Supersize me

I’m back at work now; the deck renovation actually began this morning! (I had given up hope); and I’ve been working on a mariner star – patterned quilt for the past few days. I planned to do more work on it during my vacation, but I misplaced the pieces that I’d photocopied and only re-located them a week or so ago. It’s a free pattern called Sailing By The Stars from RJR Fabrics. The stars are paper-pieced and the rest is template. Now, the star pieces have to be enlarged 200 per cent. Don’t know why, but I figured that applied to the templates as well, so I enlarged everything. I looked at the templates for days while I was putting together the first star, thinking “Really?” So I went ahead and made the big template pieces.

No, not really. It didn’t fit at all, so I looked at the original pattern and it finally dawned on my what “full sized template” meant. So… the teeny tiny template pieces worked much better. Finished my first star. Unfortunately, it looks like I’ve lost the points on the first two quarters I made. The second two went together just like they were supposed to. The paper is still on the back of the stars, so I’m hoping that it won’t look so obvious once I remove all of it.

This is my first attempt at curved piecing – it was bound to happen sooner or later! I think I’m liking it.

Until next time,

Friday Furball – Princess and the P…

…Pile of Fabric. Ginger pretends that she doesn’t like to have her picture taken, but she manages to insert herself into he majority I take of fabric and quilts. She has good taste. She also won the coin toss with Rusty and is sitting in a favoured cat perch. Here she is with my latest fabric rescue.

It’s the funniest thing about fabric. Try and match up some fabrics for a project from the one-ton stash and there’s always something missing. I had to take a quick trip into the city yesterday to visit my favourite Local Quilt Shop to round out a colour selection. I am happy to report a successful mission. I needed fabric to contrast with a red and a blue, and I needed to find a nice, pale gray. It’s not easy finding a good gray. It looks rather whitish in this picture, but I made my first block tonight and it works just fine against the dark background. The dark blue and red are Clothworks’ Laurel Burch patterns, and the lighter shades are Moda Marbles. It’s looking good so far.

Until next time,

What I did on my summer vacation

As little as I could possibly get away with! We bought these lounge chairs a few weeks ago – they’re called “zero-gravity chairs” – and they fold back a little or a lot, whichever you like. And they are soooooo comfortable! And the days have been sunny and hot. I do my yard work between 8-10 am and after that it’s too hot to do much else outside besides stretch out in my lounge with a good book and relax on my new patio.

We’re developing a hornet problem, however. They have a nest under the roof just around the corner from my comfy chair. Every year we have a few, attracted by the pear tree in our backyard, but we’ve been seeing more and more nests around the house. This one is huge. Now they’re in the food dish that I leave outside for Franky. He wasn’t impressed the other day with me waving my hands over his head while he ate, trying to make the hornets leave.

We also have a grasshopper problem, but I’m not worried about being stung by a grasshopper. We seem to have a few more than usual this year, but the biggest problem with them is that I hate grasshoppers. Ack! I can’t stand them. The birds have been snacking on them, but they haven’t made much of a dent in the population. Franky likes them too. He leaps after them and puts on a real show for a few minutes, and usually he nabs at least one crunchy treat. He’s carrying one in his mouth in the picture above.

So what have I been sewing? I bought a couple of gorgeous bag patterns while I was visiting family and friends in Fort St. John, and I was really excited about getting started on them once I got home. But then, I found a pattern that I was looking for a few weeks ago (and gave up on finding), so the last few days have been spent looking through my fabric to decide which ones I’m going to use for it. My fabric is still, mostly, downstairs where I had to store it while the renovations were taking place, so it’s a bit of a headache finding things still.

However, I did manage to make a little gift for my next door neighbour who looked after Rusty and Ginger while we were away. I found her a moose-shaped cookie cutter in Fort St. John and I thought of her at once when I saw it! Now, you can’t just hand someone a cookie cutter and say ‘thanks’! So I was going to make a little bag to put it in. While that was going through my head, I decided to make a little wall pocket instead. Probably took me all of about an hour to make.

Until next time,

Friday Furball – Keeping amused

Well, I’m back to sewing – getting back into the blogging groove is taking a bit more effort. The renovations are far from finished and most of what is left are things that I cannot do. Neither, apparently, can anyone else. I believe our deck has been cursed.

Last week we made the quick trip (less than a week) north to Fort St. John to visit the in-laws. I enjoy this annual trek, but it’s a 10-hour drive one-way. It’s starting to become a little too much driving to do in one day. We lived in and around Fort St. John for many years and still have lots of friends there, 11 years later.

We left Rusty and Ginger in the care of our next door neighbour, and it appears that they were mostly good. Nothing pulled off the wall like last year. No surprises to clean up, although our neighbour told me that one morning they got into a drawer and pulled everything out of it. Now, this is a favourite sport of theirs and they do it whether we’re here or not. Ginger grabs the drawer pull and hangs on it, knowing that it will slide open far enough for them to get their grubby little paws in. Rusty is usually on the counter to be first in line – bags, ribbons, pencils, shelf liner – you name it, it’s our junk drawer.

Usually, they’re sitting in the windows waiting for us if we’ve been away for a long time. No sign of them this time. No one greeted us at the front door – not a good sign. I called their names and Rusty finally appeared before we had the chance to climb the stairs to the living room. But no Ginger. She was lounging in her cat bed on the couch, giving us two “hairy eyeballs”. That didn’t last long, though. First supper, then a few scritches and pets and they were both happy to cuddle with us again. The third picture is Rusty draped protectively over the junk drawer!

Until next time,

Returning to normal

It’s been a crazy past few months. I’ve gone through three months of major house renovations, just finished two major community events in the past two weeks that committees I sit on hosted, and I start four weeks of vacation on Wednesday. Let me tell you – I NEED it!

The deck has yet to be completed – or even started. And I’ve given up on the baseboard moulding going up anytime soon, so I’ve been putting the furniture back where it belongs. The moulding might not happen for years. Nor the deck. I gave up on one contractor who was dragging his feet on it and hired another. I thought we had agreed to have it done by the end of this month, this month being JULY – but apparently the present contractor had some other month in mind. So I’ve given up on enjoying my favourite vacation past time of sitting on the deck. Until the deck is done, I really don’t have a patio either, since there are no stairs attached to the deck. I have to go out the front door and around to the backyard to get there. Not a huge deal, but it’s an inconvenience. Can’t do it in the dark because there are no lights back there and too many ways to trip while trying to get into the backyard.

Anyway, I’m just whining. I’m tired. The paver guys are mostly finished and the work they’ve done is beautiful. They nearly destroyed the backyard to do it, but it’ll return to life eventually. Now we have a large paved area just off the deck for a patio table and chairs. There is a small area under the fire pit that’s paved, so no more setting the grass on fire! Or sitting on plastic chairs that sink into the soft dirt if it’s been raining. There is also a paved pad for a greenhouse, which Mr. ZQ is planning to build for me. He’s already built two for me in the past, so he’s improving his design! And we finally, after five years, put a sidewalk in the front yard. I started that Allan Block wall in 2008. That took me two years to complete all by itself. Maybe this Fall I can finally plant the lilies and other flowers I want to put i the front yard. The pavers are a beautiful colour when they’re wet. If we decide to seal them, they’ll be more or less this colour all the time. We haven’t had a fire yet since the paving went down – either too busy or too rainy, but I’m looking forward to a few nights around the backyard fire while I’m on vacation.

We aren’t planning on any grand adventures such as we had last year while I’m on holidays. We’re just going to sit around and enjoy what’s been done of the renovations so far. And pick weeds. And work on the deck if the contractor decides to show up.

But I have other plans for my vacation as well… I finally have my sewing machine set up again. It’s been sitting in a corner in a spare bedroom since before the new windows were installed at the end of May! Oh, I’ve missed her. Last week I put her back where I had her. I mended one of my gardening gloves and made a quick cat toy out of a triangle scrap stuffed with some batting. Ginger, bless her little kitty heart, played with it for hours, batting it around the floor and chasing after it. I have no idea where it is now. I didn’t take a picture of it. Sewing a piece of fabric together was good enough. I’ll be spending the first day of my vacation making up for lost time – I’ll be fabric shopping!

Until next time,

Still goin’

We’ve finished more home renos than we have left to do, but there’s still no end in sight. Now that the flooring and the painting (except for the entry way) is finished, I thought I might actually get to put my sewing machine back where I had it, but it’ll be in the way of the only access to the deck if I do that – the last project in the renovations we’ve undertaken this year. So it remains out of the way in the “library”. I can still get to it, but all of my fabric is in boxes and bags in the basement, and my cutting table is in the dining room. I sew want to get back to it! I have a pattern picked out that I’d like to start right away.

New Moon tomorrow at 16 degrees Cancer. When I say tomorrow, I mean about 10 minutes after midnight tonight, Pacific Daylight Time. The only thing affecting it is Mercury, which is only two degrees away from it. Looks like a month of quiet time, using our hands and our brains. Maybe our mouths to talk to close friends and family about how we feel. Cancer rules the 4th House (out of the 12 Houses of the Zodiac) which is the House of home. And my home is my house, so it’s interesting that the New Moon in Cancer should occur at this time (- but it does happen every year around this time) when our home renovations seem like they’re finally coming to an end.

We are quite pleased with how everything had turned out to this point – the new furnace/AC, windows, the new floor, the new colours for the living room, dining room, hallway and entry way. The paving stones are gorgeous, even if the rest of the front and back yards have suffered neglect while the paver guys have been working. Those weeds in the pictures of my backyard? I finally had those well under control. Looks like they’ve got the upper hand again. There is no vegetable garden this year, and I have to figure out what to do with that mountain of dirt before planting season next year. I say that the deck is the last of the projects, but actually, I guess the greenhouse is. But that’s a Fall project. Mr. ZQ has already built two greenhouses for me over the years. Third time’s the charm! We’ve never had such a lovely foundation to build it on before. It’ll be great to have a greenhouse again, because the wind that blows through here will kill a tray of tender young seedlings in no time at all.

Until next time,

Tuckered!

House renovations STILL aren’t finished – a good part of that owing to the record amounts of rain we’ve had this Spring! No one has ever seen the B.C. desert so green before! Poor Ginger, and especially Rusty!, have put up with a lot these last few weeks. We all just want it to stop! The outdoor paving work, which was arranged for and paid for in April (when the weather was very sunny and warm) is not finished. And the deck work can’t start until the paving work is finished (something about stairs and other things).

Aside from the fact that this all began when strong winds blew the deck roof off last Spring (2012), it physically started with the furnace installation in mid-April. Then the new windows shortly after that. I’ve been painting almost non-stop since the windows went in, so it would all be done before the flooring went in. Well, the walls were finished, but the textured ceiling is another story all in itself. Long story short, I’m still working on it. But the walls are beautiful (except for the black marks where the flooring installer hit them with his rubber mallet!!! – nothing that can’t be touched up). The solid hardwood maple flooring is pretty nice. And what is done of the paving is very, very nice. The front walk really puts the rest of the yard to shame.

We are all sooo ready for the noise to stop and to have things return to normal, but the paving and the deck still have to be finished. Did you know that cats can climb ladders? Both up and down. Sweet Frankie, my sweet little stray boy, still comes for breakfast, lunch and supper every day, but he has to climb an extension ladder to get up onto the deck where I feed him. We had to take the stairs off the deck to accommodate the new heat pump back in April. Part of the deck renovations will be to replace the stairs, but that hasn’t happened yet.

And even though the hall and living room, with its new paint and floor, looks soooo beautiful, It still needs moulding and touch ups where the walls were accidentally marked. So, my sewing machine remains tucked away in a corner. I haven’t been able to do a darn thing on it (too bad it doesn’t paint!) in weeks. And it’ll probably be another 2-3 weeks before I can move it back into its old spot and actually start using it again (three weeks seems to coincide with my vacation). I am so looking forward to that!

Until next time,