I'm Thankful We're Going Out to Eat for Thanksgiving

I am sooooo thankful we are going out. I'm sick and have lost my voice. Sadie is also sick, but she is not as big of a whiner as I am. So we're going to go out to eat and not have to clean. Then we're going to lie around watching cartoons and old movies. Or looking at quilt pictures on the internet. Or reading this wonderful book I bought called Color, The Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay.
I had a surge of enthusiasm yesterday and felt I must make a quilt like the one I saw on the Material Obsession blog site. I was at school at the end of the day and had a free 20 minutes and went to look at it again. I had already lost my voice by then and was getting sick, so that may explain why I did so botch this. I looked at the quilt and counted the sides on the shape and would have sworn on my own grave that it was a hexagon. So I stopped at Jo-ann's on the way home, just in time to use my coupon, and bought an acrylic Hexagon template and 10 one-third yard cuts of Tracy Porter fabric. I had a vision of what I was going to create. I rushed home and washed all my fabric in the sink and threw it in the dryer. The kids were in an afterschool program where they were making candy and doing appropriately Thanksgivingy stuff so I didn't have to feel toooo terribly guilty about my ADD hyperfocus event. As soon as it was dry, I folded that fabric straight and started cutting. I cut out 80 some odd hexagons and then decided to look at the source of my inspiration so I could get a feel for the way the colors in the background were working. It was then that I realized we weren't talking hexagon at all. I was looking at a snowball block. It was blindingly obvious. Hmmmmm. So now I am auditioning possible wild backgrounds for my hexagon quilt. I will see if this turns out to be a wonderful, serindipitous (is that even a word? Or am I making up words now, too?)mistake or a complete and total disaster. Not the first in this household and I'm sure not the last.








Did I mention I was thankful for fall in New England?


Mostly, I am thankful that everyone in my family is still alive and well. That I have wonderful, understanding friends. And that I have the most incredible children! Oh, and the pack of 4 dogs.

Cutter Quilts

I bought these cheap off ebay. They had damage to the edges and were considered cutter quilt. I, however, haven't got it in me to cut them up. I like them just as they are.

I'm the Sheriff Round These Parts

Actually, he likes to tell me the star badge means he's "Boss for the Day." He then immediately says he would like some candy or chocolate cake, whatever we have that I've said he can't have. He loves costumes and hats. And by hats, I mean anything that will fit on his head.

German Rooms and Dolls

I just watched an old Twilight Zone where Robert Duvall was a crazy fellow who was in love with a dollhouse doll that he would visit at a museum. She would come to life and he would watch her but couldn't communicate with her. His character was a Boo Radley type in training and didn't really fit in with the rest of society, inability to interact with women, misunderstood, alienated, etc. Finally, he ends up as a tiny figure in the dollhouse himself, siting and looking through a stereoscope with his little woman. He's finally happy. You have to love the Twilight Zone.

This is one half of the long roombox I bought off ebay over the summer. It has a bedroom on one side and a sitting room on the other. I love all the little details. It came with the furniture. I bought the doll at the fleamarket last week for 10 dollars. I had to restring her arms (I did a rather bad job, I must say, but I don't think she'll be using them much so they should stay in place. I did not have the necessary elastic stringing stuff and used thread, a very sorry substitute.) Her clothes were also falling off so I had to sew those back on. She is, of course, an imposter as she is not German, but American, I think. A rich tourist, staying with friends.

Here are my German dolls. My kimonoed lady has on a cheap synthetic wig that will have to do until I get a mohair version. That is my father's rocking chair that he had as a child. I found it under our house and it was missing a rocker and part of the seat. I had it repaired when I lived in NY state many years ago.