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One of those days

~ Mary ~ 6 Comments

You know … one of those days when you’re thankful for living in a wonderful place and being able to spend your time doing something that you love that will provide warmth and comfort to others.

I’m completely on a night schedule right now so I slept a couple hours, fed and walked Finn at 7am, slept another few hours and was up by 12 noon. First up, a visit to the postal facility and then a 30 minute hike, followed by a late lunch by the lake. How could one NOT be grateful to live in such a beautiful place?

When I got home, I made up the guest bed with fresh sheets and did some laundry … Keith’s brother and sister-in-law are coming for a brief visit and will spend Friday night with us.

Then it was time to quilt – #5 of 12+ tops to be finished in the next few weeks is quilted. Another HeartStrings top from AnnG. After trimming this one, I loaded top #6 and it’s ready to quilt tomorrow.

The quilting on this one is freehand, a swirly version of Dwirling from the Pajama Quilter DVD. Dawn’s DVDs are no longer available but she gave me permission to share a brief description of how I quilt this pattern and you can see it at this post.

I made the binding and got it sewn on ready for hand stitching. Luckily Keith is coming home tomorrow afternoon because I’ve got 3 ready to hand stitch!

When I finished up downstairs, it was time to feed and walk Finn again and now we’re relaxing on the porch. I’ll get some knitting in this evening. I hope your day was as wonderful as mine!

Let’s go Bolts

~ Mary ~ 3 Comments

Finn prefers my knitting and crochet because he can sit with me … I’m working on this little corner to corner knit blanket while I watched the Bolts tie up the series 2 games all.

Quilted

~ Mary ~ 4 Comments

Another HeartStrings top from AnnG. It’s #4 of 12+ to be quilted in the next few weeks. Pantograph is Leafy Love. I love quilting hearts on HeartStrings quilts!

Yesterday I dug into the 1/2 yard bin for the binding on the first Heartstrings quilt … And found the perfect binding for it.

I didn’t have one that I liked for this top in that bin so I pulled out the stripes and found one that works. Both quilts are ready for me to hand stitch the binding but I’ll wait until Keith is home. I do my binding late at night and when I’ve got Finn he insists on sitting in the chair with me. When Keith is home, he goes to bed most nights with Keith and I go back downstairs to work.

My birthday dinner

~ Mary ~ 14 Comments

I had a great time tonight with the boys and their families.

It can be tough getting everyone together at the same time but I really love it when we can.

There was even singing and birthday cake!

Travel planning

~ Mary ~ 5 Comments

Technically not a birthday present but since we made plans on my birthday to travel late this summer to Minneapolis and the North Shore, I’m going to consider it a present for me!

When we lived in Minneapolis, one of my favorite trips was visiting the North Shore of Lake Superior. I think these photos were from our first trip there. I’m really looking forward to going back for a visit.

I couldn’t remember what year we’d gone up there so one thing I really like about Google Photos is that I can zoom in on a location on a map and find digital photos that I took there. That’s how I found these! 2 minutes searching rather than digging through years of photos!

Do you have a Quilt style?

~ Mary ~ 11 Comments

I was looking at the tops I’d made in May and wondered … do you have a quilt style? My “style” seems to be all over the place! My personal favorites are scrap quilts but I make many quilts for donation so I also make a lot of precut quilts (especially from fat quarters and jelly rolls), string quilts, and quick and easy quilts from yardage.

I was happy to be back in the sewing room in May after being in Maine for April and now after two months without quilting … I’m looking forward to my quilting marathon.

Here are May’s tops.

Memorial Day

~ Mary ~ 6 Comments

Remembering with gratitude all those who served and gave their lives for this country. It distresses me to think where we are now as a country – so much gun violence, women unable to receive the care they need, racial injustice … change won’t come as quickly as I’d like but hopefully prayers and votes will move us forward.

My holiday was spent quietly with Keith.

Knitting

~ Mary ~ 7 Comments

I started a new project a couple days ago – the knit cowl I blogged about a week or so ago. It has a provisional cast on with waste yarn … and I’ve only done that once I think and that was years ago. I found a video that showed me how to do it …

But there was NO WAY I was going to knit this whole project without knowing that I could get those stitches back live when it was time to cast off so I figured I could unravel my cast on edge and put them on a cable. If it didn’t work, I wouldn’t waste any more time with the knitting.

I’m not sure I did it exactly right … but I think I’m OK and I’m going to continue on. When I’m ready to join the ends, I’ll just put one needle back on the cable …. Of course I’ll have to look up the Kitchener Stitch too because I haven’t done that in years either but I did it when I was knitting socks and I’m sure that part will be easy enough.