Christmas Tree, Oh, Christmas Tree!

Birthday Cake---It's not just for breakfast anymore.

I would like to spearhead the committee that convinces the FDA to make birthday cake a drug of choice. Yellow birthday cake with buttercream frosting has been instrumental in lifting many a foul mood that has descended on me with the intention of staying. I do believe if we had birthday cake breaks at work everyday, we'd be a happier nation for it. As for myself, after a particularly harrowing week at work and home, I have found a sheet cake to be the perfect answer for taking the edge off. In fact, just last week, we celebrated the glowing reports that the children got from their teachers during parent teacher conferences with a lovely birthday cake with a cluster of yellow roses. (Well, okay, I'd bought the cake before the conferences, but no matter. I would have found something to celebrate anyway.)We all had a big slice for dessert that night and then while home sick the next day, I polished off the rest. It couldn't be helped. Perhaps I should feel guilty and fat? Maybe tomorrow. I haven't the energy for it today.

I was on the phone with a friend of mine last night and she said, "I finally had to throw out some cookies left over from Thanksgiving. Nobody wanted them." That little remark was met by stunned silence on my end. I pondered the impossibility of that in my house. That's like blasphemy. Sweets would never last that long, and the thought of actually putting them in the garbage with my own hand, well, that just sends chills down my spine. Then she said they were those Italian cookies you get on trays and it all made sense. Those things don't really qualify as sweets. They're like sawdust chunks.
So I'm going with the black fabric with the little flowers on it for the background on the hexagon quilt. I sewed this little set together to see how it would look. I actually had the triangels cut too small so I'm glad I checked. I made a new template and cut out 280 of those bad boys. I am thankful for rotary cutters and acrylic templates.


And this is the fabric I'm using to make Sadie a pink cowgirl quilt. I cut out 9 blocks with a cowgirl centered in the middle. Now I'm working on design to use them in. All pink with a little brown, green and red.

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.

Kimono

This is the visual saga of my kimono making endeavor. I still need to handstitch the collar in place and find an obi that works. The one she has on is an old tie I tried on her to see what it would look like. This was the first garmet I ever made and I picked brocade and a silk-wannabe fabric. Oh, the beautiful naivety of that choice. Live and learn. Not to mention it is a lined garment and I had to read a book and create my own pattern. I then had to refer to a picture book of kimonos, written in Japanese. Finally, I dug out a child's silk kimono that I had forgotten I had and referred to it for clarification.I was seduced by this pink and salmon fabric with chrysantheumums and butterflies. I should have been suspicious when the book called for taking 8 zillion body measurements and creating a neck template.
These are the two books I kept beside me at all times.
Here's the doll I bought off e-bay a few years ago. Naked and bald, that's the way I like 'em!
There is no shoulder seam. The fabric is long and folded and half and then the neck hole and center fabric is cut out. (It looked so easy in the book.)



This was the bright hot pinky salmon linen fabric I used to line the sleeves. I swooned when I picked it out to go with the brocade. I loved it that much. It was in the remnant section at Jo-Anne's.

This is the sleeve sewn-up and ready to be attached. Did I mention it was nigh on impossible to iron this stuff. It won't take a crease and laughs at the iron.

The morning sun coming in the kitchen window made it very hard to work, but I loved the patterns. Her shape is echoed in a shadow in the center of the table. She looks like she has wings. Very Icarus-ish.



This is the light salmon pinky fabric I picked to line the inside of the kimono. It was also a remnant and there wasn't enough to do the sleeves. When I put the 3 fabrics all together in my cart at Jo-Anne's, I did inadvertently start to drool just a little bit.

Here it is ready to have the collar pinned on.
This is the collar pinned in place and needing to be handsewn on.

This is the kimono on the doll.


This is the tie/obi wrap. I went to the Salvation Army and picked up two old shirts today--one linen, one silk--and am going to see if they might work.

Ghosts in the Garden

I like to start a quilt, riding high on an inspired wave of enthusiam, then get bored, put it away and come back a year or so later to finish the top.(I also like to wait another couple of years or decades until I get around to having the whole thing put together and quilted). That's what happened with this one. I learned to make the circles and had heaps of fun doing that, but then I almost decapitated my index finger with my rotary cutter, so that put an end to my pleasure with this quilt. In fact, it put me off quilting for awhile. It took 1/2 a year for my finger to heal and almost a year before I got feeling back into the part that was severed. So this quilt sat in a neat little stack in a basket until yesterday when I pulled it out and decided to finish the putting the top together. I then went into hyperfocus mode for about 4 hours--ignoring everyone and everything else. I did take a short break to root around in the basement for the Halloween decorations so the kids could put them up.

Early Frost

My bestfriend, Drue, handquilted this whole quilt. I see that as nothing short of a miracle. What a wonderful surprise to open up a package and pull out a quilt you made that looks heaps better than when you last saw it.

Hornet's Nest

Now how did this happen? All summer I have gone about my business and unbeknownest to me, the hornets have quietly gone about theirs. How did I miss this miracle of construction going on right outside my window? How did days come and go and I not notice something was afoot in the crabapple tree? Well, it just goes to show I am totally disconnected to the natural transformations going on around me. What a ninny I am. But maybe it is better I didn't know. Maybe I would have felt like I needed to eradicate them to protect my children or dogs. As it is, we have not disturbed them and they have not disturbed us. Only now that the crabapple has started to drop its leaves did the nest appear. What a marvelous and ingenious structure. It hangs there like some giant, papery fruit.

After a little research, I discovered that these are bald-faced hornets,

"Dolichovespula maculata is not a true hornet; hornets belong to the genus Vespa. Bald-faced hornets are more closely related to wasps called yellowjackets in the genus Vespula. Bald-faced hornets build colonies inside large enclosed carton nests that hang from trees, bushes, low vegetation and occasionally from buildings. A single mated queen starts a new nest each spring by laying eggs inside a small carton nest. The eggs turn into larvae and the queen feeds these larvae until they become pupae and then workers. It is the workers that gradually expand the size of this nest until it is larger than a basketball by the end of the summer season.

Workers can be identified from the large patches of white on their face; this character gives them the name, bald-faced hornet. Their abdomen is mostly black with white markings at the posterior tip. This hornet is the largest endemic yellowjacket in North America and it can build nests containing hundreds of individuals. The single queen is deep inside the nest protected by a retinue of loyal workers.

Biology
Bald-faced hornets are common in both wooded and urban areas in New England. Queens start a new nest each spring after the weather warms up in late April or May. The queen finds loose bark, and other paper strips to start a small nest into which she places her eggs. She adds saliva to the paper bark and forms a smooth carton. When painted wood is used to make carton, you can see the color on the outside of the carton nest.

Inside the carton are horizontal layers of comb or hornet cells divided into circular platforms. The outer carton shell is very thin. This means that if this nest is accidentally damaged from the outside by an animal, the paper covering is easily stripped away and a large number of angry, aggressive wasps fly directly toward the intruder and begin to sting. Since the sting is not barbed, a single hornet can deliver a series of painful stings. It is the venom in the sting that is the cause of the pain. Once a victim is stung, the best response is to distance oneself from the hornet nest as quickly and as far apart as possible. Multiple stings often occur close to a nest.

Workers are beneficial in nature, bringing back many caterpillars and other insect prey to the nest. Its historical enemy is the bear and raccoon, and thus these wasps have a very strong sting and aggressive response to protect the nest.

Control
Since there is always a danger from anaphylactic shock from the venom of a hornet, it is good policy to leave pest control of colonies to a professional. Try to find hornet nests as soon as possible in the spring and summer because they only become larger and more aggressive with time. At the end of the season, the carton nest often remains hanging from a tree but the workers have all died out and the newly mated queens have left the nest to over-winter behind the bark of trees.

Tricking Out the Kitchen Box

I've been toying with my kitchen box, cluttering it up. I can't help myself. I long to be a minimalist, but my eyes are too greedy for color and clutter.

Weekend Projects

This is a little robot I embroidered and was going to turn into a pin, but now I've misplaced him. The dogs look away guiltily when I ask if they have seen him. Hmmm.
So after a week of high-pressure back to work frenzy, I devoted my whole Saturday to making a strip quilt top. Jim took the kids grocery shopping and out to the dollar store. I listened to books on tape from The Teaching Company (Origins of Ancient Civilizations) and quite happily sewed away the day.I'd been carrying around my little piece of paper that I gluestick scraps of fabric on so I can get all in a tizzy over my quilt-to-be while I drive back and forth to work. I liked the wallpaper strip quilt in Kaffe Fassett's book because it looked very, very quick and easy. Plus I had the mood to do the ultimate quilter's no-no which is to rip fabric into strips. I know I am supposed to cut them neatly but life truly is so much better when you can just rip and let out all that stress and aggression.
I'm not in love with it, but I like it well enough. It goes with my bedroom and maybe when I finish it, I will look more fondly on it. I'm trying to decide on a border for it. I feel like this is too dark, but maybe it needs something dark.
I've been thinking of doing a pink one with green, brown, and turquoise accents.

School has started back, and I'm so busy I sometimes forget to breathe. On the way to and from work I've been listening to The Teaching Company's Classical Mythology. I've got a little addiction going with these audiotapes.