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Barb, I am happy you are enjoying the Sarah Tallman books. I am waiting for the fifth one to appear. Have  you read The Secret Daughter. It is worth reading. See I still haven't figured out how to respond to comments but usually do it as a comment on the blog  after the one you have left.
HOW TO DO FSL
in this case bookmarks.
It is too late for this so I'll do it tomorrow, promise.
Tonight was guild night , a Christmas party. Kathy picked me up and we went for dinner with Judy and Barb, our usual dinner comoanions on guild night.
It was a lot of fun . We made an ornament.. I think it is called a DoDecahedron . I hope that is right. You pushed tiny pins with squares of fabric into a styrofoam ball. Who on earth would want to do that?  We did :)))  Quilters are a strange breed. I had often wondered how they made these ornaments and now I know. We were told to bring a thimble but I don't recall anyone telling us why. Someone finally after we had all mucked up our fingers  told us that the thimble was to push the pins into the ball.
Why did I not think of that, I had three thimbles in my bag. Mine was not quite finished but finsihed enough that I can complete it at home , no problem. Ya,ya, famous last words. I took pictures of the ones at our table.

The green one sitting in the mug is mine. I put it in my mug becasue it was easier for me manage. See the red one?  It is finished, someone is pretty smart.

Grace finished hers pretty quickly too. It is lovely.

There was a good Show and Tell, lots of finished pieces. Good thing too as the challenge  was to complete a UFO for tonight. Some did severeal pieces, clever ladies.  I will put some of those up tomorrow too.
Ione brought me the set of knitting needles  that I aksed her to get me at the yarn shop on her side of town. There is no such animal on my side of town. Thank you Ione, it was good of you and even gooder(sic) of you to refuse to take my money. Dear friend!! I will start your socks right away, I know you have been waiting patiently.  Now that I have the right needles......
That is it for tonight , have a good night.

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Patti, thanks again for your great comment. .I do love to get them and I answer them on the blog because I don't know how to reach you otherwise. So help me if you can LOL. Sounds like a song title doesn't it ?
I sewed on my butterflies today at Tuesday group. My friend bought a house in Maine and was regaling us with stories of her odd neighbour, who upon meeting was hugging her and patting her, she does not enjoy that, and the neighbour offered to play her cello at  my friend's daughter's wedding in June. It takes all kinds but she means well.
We did not go to Community Quilts today as Mary Alice had hurt her back and it is her house where we  have our sewing day. It was supposed to be the group's pot luck too . I know Mary Alice must be in real ppain to have to cancel this day. I hope she gets better fast.  Both she and her husband are doctors so one witty quilter said she would have to listen to her doctor's advice .
I left the church a bit early today and did not go to Betty's for tea. I was tired after a poor night's sleep so came home and had a lovely nap.
The Christmas season is fast approaching and many activities are on the calendar. Tomorrow is the party at Guild and here I have lost my email newsletter and can't remember what I am supposed to bring to the party. I do remember something about don't forget your thimble ;)) So I'll take a thimble !
I forgot my camera once again so have no new photos for today. Too bad as there were some nice pieces being worked on.  Betty Lu had a huge quilt that she was hand quilting. It was a UFO of 15 years but looked quite contemperary. She is a hugely original designer and has had quilts shown in Paducah and Houston. She has won ribbons in Paducah. It is so nice to watch her work, a privilege I'd say.
I am going to look through my files to see if there are any unused pictures I can add to the blog. It looks so dull with no pictures.
 So I will remember my thimble......
I took a couple of photos of my recent butterflies.

This fabric is beautiful even though it doesn't show too well.

Bright enough for you :)

And here is Don cherry of the outlandish and wonderful jackets, Canada's favourite loudmouth, the hockey maven.

Tomorrow I am going to show you how to do good free standing lace, just on case you don't know.

Have a great night, keep out of the rain.

Gang Song.

a special lady

http://www.pajamaquilter.com/
A friend owns this site and has things on sale if anyone is interested.
I meant to add it to the blog tonight but forgot.
Another thing I meant to mention was , darn it I forgot. Times are getting tough for me, my brains is opting out a lot LOL
Late nights will do that to you.
Ah I remember now, if you recall I mentioned on a couple of occasions that you cannot leave an embroidery machine on its own as it will take offense and do somthing bad. Well I have had validation on that opinion. Stitch Fun News had an article on that the other day saying definitley do not leave the machine alone since it will misbehave. So now the experts had noted that ,   so I am right. LOL Try for Stitch Fun News if you embroidery, good information for embroideries.
They call it the two foot rule....
http://stitchfun.com/news_101202.htm
Look here for that piece.

Counter has stopped working

The free counter on my blog has stopped counting. It was getting close to 10,000 hits the last time I saw it. I wonder if that could be the problem.
I did a couple of FSL bookmarks today, one was a cross and the other hearts. I found the cross to be very interesting and hugely symbolic. I found myself singing The Old Rugged Cross inside my head. Here was a cross obviously on a hill with two minor crosses on either side of it. There was what looked to me to be a string of thorns across the cross like the ammo belts soldiesrs wear from the top of one shoulder to the under the other shoulder. It is a lovely piece of design work. I took photos of the two bookmarks still in the hopp . I try and do 2  bookmarks  in one hoop in order to make the most efficient us of the stabilizer which is really expensive. I hate gathering up the scraps and making more stabilizer though.  I had my machine on high speed and it took 107 minutes to do the two of them.

In the morning we met our grandson Sam for brunch, he is a most generous man and gave both Ray and me money. It was for Ray's birthday and Christmas present and for me it was for Christmas. It was a nice sum.  We feel guilty about taking the money but he is insistent. We love him so much , not just for that but just because.  He is like the seventh son to us .

Sam and grandpa outside the restaurant. Did I ever tell you that Sam had my
 birthday and Ray's tattooed on his inner arm. He laughed today and said the tattoo came in handy sometimes.
I had to get into the act too so here it is. :) Short aren't we?

So I tried  out that cauliflower , cheese soup today. Not very good. I don't have any idea why I followed an old recipe and now too well at that. I make the best cheese sauce so why did I do it any way other than my own way. The cheese curdled maybe because the recipe called for chicken broth, who knows but we ate it anyway and it tasted okay but was not the way I wanted it to look. Next time it will be my way LOL That's always the best way, don't you agree?

Now sewing today, I am thinking of what to do next on Ray's quilt, I need to add a little bit to the edges so I can add the binding. That strip is only a half inch . Maybe a bit more of the brown and then the binding. Whatever that may be haha.

So I am off the blog....

Have a great evening........................................

Bon soir.

                                                                                                                

back again

As for the rest of the day after we did the regular housework and laundry as we do every week we went out for bread.  I was hungry so we stopped at A&W , not a very important event except I have not been there for a long time and was stunned that it cost us 17 dollars and some cents for lunch . I said to the lady at the counter " A&W sure has gotten pricey". I think it is time we stayed home for lunch LOL.
I wanted to buy some cauliflower to make cauliflower and cheese soup but Ray was not hungry so I put it off until tomorrow. That thwarted I started to sew on the quilt. I got the last two rows of squares joined together and the rows added to each other. And I did take a photo. I have difficulty sewing a straight line. Are there any tips about that. I had to do some of  the sewing over but that isn't unusual. So essentially it is done but for another two straight rows of brown and maybe a bit of a border but I am not sure about that.
There is a bit of a crease in the photo , that is where I had left in a couple of pins which I found later.

There my day's work. It looks okay I think. Still need to find some batting and backing. I want to use what I have here instead of buying more fabric. It is difficult to make a quilt without buying the backing and borders- seems there is never enough in the house or it isn't the right fabric.

So this is my second blog of the day and I am signing off. Good night Mrs. Calabash wherever you are.

a strange thing happened

Something very odd happened to the addition I made to last night's blog. It didn't happen LOL. I wrote it on the same page as last night and it didn't show up anywhere , so here goes the second addition haha.
It was mostly photos of last night.

Ray and I sitting at our table. We were lucky thos year and our table was called first to the banquet tables so we had the first and best of the food.

Salads and smoked salmon  as well as regualr salmon , veggies , turkey, dressing and gravy. it was delicious. Too bad you can't eat it all LOL

Two table of delicious desserts. We had a slice of Yule log which was fabulous.

This little  poinsettia was too lovely to leave in the store so we brought it home.:))

Ray decorated the door, it looks better in real life because the lights glitter on and off and make the happway look pretty for Christmas.

These beautiful flowers were in Safeway , they do arrange things in such a lovely way.

So the blog is done for now.

I'll check in later in the evening.

believe it or not

What a great day we had. Tonight we went to the Albion Christmas party. It was the best party. Now only was the food terrific but the company was wonderful. I don't know how they all knew my name and hugged me. Even the bosses hugged me. It was so nice and I felt honoured to be remembered so lovingly. I took photos of the food and one of the Mike's lovely daughters  took a picture of Ray and me. I'll put the photos up tomorrow. I am really tired so this is a very short blog tonight, I'll finish it up in the morning.
Good night .....

a lovely time

Ray said he had a very good birthday . I took him out for dinner and gave him some money to play at the casino tonight. We just got home. When we got here there were four messages, nearly everyone checked in to wish him a happy birthday so he feels very happy and that makes me happy too. That's a lot of happys isn't it :))
This afternoon there were a couple of old movies on that I wanted to see so that is what I did but to make some progress on my quilt I pinned the rows together and took a bit of time to sew that line of stitching so now there are rows 1 to 8 sewn together. Then I pinned the strips on the sides of the next two sets of squares. Tomorrow if I have time I'll do those. We have to go grocery shopping , then I have to get my hair fixed because we are going to a party. The company where Ray used to work always has a Christmas party catered by one of the hotels and we are always invited. It is a great evening.  We have a lovely time, it is good to see everyone and get all the hugs LOL.
I am looking forward to getting the squares done and finishing this quilt for Ray. Maybe by Christmas I can do that. Wouldn't that be nice....
Ray picked up his poinsiettias today, he likes doing that. He bought a red one and a white one. He also decorated the hallway door to the apartment. He does that every year too. We used to have children on this floor but they all moved away , the kids waited for Ray to do the door then we put out candy for them. The adults ate the candy as well but that was fine by us.

All in all it was a very good day and we are feeling contented.

I hope your day was as good as ours and your evening is as pleasant.

Buona notte.

Houston

http://bonniemccaffery.com/vidcasts/053.html   Quilts from the show at Houston.   I hope this is the first time I have put these on the blog But worth looking at twice if I have :0
I managed to do something today after the past few days when nothing was accomplished. So lots happened today, first I embroidered a tea towel. No I have no idea who it may be for but I think I'll give it to Ray for his kitchen. Tomorrow is his birthday , we don't give gifts , just go out for dinner but I think he'll be happy with it. He likes my stuff.

Cute isn't it?

 We took my laptop to London Drugs this morning because the internet security programme Kaspersky was behaving too aggressively and blocking off my memory sticks as I mentioned last night. Ben took care of that for me .He said that programme was too much for a home computer. I had it for the past two years but this time it had increased the security issues and it was almost at a corporate level for my computer and blocked off my little quilting stuff. Crazy!!! He reset it so I can use my things. Next year I won't bother buying it. My upstairs computer has free AVG and no problems there.
I bought these few things. Don't you love candles?

A few years ago before my son went to Louisiana he worked as the Port Director for Wilmington Delaware and as such was in contact with Joe Biden the senator from Delaware. One time when I was visiting there he arranged with Mr. Biden for a conducted tour of the White House. So here is the invitation , note who signed it at the bottom of the card. I have kept that invitation for quite some time as it is very meaningful to me and  especially now  in light of  the fact that he is now Vice President Biden .  

Bathroom accidents just keep on happening LOL. I banged me hand on the corner of the sink counter and now have a blood bruise. I am getting these often lately, maybe I should stop taking aspirin, stubbed my toe on my slipper isn't that crazy, now how could that hurt. I would stay  out of that room is I could :)))

Time to watch the Mentalist so good night folks.

Take care.

computers are timewasters sometimes

At least today they were as I spent the afternoon trying to figure out why my laptop would not open up my memory stick with all my embroidery designs. I tend to panic if I think they are lost. So I will put them on a disc as well.   Or maybe buy another stick, they are expensive though. Finally I had a thought Hurrah!! yes that happens occasionally :) Perhaps it is that new Kaspersky internet security that I bought recently and downloaded to my laptop.  I went upstairs to the old computer my PC which had its own issues yesterday when the wireless mouse refused to work. Luckily I had another smaller one for my laptop and the connection worked in the PC, that was good!! Yes the sticks were fine so it is the Kaspersky. Apparently they had made it much more secure because they had trouble with it in 2008 and upgraded it for 2010. All well and good but it stops my own innocent stuff from working and that does not make me very happy. I'll go back to London Drugs tomorrow and ask the "boys" if they can do anything about that and while I am there buy another mouse for upstairs. I'd really like to buy a new computer as well but later when Jim comes down for Christmas. The discs for the Kaspersky arrived in the mail one of which was a Win Zip and I am wondering if that is what I need for the sticks, but enough of wondering tomorrow will bring the answers. If I cannot get things to work to my satisfaction then I'll download the free AVG which is doing fine on the PC.
As for the rest of the day, we just wandered around in the mall in the morning and drove around in the early afternoon. We wanted to see if the Westminster Quay market had reopened. For some reason we thought it might have. We used to go there every Saturday to buy our vegetables and fruit from the old Chinese man who owned the market. He was a sweetheart and was often very pleased that we would come in from Vancouver to shop at his market. He always gave us a present at Christmas and fruit at other times in the year. We missed him when he passed away and eventually stopped going there. The market  closed soon after and no not because we had stopped shopping there LOL. We went just to see if anything was happening there. Nothing. Too bad.
I promised the third photo of the 12 Days of Christmas so here it is.

The last of the three photos . The embroidery designs are from http://www.emblibrary.com/ for anyone interested.

A beautiful quilt made by my friend Pat who is an amazing appliquer and quilter.

No quilting today just messing with both the computers. Exhausting :)

Tonight I think I knit again on the socks for Ione.

Have a great night Folks.

Shubha raatri.