I'm an incompetent tooth fairy

None of my children believe in the tooth fairy or Santa Claus. Even the youngest is quick to tell you that neither one exists. So why do I have to keep going through the motions? I'm not good at this!

I'm especially bad when it comes to the tooth fairy. When our oldest lost her first tooth, a few years ahead of schedule and with surgical intervention because I'm Mom to that one kid who ever got hurt going down the slide on her belly, I fought the dentist to be allowed to bring home the pieces of broken tooth. Because she had to be able to put it under her pillow for the tooth fairy.

That was probably my first mistake. I should never have let any of my kids find out about the whole tooth fairy concept.

A few years later, when Alex was losing teeth on schedule, her younger brother retrieved one from its hiding place and swallowed it. Ever try explaining to the doctor that your little boy just swallowed a tooth and it wasn't his own and that's why you're so worried? They referred me to poison control, and I got to go through the whole story again with them. Apparently that one isn't in their handbook, but teeth are inert, so the nice lady was pretty sure it would be okay.

Things mostly settled down after that, except for the nights I fell asleep myself before tucking money under pillows, and the times I left the tooth along with the money because I couldn't find it in the dark, and the time I did take the tooth and leave the money and was greeted first thing in the morning by a screaming child who couldn't find the money, which was right under the pillow....

When Quinn lost his first tooth a few months ago, I almost changed my mind about the whole tooth fairy thing. After reminding me that there was no tooth fairy, he showed me how he planned to hold his tooth in his stretched out hand all night. It was so adorable, I almost got excited about the whole thing all over again.

Last week, he lost another tooth and handed it forward from the backseat of the van. Never mind that I was driving on the interstate and not at all prepared to deal with a bloody tooth...I think he gets that from his older brother who seemed to lose every tooth in as public a place as possible.

Leif wasn't about to be outdone and had a tooth of his own that was just barely loose. By the end of the afternoon, he was handing me a tooth and smiling a bloody grin. In the morning, he was wailing at me because he couldn't spend the real silver coin that the tooth fairy had left him at the Dollar Tree...

I've got two mouthfuls of baby teeth to get through before I can put this whole routine behind me. And then there's the bleached jaw Leif found when we were hiking down to the river last week. He had plans to leave the teeth under his pillow to get more money.... and if it wasn't for the fact that it's so gross, I'd be tempted to let him get away with it....

This post is linked to Finding the Funny.

but it has....

curved seams... inset seams... a zipper... buttonholes... cables... intarsia... a chart... needleturn applique...

That sort of thing is always running through my mind when I'm looking at patterns. I've crossed charts, and cables, and curved seams off of the list. And inset seams --That was last week's new adventure.

The more things I can cross off that list, the more opportunities open up.

This week I'm trying bias stems. It's not going well. Possibly because my green fabric is a polyester blend, but that's what I have and this is a scrap quilt.



I got them cut on the bias, and got the edges ironed under. They'll go go straight, but they won't curve prettily like the ones in the pattern. (And I am *SO* not handstitching the applique on a scrappy string quilt that's probably going to be used by the boys!)

After reading this tutorial at Applique Today, I'm going to try doing it her way. I've got the bias bars already (and might even know where they are) and fusing them in place might help...

The bias seams may not be working for me, but learning (or relearning) new techniques definitely does, so I'm linking this post to Words for me Wednesday at We are THAT family. And to Try it out Tuesday at Jo's Country Junction.

Design Wall Monday - Daylilies and Legos

The temperature shot back up, putting my string blocks on hold for the moment. It's supposed to hit 102 later this week -- not something I'm looking forward to. The string blocks can wait. Until it cools back down, I'm piecing strips for the Lego quilt and ironing them in quick little bursts.

I can't run the fan and the iron at the same time, so it's forcing me to work a lot more efficiently. Iron a stack of strips, then unplug the iron, plug the fan back in, and trim them down to the right length.



This may be a long term project. Part of me wants to keep digging through the scrap bags and see how much more variety I can add. And part of me is having so much fun piecing the strips together that I don't want to stop and hunt for more fabric...we'll see what happens.

Last week's goals were to quilt and bind the red and white scrappy pinwheels, and to finish picking fabric for the Daylilies blocks. The red and white quilt is done, and I've decided to make the petals completely scrappy instead of fussing so much over the color choices.

This week's goals...I'll just see what I can manage to get done.

To see more design walls, head over to Patchwork Times.

What's the opposite of burnt out?

I thought I was done with baby hats, but it turns out I just needed a new book of patterns to play with. Now I'm happily obsessing about little Halloween hats for the NICU.

Quinn was there on Halloween 2004, but he didn't get a special hat for the occasion. He got one for the presidential election a few days later...but that one wasn't a hand knit.



I've got ideas about knitting my way through the entire book, but I keep going back to the little witch hats, because they're just so fun to knit.

And I know I was going to stop babbling on and on about bees, but there's a beehive pattern on the author's blog. How could I not knit a beehive with the week I just had?


Weekly Stash Report

Fabric Used this Week: 2 3/4 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 40 3/4 yards
Added this Week: 10 yards
Added Year to Date: 145 yards
Net Added for 2012: 104.25 yards

Yarn Used this Week: 230 yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 230 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 3000 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 3000 yards
Net Added for 2012: 2770 yards

To see more weekly stash reports, click over to Patchwork Times. This post is also linked to Sew Darn Crafty.

Is it bee week?

It must be -- so far this week, I've soaked a quilt in sugar water in an attempt to get bees to land on it for the Pets on Quilts show, gone over to Grandma's house to annoy the yellow jackets who took up residence in her favorite birdhouse, and watched three different documentaries on Africanized honey bees.

Today, Hubby went out to inspect the hives. I don't know if that was something he already had planned, or if all of my whining about the uncooperative bees inspired him. but he got into his bee suit and fired up the smoker.

I was keeping my distance, figuring that I'd pushed my luck enough this week. Then he handed me a frame full of honey and told me to get it into the house, fast.



Did I mention that I was in a sun dress and sandals, not my new bee suit? Happily, I made it into the house without incident. I don't think the bees even noticed me hurrying off with a chunk of their pantry. And now we've got about five pounds of comb in our pantry!

somewhere, I have a darning needle...

And when I remember where I put them all, I can weave in ends and finish the cutest baby hats I've made in a long time. I bought the book a couple of weeks ago, just so I could knit some little preemie size witch hats. Then I stood there in the checkout line, wondering if it was really okay to knit witch hats for the NICU.

I did stick a baby hat with devil horns on my own baby, but I'm not sure if there are actual rules about this sort of thing.

Turns out I should've looked at more than just the pictures and read the introduction, since these hats were designed for just that. And the sizes go up to twelve months, so you can knit them for your own babies, too. The author has a blog, Knitting for the NICU. Take a look at this post, with all kind of adorable hats for Halloween. And look at that turkey on the book cover -- I know I've got some scraps of acrylic in those colors that I couldn't figure out what to do with until now!



This post is linked to On the Needles at Patchwork Times.

pets on quilts - the voting starts today

Of course, when I went out to pick up my quilt from in front of the hive yesterday, there was a bee sitting on it....and the camera was in the house...then my oldest son said there were bees on the quilt, but the younger ones chased them off. How do those kids keep from getting stung?

It was too late anyway. Voting for the 2012 Pets on Quilts contest started this morning. There are some fun entries in the "other" category -- including our bees. Just submitting a vote enters you to win some great prizes, so go over and take a look.

I've decided to stay away from the bugs for a while. Grandma told me yesterday that she thought some honeybees had taken up residence in her favorite birdhouse. I was in town, so I went over to take a look and I'm pretty sure they're yellow jackets, but Hubby will go over on his day off to make sure.

Did you know that yellow jackets give warning thumps just like bees do? And they aim for the eyes. I'm so glad he decided to just hit me instead of sting.

Even better, I was finally able to get that Ergotamine prescription filled at a local compounding pharmacy. I was never so happy to spend to much money on a bottle of pills.

bees aren't impressed by quilts

Wouldn't you think that with at least 50,000 bees buzzing around the yard, I could get a couple of them to land on a quilt? I think this might confirm that our bugs don't like me, not even when I make a special batch of sugar water and doused my quilt with it in an attempt to catch their interest.

I tried putting the quilt in a tree near the hive, putting it in the mint patch, putting it on the hive...and at that point a couple of bees landed in me, so I took the hint and gave up.



The quilt is Do Not Put Your Elbows on the Table, from Back to Charm School by Mary Etherington and Connie Tesene. You can read all about how much I adore the book in this post.



Bees definitely qualify as "other", right?

experimenting with new batting

I'm posting late this morning because it made more sense to use the iron while it was still cool enough to have the windows open.

My own Extra scrappy pinwheels quilt is finally done. Seems that that secret to stopping the Janome's latest hissy fit was to do some straight stitching and then try again later. Since re threading and needle changing and cleaning the machine didn't work... I really don't want to take her in for a check up right now, not unless I absolutely have to.



I'm using a new-to-me brand of batting, Hobbs Heirloom Premium, which an acquaintance gave me after cleaning out her closets and deciding that she was never going to make a quilt herself.

It has a slightly tacky feel to it that I don't care for. I suppose it doesn't matter once it's quilted into the quilt, but I think I'll stick with my Warm and Natural and my polyester.

I do plan on experimenting with the polyester batting I found at the local Mennonite store. It's sold on a bolt, so I don't know the brand name, but it feels a lot like the Mountain Mist Quilt-Light that I like so much. It's 90" wide and it's cheap -- $2.59 a yard. That makes it cheaper than Joann's sale prices.

For this quilt, I wanted to use cotton batting, but I'm excited to try it on the next batch of baby quilts. Or one of the string quilts -- whichever I get to first.



There's a free pattern here on my blog for the Extra Scrappy Pinwheels quilt. This post is linked to Try it out Tuesday over at Jo's Country Junction. Check out the book she's giving away this week -- it looks like a lot of fun!

Design Wall Monday - lots of strings

It's one of those weeks when I want to be working on everything. I've got the Santa Fe star wedges, and the Daylilies, and the Lego strips...and a new knitting project on my double point needles, and the little red and white pinwheels to finish quilting...



If it wasn't for the heat, I think I'd spend the whole day making string blocks.
Instead, I'm piecing together strips of little bricks for my Lego quilt. I can make a stack and then iron then when it cools off. These aren't assembled into blocks yet. I want to wait until I have more strips done before I have them put together.

So far they look promising!



My to do list for this week --

- finish quilting and binding the red and white scrappy pinwheels
- pick fabrics and cut diamonds for the rest of the daylilies blocks



To see more design walls, head over to Patchwork Times.

sewing in the heat

I didn't make it out to look for the green Ric Rac last night. By the time it cooled down enough, I was busy working on other things.



Like getting my own scrappy red pinwheel quilt almost quilted and bound. My tension went haywire 3/4 of the way through. I've re threaded, tried a new bobbin, tried a new spool, cleaned the machine, changed the needle.... None of it helped. Apparently the Janome was due for a hissy fit. She does that.

The tension is fine when I'm not trying to free motion quilt, so I'm back to piecing and hoping that she decides to behave herself tomorrow. At least it didn't happen while I was finishing my latest Moda quilt.

Because they're already pressed and I don't have to use an iron, I've been cutting my pile of 1 1/2" strips into Lego Quilt sized bricks.



My weekly stash report numbers grew this week. Joann's was having their Founder's Day sale, with a coupon for 25% off of the entire purchase, and fat quarters were ninety-nine cents, so I stocked up on some colors I need for the String Fling quilts...and Walmart had some nice yarn on clearance so I bought yarn for the first time this year.

There would have been fabric used if the Janome had behaved. To see more weekly stash reports, click over to Patchwork Times.


Fabric Used this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 38 yards
Added this Week: 21 yards
Added Year to Date: 135 yards
Net Added for 2012: 118 yards

NewFO - Daylilies

Google says it's 100 degrees outside...too hot to go climbing stairs and chasing after that green Ric Rac that I know is in the sewing room. What I don't know is how many packages there are, since it was a yard sale find a few summers back. Or how it will look with the green fabric I'm using...

It's also too hot for sewing, but I had the whole day to spend at home and I wasn't going to give up the first big block of quilting time I've had in ages.

The temperature inside the house is a delicate thing on days like today. Anything that produces heat, even my laptop, seems to drive up the temperature. I needed a project that wouldn't take much ironing.

Since string blocks were out, I decided to tackle one of the pieced blocks for Daylilies.



It's not perfect, but it's the first time I've worked with diamonds or set in seams. I'm happy with it. Now I've got to decide if I want to follow Bonnie's instructions for the applique stems or experiment with some ric rac.

more free mysteries to download for your Kindle

One of the things I love most about my Kindle Fire is that there's always something to read.

Honestly, even without the Kindle, I'd have plenty to read. I spent my teen years working at a used bookstore. It's where I met my husband when I was sixteen. I got a great discount, and I got to take home books that were too damaged to sell, or that we had too many copies of. And then there were the book sales where romances were a dime a piece. Even after getting rid of more SUV loads of old paperbacks than I'm ever going to admit, I've still got boxes and boxes of unread books in the attic.

But there's something satisfying about picking out new ones. And the zombie apocalypse might start, or I might hurt my knee or wind up on bed rest without Internet access and suddenly find myself reading through all of those paperbacks....
and I don't think there are many cozy mysteries up in the attic....

Do I really need to justify downloading free books anyway?

There are a lot of free mysteries available today that I hadn't seen before. Now what I need is some time to actually curl up and read them!











Note -- All of these titles were listed as free when I wrote this post. The prices on Amazon change quickly, so please double-check the prices before you order them. You can find Amazon's current top 100 free mysteries here.

wfmw -- Is it just me?

This morning, I needed to send a quick email before we took off for the rest of our day. The homepage for my email provider gave me a pop up screen saying that I needed to click on their new terms of service. I was in a hurry and knew I'd have to agree with them anyway if I wanted to get the message I was waiting for, so I clicked....

It wouldn't let me into my email. It wouldn't let me see the new terms of service. I started to worry.

Ever have one of those moments when really need to get to a website and it won't load and you can't tell if the site is down or something is horribly wrong with your computer?

Go to Down for Everyone or Just Me and type in the site you're looking for and they'll let you know if it's you or if the site is having problems. I wish I'd known about this a long time ago, especially those times when my husband and kids couldn't get to the sites they wanted and expected me to know how to fix it!

This post is linked to No comments:

Design Wall Monday - Santa Fe String Star

The diamonds aren't cut to their exact size yet, just trimmed enough to give me an idea what they might look like when they're done. Honestly, I'm not sure if I have the nerve for this quilt or not. I haven't worked with diamonds before, and haven't done set in seams, or a big star like this one.... and I've got 200 diamonds to piece...I really feel more comfortable with quilts where you can try out a test block or two before jumping in.



As I sort through strings I'm pulling out anything that looks pink enough for the cotton candy quilt, and anything that's wider than 1 1/2" for the Lego quilt...and using the little strips for diamonds. And since I was finding so many long strings, I decided to start some 7 1/2" blocks for Daylilies... conveniently forgetting that that quilt has set in seams and hand applique... looks like I'll be developing some new skills!

My 1 1/2" strips die that actually cuts 1 1/2" strips came this week (long story which I'll tell you later this week) and it's making cutting the pieces for the Lego quilt so much easier. I just iron anything that's wide enough and stack them so the edges extend past the blades and run it through the cutter when I've got enough layers. I'm loving this!



To see more design walls, head over to Patchwork Times.

weekly stash report

There are new numbers in this week's report! I finished a quilt I can't show you yet, and bought five pinkish neutral fat quarters for the cotton candy quilt from Bonnie's new book.

Fabric Used this Week: 7 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 38 yards
Added this Week: 1 1/4 yards
Added Year to Date: 135 yards
Net Added for 2012: 97 yards

If I add in the hundred yards or so of unusable stuff I've flung from the sewing room so far this year, there's still less fabric in the house than there was on January 1. Who would've thought that was possible? To see more weekly stash reports, click over to Patchwork Times.

It's here!

My copy of String Fling came in yesterday's mail. The timing couldn't be much better -- I just finished a big project and now I've got a little time to drool over the book and sort through my own collection of strings.



I think I want to make every quilt in the book. When Bonnie showed them all in her preview post a few weeks ago, I thought I wanted to make most of them. Now, I can almost picture myself working through my entire stash of strings and scraps and crumbs. This is definitely the book to do it with.

The "Directions at a Glance" pages are great. They show how many units you need and give the measurements. More detailed instructions are elsewhere in the pattern, and I'm sure I'll still need to read those, but having everything on one page will make it easier to keep track of what I'm trying to accomplish. (Looks like the Directions at a Glance made their debut in Scraps and Shirttails II, but I don't have that one yet, so I missed them.)

Talkin Turkey was my first favorite, but now that I've got the book in my hands I'm seriously in love with Zuckerwatte, the pink cotton candy quilt. Do I have enough pink scraps left to make that one? I'm almost positive I don't have enough red for Talkin Turkey, so I'm thinking of trying it in brown. Brown, I've got. For the moment.

I can figure out what colors I've got while I'm cutting strings into 1 1/2" strips for my Lego quilt. And the bits that are too small for that, or not the colors I'm looking for, can go into a Santa Fe String Star. At least that's the plan for right now.

sewing again -- finally!

I hope the bees are enjoying whatever's blooming outside, because it's turning my head into a stuffy mess. Maybe I'm just getting a cold, but it makes me feel better to think that the bugs are having some fun.

I could go out and see if they're coming back to the hives with sacks full of pollen, but I'm not quite that enthusiastic.

All of my enthusiasm is tied up in a new quilt. I'm finally sewing again, working on a project I can't show you quite yet.



Those little strips finish at 3/4". They're not strings. I feel like I have to emphasize that so I get credit for all of my careful measuring!

design wall Monday - broken dishes for the witches' houses

I'm playing with ideas for the pieced center of my Hocuspocusville quilt. So far, Broken Dishes is the winner. Either that or Drunkard's Path. I ordered enough extra fabric to allow for experiments.



To see more design walls, head over to Patchwork Times.

How could you make your sewing room better?

Is there something small you could do that would make your sewing space more fun to work in? Not new shelves or furniture or paint, but something really simple that you just haven't bothered to do yet...

Like making a duplicate key.

When we moved into this house six years ago, there was one set of keys to the garage where hubby's shop and my sewing room (and the chest freezer) are. I've been accidentally locked out of my sewing room, and been unable to get out to the chest freezer for the ground beef I needed for dinner, more than once. And I might've accidentally taken the keys to town in my own pocket a time or two. It was just dumb luck that hubby didn't want to get at any of his own toys.

A couple of weeks ago, we made copies of the garage keys. They live on my keyring with the keys to the house and van. So I don't get locked out of my sewing room anymore. And I keep much better track of my car keys. :-)

Why did I wait so long for a second set of keys?

Today I stumbled across a second opportunity for sewing space improvement and downloaded the Netflix app onto my Kindle. This is so perfect! I can prop it in the corner by my sewing machine and have something to watch while I'm slogging through some boring piecing. The kids can have the main tv for their own shows or video games, and teenage girl can have my laptop and we're all happy.

Now I'm wondering what other steps to more blissful sewing I've been missing.... Cleaning up my sewing corner was not one of them.