an excellent Monday

All is well in Wisconsin, although we weathered a storm today with plenty of blowing snow. Mostly observed from the cozy warmth of our sewing condo, as we enjoyed hour after hour of cutting, stitching, movies, and some good food and beverage when needed. We do have to keep our strengthup!

We are staying at The Rushes at Baileys Harbor and loving it. We even have a garage! That make unloading our trailer so easy, we have experienced some much worse unloading scenarios in our travels. But before we got here Saturday, we made a stop at Primitive Gatherings in Menasha, WI. This is a great quilt shop with many samples and kits and patterns that were looking for a ride home with us! You can see our happy faces as proof that this was a good place to find!

Since getting ourselves settled in to our condo, we have been pulling together projects and ideas non-stop. One of the things we (all 3 of us in one way or another) are working on is a bunch of teeny 9-patch blocks that will eventually be joined into a quilt of some type. These are some of my squares:

Each little square is 1" when completed. So far, we have been making lots of little blocks and talking about ways to use them. We have used this book for inspiration.

Finished the binding on this quilt, which I have blogged about earlier and had quilted before leaving home. Other activities--3 little baby quilts for charity donation, pinwheel samples for teaching, prairie point samples for teaching and a flannel baby quilt.

Plus this morning I had to make time to become acquainted with a local dentist to have my temporary crown tuned up after my DIY dentistry activity yesterday. The crown came off, and since it was Sunday I made do with some dental adhesive purchased at Walgreen's until I could contact the dentist recommended by a woman working here. Turned out to be fairly easy to adjust so my jaw is not aching as badly, and with any luck it will stay put until the real deal gets installed in 2 weeks. Oh, the joys of maturity!

And speaking of maturity, my baby girl turns 31 today! How did that happen?!

I think you can see the Hansen lineage in this picture! Love to my beautiful girl!

on the road again

I showed you Deb's quilt a few days ago while it was on the quilting frame. I am happy to report that it is now off the frame and went home with Deb last night. Because of the challenging arrangement of blocks it took me a little while to come up with a design that would fit into the "wheel" of this wagonwheel block. I ended up doing a lot of these:

looping scrolls in varying sizes to fill in the spaces. Once I get into the rhythm they are hard to stop!

And today I am celebrating the start of a great vacation. This is my girlfriend getaway with Nancy and Leisl, great traveling partners. Here is some of my stuff in the staging area, waiting for final packing andthen loading into the official Stitchin' Trips trailer.

We headed east this morning, into the land of cheese, which can be a hard road for us lactose intolerants! We are staying in Appleton tonight, went out to see Country Strong for our evening entertainment and popcorn binge. Pretty good show, a few tears were shed. Our only real problem with the show was that the speaker system was not working well, bass notes were real buzzy, and for a show about country music singers that was not good.

I left my sewing room looking forlorn, but I think it will be looking much better when I return in a week. It started with a plan to hang my new design wall, a lovely gift from my precious husband, I was totally surprised that he had even remembered that I had shown him a picture once. Hanging it on the sewing room wall made the most sense to me so it would be within easy reach. That meant taking down some wall shelves and a lot of decor and misc. stuff pinned to the walls. That left one bare ugly wall with big holes from the shelving screws. This room was first painted blue when it was Dan's room. Then a few years later he changed to another room and this room became Julie's room, so we got really creative and sponge painted white over the blue. For a long time I wanted to repaint, but always felt overwhelmed by the thought of removing everything. But when I saw one wall was bare, I came to the conclusion that the time is now to get a clean coat of paint. So here are some recent photos of the collection of stuff that

is usually in my room, and the only things remaining are the wooden table and the gray metal cabinet. The rest I was able to remove to other temporary homes nearby. And then I bought paint and left town! Hoping that the good painting spirits will be present in my home (Bob) and feel free to get the job done! There will have to be a big reveal when I get home!

When I talked to Bob tonight he was mumbling something about emptying out the closet to remove the shelves and lay new flooring, I think he may have been delirious! I had intended to just cover it with plastic until the painting was done, but if flooring is changing that's a whole other ballgame! I'm a little afraid that if he has to actually handle and pack up all the stuff in there, he might start to wonder about my purchasing plan. I'm not sure he knows that there is no purchasing plan, I just plan to purchase whatever meets my needs!

This could be an interesting vacation!

pioneer woman

One thing I like to do when I have time on the keyboard is reading other people's blogs. I find good ones and bad ones. I find ideas I want to remember and things I would prefer to forget. I have discovered how to get email notifications of updates on my favorite blogs, which is a cool thing. I need to update the sidebar of my own blog to share some of these, will work on that! Today I am wanting to share a site with you that is fun and inspiring. The Pioneer Woman. I'm not sure how I stumbled upon it, but I have returned frequently. What first sucked me in was reading Black Heels to Tractor Wheels, the story of her courtship and marriage to Marlboro Man.

This story is actually a soon-to-be-released book, so expect a good saga. In addition to this romance novella, her site is full of good stuff about family, food, homeschooling, photography and the list goes on. Today I am making the Chicken Tortilla Soup that is among her recipes. She includes lots of pictures of the cooking process, which makes it easy for people like me who aspire to be better cooks but don't make a career of it. In the photography section there are some awesome pictures of prairie and sky, 2 of my favorite things! So pop on over there and see what is cookin'!

dan's day

It was only 2 weeks ago that Dan returned to Mammoth Lakes after his Christmas vacation here. Seems like longer. So I was looking back at some pictures he has sent us--

He moved there for a job with the Mammoth Mountain ski resort after searching for something that he liked and could use his degree in mass communications. This was about 3 years ago, I think, and jobs were not plentiful. He had looked in the Twin Cities area for months, making do with "gap" jobs. I call them gap jobs because they are something to fill in the gap, not working for The Gap! But thanks to his gap job at IKEA, he now can tell me where everything is in that store! Something else needed to happen, and since we have family ties to CA, he packed up his truck and headed west, not knowing what would evolve. Thank God for good family, allowing him to afford to live there until he found his job at Mammoth. A seasonal job as snow reporter, renting a room in "company housing" and skiing whenever possible--what's not to love!

Through persistence and hard work and some luck, he has been able to continue to work for Mammoth Mountain year-round and is their Public Relations Manager. This job seems to be made for him, he is always full of positivity when I ask him about his work, and he loves to make connections with people which is a lot of what his job takes.

I am writing about this because I think a lot of people, especially young people, are searching for jobs and direction. I think that Dan's path shows that good things can happen. There were problems and bumps and troubles and worries and tears along the way, to be sure. But he tried to stay positive and has benefitted in the long run.

There is another angle to his career that I find very interesting. His work does involve a lot of video media and tech stuff, but the underlying basis all revolves around the written word. Dan was not a lover of the written word as a kid. I used to strain my brain to come up with ways to interest him in reading. Something happened along the way to change that, I credit his HS teacher, Mrs. Beyer. I saw a huge change in his attitude when he was in her English class. For all you teachers out there, remember that one teacher can really mean the world to a student.

So have a happy Tuesday, Dan! You are the best!

merry monday

I'm indulging in a little "me" time for the moment after about 2 hours in the dentist's chair this morning. Seems like I had 4 hands and at least a dozen instruments crammed in my mouth at once! Glad to have that over with, and the procedure itself was nearly painless, but my jaw doesn't accommodate this stuff very well and even though I pre-medicate I feel the headache coming on. So much for a fun Monday morning!

Last week I read about this new pen on another blog and I can't remember which blog, but I have tried it out for myself.

It disappears with heat (or enough friction to generate heat) and can be used on fabric. They cost about $2 each at the office supply stores, slightly more on the Pilot website. The results of my preliminary testing:

I drew 2 scribbles in blue on white fabric, ironed one of them and it immediately disappeared! I did wash the sample, and the doodle seemed to faintly show up when it was damp, but was gone again when it was dry. It doesn't work on real dark fabrics. I guess I would continue to use it cautiously until I have tried it out in more situations. But it could come in really handy now and then, and isn't costly.

What's on my frame:

I don't know the name of this block, it was put together by Deb L. and is going to be one fine quilt when it's all done.

In the queue:

I call it the colorblock quilt, put together by Little Sis. I have been playing with threads to find the right colors, even resorting to using the colorwheel so I canput the complimentary colors on the solids.

One great Christmas present was a new pair of socks from Keen. Not your ordinary socks, these are made in a left/right pair, they are even labelled so I can be sure I have them in the right place. They are quite comfortable.

So that's the update from the frozen tundra!

a spot of color

I was trying to take some pictures of the downy woodpeckers (3 of them) at the suet feeders this morning. They startled and flew away before I had a good shot, but as I was trying to compose the shot (as all professional photographers do!) I realized how gray it was outside. Well, shades of gray, white and black. Then I remembered that this scarf was drying on the table downstairs, and when I picked it up it was a day brightener!

This was something that I knitted to possibly be a gift but without a definite recipient. Well, I think that person is me! I don't think I have anything in my wardrobe, maybe not even in my house, that is this color. I thought maybe it was a little "out there", maybe something someone else would look great in, but not my typical personal choice. But sort of wishing that it would be my own and that it would bring me to become so very stylish with this lovely color sort of casually draped around my shoulders. I guess there's still a dreamer in all of us! This design comes from the Ravelry website and is designed by Martina Behm. It is called 22.5 Degree Scarf because, well, the 2 tail end angles are 22.5 degrees instead of the usual 45 degrees. I like that because it gives better length to wrap and tie. The yarn was bought on a whim from Thora Lee's Clearance Sale, 4 balls of Artyarns Superwash Merino wool. I probably paid as much for the 4 balls as one would normally cost, so I am liking that! It is maybe kind of a sport weight yarn and I used up 2 1/2 balls making this. I learned how to make that cute scalloped edge finish for this, I had never done anything like that before so that was a good learning experience. Other than that, the knitting was very smooth, all garter stitch (knit all rows) with increases on the ends of each row and in the center of every third row. It was suitable for car knitting and tv watching. I did make this before from a bulky yarn and I might like to make it again, it is that easy and rewarding. I like wearing it with the center point in front and the ends wrapped to the front just for something different. And because on these cold days it is really handy to do this...