full circle skirt....

Amanda is the crook, the bad girl named Concheata....in the school musical. I agreed to make this full circle skirt. The ruffles are taking way longer than I anticipated....but so far we are thinking it will look so cool.
So I will be at my kitchen table for some time yet....

prayer, words & hearts

I am sewing the binding on right now....soon I will be done!

Do angels have gray hair??? This one does!

reading material and project....

Cloth*paper*scissors magazine has old issues for sale at half-price. I have seen it in the stores, but never bought an issue.
But lately I have been more intrigued by this mixed media stuff.....it all looks so interesting....so I bought three of them.
Oh my goodness....I spent part of the morning sipping coffee, and pouring over these issues while sitting on my bed.....so delightful!

Crispy had received a Amazon gift card at Christmas....I bought it from him and ordered
Journal Spilling by Diana Trout. It is almost like a work book...full of techniques....

For now I will just continue to study it....eventually I will actually do something.

My other latest book came from Gwen. I LOVE this book....and I love Gwen for buying 2 and sending me one!!!

My bunnies came out of here!! I have a few more made now.

The angel got me thinking......
I have plans for her.

Since I am deviating from the pattern....I thought I better plan just a bit....

I needed to find out how wide words were when I stamped them with ink....

As I started gathering and making pieces for my angel quilt....I could see that, to make things work the way I wanted them to....

she had to be made backwards.

My angel quilt will be just like the original....only different. I think I will go back to working this one....as I was laying things out it became apparent...

I need paint....
I am off to make more elements.....

clean dog, clean window

Life was good for Ozzy....the weather was warming. Good days to go find mud to play in and then lay in the warm sun.As luck would have it, the very day Ozzy REALLY made a mess of himself, he also had a grooming appointment.

They washed and clipped and decorated him with girlie stuff...

and he smelled so good too.

He must have felt funny with no hair and gussied up like this. He wouldn't even look at me. It wasn't to much later when Cornelious came along and wondered if they always do this.

Yep.

So Cornelious took out the yellow feather and removed the scarf.
He was Ozzy's best friend for the rest of the day.

I really debated showing this picture. It is a really nasty dirty window.....

at my house.

Last week I pulled up the blinds after being down all winter and looked at this.

Uck

It was shut up last fall and never looked out again...until now.

It was time to clean.

Everything looks so much nicer out the window now!

one more stop.....

We had one more very important stop to make on the way home from Minnesota.
This one was at yet another cemetery....
We were still working on hitting 600 caches.
This cache is right on hiway 169...under some big evergreens.
I grabbed the flashlight and crawled under the trees.
Couldn't find a thing shining the light on the base of the tree.
I was ready to give up....it was dark by now and cold anyway.
Good ol' tractor joe said "let me have the flashlight"
3 seconds later he says, "it's right here!"
I had probably leaned right over it looking very deep under the tree, when it was out on the edge all along.
....geesh.
I signed the log book and it became official..... We have 600 caches found!
It was a really good day over all!!!

stopping at the cemetery....

After purchasing the Explorer we headed south to New Auburn, Minnesota. I have been wanting to go here for a couple years now.
My great great grandpa and grandma are buried here....Frank and Sarah Ramsdell. He came from Maine to settle in Minnesota.
My Dad always told us that Frank was killed in some kind of horse & buggy accident when he had been drinking.
There is some kind of yellow growth on Frank's stone. I tried rubbing some of it off. Tractor joe said to leave it for now....we would come back to work on cleaning. It was cold and windy...so I agreed to that idea. The lake in the background is still frozen.
On a warmer day we can wonder around and see who else is buried here.

I will have to google "cleaning grave stones" and see what I can find out.

the explorer....

Last week tractor joe was on the computer looking for a decent Explorer that we might buy.
(he has been looking all winter)
He found one way up in Minnesota...a few hours away.
We went up there on the last day of winter and that is exactly what it felt like....cold north winds, even snow that morning....
anyway, when we arrived....there was a HUGE, brand new truck sitting in the lot.
It's bumper was so big, it was like a mirror. I had to go take a picture of it....tractor joe was telling me to "stop messing around, there was an explorer we needed to test drive."
yah yah, here I come...


We took it out for a drive...
used every button to see if they worked....
found out that setting the cruise is not the same as in the Envoy....instead of cruise the the washer fluid sprayed on the windshield and the wipers came on....
I don't think we actually kicked any tires, but darn close.
The price was right....
and....
In the end we decided to buy it.

We are now the proud owners of this 7 year old Explorer.

this was fun...

I am jumping the gun a little on this one...it isn't really done yet.
But it was such fun to make and went so fast. It was an experiment sort of....
I didn't want to sew an applique stitch around the bunny...so I used a pen to make the marks.
I chalked his face and coat.
I will put buttons on the flower centers, which are supposed to be eggs, but I changed that.
The words on the pattern are "be kind"...but I went with the word "spring" instead. I figure it's use-ability will be longer.
and...
I will make the right border wider (I was using what was cut and laying around)...I might follow the directions next time.
What color binding?? blue? pink? green?

Sunday adventures....

The big guy's birthday is coming up this week.

We thought we would run down to Kmart to buy a gift for him. This sign greeted us at the door.



OH OH....we needed electronics....luckily everything was still there and we were able to get what we wanted.

Relief...

But I wanted sox and underwear for myself and Crispy.

Would we find that anywhere???

It was really empty in clothes area.

But look!!

.... a whole wall of women's undies were still hanging there.
I don't think tractor joe has ever spent much time looking in this department. He had to help me find the size and style I wanted.

He said, "I had no idea there were so many different kinds to choose from." He was able to find what we were looking for and off we went to our next goal....

Crispy needs new boxers, he didn't fair so well. There were no plaid boxers to found. (if there is a chance they will be used for a sewing project someday....we want "cute" plaids)

He will just have to wait until we get somewhere else or Kmart is able to restock the shelves.

Most of the sox were still out and we both get to wear socks that don't have hole again.

I wanted to get a picture of how high the water was in the river by Kmart, but missed the shot...

instead I found myself parked next to this tractor.

We need a bumper sticker that says we brake and stare lovingly at old tractors.

good gravy, it's been years

On Saturday afternoon....
After Crispy's speech competition
we went to visit some very old friends....
The Meyer family. It has been several years since we were together.
They live way up on a hill,
no worries about flooding.


Dave and Juli went to college with tractor joe.
They just bought a new stove...the old one is sitting out on the front porch.
Juli will be so proud of me...I manuvered myself just right....you can't really see it in this picture.


Now what is Dave doing here???
They have recently installed this wood burning furnace to heat the house. So Dave does a lot of wood chopping these days. He is very proud of his wood pile. We got the full tour of it.

It take a lot of heat to warm this old house in the winter....so they don't worry about flooding, but do worry about nasty NW winds up there. As we stood there the wind was blowing out of the north.

They also have an exchange student living with them this year. He is from Serbia.

His name is pronounced "mirror-E", and that is the short version of his full name.

I never got the correct spelling....so that will be his name here....mirror-E !!

His father came to visit and gave Juli these paintings he had done.

The tile is of the city hall building in mirror-E's hometown.
While we talked in the kitchen...Mirror-E was playing the piano in the other room. It was beautiful. I didn't get a decent picture of him.

Our visit was really much to short. But there is talk.....

Strawberry Point has some kind of auction with tractors coming up in April. It sounds to me like tractor joe is thinking that would be a fun thing to do with Dave.

busy busy Saturday

On the way to the Speech Competition we did some geocaching.

Mostly park and grabs.

Simple ones, that are usually micros or small and you can practically

park right next to them.Like this old gas station...we are parked right next to where the cache is hidden.

......and this street sign.....

we were able to do 6 of them in

no time at all.

As you can see the rivers are all over their banks. This was in Waverly, Iowa.

I have been trying to hit 600.

We are now at 599...

oh the agony of being so close...

sigh...

At the speech competition Crispy ended up getting disqualified for touching the wall during improve....no touching the wall (it becomes a prop)

and his expository speech got 2 ones and a two.

(three judges)

the judge who gave him a 2 said his singing wasn't very good...

what?????...

It wasn't supposed to be good....

oh well, there is always next year.

another tulle wall quilt.....

Last weekend, as I was unloading the dryer, I pulled out a pair of Crispy's underwear.


They were boxers....but the back end was thread bear and one big hole. He couldn't wear these anymore....


I will throw them away.





But wait....


That is a cute plaid.


And even if it is thin, thin fabric...


could I use it????





Maybe I could just cut it up in to squares and and make one of the "tulle quilts"
It received it's official name when Crispy came walking by and said,

"hey, what are you doing with my underwear????"

I won't add any other embellishment...just the binding. When I showed Crispy and his friends, who were here, the finished product they said,
"hey that's cute"









And...
I have to keep it and hang it up somewhere here at home.....
Who would want Crispy's old underwear anyway????

he who plants flowers.....

Another lay down the random squares of fabric

bond it to the batting

add stamped words, images and applique,

sew it all down with tulle

and add more embelishments

mini quilt!!

(There has got to be a shorter name for these...I gotta think about that)I made my first ever YO-YO for the flower

I was going to give that job to Karen....

she has made them....

but decided to try it on my own, besides, she was working.

It is probably the frilliest, girlie type quilt I have ever made.

and I am giving it to my 70-something father-in-law
no....
wait.....
he is 80-something now.
anyway....
He plants SO MANY flowers in their yard every year, I thought this was most fitting for him. A little brightness for their entry way while we wait for the snow to melt and the ground to thaw. It is March, it can't be long now.

from last fall...tractor stuff

If I were good....
I would have Barbara Streisand's, Memories, playing in the background

as you read this post....

but I am not good, so hopefully you will be able to hum the music in your head as you read this.

Memories

of each corner in my field

I love my Oliver memories and the John Deere plow

...Scattered pictures

the piles we left behind

smiles we gave to one another

oh we love to plow

Can it be that it was oh so warmer then

but now winter covers every line

If we had the chance to plow it all again

tell me... would we, could we?

Memories of my precious Oliver

we'ld love to hit the fields again

hear it hum and purr some more

Oh it's the tractor

we will remember

whenever we remember

the way we plow

the way we plow......