For Us

Godspeed to our soldier son and his battalion. May they come home safely.

Check Out This Online Mystery Quilt

Hey, Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville blog is having a mystery quilt starting today! Click here for a link to the Supply List, and click here for a link to the first installment.

If you don't know Bonnie's work, she's written a wonderful book called Scraps & Shirttails in which she discusses her revolutionary way to set up your scraps to make them usable.

My current project is string pieced, but I'm using Bonnie's idea of using men's shirts (the larger the better from the thrift store) in quilts. You've seen these blocks before, but here they are again so that you can see the shirting fabrics mixed with quilting cottons and batiks...


I'm nearly finished with the second batch of blocks, so you'll be seeing the whole group again soon.

Morning Finds

Not so grouchy today and I'm liking the crutches much more than the walker...and the sun is out, so all's well.

We drove around to some garage sales and Goodwill this morning for a little outing after over two weeks of hanging around the house. I found these high-quality men's shirts at Goodwill which I'll use as fabric in upcoming quilts...



This one will be perfect to use in a man's quilt...maybe for my younger son when he moves to Alaska in a year.

These two are gorgeous men's shirts; the left one is a beautiful purple fabric, and the other will be perfect in a black & gray quilt I'm planning.

I also found a fine, handmade wool Fair Isle sweater at Goodwill for $2.25! It's in perfect condition.

It feels so good to shop for quality items without spending a fortune.

Slow but Sure

I do not like recovering from surgery, and this is my second surgery recovery in just over 4 months. It rots...but I am feeling better and I've been cleared to walk at 50% weight with my walker. Four more weeks to go. I'm trying not to feel down, but my walking has been restricted for 20 weeks in the last 4 1/2 months. Yes, it's getting to me. boohoo

Here are two of the small projects I can work on right now: more of AJ's blocks and a knitting project that I carry around with me. The yarn will be felted and made into a cinnamon-roll pincushion.



Yummy colors.

Finally Sewing

Getting into my sewing room has been a challenge with a walker, but today I set up my work area so that sewing, cutting and pressing areas were close by.


It was refreshing to work on sewing again. My nephew AJ's quilt has been put aside for a while but I was able to finish some of the blocks today and place them on the design wall.


This is the start of the blocks and I was going to blend these with orange half-square triangles and create a geometric layout...


AJ is a freshman at RIT (Rochester Inst. of Tech.) in New York. RIT's colors are orange and brown, but don't the blocks look beautiful with just a little orange? We'll see what he thinks when he checks out this blog entry.

Thank You Veterans

Thank you to all of our veterans and their families during this memorial week.

Today our family especially remembers Cpt David A. Boris, and Sgt Adrian E. Hike. Killed in action 0455Z 12 November 2007, Afghanistan.

Check out this Giveaway

Candied Fabrics is having a huge giveaway that you may be interested in. She is celebrating the opening of her new website from which she will sell her lovely hand-dyed fabrics and silk items. Check it out here.

Anita's Big Adventure

Big adventure, as in "this is the only thing I am allowed to do right now", haha.

Here is my trusty walker with a handy pouch that the husband washed just for me. I thought about making a brightly colored pouch with lots of pockets, but I'm hoping the walker won't be around long enough for me to really enjoy it.


Yesterday I took a short mental-health ride around town after 4 days of surgery recovery and days of being in the house. First stop: the video store for an evening with Columbo.











Next, we took a trip "inside the loop", which is
we rarely do on game day. Tomorrow is game day in Athens, GA and it is also Homecoming weekend, so "inside the loop" is off limits unless we want to sit in traffic for hours. The buildings in the background are part of the Univ. of GA campus.















Here's Sanford Stadium on the UGA campus.

















Then a quick trip through lovely downtown Athens. A good southern downtown has lots of shade trees.


Not much excitement, but it was a lovely day and I needed to get out of the house.

Beading Progress

Here's how I changed the current beading project since the last post...




I've moved the blue button that was in the way and beaded it into a swirl (top of the photo).


I like the way this turned out. More on this piece later.

Here's an update on the spill I took four weeks ago that hurt my hip and has kept me on a walker and cane for weeks. It turns out that the "bruise" that the emergency room said I had was a fractured hip. Makes one wonder why the ER couldn't figure that out, huh? So, I'm off to surgery in the morning to get some expensive new body jewelery...three new matching pins screwed into my hip bone. Fun.

For tonight, I'm enjoying my cheesecake brownie from Fibermania's recipe (Oct.22) and some yummy hot tea that I will not be able to drink in the morning. Worst part of surgery? I can't eat or have my tea! Pain is secondary.

I'll write again when I can...