Mostly ramblings about some of my passions, needlearts, working on my fixer upper and my dogs, pug Aoife and black labs, Isabelle and Benny.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Friday, March 26, 2010
friday :-)
I had bad news at the car repair place yesterday - to do the minimum of work required on my car it will take $1,200 and that is not even fixing what I went there for. I have no idea where I'm going to find the money for that. That pretty much put me in a rotten mood for the rest of the day so I didn't as much done as I had planned. I basically sat and sulked the bulk of the day. But I did finish month three of Civil War Tribute. This was a really cool block to do. It looks hard but wasn't at all. I did get some of my fat quarters made into strips but not as many as I had hoped. I found that I needed a nap. :-)
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Playing hooky
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
good progress
Monday, March 22, 2010
Monday just keeps coming around
That's all for now - hopefully Margaret H will progress a little more than she did last week. :-) Have a great week!
Friday, March 19, 2010
Yeah!
Someone made a comment yesterday or the day before about how long houses seem to take and they sure do. :-) But always so worth it.
No plans for the coming weekend except crafting, crafting and more crafting. I do have the usual household chores to deal with, more than last weekend so I don't expect to get as much done as I did last Saturday and Sunday. But on my list is: finish my four Civil War Tribute quilt blocks, start and complete month 3 (it should arrive today or tomorrow in the mail), work on cutting out and starting to piece my last quilt kit purchased from last year's International Quilt Show (a lap size flannel quilt), stitch my Margaret H piece and maybe start on a new rug.
I do want to maximize my time however as my next two weekends are going to be pug weekends. Next Saturday and Sunday I'm attending an agility seminar with Eva Bertilsson and Emelie Johnson Vegh - they are the hottest agility thing out of Sweden these days. They have a new book out covering agility and clicker training. I love clicker training for my dogs but I have not used it much with agility and I'm hopeful it will help me with some problem areas that I have. It will be a lot of fun for sure. The weekend after that I'll be with Clancy at an agility trial in St. Charles, IL.
Please everyone enjoy your weekend! And thanks for stopping by. :-)
Thursday, March 18, 2010
It's a house
I had planned on stitching last night but I sat down at my computer to harvest just one more crop on FarmVille and three hours later I was still rotting. :-) I went to bed not long after not putting in a single stitch. Damn that FarmVille! I'm still looking for more friends, let me know if you want to be one with me.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
managed to stay awake!
Happy St. Paddy's Day! I forgot this morning to take a photo of my little Irish Pugs. I'll try to remember tonight.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
at least it's a start ;-)
I have to laugh at most of the comments I received from my post regarding my weekend's activities. I do tend to get a lot done during the week and on the weekends but there is a reason. I really don't have much else going on. :-) I don't have kids or a husband or significant other distracting me from the things I like/want to do. If I want to sit at the sewing machine for eight hours I can do so freely. And often do. I started sewing on my quilt Saturday morning at 10:00am - I was done doing my little bit of housekeeping and my laundry for the week (I did get up at 6:00am to start this) and I sewed until 6:00pm that evening. I then drove to Joann's to pick up my wool fabric for my pillow and got home an hour later. I then hooked until my heart pillow was finished. On Sunday I started sewing again around 10:00am or so and didn't stop until almost 7:00pm. After that I worked on kitting Margaret Harris. So over the two days I got in almost 17 hours of quilting/sewing! Most people don't have that much time to dedicate to one thing over a weekend. Truthfully most weekends I don't either. I have to fit in dog training, housework, shopping, friends and everything else I need to get done. It just so happens that last weekend it was still to wet to take the dogs outside to train, I didn't need to go grocery shopping, had no plans with friends and my housekeeping tasks were very light. :-)
And then don't forget I have an almost two hour commute every day. Before I do anything at night, that is almost three hours a day of stitching. If I don't fall asleep on the train that comes to 15 hours of bonus time that most people don't have. Heck that amount is what some of you must get all week including the weekends to craft!
But now that the weather is getting better I will have less time. I try to spend at least 30 minutes every evening to train/play with the pugs outside and on Saturday and Sunday I try to do more. I also will start my gardening soon and that really eats into my weekend. And peak agility trial season starts soon (May) and then I don't get any quilting in at all on the weekends because I'm gone both days at a trial site. So I'm really trying to push right now to get the stash down while I have the time.
Monday, March 15, 2010
a non-stitching weekend :-)
I spent the majority of my weekend piecing my Quilt By Numbers quilt. I really didn't think it would take me as long as it did to get this together. In my head I was thinking one day max. But it took all of my available day on Saturday and half of Sunday. But there are over 550 blocks plus I had to lay them all out before I started to join them to the pattern right.
I got this quilt pattern from an old issue of one of the McCall's quilting magazines, maybe from 2007/2008? That's all I remember and I only saved the quilt instructions not the entire magazine. The fabric is from Cherrywood Fabrics. I purchased this to practice my machine quilting skills and that is still the plan. I'll do a continuous line orange peel in all of the triangles with a simple curving pattern for the borders. At least that is the plan for now. I have two others quilt tops that I need to also get ready to machine quilt but I need to take my machine in for a tune up first. I just don't know when I'll do that however. The closest Bernina dealer is an hour away from me and quite frankly, I don't believe I can live without my machine for very long right now. :-) In mid-May I have two agility weekends back to back so I'm thinking that would be good timing as I'm only sewing on Saturday and Sundays.
I was able to finish Garden Flowers on the way home from work on Friday evening. Part of the weekend's plan had been to finish it into a pillow but I didn't like any of the fabric in my stash for it. Can you believe I have yards and yards of fabric and nothing worked!?! So I need to go shopping. Bummer. ;-)
I finished up hooking my second little rug on Saturday night and started turning it into a pillow on Sunday. I haven't put on the binding yet. It's all done by hand and I was just too tired last night to even start it. But the finished product won't look to different from this photo. I have two more little rugs in my stash and I'll start on one of those this week in the evenings.
After I finished up piecing Quilt by Numbers I started working on my Civil War Tribute quilt's second installment. For month two we received four 15" blocks. They are all the same. I'll finish them up next Saturday. Good timing as I expect I'll receive month 3 by the weekend.
As for my new stitching start I kitted up Margaret Harris from Honeysuckle Manor by Blackbird Designs. I'm not using the silk called for but rather an assortment of cotton overdyed. I'm disappointed that BBD are starting to use Belle Soie more and more. Not only are they so not colorfast but they are now more than $7.00 a skein with the new price increase! Way too expensive for me.
Friday, March 12, 2010
One more train ride
I'm thinking I will pillowize it. :-)
I have a wedding to go to tonight - in fact I need to catch an early train to get there on time. I hate Friday night weddings. But I understand why people do it.
The weekend will be full of pugs, rugs, stitching, pillowizing and quilting. Hopefully I will have tons to share on Monday.
Enjoy your weekend!
Thursday, March 11, 2010
I haven't chatted much about the Market pieces that came out this year. Mostly because I just don't want to spend much money and try to get to my ever growing stash. But I really want Autumn in Hawk Run Hollow. I love that one - I love it as much as I didn't care for the Christmas piece. I liked a couple of With My Needle pieces - Quaker Sampling III - a must have for me since I have already stitched QSI and QSII. Also I loved Mrs. Waddelow's Huswif but I really don't need to spend money to stitch and finish yet another needlecase. But I might give in anyway. :-) As usual a couple of Primitive Needle designs caught my eye but unless I can pick them up on a really good sale I will most likely pass on those.
I also liked everything from Blackbird Designs (of course!) and purchased Honeysuckle Manor just this week. I also want the new series, Anniversaries of the Heart, and I want to do it on the same piece of linen. So far the only thing that as kept me from buying the two charts that are available is I don't have any linen of the size that is needed. To keep down the cost of thread I figured I would do mine on 35/36 count because then I could do one over two. But that is still a 29" x 21" piece of linen. The largest piece of quality linen I currently have in my stash is a fat quarter which is too small. Bummer. I have several yards of crappy linen that I can over dye no problem but which a project this long term I have found that I really like to use Zweigart based overdyed and not the looser weaves. It doesn't look like Silkweavers sells custom cuts anymore so that means buying a fat half at $51.00! Yikes! Plus 12 charts at $9.00 a piece. That's almost $160.00 before I buy any thread. So not in the plan for using my stash! But I'm still torn. I REALLY like the two that are out so far.
Thanks for your nice comments on my agility videos. I'm so glad several of you noticed how much fun Clancy was having! :-) That is my first priority always. He was even so relaxed that on a couple of the runs (and you can see this in the videos) he was rolling over for a belly rub at the start line! Now that is relaxed.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
uploaded some videos
I posted four videos of me and Clancy from the weekend's agility trial. Here is the link to my channel: http://www.youtube.com/ThreeCoolPugs. The videos are dated from last weekend. WARNING! Watch at your own risk - videos include lots of bad handling. :-) Since most of you don't know the difference between good handling an bad handling I'll fill you in. It's good handling when the dog just seems to know where to go next, there are no dog under your feet and dog way behind you and things like that. Good handling is very smooth and it looks easy. :-) Bad handling is very jerky and out of sync with the dog.
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
back to stitching
Monday, March 08, 2010
pug looking for new agility handler
That just sums up our weekend. Clancy was great - I sucked. In the end I cost us three qualifying scores. That just breaks my heart. My timing was off and I even go lost once on a course. Clancy does his darnedest to figure out what I want him to do but sometimes even he can't figure me out. :-) Our next trial is in four weeks so I have time to learn all about agility handling. :-)
I didn't get any crafting in of any sort expect some hooking on Friday evening. But I'm making quick work of my little heart pillow. It should be done by the weekend for sure.
Enjoy your week! I'm doing my best to enjoy mine. And so is Clancy! :-)
Thursday, March 04, 2010
still sick
I'm still sick and while I don't feel very ill, I'm feeling really tired and nap time has a big draw. I worked from home yesterday and did manage a tiny one during the day. I also got going on my next rug project. It's just a little heart and I'll finish it off into a pillow. This one is smaller than my last one - only 10 x 10. But I think it's very cute.