"Ain't No Mountain High Enough...."

I came into the kitchen while on the phone and found Oscar at the top of the tall kitchen cupboards looking for respite! He'd never been up THERE before, that I know of anyway...the only way he could have gotten up there was to jump to the counter top, up to the top of the fridge, and then to the top of the cupboard. It's quite a way up there, as you can tell from the top of the fridge beneath!

Most people have to worry about the dust bunnies on the tops of their fridges...by the looks of it I'm going to have to worry about hairballs instead! :c)

Bonnie

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Kitty Comforts????

How can this be comfortable?!? I came downstairs to get something to drink, and found Oscar in the desk letter file thingy...WEIRD CAT I tell you! He just looked at me with his shifty eyes as if to say "So? You got a problem with this? Can't you see I'm sleeping?"

It just made me chuckle and I wanted to share it with you :c)

It's another beautiful fall morning in SC. DH and son went deer hunting. No....scratch that...they went deer watching. Maybe they are more like Oscar than I am because they seem to LIKE sitting in trees doing nothing? But I think it's great that they are spending father/son time together.

Down to the nitty gritty here! 2 finals to go. Parents come in on thursday evening. Jeff's got a doc appt thursday afternoon after school to get the pins out of his hand. It's going to be a crazy schedule this week, so any house cleaning to get things ready has to happen between now and wednesday night....Never DID get the carpets clean. I decided I don't care. The walls that definately need painting? I'm not going to care about those either. If they don't like it here they are welcome to go down to the Amerisuites! I'll just do the best I can....however, I opened the fridge this morning, and then quickly moved the 'cleaning out the fridge' project to the top of my cleaning list!

Yesterday a friend and I met for lunch, and then went to the fairgrounds for the annual holiday arts/crafts festival thing. Can you believe that there was NOTHING quilty there? Alot of basket makers...I mean ALOT....every time we turned the corner. I love hand made baskets, and that is something that I want to learn to do.

I however LOVE the booths that have musicians selling their own CD's. There was one guy playing hammered dulcimer....and he had a celtic CD that was awesome, so I bought that...and then around the corner was another gal, a harpist (not a harpy, just a harpist!) and her CD's were wonderful too, so I bought two of those......these are for my massage music collection. I've always loved this kind of music though.....I play it all the time, even before I started school because I love stuff without lyrics...just instrumental. It leaves time for thoughts in my head. I love to sing along to stuff with words, but if I'm singing, I'm not thinking, and that can cause problems! *LOL*

Okay, back to the cleaning and quilting...and hopefully a trek through the woods at Harbison State Forrest again. It's going to warm up today and the colors are just brilliant! That might be my lunch hour treat :c)

Bonnie

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My friend Lucy is nearly onboard!

I am SO SO excited! I have a wonderful quilting friend, Lucy, who lives in Haarlem in The Netherlands. She is an AWESOME quilter, and she works at a quilt shop in Haarlem called Irma's Sampler. Those of you who have been quilting for a long time might be familiar with a book by the same name...a book written by Irma herself! Well Lucy works there and is teaching classes there and does FABULOUS quilts, some in dutch fabrics which I have fallen in love with!

Lucy's blog address is http://lucyquilting.blogspot.com/ and I want you to all go over there and encourage her to post more of her gorgeous work! She has uploaded one pic of the latest quilt...she just finished the top and is starting on the quilting, and will be teaching this class at Irma's hopefully in the near future.

I'm sure I can twist her arm to be part of Quilt Mavericks with your encouragement!

Bonnie

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It's November!

Halloween passed here as mostly uneventful. A few little gremlins walking the streets with their parents, but we don't get alot of trick or treat action in our little corner, kind of a long dark culdesac, and there aren't many 'littles' at this end of the neighborhood.

I spent yesterday piecing the second student quilt for the giveaway next week. I did have 20 of these pineapple blossom blocks done, it wasn't quite enough for a lap quilt, but the thought occured to me if I added sashings, and cornerstones...that it would be big enough for the center. By the time I added borders it was just right! All that is left to do is quilt and bind it.

I've noticed something lately....not that it bothers me, but very seldom do I do fancy pieced borders! Maybe it's because the middles are so busy that I need something just to frame it in and stop the busy-ness..but also I think that by the time I am in a crunch to finish a quilt, I just don't want to put more time into the borders! *LOL* I have done some with braided borders, lots of 1/2 square triangle borders, and dog-tooth borders with equilateral triangles, and I love how they look, but unless it is really a quilt that cries out for more piecing in the border, I'm happy with the formula of either a 1 1/2", 2", or 2.5" cut strip for the inner border and then something 5" to 6" wide for the outer border to frame everything. Some Amish quilts I've done 8" borders on so I can do really fancy quilting in there, but most of the time, it's a 5" cut.

Do you find yourself in a border rut? I'm curious if many find themselves like me.

I also tend to like a contrasting binding when binding a quilt. Even if it's in the same color family as the border, I rarely bind the quilt in the same fabric as the border because it just doesn't show. How bout you guys? Contrasting binding, or binding from the same fabric as the border?

At 11:45 I have a dentist appt to fix a molar that a piece broke off of....it's not bad enough to need a crown, but it has made the space between it and the next molar big enough that food gets in there and I'm forever toothpicking it out, so it will be nice to have that space smaller.

Yesterday the weather was so nice that at about 2:30 I took buddy the golden retriever and we went to Harbison state forest to go hiking the trails. We did between 4 and 5 miles I think..the loop takes about 1 1/2 hours to do and of course it is more uphill than downhill...ask me how this is possible! It was great enjoying the sights and smells of the forest. We even saw a deer bounding through...Buddy wanted to take off after him, but a quick jerk on the leash made him give up that idea quickly.

Bonnie

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