"She was nothing of the kind."

That's the first line of The World According to Garp and it's for the Fast Friday Fabric Challenge group I'm a member of. Once a month, we're issued a challenge with a theme and an element of art to use to complete a piece within one week. This month, it was to take the first or last line of a favorite book to use as inspiration and incorporate the element of contrast. I had a lot of fun with this one and needed the stark colors and graphic look of it to clear my head from working on the batik piece. Well, a lot of fun other than the fact that for some unknown reason I decided it needed microscopic stipple quilting on it. I wouldn't have minded it so much except for the fact that white on white is terribly hard to see. The final effect is what I was looking for though so it's all good. It also felt good to actually finish something for a change. And again, I completely forgot to put the sleeve on it, but my corners look good! Fortunately, I've left the sleeves off often enough that I've devised an invisible way to add them after the fact.

My friend in Illinois gave me an update on his painted piece we're collaborating on too, and he has the fabric gessoed and was shooting for laying in the background colors last night. The design is incredibly cool looking and I can't wait to get my hands on it to begin work. If the timing works out right, I may have it available to display at the artist invitational thing this spring. He's also done some beautiful hand drawings that I'm going to use for the next piece (or second next if I do the draw-down quilt first) in line to be worked on. And in the midst of doing my own stuff, I have one more OPS quilt to finish.

Today is our 23 wedding anniversary. Time flies.

Cory and her strangeness

My oldest daughter turns 22 on January 2, and she's having a pirates and ninjas costume party at a local restaurant. Her friends are apparently just as strange since they're going along with this wild plan. We've been cobbling together a pirate costume for her and I've gotten several calls from her friends about how to put together their own pirate and ninja costumes. When I asked about the theme her perfectly reasonable response was "Everyone is either a pirate or a ninja." I couldn't help but think of the novels by Lawrence Block, in which the protagonist Matthew Scudder explains about everyone being either a pig or a fox, although he's referring to their looks. I think the whole pirate/ninja thing is more a comment on personality.
She's also announced that what she is getting herself for her birthday is "Mom" and "Dad" tattoos. But not just any old flower and skull tattoos since that would be tres gauche, but "Mom" written in sign language (I speak ASL) and "Dad" written in Klingon. I think they will go nicely with the copyright symbol she already has on her back. Maybe she'll get quotation marks on her shoulders next year.
Our 23 wedding anniversary is on New Year's Eve (my parents and sister have the same anniversary) and our big plans are to go out to eat and then come home and drink champagne and eat sour cream and onion potato chips. One more year and I will have been married for half my life. Two kids already in college and the third graduates this Spring and wants to take a couple of courses this summer to get a jump on freshman year. Within 6 months, ALL my kids will be in college. Am I really that old already?

A quilt!

I was beginning to feel guilty about the name of my blog since I haven't put anything quilt related up in a while. I've mostly just been trying to get through the holidays and haven't hit a lick at a snake much beyond that. But this one is just little scrappy pieces that I can work on a few minutes (or hours) at the time. Slow but getting there with it. No sort of plan either. I just pick up and sew on whichever next strip is the right length with no thought to colors or anything unless it's 2 of the same side by side. Other than that, it's very organic.

I'm maybe 2/3 of way finished with this part of it, then some fairly wide pieced borders and I'm done with the top. I'm really liking this one too.

Home for the holidays

We had our family thing last night at my parent's house. All the sibs and spouses except my youngest sister and her husband in Memphis made it, including my uncle from the coast and my mother's cousin and her husband. These things go MUCH more smoothly when my mother starts on the wine/martinis/whatever before we get there. Nobody had assigned seats and we didn't have to raise our hands this year to talk. The traditional Christmas gumbo was wonderful, as usual, and my brother and his wife brought red beans and rice. Unfortunately, they don't have kids and lived alone for many years until they married this past April, so they're sort of unclear on the concept of cooking for more than 2. Doubling the recipe doesn't quite cover feeding 15 or so adults. On the other hand, I've always had a houseful of people to feed so I'm sort of unclear on the concept of cooking for 2 now that my DH and I are alone so much.

The kids were entertaining as always and I should know by now not to sit close enough to Nick and Bryndan to hear them talking. I usually wind up embarrassing myself by bursting out laughing at inappropriate times from their muttered comments. The upside to that is I was far enough away from Cory to miss most of her pithy observations. She was sitting next to her dad though so he was the one doing the inappropriate laughing, which sort of spread the embarrassment around evenly. Nick and Bryndan had some sort of betting thing going on where they were calling out colors, or making responses to the gifts being opened BEFORE they were open too. The really funny part was how often the comments were dead on for whatever the gift happened to be.

I think my brother summed things up pretty well about our family during a conversation with my mom and oldest daughter too. My mother had asked her about the Marriage and Family class she took at State and my brother's response was "How do you think she did, coming from a family where the girls get guns and the boys get tea sets?" My B-I-L gave me a Daisy air pellet pistol (which I think is a totally cool gift) and DH gave my brother a beautiful Japanese tea set and tea ceremony book. Nobody had even thought anything about the strangeness of either until my brother made the comment about guns and tea sets. Maybe that says volumes about the family all by itself.

All in all it was a pleasant evening with good food, good company, good wine and a noticeable lack of any discord. That alone made it a nice, relaxing night.

The canvas floor cloth made a huge hit too, and I'd show it off and brag about it if I hadn't had my head up my butt and forgotten, yet AGAIN, to get a picture of the finished product. You'll just have to take my word for it that it looks pretty cool under the table it was made for and the colors work as well as I hoped they would.

As requested....

I completely forgot that Jen had asked to see a picture of the well-dressed flamingos! Here they are in their Santa hats and cheery holiday scarves. They get straw hats and flowers at Easter, masks and tons of beads at Mardi Gras, and sunglasses the rest of the year.

Incoherent rambling

Does "sorry, we're out of beta" strike anyone else as hysterically funny? That's like saying "this hammer quit working" isn't it?

Ziplock double zipper bags...no, I'm not adding them to my list of can't-do-without supplies, I'm making fun of them. Their ads start out with a jab at store brand bags with one zipper that doesn't work, then brings in their selling point of TWO zippers. So I'm thinking if you're too stupid to get ONE to work, why would you suddenly become smart enough to work double that?

One of the most annoying tv commercials in the history of mankind is for one of those local pager/cell phone companies here. Not only is it about twice as loud as everything else, but it has this high-pitched ringtone in the background. And to further compound the felony, they have "flexable" plans. Makes me want to scream (or whimper in the corner) every time it comes on.

Another pet peeve of mine, besides illiterate advertising, is the misuse of the word unique. There is no degree to unique! Things, by definition, cannot be more unique or very unique or the most unique. It's either unique or it's not. Which brings us to the use and misuse of phrases. A few that I've heard recently are case and point (case in point), I'd just assume (I'd just as soon), and for all intensive purposes (for all intents and purposes) among others. Do people who say that stuff even think about what they're saying or are they just mimicking the sound of something they heard? Reminds me of that new commercial for the cell phone that plays music where the guys are singing along with Rock the Casbah but they sing lock the cash box, argue about it for a second and then change it to lock the cat box. Southerners are notorious for using some truly weird sayings, but at least they make sense when you think about them. At least they do to us.

And to keep from sounding like a complete Grinch I leave you with a picture of the Tabasco cookies and the "cookies with hats" I made the other day. The recipe for the cookies with hats came from Vicci over at http://moonstarsandpaper.blogspot.com/ Hers are MUCH prettier than mine, but nobody will ever know since all 7 dozen were gone in a little over 24 hours. I hid the Tabasco cookies so I still have a couple dozen of those.

Santa Claus is coming to town...

...but much too early this year it seems. I'm going to blame it on the weather rather than my lack of organization. It's hard to get into the Christmas spirit when it's 75 degrees outside. Don those red tank tops and green shorts for holiday attire! I have a nice pair of lime green flip-flops that will work nicely I think.

Why is it that artists/crafters seem to have so much trouble sticking to one thing? I've spent the last 2 days on my knees making a painted canvas floorcloth for my mom (to be included with a 'gift certificate' for DH and I to hang wallpaper if she ever gets around to actually choosing some) instead of doing something at the sewing machine. Same thing with my S-I-L. We draw names each year among the adults so we only have to do one big present for each other instead of one for each of the fortylebben siblings and spouses. This is her first year as real family with us and I could have done a quilt for her, had I not done one for their wedding in April. Bad planning on my part I guess. So she's getting a pashmina with some needlefelting on it. And maybe a pair of gloves and a hat to match if I can find the right ones. But that would involve actually getting out to shop and that's WAAAAAY down on my list. I tend to go to one specific place looking for one specific thing, and if I have to hit a bunch of places just "looking" I usually change my mind about what to get so I can bypass the whole shopping experience as much as possible. That's the Scrooge in me coming out I guess, since shopping to me feels like rooting around in someone's closet. Maybe my expectations are too high also. If I see something I like, I expect the store to have it in the color/size/style I need. All too often, I find exactly what I'm looking for only to discover the only one in the right size only comes in Tangerine Sunrise, (I tried to work the word 'only' into that sentence one more time but just couldn't do it) or it doesn't come in any size but 2X-petite. Too much crap piled up too high on the displays, and it looks like my slob child has folded and stacked the stuff too. There is just some sort of switch in my brain that makes it impossible for me to justify spending 45 minutes rooting through a pile of stuff to spend $15 on it in the hope that the recipient will enjoy it.

And more Scrooginess on my part involves the incessant ads for "One Day Only" sales, and "Lowest Prices of the Season" sales. If they're one day only, why do they have them every Saturday? If J.C.Penney keeps lowering their prices every week to the lowest of the season, I can just wait until January and they'll GIVE me the stuff. Sort of makes me wonder just exactly what their mark-up is to begin with too if they can keep lowering the prices like that. And my favorite is the "Everything in the Store ON SALE" sales. Well, everything in the store with the exception of the list of departments in the fine print at the end of the ad, which they very neatly cover with lots of movement and color so even if you're looking for the exemptions you can't read them.

Thank God I live in the Deep South where Christmas lights hanging year-round don't get too many weird looks from the neighbors (reference Redneck Woman) so my decorations so far involve plugging in the lights on the front of the house. Yeah, I have pink flamingoes in scarves too, although with this heat they should be in bathing suits. We finally broke down last year and bought a plastic tree too, already lighted (long story about the Christmas tree that stayed up until April that was the last straw for a live one) and I'm leaning towards hanging tons of candy canes on it and being done with it. I found candy cane stripe wrapping paper (wrapping you say? Sure, I wrap everything as we're walking out the door to deliver it) at Dollar Tree yesterday and may be back to buy enough to do ALL the presents with this year. Keep everything simple, but it will involve actually attaching name tags to the presents. When the kids were little each one had their own paper so nothing needed tags. Another lazy way to do things. It will probably keep me out of the running for Mother-of-the-Year, but I'll get over it.

My kids and their mouths

Not smart mouths, mind you, my kids know better than that. Medical mouth stuff. My son has been at the doctor twice trying to get his healed or at least get some relief from the pain. He went with the GF to a sorority party and they shipped them up to Laurel on a bus. On the way back, there was some sort of argument over music (he takes his music very seriously) and he wound up in the middle of a fight. He may or may not have been actually INVOLVED in the fight, the stories differ, but at some point he got pinned between 2 bus seats and took a punch in the cheek. It chopped up the inside of his cheek and the side of his tongue and gave him a split lip. After a couple of days, the cuts turned into a HUGE ulcer in his mouth and my poor baby could barely even eat. Not eating is a critical situation for him. So off he goes to the doctor to get antibiotics, some kind of topical stuff and a mouth rinse. He seems all better now but it took a few days. He also did really well on his Philosophy of Politics paper and exam yesterday :)

My youngest daughter had all 4 wisdom teeth out several months ago and things haven't been completely right since. She's been on several rounds of antibiotics and been back and forth to three different dentists. First, she had a dry socket, then one of the 'dissolving stitches' didn't dissolve and had to be removed , then she had swelling and bruising come up for no known reason, then muscle cramps in her jaw, then a big knot came up in her neck. One dentist told her to chew gum for the muscle cramps, then the next one a week later said one of her molars was out of alignment and the gum chewing was making it worse so he re-aligned her tooth. Another of the dentists thinks the surgery may have resulted in some nerve damage that would account for the fact that she's been in constant pain to some degree since the wisdom teeth were removed. She's BACK on antibiotics with another appointment next week.

It just kills me when the kids are in pain and I can't fix it.

Bryndan and the GF (pretend that's Sprite they're holding) and a picture of Aidan I'm playing with for a quilt.

Decorating for Christmas

At least I think that's what they're doing. A few minutes after letting the dogs back in about 5:00 I heard a bunch of rolling around and barking and grunting. They have a habit of getting too wound up and knocking things over when they roughhouse inside so I went to check on them. They've dragged the stuffed animals out of the bag my daughter had packed up to get rid of and looked soooooooo cute when I walked in and "caught" them. Is there any breed in the world that has more human facial expression than Labs? Jake is the brown one (referred to as "Brown dog" when he's where he can hear us talking about him) and dOg is the black one.

The Nutcracker

Last night, my youngest daughter took my father to a performance of The Nutcracker for his Christmas present. She is carrying on a long tradition of mine and perhaps building one of her own. My dad told her it was the best Christmas present he'd ever received, and I don't think he was just being polite.

The first time I ever saw a live performance of The Nutcracker, I was 11 years old. For some unknown reason I got it in my head that I HAD to see it that year. The music was familiar to me but I'd never seen a live performance of it. I went by myself that first year, and for many years after that. I still have vivid memories of my dad dropping me off and picking me up before I could drive myself. Once my daughters were born and old enough to sit still through it and enjoy it, my dad started going with us every year. I didn't miss a single year going until I was about 40, and they stopped having the big professional production here for a couple of years. We even suffered through a show at the Madison Arts Center the last year we all went together but our old bodies and arthritis couldn't stand the wooden bleachers and bad sound and barely-heated gym. Over the years we have seen some incredible ballet troupes, and some really amateur ones, heard full orchestras and screeching recorded noise, seen the absolute best and worst of productions, costumes, sets, lighting and choreography. One year they changed everything up and we left simply shaking our heads and wondering where the mice and pas de deaux were. No Chinese or Russian dancers, and dancing candy canes (we think that's what they were anyway) instead of the army of mice. It's like an old friend to see the same sets and costumes year after year, and there's no real reason to do more than tweak the staging on a classic.

I was floored when she told me a month or so ago that she wanted to take him. She worked for the money to buy the tickets and took care of all the arrangements herself. She spent an hour yesterday trying on everything in her closet looking for the "right" Nutcracker attire. We've worn everything from black velvet to blue jeans so I left it up to her. She looked beautiful and elegant in her black pants and pretty shirt and her paternal grandmother's white fur coat. I can't believe how grown-up she looked and acted last night, but I was so proud of her and so happy that the years of taking (sometimes dragging) them to get some culture has seemingly paid off. The Nutcracker was something that has been a part of my holidays for so many years that I can't help but be sentimental when it takes on importance to one of my kids too. Maybe our traditions were not all for naught.

7:30 on a Saturday morning....

...and the phone rings. It's my son. Of course, I have visions of bail money or a crushed fender or another broken bone since he is NEVER up that early for ANY reason. Thankfully, not this time though. He's just calling to tell us they have the day off so they're coming home for a quick visit if that's ok with us. When is a visit from the one of the kids NOT ok? Ten minutes later, the phone rings again. Yep. It's him. This time, he needs directions to a local high school. A girl in Jackson called him in Hattiesburg on his cell phone to get directions to the place in Jackson so he calls me from Hattiesburg (I'm in Jackson) so he can call her back and she can call her brother, who is probably in Memphis or something. Oh the joys of a cell phone. Meanwhile, each time the phone rings I have to wipe the glue and paint off my hands to answer it because it MIGHT be something important.

My oldest daughter asked yesterday if she can invite a friend home for Christmas too. Something about a feud with a sibling and an unwillingness (or maybe a request) to be in the same house at the same time, so she apparently has the choice of hanging around an empty college town in an empty apartment over the holidays or coming visit us. My daughter is the Pied Piper of people with bad home situations so naturally her solution is to just "adopt" her for Christmas this year. It did make me feel good to know she'd already invited her before she asked me because she knew it would be ok though. That's the same way my "spare" son came to live with us. He followed my son home one day 3 years ago and he's still here with us, even though my son hasn't lived at home for 2 years.

I finally finished the pieces of art for the blog swap thing too. I got Sombra's mailed off Tuesday and the rest will go out either today or Monday. And in my usual fashion, I was 90% finished with the original pieces when I changed horses totally and started new projects. I can never do the simple thing either and choose something that was time- but not labor- intensive. Many layers of stuff that has to dry well between layers so I'd do a bit, let it sit a day and do a bit more. At least I had the forethought to do a bunch at one time. There are definitely some tweaks necessary, but this is something I'll do more of, maybe a lot more. I have some ideas already for a few Christmas gifts with them and my fingers are crossed that the strangers from my blog like them.

Flashback to 9/11

I'm a long-time poster on a Chicago message board and have many friends up there. On 9/11 we were all frantic to touch base with everyone who worked downtown after they started evacuating people. Not knowing any details, and hearing that Chicago was a target was nerve-wracking until everyone was accounted for. Today, I was merrily chatting away on IM with my friend in Chicago when he says they have to evacuate, sirens are going off, alarms are sounding and everyone is being told to get the hell out of the building. His only information was a shooting and possible hostages a few floors above him. After the news this morning about the 'lone terrorist' and his bomb planting plans of course my mind jumped immediately to that. Fortunately, he was one of the friends posting on 9/11 with us so he knew I'd be worried. As soon as he got outside he called to let me know he was OK and give me what little additional info he had. I didn't realize just HOW panicked I was until I actually heard his voice either. It meant a lot to me that he called from the middle of the confusion in single-digit weather while he was wondering how the hell he was going to get home, just because he knew I'd be worried if I didn't hear from him.

I'm thankful he's OK but you people up there have GOT to stop scaring me like this!

What a surprise!

I almost said "unexpected surprise" but that's pretty redundant. Aren't all surprises unexpected? Anyway, I did a google search on "fruitcake brick" and my blog came up on the very first page! 'Brick fruitcake' brings it up close to the top of the second page. Of course neither of those search terms has a damn thing to do with quilts, art, or art quilting so I guess I shouldn't get too excited. Well, maybe a little bit excited.

And on the quilting front, my piece "Orphans of the Motherland" will be shown to another group of people in Minnesota. It's going to an IAPP dinner/presentation to be used to illustrate a talk on visions and living your dreams. I think that is a very cool use for it. The other very cool use for it is the pleasure my friend (and the owner of the quilt) Mary gets from seeing it hanging in her office. As the saying goes, my quilt travels more than I do.

If it was raining soup...

...I'd be out there with a fork. After all the work I did on the Christmas stockings, and racing madly to get my son's quilt finished for his Christmas present, I didn't get a single picture of any of it. The GF is supposedly getting pics for me and emailing them but we had a mini-crisis with the son yesterday so the pictures from her are running a bit behind schedule. I'm guessing her attention was on nursing him back to health rather than doing a favor for me. I was really proud of his quilt too, and made his stocking to match. I had to post Ben's and say it was Bryndan's so he wouldn't know he was getting the quilt too, but he seemed to be pleasantly surprised. I know the GF was surprised she got the "Dreidel" quilt. Hopefully, she'll send a pic of Ben's Chinese mixed media piece too since that's another one I never got a pic of.

All in all, I think he did a beautiful job of entertaining the 2 sets of parents and we all had a wonderful time. I was particularly impressed that he made the eggnog from scratch including whipping the egg whites to form soft peaks. It made such a big hit that he had to whip up a second batch before we left. I am so proud of him and it's almost scary watching him mature SO much, SO quickly. He seems so settled in his apartment and, well, so mature.

More Christmas stuff

Thinking back through the years and the stuff we did for gifts when the kids were small and needed teacher presents and such has brought back good memories. The Chex mix was always a hit as a gift, and the kids had such fun picking out the "right" packaging for it every year. We've used painted and "stained glass" (colored tissue and white glue) jars, painted tins, decorated lunch bags, small cookie jars, baskets, pretty much anything that either had a lid or would hold a plastic bag. And of course they always decorated it, whatever it was.

We've baked banana nut bread in terra cotta flower pots (decorated, of course) and stuck suckers in the top like flowers. That was a really big hit with the teachers. And at 20 cents each for the pots and the bread mix that I could get 4 loaves out of for a dollar, it was a big hit with me too. Just remember to bake in one set of pots and decorate the other, then transfer the loaves to the decorated ones. Oil the inside of the baking pots and line with wax paper or something to cover the hole in the bottom.

And the "fruitcakes." We can't forget the "fruitcakes." I had a request for one the other day and it's been at least 10 years since I made the first one. It's a truly easy recipe too.

Grandma's Heirloom "Fruitcake"
1 brick (the tan one if possible) with no holes
craft acrylics - red, green, yellow, etc
plastic wrap or cellophane
label

Sponge paint the brick to look like a fruitcake, or just sponge paint it to kindasorta look like one.
Print an adhesive label on the computer with whatever sort of weird gibberish you want. Seems to me like we put something about the Ice Age on the original one, but it's morphed over the years and I'm not sure I even still have a copy of it. Wrap it with the plastic or cellophane and stick the label on it. The closer you can get the label to look like the real thing (ingredients: marble, iron ore, dinosaur dung, etc) the better it is, regardless of how much or little the thing actually LOOKS like a fruitcake.

People have used these for doorstops, bookends, whatever you would normally use a brick for, and I have a couple of friends who bring theirs out each year with the Christmas decorations. For whatever reason, adults really seem to get a kick out of them and they're great for those stupid parties where you have to bring something cheap. I had one woman who wanted 10 of them for bunko prizes too.

And of course we did innumerable theme baskets from the Dollar Tree too. Cooking stuff, with a few hand-written recipes included. Bath salts the kids made that were wrapped in loofah mitts. One year they did a whole raft of different types of spice mixes and then got stuck when it came time to pack them. We wound up with those old fashioned salt and pepper shakers, which by good fortune happened to fit 4 perfectly in a wire mesh napkin holder. We made 5 different mixes and it was interesting to watch the kids try to decide which 4 flavors each recipient got. The ensuing conversations as they justified their choice about why the math teacher got the Cajun instead of the poultry was hilarious.

And for our own friends and 'special' teachers, we've made Kahlua and Bailey's on occasion too.
DH's dad swears we tried to poison him one year with it. My bright idea was to pack it in Grolsch beer bottles with those locking caps. DH drank the beer and I made the Kahlua then we labeled it and packed it up and shipped it off to him. Apparently, when it got there it no longer had the label attached and for some reason he assumed we had sent him a single bottle of beer for Christmas. So off it goes to the fridge to chill for a week or so. He settles into his recliner one night to watch tv with a bottle of beer, opens it and takes a big slug of ice cold Kahlua. He swears he spewed it 20 feet. We still giggle uncontrollably at that mental image.

Magic Reindeer Food

1 bag dried split-peas
1 (pkg, cup, handful, whatever) of something else (oatmeal, rice, vermicelli, whatever)
red food coloring
glitter

Put the oatmeal, rice, whatever you're using in a ziplock with a few drops of red food color. Squish it up until it's all red. Let it dry and mix the split-peas and a tiny amount of glitter with it and you have Magic Reindeer Food. You can leave the glitter out if you're worried about the animals getting it, but if you craft like I do it's already in the yard (and in the carpet and on the deck and in your hair) and the glitter they make now is so tiny I don't see a real problem with it, but that's my disclaimer.

Put a little bit of the mix in one of those small ziplock bags and add this tag to it:

Magic Reindeer Food
On Christmas Eve, right before bed, take the food out in the yard. Turn around three times with your eyes tightly shut and scatter the Reindeer Food. Then run as fast as you can and hop in bed and go to sleep. The glitter will sparkle to show the way and the reindeer will have a snack while Santa is at your house.

There are endless variations on not only the recipe (I haven't found any others that use the split-peas, most use colored sugar and/or hay) but also on the instructions on the tag. We made and gave these out by the dozens every year when my kids were little and they were always well received. And now the kids are beginning to pass it along to another generation. My oldest teaches a class of 8 year olds in an after-school program and she's making this for her kids, along with candy cane reindeer, if we can ever find the little tiny google eyes. We have the pipe cleaners and pompoms waiting.

YUM!

My son's response when I asked if we could bring anything when we go down later today was "Chex mix" so that's what he's getting. All of the kids have, independently of each other, not so subtly hinted that we needed to make some, so we got enough supplies for 2 batches. I can smell it baking all the way back here in the work room. The silly people at Chex only call for 1 cup of pretzels and 1 cup of nuts. It makes us laugh as we dump the entire bag of pretzels and 2 cans of nuts in it too. My oldest daughter is taking one batch back with her to put in treat bags for her co-workers and her students. She's also giving them little bags of reindeer food if we can ever remember to buy the dried split peas. That is NOT something on my normal grocery list.

Oh well....

So much for my daily posting! I skipped yesterday and didn't even realize it. I did manage to get a LOT of stuff done yesterday and today though. It turned off cold here for a day or two and I was expecting to hurt but I've been relatively pain-free this weekend so I've been knocking out some work while I can. Of course, everything that I've accomplished this weekend has to wait to be posted since it's all gifts but I'll get some of it up tomorrow night after they're delivered. I might even remember to get pictures of the stuff this time. It occurred to me as Julie pulled out of the driveway yesterday that I hadn't gotten any pictures of the finished carousel horse quilt. She was thrilled with it so that's good enough. The one picture of it I do have is not a good one, and the colors are way off. She thought it was navy from the picture and it's actually a bright purple.

My oldest daughter is home again this weekend for another funeral of a friend's parent. It's nice having her home but, damn, I hate the reason for it.