the old star quilt.....

Yesterday morning I sent a text to Crispy asking for a picture of the old quilt with the new binding. This photo came back. 

It took me a minute to figure out what I was looking at. 

Oh geez, he is still in bed, and this isn't exactly what I was thinking for a photo.

He tried again when he got up.

I think they are 12 inch HST's forming the star. The blue and red checks at the top and bottom are 4 inches.

getting up to date on things.....

Last weekend I put binding on Carissa's T-shirt quilt. Her party is next weekend and she will be able to have it on display. We were going to meet her in the parking lot of Kmart, down in Algona.

A friend of hers had free kittens. My Malcolm in the middle son wanted one of them. 

We would meet up and trade one quilt for a kitten.

I wasn't able to get a decent picture of the whole thing in the parking lot....so it was decided that it will get official pictures at Carissa's party. Besides there was a kitten involved and all my son wanted was to get it back home quickly.

This is my new granddaughter-kitty. Her name is Dusk of Oolacile. 

(heavy sigh)

It is from some dark video game he plays. He says she answers to her full name and calling her Lucy for short does not work. What the heck? 

Okay, whatever.

Amanda wanted to see a "so far" picture of her T-shirt quilt. Her uncle, tractor joe wanted her to see how her quilt was taking over his space and stuck his foot in the picture. My goal is to get a finished top this weekend. She won't have a finished quilt for her party next weekend, just a top.

She is okay with that. It took her forever to gather her t-shirts! 

I won BLOCK LOTTO again. I know, it seems like I win a lot. But I play every month, there is only one month I didn't. The block involved batiks and curves. The curves said take a break.

I laid the blocks on point to see how that would look. While I like it, I am not 100% sure this is how it will end up.

My brother-in-law received one of the envelopes in HIS mailbox and promptly brought it over. This has happened before, too. I suggested that maybe he should get the quilt, tractor joe totally agreed!

"Yes! Make my brother a quilt!" 

And last but not least....

Last weekend we went down to Ames to bring home a carload of dorm room things. It was all the stuff Crispy could live without for a week. He brought the rest home with him yesterday.

Next year he has an apartment. This may be his last summer at home. 

I better get busy sewing on those T-shirt columns.

the charmander cake.....

Charmander is a baby fire lizard. He belongs with all the other Pokemon characters.

His tail has flames. I printed out a coloring page, then made it a little bigger.

I cut him out and drew around him to get him on the cake

I piled a bunch of candles at the end of his tail.

Then lit all the candles.

I thought the flames were plenty big 

the frosting was melting

and we needed to blow them out!

But, Crsipy says

"No wait, take my picture!"

Oh yah, birthday boy with his cake!

He was able to get them out and we all had a piece of cake!

nothing finished yet.....

We lost electricity this morning. It gave me a chance to take pictures of what isn't getting done around here. I ran out of pure white thread. Haven't gone shopping to buy more yet.

I was just inches from the edge of the Zig-zag doll quilt.

With the lights out, I could have worked on some hand stitching.

But no, I didn't, this little mini quilt is still sitting there. 

I went out to pull dead flowers and put things inside the shed for the winter. 

*************************************

So, the other night, I was texting with Crispy.

He will be here for his birthday in a few weeks and he sent me a picture....

He wants his birthday cake decorated like this one.

I answered...oh, you want a peekachoo cake! 

and started thinking about cake decorating.

lost in my own little world

then...

I hear the chiming sound from my phone...

another text from Crispy!

Hmmmm..... 

Why, I think he was yelling at me.

This is what Pikachu looks like...

And this is what Charmander looks like....

You can see why I might be confused with the two of them.

Now I need to find all my cake decorating stuff, so I can make my

(soon to be 19 year old)

a fire breathing Charmander cake.

doll quilts....

Last year I made a ton of 9-patch blocks from old sheets. I am making them into doll quilts this summer. They are for donation to a new program Karen has learned about.

She talks about it (here) and you can see her quilt too.

Because they are sheets, they don't like to stay flat....even after you steam press the crap out of them.

That made them rather hard to quilt.

(for me anyway)

I tried diagonal on the first one, and just wavy lines along the seams on the last two.

That seemed to go okay.

I did one more. 

Last spring I got a huge tub of sample shirts and fabrics. Some of it just seemed gross to me. I didn't see anything wonderful in it at all.

Kristi, who gave it to me said,

"go though it and pitch what you don't want"

It had been given to her by someone else.

I cut off sleeves and backs.

There was also a small packet of decorator fabrics.

I combined the decorator fabric with the stripes from the shirts, and free pieced hearts, 

this is what I came up with.....

It is about 20 x22 inches. I am thinking that I will give it to Kristi's little girl. I am sure it will shock her to see what came out of the box. It shocked me! 

We spent 2 days down at ISU, in Ames. 

That would be Iowa State University, home of the Cyclones.

NOT the University of Iowa, home of the Hawkeyes.

I easily confuse the two.

(I am a Minnesota girl, a Gopher!)

Anyway.....

Crispy will be attending ISU this fall. We spent two days walking around the campus.

Miles and miles of walking. 

Okay, we did some geocaching on the campus and that added to the total of miles.

Crispy's dorm room is the window right above his head.

We looked in the windows of the room right below it. Nice corner room, with two windows.

He is pretty sure he will love it at ISU.

block lotto and the boomerang

I finally took out all the plaid blocks I won at block lotto. I laid them out this morning. This isn't all of them, but a good number of them. I never marked them with names. 

I am thinking that I will add narrow sashing and white corner stones,

and the setting triangles will be white and some dark.

Picture snow topped mountains.

Or maybe not, it is all just rolling around in my head yet. 

Yesterday, I hung up my super secret project to take pictures of it. While I was out there Crispy came along with his brand new boomerang. He was throwing it around, trying to get the hang of it.

I did duck for cover at one point.

He was rather close to me. I could hear it cut through the wind.

Then I heard him say, "oh God"

and his foot steps were running towards ME.

It was coming back, with me as it's target.

I covered my head and closed my eyes waiting for impact!

I escaped being hit. When I felt safe to look, it had landed several feet away from me.

All was well. Crispy adjusted his throws and continued to practice. 

Next thing I know, Crispy is out walking in the corn field. 

This corn belongs to Farmer T. Our acreage is surrounded on three sides by his farm ground. The fourth side is the edge of town. It is a good combination of town/country.

Anyway, the boomerang landed in the corn but he couldn't find it. Years ago he lost a boomerang to the corn field. We never found that one back. He wasn't losing this one. 

I went out to help look.

 So did the cat and dog. But all they did was fight and chase each other. They were really no help.

It took a good 20 minutes of walking up and down the rows.

We had to change our search tactics. We started looking at the corn and not the ground.

That worked. There it was, hanging on a baby corn plant.

Back to throwing.

More block lotto stuff.....

The June block is a SCHOOL HOUSE block. So cute.

I made two, but they are wrong.

The chimney reds are the same color as the roof. They should be the same red that is used on the door side. Plus they could use more contrast with the reds. So I pulled out some more reds and laid them out. I leave for camping this week, but I am hoping to dive into these and sew a bunch of blocks. 

the last few weeks.....

I won block lotto!

 I may write the name of the person who made them, on them,

 so I stuffed them back into the envelopes for now. They are the hot cross plaid blocks.

 (this block and I kept mine to mix in)

Both Jacob (owner of the zombie quilt) and Crispy were in the high school spring play, Leaving Iowa. 

It was so fun to watch, I went both nights.

Synopsis.......

The spark behind Leaving Iowa comes from being children of parents from the now dubbed "greatest generation." The story is a toast to their idealism and character and a little roast of their undying dedication to the classic family road trip. More specifically, it is the story of Don Browning, a middle-aged writer, who returns home and decides to finally take his father's ashes to his childhood home, as requested. But when Don discovers Grandma's house is now a grocery store, he begins traveling across Iowa searching for a proper resting place for his father. This father-and-son road trip shifts smoothly from the present to Don's memories of the annual, torturous vacations of his childhood. Don's existential journey leads him to reconcile his past and present at the center of the United States. His Dad wanted to go there, but the rest of the family voted no....so he never got there. Don finally gets his Dad there.

Leaving Iowa is a postcard to anyone who has ever found himself or herself driving alone on a road, revisiting fond memories of his or her youth.

Jacob was the grown-up Don.
Crispy was Grandpa and the character of Bob, the hog farmer at the center of the United States,
somewhere in Kansas. 

On the way to graduation, my Mom was saying,

"I've never been to House on the Rock."  (roadsideamerica)
She has been by it many, many times but never stopped.

She is the female version of Don's father in the play. We took many road trips and stopped at ALL the historical markers. There was something to be learned everywhere.

I told her to stop there next weekend. She will be going right by it again....
this could be her chance to finally get there
or we might have to go there someday ...just to leave some ashes.

Crispy is officially done with high school!

I went fishing, caught nothing. 

Well, wait, I did catch a tiny crappie.

But it fell off the hook before I could get it in. Haven't had time to go again.

Last night was a partial eclipse....

A friend brought over his welding masks.

We could see the moon over the sun with these.

Tried taking a picture through the mask.

 It just looks like a hot green sun.....

I did get a quilt to the quilter...I can't talk about it yet.

Super secret.

I also have 8 star blocks made for this month at (block lotto)

Just need to get their picture taken!

Maybe I should go work on that.

two more prom pictures....

I am not sure who took these, and I stole them off facebook.

They are on the runway at Grand March.

Crispy and his date. I was so excited to see close-ups of them!

busy weekend....

Last night was prom. We went to the Grand March to see all the couples. It was in the gym. All the couples were seated down on the floor waiting for it to begin.

We were way up on the second floor bleachers.

Waiting.

Getting bored.

To entertain ourselves, we mothers took turns texting....

"look up and to your right"

to each of our kids down there.

It was fun watching them take the phone out of their pockets

(we mothers squealing with anticipation)

read the message

slowly turn around

(to the right)

wondering and looking....

Then we would stand up call them and wave.

They all waved back.

Good times.

Crispy and his date.....

We were up kinda late by our standards..... (11:00pm)

and the phone was ringing early this morning.

Our bank was on fire!

We grabbed our coffee and headed off in our pajamas to see. It had already been burning for several hours when we arrived.

Fire departments from Woden, Burt and Algona (surrounding towns) came to help. 

The building was totally destroyed.

It was unreal. 

The building on the right is Karen's grocery store. 

No one was hurt and they will rebuild.

...and we were worried about bad weather and tornadoes last night.

It is the stuff you aren't even thinking about that ends up getting you.

http://globegazette.com/news/local/fire-destroys-tsb-bank-s-titonka-office/article_d77f866e-873f-11e1-a560-001a4bcf887a.html

here is a link to a newspaper article on it

it is about time....

Seems like forever since I was last posting.
My sister asked me to make a "blue baby quilt" for a friend of hers. She didn't care what I did, she trusted me to come up with something.
Using this technique... (8 at a time)....I made blue HST's for all the points.
I wanted to make some bears paw blocks for the quilt. Doing them this way REALLY made it all quite painless.

The 9 patches are randomly sewn 1 1/2 inch squares. As I sew other things, they get put through the machine.  I emptied the drawer they were stored in. But there is still a box on the desk full of squares. Eventually there will be more 9 patches that finish at 3 inches, in theory anyway.
The HST's finish at 1 1/2 inches. I think the starting squares were cut at 4 3/4 inches.

Crispy brought home his art project from school today. I was so excited to see it! I was squealing in delight! 

OMG, I LOVE it. I needed to find the camera right away and take a picture. 

Then I had to ask....who is it?

He says, "if you were a fan of Weezer, you would know who this is."

It is Rivers Cuomo. oh, of course. 

It is already hanging up in his room.

maybe it wasn't a good idea.....

Crispy came home from school (on one of the last days) and said they had put together a time capsule. They wanted to bury it here. It had deflated balls, t-shirts and letters to themselves and other things.

Okay.

We pictured something the size of a shoe box or ice cream bucket or maybe even something as big as a 5 gallon bucket.

NOT a 55 gallon tank!
Tractor joe told them they could never dig a hole big enough...it would be to much work....it wouldn't stay in the ground....they would break shovels digging.....

Crispy thought his dad was being negative, that wasn't allowed..... and they were going to have fun! On Monday they had their fun. About seven boys started digging in the late evening and the digging continued well past sunset. Flashlights were found.
They quit digging when they hit water, threw the tank in, buried it and called it DONE!

They wouldn't see it for 10 years!!

Two days later, it rained and rained and rained and rained some more. I looked out the kitchen window at supper time....there was this mound of dirt.....what the heck is that?????

When it quit raining, I walked down to get a closer look.....

OH NO!! The time capsule was popping out of the ground.....

Crispy came home from work and went down to survey the damage. There wasn't much he could do.....he took some pictures for facebook. He needed to show his friends what was happening to all the hard work.

The sun was out nice and bright the next morning and so was the tank....

The earth was done popping that invasive tank out of the ground. There was now a nice big hole filled with water and mud....and a tank floating on top.

New plan....Grandpa has some farmland with an old shed. It isn't being used for much. Seems like a nice place to store a time capsule for 10 years and no digging is involved!

...and then there is tractor joe walking around muttering about how, "no one listens to him"

prom 2011...