Message to my dear husband:

(image credit)

I may have mentioned this once or twice before but my dear husband does not cook.  He does lots and lots of other things, but does not go into the kitchen.  So unless I make a huge recovery soon, it will be basic easy to cook fast food this week.  So no menu plan this week, as it will depend on how I am feeling as to what we have type of week.

I finished off the quilt top on Sunday as I thought that wasn't too strenuous a job:

 I have to say this quilt does not photograph well.  It's much nicer in real life.

The border and any other plain cream is Free Spirit Designer Solid in Natural.
The orange is Architextures by Robert Kaufman in Tangerine.
The rest of the material is Dear Stella Piper line.  

I am hoping I have enough orange left for the binding and I still have to pick up the backing fabric.  It's around 55 inches wide and 74 inches long.  It's for dd for her family room.

I have been watching this Youtube video:




I got this far before I managed to get totally confused.  It's the way I am holding the yarn which is confusing me.  It doesn't feel natural to me.  So I need some one on one time with one of the ladies I knit with to show me what I am doing wrong.

I am on with ball four of five with the blanket.  My tension sucks and is very "holey" in places...oh well onwards and upwards as they say.

All things creative today

How to make pinwheels:

How to make fruit roll ups....yummy!!


Here is where I am in my knitting, over half way through the yellow ball of yarn, two more to go after that:

Putting together a quilt top for dd that I started, ages, and ages ago.  First four rows done, it's a lot brighter in real life.  The blocks are a pinwheel variation, that I had done here.

Bought a ball of dishcloth yarn in an attempt to try and learn myself to crochet..........not holding out much hope though!!

I already have the crochet hooks, so it's not costing me a lot to see if I can do it.

I just posted another book review "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan," by Lisa See if anyone is interested?  Great book I gave it a 5 out of 5!!

Thursday is going to be called this from now on:

"Our Little Munchkin's Quilt Day."  Well at least for the foreseeable future.  If you have been following my blog for the past couple of years, you will know I have a grandchild who was born in November 2013.  Every month on her month old birthday dd took a photo of her.  You can see some here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. 

You can see there was a different fabric used as a background each month.  So dd asked me to make a quilt (twin/single size) for when Our Little Munchkin goes into a big girls bed.

Knowing how fast I sew I figured I had better make a start on it soon.  So my first job was to wash all the fabric.

I knew those stair railings would come in useful for something!!  I then had to iron all that material.

So for the next few Thursday's I am putting everything else aside and sew all these fabrics into a quilt top.  I had got a pattern in mind of what I am going to do, I just need to get it all done!!!  Wish me luck.

Our Little Princess and Our Little Man will be back from India in a week's time, so looking forward to seeing them again.  I bet they have grown.

Here is Our Little Man's 6 month old photo:

Here they are both together:

Finished Quilt top, Home of the Week & Drawing for Art

I finished the brown, cream and pink quilt top on Thursday.  It's around 6 feet by 4 feet, bigger than I thought or had planned, never mind.  I like it though; mind you the more I looked at it the more I saw problems!!!

I put the smaller cream border on as I thought the blocks were busy enough.  I am a pretty organized person until it comes to quilting and then I never plan ahead!!  I am putting this away to quilt later on as I have two other projects I want to finish first.

This week's "Home of the Week," is the grand prize for the Princess Margaret Lottery and I'll take it PLEASE!!!!  I don't think I would change a thing, other than put in more comfy chairs to sit on.  Not sure what I would do with the yoga room..........guess I could prance around pretending to be a dancer or something?  If I had the money I would buy a ticket to the lottery, but I don't so I can only dream..........mind you I don't think I could afford to run a house that big?

The "Condo of the Week," is different and pricey at $2.6 million.  Those stone floors makes the place look so cold and sterile.  I do like the terrace and the views, but I will pass with the rest of it.  As for the art work, interesting, and that artistic display of the boots with the "seat" in the front hall, please lets hope they didn't pay much for that!!!!

Now talking about art it's coming up to our annual excursion to the Drawing For Art at the Station Gallery in Whitby.  We have been going for the past three years, this will be our fourth.  The art work is up online now.  For those of you not familiar with this.  We buy a pair of tickets, this year it was $170 for the pair.  We go to a gala and our ticket is thrown into a barrel and drawn and we get to choose an original piece of art work per pair of tickets.  The art work is donated and all profits go to children's art programmes.

Now here is a link to this year's art work.  I see there are 117 pieces to choose from so far.  Now last year dd and I both wanted the same piece!!  She had her name drawn first so she got it and lo and behold the same artist has submitted a companion piece this year, so she is going for that.  It's the Poppies painting by Sarah Shaw.  I am undecided as yet, but have to draw up a short list, as dd does not live too far from the gallery so she was going to preview them for me to see what is nice and what isn't as you can't really see very well online.  So far here are a few of my favourites:

This one by Leif Peterson, I love the colours.

This one by Dale Wheeler, very appropriate for a farmhouse, don't you think?

This one by Carolyn Joore, love this type of painting.

This one by Chrystal Niemuller, I got one of hers last year.

This one by Marion Stevenson, love the colours again.

This one by Shelley Beach is also very nice.

As with every year there are some very strange pieces of "art."  However it would be a very dull world if we all liked the same thing!!  I would ask you to look for the painting with the woman walking out of a lake with a head in one hand!!!  That is one you will never forget that's for sure.  No doubt it will be one of the first to go, all the weird and wonderful ones do!!!

I need to pick out four more paintings as I like to have ten choices in case we are picked near the end.