Memorial Day Weekend

DH and I spent the day at my sister's house having a yard sale. We did better than we had expected to do, so both DH and I were pleased. And I made enough money to have some mad money for the community sales happening in my hometown next weekend! Yay!

The bowls I showed you in my last post didn't sell, though. Apparenly I had them priced too high for a yard sale or nobody was interested in them. That's ok, I'll just keep them handy for gifts.

I finally got some pictures on the wall today. If you'll recall, we had painted the living room this week, and I wanted to wait a while to put the pictures back up. For some reason, the walls grew in size when we took down the wall of curtains!!! LOL We replaced the curtains with roller shades (very temporary until we can afford to get the roman shades we want), but now I have more walls to put the same amount of pictures on. They sure aren't going far! I need to look for wall pockets to add to the ensemble and have Mom help me compose some nice settings. She learned this wonderful trait to put together wall settings when she sold Home Interior years ago. At least someone in the family has some taste! LOL

Am I still here???

My life has gone on hyperdrive since my birthday last month. I've now become the official back-up babysitter for my sister's 2 boys. Which is taking up a fairly good amount of time. And Kendrick has hit the stage where he is testing to see how far he can get away with things..and he doesn't seem to like his little brother, so there is a LOT of hitting going on. Good thing Grayson is so laid back about it. Anyway, life is very full with this new responsibility - and I've only watched them 5 days out of the last 3 weeks - wow, it seems like it's been a lot more than that! LOL

I've also discovered the fabric/clothesline bowls craze that was going around a year ago or so. Man these things are addictive!! I made a couple for my mom and sis for Mother's Day and am now trying to build up a small stash of them to offer for sale at the yard sale we're planning to have this weekend. I currently have 3 made - hopefully at least 2 more will join the party.

I also spent today painting the living room with DH. Talk about hard work!! I was in charge of trimming the ceiling and baseboards so DH could follow with the roller....which meant I was up and down the ladder alllllll day. And did I mention we have 10 foot ceilings in our house? That's a long way up!!! The first time I went up the ladder this morning I thought I was going to have a panic attack (I have issues with heights) and DH would have to to the ceiling bits. But I finally conquered my fears and didn't look back. We now have a lovely green living room and we even got 2 coats on in one day!! All the neighbors were impressed (yes, we had to show it off to someone!).

Let's see....oh yes, I'm also working on a surprise gift for Mom for her birthday in July. I had some blue and cream log cabin blocks floating around my sewing room for years. I had originally bought the fabric to make a log cabin quilt for my little brother and his first wife. He's now on to his second wife and I never managed to finish the quilt. In fact, I only had 6 blocks made. So I got this bright idea to round out the number of blocks to 8, and sew them in 2 rows of 4 blocks to make a tablerunner. I'm going to cut the corners off to make the ends pointy and am in the process of hand quilting it now. I'm about 2/3 of the way finished with that and am still on schedule to get it to her by her birthday. And I repurposed the blue and cream fabrics to make my pineapple quilt.

I've also been working on my pink and brown Candied Hexagons quilt blocks. I've got 3 rows of blocks completed and on my design wall. I'm waiting until I get all the blocks pieced before I decide on an actual layout. In the meantime, I'm placing them in position the same way the quilt I'm following for the pattern has the blocks placed. I'll rearrange to make the colors flow right once they're all made.

I was able to get my grandmother's sewing machine fixed recently, too. Apparently the ceramic plate in the foot pedal had cracked, which made the entire machine not usable. The local quilt shop's father (a retired electrician) replaced the foot pedal for me for only the cost of the pedal. How awesome was that!

I've had another interview since my birthday rejection. And they didn't want me this time, either. My mom and sis think I need to dye my hair. I went gray really early - first one found in high school, major additions in college. I'm really starting to think they might be right...sigh...

Now that I have access to my blogger account again (I was locked out for a week or so) I hope I'll keep up with somewhat regular posts....but we'll see.

Happy Memorial Day

We've had a busy weekend already at our house. We just wrapped up a 2-day yard sale at DSister's house yesterday. We had a pretty good turnout, and made some $$ - enough to replenish the sock drawer, as well as get new flip flops and sunglasses for the summer. And even though we sold a lot of stuff, we still have a carload of things to take to Goodwill. I think I'll do that on Tuesday.

DH has been on vacation all week and has managed to keep himself busy with various projects. He is always working on some project - he's got to keep busy. He helped our elderly neighbor put beadboard on the inside of her potting shed this week. He now has a new best friend :) Right now he is making a kitty stand for The Insane Gardener to put in their Humane Society booth at the county fair this summer. They're planning to have a drawing for it.

This is the project I pulled out of the WIP bin this morning. A friend of mine recently pulled hers out and when I saw it, the bug bit me to get back to work on mine.
This is Flower Power by Crossed Wing. I love their designs and this one is my favorite. It's a huge design with lots of butterflies and hummingbirds mixed in. And there are even caterpillars and ladybugs and gnats, too! It's a wonderful piece.

I think I've been working on it for about 6 years, off and on....I started one on 12/31/99, but after getting the daylilies and daisies done, I realized I really didn't like the fabric I was using. It was a yellow 32 ct and I was going blind with the over one bits. So, I started over on something I did like. This is a soft grey fabric in 28 ct and I'm muuuuch happier with it now.

I finally found a picture of Tiger. This is our 15 year old cat that was recently diagnosed with cancer. Even though she's never had kittens, she's known as the mama cat of the house....she babies all the other kitties we have. I know everyone will miss her when it's her time.

And here is one more shot of our clown, Felix. This is his favorite way to sleep - especially since it's gotten so hot here lately. He did manage to open his eyes for the photo shoot, though :)

Antiqueing..

Is that how you spell it? Hmmm, hope so..LOL

I spent some time this weekend roaming around the antique mall in my hometown. I started on Friday with my Mom. The dime store has converted half of its space into antique booths, so we explored those while out and about. I found 2 wood spindles that are working great as Nostepinnes. I didn't know what a nostepinne was until I saw one on a knitting show on PBS last week. When I saw these 2 things in a bowl in one of the booths - for $1 each - I snatched them up. They work just like a nostepinne should work. However, now that I've researched them online a bit, I realize they are wooden spindles - probably for an industrial loom, as they have metal pieces on the ends....oh well, I'm repurposing them well and they look great in amongst my things in my sewing room :)

Mom and I also checked out the new yarn shop, as well as the new quilt shop in town. Both shops are great and I expect we'll both be spending some time in each one. I even sold a few pincushions to the quilt shop for them to sell on consignment for me. Win win :)

Well, apparently the antique bug wasn't satisfied, so on Sunday I went back to town and roamed the large antique mall for a few hours. It took me 2 1/2 hours to poke my nose into every booth they have - this place is huge. It has 2 upstairs and 2 basements....whew! Anyway, I found a neat windchime of glazed pottery for $1.25 and a glass flower frog for $2.50. Then, as I was at the 2nd to last booth in the place, I noticed all these planks of wood stacked up against the wall. The tags on them identified them as cherry, hard maple and walnut! They were huge pieces of wood, and none of them over $11.00 a piece! So, a quick call to DH and I was lugging one of the pieces down the stairs for him. Then, I learned that everything in the mall is 10% off if it doesn't say "firm" on the tag! Whoa! All told, I got to shoot the antique bug in me for a while for $9.23! Not bad :)

Oh, I finished the crochet bag this weekend. Mom likes my variation much better than her version of the pattern. She followed the pattern faithfully and got a very floppy bag out of it. I followed the pattern and got a circle - it wouldn't turn 3-D for me at all. I finally ripped the whole thing out and revised the bottom - now I have a very nice bag to hold my odds and ends of yarn bits. I'm liking it :)

We're having a yard sale at my sister's house next weekend - so the house is in an uproar as DH and I are pulling things to get rid of. The criteria for this sale: if it hasn't been touched in more than 3 years, it's going. There are a lot of things I love, but I'm not using, and since we need the money, it's time to get rid of them.

My Amazing Find!

Today, on my way to the Amish fabric shop, I must have passed 15 yard sales - it is Labor Day weekend, afterall. One I noticed, has a large pile of yarn on a tarp laying in the yard. Well, I decided on my way back from the fabric shop, I would stop there and see what I could find. Maybe I could get a large bag of yarns for my Mom to work on this winter. You see, she's quite the crocheter.

Well, when I got there, the yarn wasn't really much of a deal. So I didn't spend much time looking at it. But on the other end of the tarp, I noticed this huge hank of something. When I went over to investigate, the lady in charge of it all told me she'd take $10 for the hank. Ok...I still didn't know what I was looking at. So, I picked it up and immediately could tell this was something special. First of all, it was heavy! (It ended up being 1 1/2 pounds) I noticed there was a tag on it, and it said it was 60% wool/40% silk. Whoa....and it was 1635 yards!!! Whoa!!! On the other side of the tag was a price tag saying $220 a bag (how many of these could fit in a bag??)

As you can see, it's really a gorgeous hank of yarn. It's got a sheen to it that I think shows up in the picture pretty well. It's even decent colors. The color on the second picture is much truer.

So, I originally thought I'd put it on ebay and try to make a little money off it. But the more I look at it and stroke it, I realized I just can't part with it! It's soooooo soft. So, I'm trying to figure out what I can do with it.

My first thought is this is a lot of yarn. I don't know how to knit very much at all (I can knit a dishclothe that has knit and yarn over stitches - everything else is beyond me). I can crochet very well, but I'm not a big fan of the look of crochet. So, I was thinking, a scarf would be nice. To have something that soft next to my face is a nice thought. But, I'm thinking with this much yarn, I'd have enough for 3 scarves!!! Unless I could find a pattern that is a real yarn-eater, that is. I don't think there's enough for something like a sweater, and I couldn't knit one of those, anyway....

Oh! Maybe a shawl! Hmmm....I think I'm going to have to surf for scarf and shawl patterns. If anyone has a good pattern they know of online, let me know. Thanks!