brought home some vintage sheets and slips for a dollar each and I'm sure I walked past quite a few other things that I should've picked up, but that house was soooo crowded with people who had no intention of letting anyone slip past them into other rooms.

I thought I'd done well, until Mom called to see if by any chance I was anywhere near Bend. Because Joann's is going out of business (they've got a new location across town) and all of their Keepsake Calico and quilting fabric was 90% off of already reduced prices.

I'm SO jealous! Not that I don't have fabric of my own, but sixty cents a yard for brand new fabric right off the bolt?! If I didn't have a husband to explain things to, we would've been in the car driving the hundred plus miles to see what was left.

Do you keep spares?

Just in case you haven't tried it yourself, throwing your rotary cutter against the table so hard it ricochets up and across the room will not make the damn thing work any better.

I've got a bit of time to sew, I've got my machine back and working properly, I actually brought new blades for the rotary cutter home with me, and now the cutter won't stay together. And I can't find the other one and I really don't want to use the itty bitty one.

Is there some nasty evil conspiracy to keep me from quilting? I'm not quite desperate enough to drive thirty miles round trip in hopes that Walmart sells them, but it does make me miss living within five miles of Joann's and Hancocks and Michaels and Craft Warehouse and two yarn shops. That's absolutely the only thing I could possibly miss about the old place!

Because everything is so far away, I try to make sure I've always got pins and batting and extra machine needles and thread. And I almost bought another rotary cutter a couple of months back because it was on sale and had pretty vines on the handle. But I convinced myself that I didn't need it.

Stupid no-buy!

Do you make sure to always keep certain notions and supplies in the house?

Because my sewing has gone by the wayside lately, I'm setting a weekly challenge for myself. Nothing as ambitious as the ten baby quilts in ten days plan, just reasonable goals to finish (or start) things I haven't been getting to.

Last week's goal, which I never got around to posting about, was to see how many hats and booties I could knit from my yarn bag by the couch. I haven't counted yet, but I got quite a few done before a headache laid me low for two days.

This week, the plan is to get the last twenty-nine Grandma's Donuts blocks appliqued. I'd like to get the top assembled, but squaring up the blocks is going to require a decent rotary cutter.

Again?!

Last year, when I was waiting for our homeschool curriculum to arrive in the mail, all that was delivered was a paper label with my address on it. The books themselves never did show up, but we finally got a refund (thanks to ebay's resolution center) and found another set to buy a couple of months later.

The year before that, we splurged on new books direct from the publisher. Which Fed Ex couldn't quite manage to deliver, so I had to drive a hundred miles round trip to pick them up from Fed Ex myself.

This year's package was sent insured and with tracking and I've been obsessively checking the USPS site to because I'm getting a bit paranoid about this whole thing. Yarn....fabric... nothing else I order through the mail goes missing. Just our schoolbooks.

I shouldn't have been at all surprised when I checked the tracking page and saw that that this year's books were delivered to the post office box we closed three months ago. (But I would like to know how that happened when I changed my address with paypal and ebay before even bidding on the items.) After a frantic call to the old post office, we were in the car and on the way to get our books.

They would've saved them until our regular errand day, or forwarded them down here for another twenty dollar charge, but I wasn't giving that box any chances to go farther astray than it already had.

Now they're safely in my living room and I can breathe again. Alex has sorted through them, read the descriptions, and decided that this is the best core so far. I haven't even looked except for making sure that they're in decent enough shape.

The cute little bookmarks are at the top of the post are free printables from Wild Olive, available here and here. Because who can resist smiling bacon or a smiling pickle? I didn't have any magnetic tape (and this whole working-from-my-stash thing keeps me from buying any), so I cut them out and ran them through the laminator I got at Costco a few weeks ago. The boys love them, so I think I'm going to need to make a second batch of these!

things that make my heart go pitty-pat

Someday, I would love to tackle the applique patterns at Bee in my Bonnet. I just need to learn to do better applique and save my pennies. And make up my mind which of her patterns I love the most. I thought I had the decision down to either Grandma's Kitchen or Woman's Work, but now she's got a new one, Paper Dolls, that I might love just as much --



Aren't all of those little details fantastic? The mixer...and the suitcase...and the marshmallow roasting stick...and the umbrella...

To celebrate the release of the pattern, she's having a giveaway. Which I've entered, because I really would love to have one of those patterns, even if it's just to look at and dream about until I'm ready to actually tackle it.

More realistically (slightly), I'd like to find some small pumpkins and paint houses on them to do something like this for our fireplace mantel. Because if I had a tall skinny bookshelf it would be too full of schoolbooks to make the tree.

And I'd like to get a Skillbuilder Quilt Panel like the one that Angie at Timber Hill Threads just finished. I almost bought one last summer, but the shop only had one left and my mother got to it first.

Now that I'm actually doing more machine quilting, I think I could learn a lot from one of those. Or something like it. I know there's a sampler pattern in one of the quilting books I keep checking out from the library.

There's a great post over on Indietutes about doing it all at once, five minutes at a time. That's exactly how I need to be doing things this week.

I Hate Math

Can't say it within earshot of my kids, so I'm gonna say it here. I hate math!

Not so much that I won't draft a quilt block or calculate how to change a sweater pattern enough to match whatever gauge I'm getting, but teaching my four kids may be the end of me. Especially when the only answers to "When am I going to need this?" are "To pass a standardized test" or "When you're homeschooling your own kids and teaching them so they can pass a standardized test."

The back-to-school thing has hit me like a ton of bricks this year. Usually, we do school all year and, except for great sales on paper and crayons, September isn't anything special. But with my knee and the related chaos, we took the summer off this year -- and then didn't even get to enjoy the long vacation.

I will not do that again.

I've almost, but not quite, convinced myself that getting the two older kids through their schoolwork every day counts as enough of an accomplishment and I don't need to feel any not-quilting guilt.

But I really want to sit down at the sewing machine. Just as soon as my headache fades a little more and I get a few more minutes of sleep.

This quilt, which we saw at an Oregon Trail information center on the way back from the trip, has me all inspired --



Part of me wants to make a big reproduction to snuggle up in, and part of me wants to use those hollow sawtooth stars to make another scrappy little sawtooth chain.

And part of me wants to start another Bullseye quilt because I can't have this one --



I don't buy a lot of quilts, because I always convince myself that it's like buying a puzzle someone else has already finished and then sealed with that protective glue stuff. I'd rather buy the fabric and have the fun myself.

But this quilt screamed at me to snuggle up in it. I think I might've wrapped it around my shoulders for just a moment even though Grandma had bought it in a box at the auction and I wasn't sure where it had been. The backing was a soft yellow floral, and the quilting was this fantastic micro-stipple with a spiral inside the circles... The only thing I would've done differently was to leave off those borders. I don't do borders.

Grandma wasn't home (but I had specific permission to go dig out those quilts and take a look while Bill and the kids were visiting Grandpa), so I didn't get a chance to ask her what she planned to do with the quilt until after our trip.

And by then Mom had seen it and now it's Mom's quilt.

It's not like I can't make my own. Or like I hadn't already actually started my own two years ago. Wonder what the odds of finding those blocks are...

Probably better to start a new one. And I've even found a pattern.

and I still haven't quilted

The sewing machine is back in its spot, the table is clear except for a stack of school books at the far end, most of the things on my to-do list that could be done today are done....

And I'm not quilting because I'm suddenly annoyed by the mess that piled up while my sewing machine was gone. And in the two months before that when I wasn't sewing.

The big mystery is why I'm suddenly so unable to work in my usual clutter. I blame the cold I've been fighting and lingering exhaustion from the trip. Seriously, how many full nights of sleep does it take to catch up?

I did try out the machine for a few minutes yesterday, just long enough to verify that I could've quilted something real today. I did some of the practice work from the Free Motion Quilt Along. And then tried one of the loopy flowers from Oh Fransson that I found and fell in love with while the machine was gone.



I did get all of my baby hat yarn together in the pomegranate bag I finally bought with the groceries after months of wanting one. Two new little projects are cast on so I won't have to count before I knit, and the three patterns I'm using are laminated on one big sheet so maybe they'll be a bit harder to lose.



On the way home from the trip, we stopped at a junk store to window shop and stretch our legs. Before we even got out of the car, DH pointed out that we didn't have room in the car to bring anything home. Not a problem, since we rarely buy anything at those places anyway.

But then he found me a sewing machine, an old singer with a neat case and fancy decals buried under a heavy layer of dirt. I couldn't tell how much TLC it would take to get it sewing again, but now I'm thinking maybe I shouldn't have resisted so hard. He's never bought me a sewing machine before.

He did buy me this thing, which I found and fell in love with.



The original price tag on the bottom confirms that it's definitely not old, but I like the way it looks and think it'll be good for stuffing notions into. One drawer is already stuffed with my new stash of rick rack and another is crammed tight with the fifty-one zippers I brought home from a yard sale before the trip.

The woman seemed absolutely shocked that I wanted all of them, but at five for a quarter, I wasn't going to stand there and carefully pick and choose. She didn't want to count them either, so I got all fifty-one for two dollars.

Will I ever use them all? Maybe, maybe not. I've wanted zippers for some of my bags but been too cheap to buy them. Odds are good that something in this tangle will work for the next project that screams "I need a zipper!" Unless I really want to invest in the perfect length and color.

now it's time to get back to normal

We've been on the road again. This time, we drove from Oregon to Mount Rushmore and back in five days. Amazingly fun, but even after a day at home to catch my breath, I'm so exhausted I can't even begin to describe it.



See that animatronic dinosaur? Even when it was just moving its head from side to side and blinking, Leif was backing away and hiding behind me and his big sister. When it started to actually roar and lean forward a bit, he didn't want anything more to do with it. I can't quite decide whether he's really scared or enjoys playing at being scared. Either way, it's cute to watch.

We didn't get to walk around the base of the Devil's Tower. Or do more than one short trail at Yellowstone (no great tragedy because we've been there at least ten and probably more like fifteen times and I'm sure we'll be there again soon.) And I kept having to remind my husband that if I walk fast to keep up with him, I won't be walking the next day. Have I mentioned how frustrating this is?

I kept waiting for my cell phone to ring so I could find out what was wrong with the Janome and what it would cost to have it fixed. It never rang.

When we got home, there was a message on the machine that it was ready for me to pick up and there hadn't been anything wrong with it. Supposedly, the noise was in the free motion foot, which just needed to be oiled, but I've got a bad feeling about this. If my foot was the only problem, why didn't Mom's Janome foot make it work?

They checked the timing and needle position and a whole laundry list of other things, so I'm hoping that it really will work now. If it doesn't, I'm going to throw a fit. Or sob in the corner.

I think I'm going to dig out scome scungy fabric and try the practice stitching from the Free Motion Quilt Along just to see if things are okay. Or thread the machine with a wild color and just sew over the quilt sandwich that came home in the machine. Because even though I know practice sandwiches are important, I hate wasting the batting.

it's been ten days

When I decided to take drastic measures and set difficult goals for myself, I should've known that the sewing machine wasn't going to hold out. But even though my machine didn't make it to the end of my personal challenge, I'm happy with my results.

Yesterday, the last day I had to work on it, I got Alex's Janome working and added the borders to my scrappy sawtooth star --



And then, because I was soooo close to what I could manage of my goal, and I'd had scrappy Bento Box sort of blocks dancing around in my head all week, I pieced this little top. Which no longer looks anything like the Bento Box I had in my head, because I got derailed by the possibilities. I'll make the other one later.



Halfway through, I lost my momentum and decided that I was wasting fabric, but I like it better by the light of day. And I always like them better once they're quilted.

That brings my total to six finished quilts and four new tops in ten days. Not quite the ten finishes in ten days I was aiming for, but more than I expected after I lost my good machine on day four and then lost a couple of days sulking about it.

And my real goal was to get back into the quilting habit after two months of not being able to. I've done that!

This is the one with the spirals that was left half quilted and gathering dust in my machine for so long after the accident. Between my sore shoulders and the machine's tantrums, the quilting is sort of a train wreck, but done is better than perfect - or something like that.



When I first started working on the Scrap Savers System from Quiltville, I cut a bunch of novelty prints into six inch squares for I Spy quilts. There was a plan, I just can't remember exactly what it was, and then the squares got lost in a safe place.

Whatever I originally intended, I like the way this came out and have enough squares left for a couple more little I Spies.



I'd been wanting to try this zig zag tutorial, but I don't have a lot of yardage, and I really don't have a lot of yardage in coordinating colors (not that I'm willing to gamble on on experiment at least.)

So when I found yards and yards of this blue floral in an estate sale box, I decided it was time to give it a try. It really needs a design wall to lay it out right, but other than that, it's an easy project.



And this one was a pattern from Quiltville that just needed binding.



The other quilts and tops I've finished over the past ten days are here and here.

that didn't work

I tried piecing with the Featherweight last night. It didn't go entirely well. My tension went from fine to completely off and then back to decent, seemingly at random. And some someone at some point had put a bobbin in with its stuff that looks almost exactly like a featherweight bobbin but definitely isn't. Took me a while to figure out that that was part of my problem and then I couldn't manage to wind a new bobbin and the book is out in the sewing room...

Edith Mae is too small to sit nicely on my sewing machine table, and her cord isn't long enough to stretch over to the kitchen table, and I don't know enough about her quirks to help her do what she should. But I don't have the urge to scream obscenities at her because she's sixty two years old and deserving of some TLC and nice treatment.

Before throwing in the towel for the night, I finished the last few seams on this little top (which wound up being a smaller version of this tutorial) --



And I pieced this, which I've been thinking about all week. I thought I knew how to do what I wanted without measuring and cutting extra triangles, but wasn't sure the seam allowances would work for me to do a quick corner triangle with only three squares in the pieced part. It worked just fine and I'm going to add some borders as soon as I get my hands on a machine that will let me do it.

day six

I really hope I get my sewing machine back in time for this --



Doesn't that look like fun?

I'm on the sixth day of my ten day baby quilt challenge, the third day without my sewing machine. Five of the baby quilts are done, another is ready to be pin basted, and another just needs the binding handstitched into place. I've got a slim hope that I'll manage to finish another top on my Featherweight or one of my daughter's machines (which she can't get to work, so that's a very slim hope), but even if I don't, six quilts isn't bad.

I absolutely could've finished ten quilts if the Janome wasn't at the repair shop. I've written deleted a couple of entries about how unhappy I am that it's there again when I just spent a small fortune having it cleaned and serviced in March, and haven't been able to use it for two of the months since then. And then the woman tried to convince me I needed to have it cleaned again...

Luckily, I've been able to find some ways to distract myself. Yard Sale Treasure Map has got to be one of the neatest websites I've found. You put in your starting point and how many miles you're willing to drive and it spits out a list of yard sales with driving directions. It's great for me, because I still don't know these little towns well enough to plot a route on my own.

AND you can search the ads for things like baby clothes, or tools, or....fabric. Yippee!

I stopped at one sale on the way to the grocery store this afternoon and for $15.40 I got twenty eight new packages of jumbo ric rac, and almost thirty yards of fabric. Most of it is Joann's Snuggle Flannel in prints that'll be perfect for backing the baby quilts. Some was far quarters still with the carboard and stickers. None of it looks very old at all.

I think I'm most excited about the ric rack. Just to go out and buy that much would cost fifty bucks (yup, I stopped and priced it while we were grocery shopping!) Now I'm trying to remember all of the neat ric rac ideas I've seen and been too cheap to try...

last night

I assembled some I Spy blocks that have been gathering dust into a little top.

I pin basted the new top and a two color zig zag quilt I'd pieced a week or so ago.

I finished quilting the spirals on that baby quilt that got derailed two months ago and machine stitched the binding.

I used (and broke) the walking foot to quilt the zig zag quilt.

I started meandering the new little I Spy, which was coming out absolutely gorgeously...

And, about halfway through that, I finally had to accept that that my machine is definitely having some new issues and needs to seek professional help.

drastic measures

I did it. I emptied my quilt ladder and took every single baby quilt (except for the cat quilt) up to the gal who does the newborn layettes. Yesterday, I started refilling it.

My somewhat crazed goal is to finish ten quilts in ten days. I've got at least five or six sitting here waiting for bindings or quilting, so it's possible. Or would be if I didn't have the factor in my knee or the Janome's moods.

The quilt at the top of the post had been sitting on my ironing board for a couple of months and just needed binding.



This one was a finished top, but the boys bumped into the table and sloshed diet Coke onto the white blocks. I hand washed it at the time, but never got back to it, and then was my unplanned two month break from quilting....

The backing is a hunk of knit fabric I picked up at the thrift store earlier this week for fifty cents. I really like the way these knits work on baby quilts, and they seem to go for less than cotton -- probably because they don't have value to quilters. I've got enough left for a second quilt.



And I assembled a bunch of those 4 patch units I was working on into a new little top.



Now I'm going to have to see if I can get the Janome to cooperate so I can do some meandering. Wish me luck!

forcing myself to get it done

I've got two baby quilts quilted and waiting for binding. I've got another 3/4 quilted (that one's stalled due to Nellie the Janome's latest hissy fit, but I need to either figure out how to finish it or haul the machine up to town and get it fixed.) I've got at least two more tops done and waiting to be basted. And two more tops that I could get assembled in a normal afternoon of quilting, if I ever have one of those again.

In an effort to motivate myself, I've decided to do something drastic and almost completely emptied the quilt ladder next to the television. I usually hold a few back just in cast I need a baby quilt in a hurry. This time, they're all going, except for the applique cat. I'm not ready to let it go quite yet.

Hopefully, this will motivate me to start making some baby steps towards finishing some new ones.

instant thread stash

Although I've got a decent thread stash, I've always envied the quilters who show off their hat boxes and thread organizers overflowing with random spools.

So when we were at a yard sale yesterday I jumped at the chance to get my own exciting thread stash for two bucks. It's pretty, a lot of it is on old wooden spools, and I can't tell you how tempted I am to use it for piecing.

I know....I've read the warnings.... and I'm still planning to experiment. (After all, I'm using fabric that's probably just as old!) The only thing that's really holding me back is how pretty the colors look wound around those wooden spools. I know I've got at least one more old jar that matches this one, and a few of the bluish ones with the glass dome tops. So I may just use the newest stuff and keep the pretty ones for decoration until I find a perfect project for the wooden spools. In case you haven't noticed, I'm easily entertained by vintage stuff.

(And while I was writing this, my thirteen year old daughter came in and asked me if I'd like Grandma M's old thread, which she's had in her room since my mom gave it to her. How did she get that?)

It was a good day for yard sale browsing. I got a new-to-me cutting mat (30x36, which is twice the size of the one I've had until now) for four dollars from a lady who made one quilt and didn't like it. And a nice box of cotton scraps and two quilts (which will get their own post later) from the same sale where I found the thread. And some odds and ends of old stuff that were too neat and too inexpensive to leave behind.

post office surprises

A couple of weeks ago, I closed the post office box that I've had for the past twenty years. I've hung onto it for the past five years, even though it's too far from the house and I could only pick up my mail once a week. This time, when the box came up for renewal, we decided to get a box closer to home. Mostly so we could have a Netflix subscription and not wait so long for the DVDs.

I filled out all of the forms to get our mail forwarded, which was a lot more complicated than it should have been and after two weeks, nothing had been forwarded to me. Bill and the kids get mail with yellow stickers, but I don't. I've call, I called again, I went in to the old post office and begged... My mail had been sent to the place that does the forwarding, but hadn't gone on to me.

Maybe it's so many years of sending submissions to publishers and waiting anxiously for replies (even though it's been years since I did either) but not getting my mail stresses me out. The nice lady at the post office, the same one I've talked to six or eight times, assured me that my mail wasn't being thrown away or returned to sender.

I finally almost convinced myself that I wasn't expecting anything but bills and bank statements and that those were easy enough to replace. The one thing I was expecting probably wasn't on its way yet.

So I was surprised to find a squishy envelope when I checked the mail at the new post office. No yellow sticker -- someone had written my new address in black marker. It must've been a long day, because it never occurred to me that the package in my hands could be that one thing I was expecting.

Angela from Country Scrap Quilts had sent my Pay it Forward gift, the sweetest little table topper in 30s prints.



I'm absolutely in love with this sweet little thing. And now it's my turn to Pay it Forward, so I need three people to send gifts to.

Here are the rules, borrowed from Angela's blog --

1. The first 3 people to visit my blog and leave a comment saying they want to participate will receive a handmade gift from me, within the next year... (Probably much sooner than that, but you are suppose give everyone a year, because sometimes life gets in the way!)

2. You MUST have a blog of your own to to participate in the PIF.

3. You must post about the PIF on your blog & offer the PIF challenge on your blog.

By accepting the Pay It Forward challenge, YOU agree to host a Pay It Forward to the first 3 people who sign up on your blog...you will then carry on the PIF by sending them a homemade gift within a year's time, and so it goes :)

Let me know if you could use a baby quilt, or if I need to dream up something different to send! And please make sure there's a way for me to contact you for your address. If I can't find you, I won't be able to send your gift!

process

I haven't posted anything about my process lately because there hasn't been any for almost two months. Mostly, it's been me limping around the house whining that my knee hurts, or doing things that have to get done (while whining that my knee hurts) or sitting and looking at other people's neat projects online, because that doesn't make my knee hurt any more than it already does.

Last night I cut some white squares and did some piecing. It made me feel a lot happier. And also made my knee hurt -- a lot. I can start using my left foot to operate the foot pedal, but I really resent having to do that.

I've got a lot of ideas that will use these little four patch units and what usually happens is that I make a bunch, lay them out to see how idea #1 will work, then like it so much I sew them together and have to start all over before I can try idea #2.

This time, I'm going to make enough for patch units for several baby quilts before I start laying them out. I've got the squares cut. If I pace myself and only work on it in short spurts, I can get this done.

I have changed

I come from a family that thinks things like Doritos and pepperoni are spicy. I married a man who has swigged Tabasco from the bottle to see if its lost its kick or not.

Ask anyone in my house if Mommy likes spicy things and the answer will be no. Compared to my husband and my daughter (who is someday going to melt through the bottom of my frying pan with one of her stir fry experiments) I don't.

So why, when Bill told me that the hot sauce he picked up on vacation was a disappointment, did I stick my fingertip onto his chip and try it for myself?! He didn't ask me to try it, I volunteered.



The stuff has a seriously nasty flavor, but it really isn't that hot. Proof that I now live in a household where we use seranos because they're hotter than jalapenos and taste better.



We're just back from a four day road trip. I've figured out that the problem with tent camping isn't really being wedged in so tightly with my children. It's whatever the people in the next site are doing. Night #1, we had the loud drunk laughter. Night #2 was the hundred dollar tent site at a "destination" KOA -- I'm no longer afraid that my kids are making too much noise while we set up the tent. And night #3 we had more drunks, this time playing loud music that I probably would've liked under any other circumstances.

We did have a blast, and at one of the museums we visited, I had to take a picture of this old book.



From the card:

"Bessie Prehn complimented this field guide with watercolor paintings, dried flowers, and concise notes of what she had observed."

Today's inspiration --

I want a chalkboard globe and now I'm afraid that we threw out the one the kids kept disassembling because I was so sick of trying to make the countries line up again. It didn't seem like a big loss at the time because it was so outdated, but now I'm hoping it's somewhere and I can patch it back together because this is just SO neat.

I'm sure my kiddos would love some cereal box notebooks. Although I may just glue the boxes onto the existing cover instead of redoing the wire if they're for the little guys. For myself, I might tackle the wire.

The drafting series has started over at ikatbag. Am I the only one who had to resort to Wikipedia to find out what on earth a sloper is?

I could seriously use a double framed clock for my dining room.

Now I need to get the sleeping bags and tent back up to the attic and make some time to sew!