Are You Giraffe Dreams?

Last weekend while on a road trip I stopped into a quilt shop (Aunt Annie's, one of the best shops in Minnesota) in the tiny town of Avon. Another woman came in and said, "are you Carol? Giraffe Dreams?" I looked blank for a while, trying to figure out who she was. It was Caron from And Still Counting! I never expected someone to recognize me out in public just from reading my blog! A new experience!

Some time this summer I am hoping to get an in-person look at Caron's quilt project. (I hope you vist her blog and read about it.)

I've been doing some fun sewing. First, I decided to make a few more blocks for Clare at Quilts 4 Leukemia. I hadn't mailed my first five, so I decided I could add a few more before I mail them off. (Read about my challenge in my June 10 post, and join in the fun if you can.)



Then I made a couple of tops for Wrap a Smile. These will be quilted by a volunteer other than me. You can see that I have been enjoying my free time this summer! (It rained and it poured on Wednesday - a good day to stay inside and sew.)



Sorry for the blurry quality on this photo. I'm having some camera issues!

Blocks for Leukemia

I made these blocks to send to Clare in France. She coordinates the Quilts 4 Leukemia project. Check out her blog, here, and see the cute quilts and the even cuter kids who receive them!

After looking at her blog and the photos, I decided to post a challenge. If you want to participate, here are the rules:

1) Make duplicate sets of blocks, in red and white. Must be 8.5" unfinished.
2) Send the blocks to me
3) One set of blocks I will use to make quilts for Sunshine. The other set I will send to Clare for Quilts for Leukemia.
4) You have all summer (northern hemisphere) to work on these blocks. On August 31 I will draw a name from those who participate, and will send a thank-you gift to the person whose name I draw.

Let me know if you want to join the challenge, and I will email you my address! (Please fix your blogger email so that it is not set on "noreply".)

Get ready, get set, start sewing those red and white blocks!

Has Finn Run Out of Steam?

Oh, sad... our friend, Finn, is talking about pulling her Orphan Train blog into the station, and parking it for good. Personally I don't want that to happen; what do you all think? Visit her blog and give her your opinion. If SHE is wanting to retire, that is one thing, but if WE have been bad passengers by not communicating enough, that is another thing entirely!

Let's have a blog democracy and let our voices be heard! Visit Finn today!

Waiting for my Cousins

In a minute it will be clear why I entitled this post "Waiting for my Cousins." First, I'll tell you that I had a busy weekend out of town. I stopped at 3 quilt shops and one bookstore, and those are the places where my money tends to just fly out of my pocket. It was definitely true on this trip! These are some of the fabrics I bought, all for no particular reason other than I liked them:







At the bookstore I attended a talk by this author, Kao Kalia Yang. She wrote "Latehomecomer" which has just been published. It's an excellent book, and she is an amazing young woman - bright, poetic, thoughtful, caring, and accomplished. She was born in a refugee camp in Thailand and moved to St. Paul where she grew up. I highly recommend her wonderful book!



There was a parade, which I mostly ignored, but I like bagpipes, so I made sure to grab a photo of this group.... Minnesota Police Bagpipers. It was a parade of fire fighters, equipment, related services and friends. The state firefighters conference was in town. I sat in the bookstore and occasionally went out to see the parts I found interesting. (Mostly parades bore me, unless someone I know is in them.)



My official work for the school district came to an end last week, so I have a summer in which to relax and sew, read, visit friends, and do whatever I want! I probably will work part-time at another job, but it won't be very taxing. So I am eagerly looking forward to my free time and all that I can enjoy during my off hours.



One main reason I went out of town was to help my sister look at possible reunion sites. Next summer we will get together with 30-40 cousins! This will be our 2nd reunion as adults. We loved this particular place and are hoping we can get a reservation here and host all the cousins at this beautiful site. Wouldn't you love to vacation here, too?? Now that we found a site, I am beginning to get excited about the onslaught of a zillion cousins. (Our first reunion, in 2006, took place in Washington state and was FABULOUS.) So now you know why I am waiting for my cousins!









P.S. Check out Brenda Lou's blog, if you dare - she's asking for UFO counts!

Front Porch Party - Want Some Pie?

I apologize for my very late arrival to the front porch party (hosted by Rhondi, here). It has been a crazy day... 8:00 p.m., and I am finally home and ready to post the photo of my front porch. I hope I haven't missed all the fun!



You can see that mine really isn't a porch. It's just a medium-sized stoop. This is a good "before" picture, though. We are probably going to do some major landscaping in our yard, and part of the remodeling will include some changes to this front stoop. A long time from now, you might get to see an "after" picture. When? I would suggest that you not hold your breath.

Since my front porch is rather boring (and gets too hot on a sunny afternoon), I'll also invite you to my back deck. It's cooler here - in the shade - and we have a little more space to sit and sip some lemonade, or if you'd rather, eat a lucious piece of Lemon Meringue Pie. Very summery, don't you think??



(Who spilled the butter along the bottom of my deck? Or is that the lemon for the pie I was about to make??? No, silly, it's Blogger being uncooperative again.)

If we are lucky, we can also watch the wren family build their nest in this little tent we provided for them. Can you see the little stick poking out of the hole? That's what the daddy wren put in there.. the mommy puts in the softer stuff like grasses. They have been singing such beautiful songs, but they are rather shy, and if you make a lot of noise, we won't get to see them.



What have the rest of you eaten or watched on your front porch today?

In the Presence of Greatness

I am still buzzing from the excitement at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul last night. I attended the Barack Obama rally, now a major historical event. I was lucky to get in! Our seats were fabulous! I admire Obama so much, and felt honored to be in the presence of greatness! (I promise I will not discuss politics at my blog for the most part... but this was such an historical milestone. I wanted to share my excitement.)

I'm going to post a few more pictures, but most of them will be at my photo page. At the end of this post I'll give you the link, in case you want to see the rest of my photos.












The rest of my photos are here, in the album called Obama Rally:
http://photosbycarol123.shutterfly.com

Yes, We Can!

Last night I attended the Obama rally in St. Paul!!! Super fantastic! I'll post more pictures and details later this evening.

Randomness

This weekend saw a little bit of quilting coming from my household, but not as much as I had hoped. I finally felt inspired and out of my slump, but didn't have much time to sew. In addition to the UFO I posted yesterday, I also completed this donated-UFO. BrendaLou gave it to me in pieces, partially assembled. I added some squares of my own and got it all together for someone else to quilt. That's all I did!



Today I spent beaucoup hours working on this board thing for church. It took way more time than I had anticipated. I'm glad I got it done, though. It'll be on display at a community event next week.



Recently I was tagged by Walk-a-Mile. Check her out here:
http://walkamile-beth.blogspot.com

I am supposed to list 7 random thoughts about me.
Whoa! Hang on! This should be fascinating!
1. My favorite snack is potato chips.
2. I love being a mom of adult children.
3. I have three pen pals.
4. My favorite time of year is fall.
5. I wear size 9 shoe.
6. My grandfather, father, two cousins, and a cousin's husband are all Methodist ministers.
7. I have pencil lead in my arm; it was jabbed there 45 years ago by a kid at church. It's still there.

And to add to the randomness, here is a picture of me at 15 months of age:




I am going to break the Tag, You're It rules a little bit. I'm supposed to tag 7 people, but I'm only going to tag one:
http://quiltinginct.blogspot.com

Here is what to do when you are tagged...
1. Link your tagger and list these rules on your blog
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs
4. Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Fresh and New

My ironing board cover had gotten badly stained and even had some sticky spots from when I ironed some fusible the wrong way. It was past time to replace it. This fabric isn't pretty or cute, but it was a leftover piece, just about the right size. It doesn't need to be pretty for this application. I love having a new ironing board cover! It makes me feel so clean and fresh!



Then in today's mail I got my little table for my FW! I ordered from the guy that Bonnie recommended... he was super quick, and I love the table. I don't use my FW very often, but now when I do, I'll have this wonderful extension.



Finally, I found an old UFO that was further along than I had remembered. This was a mystery class I took at my guild two or three years ago. I didn't like how busy mine was turning out, and I had set it aside. In the meantime, I had forgotten that I had several blocks already made. All I had to do was add the blocks and borders, and another top is done. It'll probably go to Wrap Them in Love.

Back in the Loop

When I lose my buttons and links in the sidebar, I feel like this:



It takes me forever to get them back! But I appear to be mostly back to normal, so now at least the Mavericks ring surfers won't get stuck at my site. Thanks for your patience!

Sunshine, Rain, Rainbow

As you may know, I work for a school district. I have one week left! It always sneaks up on me and surprises me when the end of the year arrives so quickly. Tonight we had an end-of-year party. We were at a very nice place with a big barn to meet in and a lake to walk around. We had great food, good conversation, and I walked around the lake TWICE.











On the way home, it rained pretty hard. At the same time, the sun was shining. I had my visor down to keep the sun out of my eyes, and the windshield wipers going to keep my view clear of rain. And then I noticed the most beautiful rainbow!! It was an interesting meteorological event!








The other day I saw these guys hard at work. Thank you, work gods, for not pushing me in that vocational direction. I would HATE that job as I am not so great with heights and with feeling vulnerable held up by tiny strings. Please, I'd rather deal with challenges in the Special Ed field any day!



I'm still working on getting that Mavericks button back up. I hope to have it back soon. (Sorry, I have no quilting news to report. I have not been sewing much lately!)

Check out my Slide Show!

Parents, a Baby, and James

Look at these gorgeous irises! Guess "who" they are.... they are the parents of the one flowering stalk that I have in my yard. Maybe some day I'll have a large swath of purple spreading across my yard, too, so that I can spare this many to take to the office! Ooooh lala, the thought makes me smile.



And here is a sweet baby... taking a nap under a little fleece blankie that will eventually make its way to Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. Shhhh! Don't wake up the baby! (Just now when I wrote that, I remembered that my daughter as a toddler used to say this: "shhh! baby ky-ing!" Meaning, "shhh, baby is sleeping!" Isn't that cute??)



Do you like James Taylor? I have always loved him! He burst upon the scene when I was in college, and I instantly loved his music. Today I bought myself this CD:



Hey, I heard James has a son who has a CD out... and is as good as (better than?) his dad!! Way cool!

Quilting Blues

I had this nice, long weekend and not much stuff I absolutely had to do... so one would think I would have plunged into a bunch of quilting projects. I didn't, though. I'm in one of my quilting slumps. This happens every now and then.

I made these blocks for a challenge at Sunshine. I was so uninspired, and you can tell. I didn't make anything very spectacular. In fact, some of them are downright ugly. They'll probably be OK along with the others that get turned in. That's my hope. (The challenge fabric was the Halloween jack-o-lanterns, and the postcard is for the challenge organizer.)



I managed to get the borders put on this top and get it quilted and bound. That's all the quilting I did all weekend! Recognize the parts in this quilt? It started out as Bonnie's Crossroads to Carolina... but this is the farthest I got. So what should I call it now? Gravel Road to Nowhere? :-) Here it is quilted, but not yet bound.



I go the binding on just before total dark.


Son and his GF came over tonight to use my sewing machine. They needed to hem these pretty rainbow fabrics that will be used as room dividers. It was fun to see them and to help them with their project. Son is going to Greece in a couple of days! Please cross your fingers for a safe and happy trip, and for me not to worry while he's gone!



P.S. I updated my blog, and in the process I once again lost my Mavericks ring code and some other links. I hope I can figure out how to reinstate them (again) soon.

God's Laughter

Have you ever heard that saying, that flowers are God's way of laughing? I'm enjoying God's laughter these days. I don't have an award-winning yard by any means (unless it's the "ugliest yard on the block" award). But I do have a few flowering gems here and there which I will share with you today.

Here is the first iris to bloom in my yard! The first two, actually. Yesterday I had one blossom, and today I have two! I got these extras from a co-worker and planted them last year. (I know, I planted them way too close together.) I'm thrilled that one stalk, at least, is blooming.






Then I have some "stuff" around the edge of our yard. Our side and back yards are wild and woodsy. At some point, though, whoever owned this land apparently thought it should start to be domesticated, and planted these honeysuckle and lilac bushes. They struggle along, trying to get enough sun among the shade of the trees, and do pretty well for living here in the wild territory!






This is the extent of my garden. It's about all I can handle. I do NOT have natural gardening instincts. In August I will post another picture so you can see how these flowers grow and spread. They usually fill the barrel.



Here's my garden #2. I like 'em small!



This is supposed to be a hanging plant, but it's so huge and heavy. The spot where we have a hook is exactly where people's heads happen by when they come to our front door. I didn't want visitors getting klunked in the head, so the plant sits here on a small chair. Isn't it luscious?



And finally, the last of the flowers... these "lovely" volunteers. I bet some of my readers have these pretty little gifts in your yard, too! Hahahaha (is that God I hear laughing?)