Spinning Stars

This is one of my oldest handwork projects (there are still a couple more though!)

I started this after seeing a picture of a Spinning Star quilt in the class roster for Road To CA. I didn't take the class since something else was scheduled at the same time that I wanted to take more. But I copied out the picture for inspiration. 

It's gotten quite wrinkled over the years!

When I got to Retreat that year, one of the other ladies just happened to be working on a Spinning Star quilt...I found out where she got the template for the block, printed out the pattern and made a cutting template from template plastic when I got home. 

The idea that the Spinning Star could be seen as a flower with green leaves around it appealed to me. So, I gathered up some scraps and commended cutting. I found out really quickly the template only goes ONE direction to nest properly. I have a bunch of miss-cuts in my scrap bags,

This was in one of my Go bags for years. I only worked on it when I was out of the house until just recently when I decided it was time to finish 'er up!

It been backed with green fleece and bagged out and is waiting it's turn to be quilted. Not sure if it will get hand quilted or if I will do it by machine - probably by machine - the fleece backing is kind of odd to needle. Thinking of adding some French knots to the center of the flowers.

In hindsight, I probably should have gone with ONE green fabric for the leaves. But, I kinda like how the miscellaneous greens look too. The whole table mat is all scraps from my scrap bags.

Snowball Fights and Javalina in Tucson

What you say...where the heck did you get snowballs in Tucson? 

Well, let me tell you how!

We went to Tucson for a face-to-face Team Meeting for planning our next 13 weeks of work. There were probably around 100 of us from the applications development and support team. We also had some of the team on Zoom.

We stayed in a resort (pretty fancy!) 

The hill with cactus across from the resort

 My balcony

Had some lovely meals there too - I had swordfish one night and it was superb! Appetizer was figs stuffed with blue cheese - those were yummy! 

The leader of the Team Meeting said she always wanted to have a snowball fight in Tucson  -  she found you can purchase faux snowballs! They are made of some sort of cottony material and don't hurt when thrown. She had a bowl of snowballs on each table and we had great fun tossing them around.

We had a great meeting, got lots of tasks created in the planning software.

One night when we went back to the resort and pulled into the underground garage,  the driver of the car suddenly exclaimed 'PIG!' Sure enough, there was not only one javalina (the kind of wild pig that is common in Tucson), there was a WHOLE troop of them!

I told the front desk as I went up to my room - javalina can be dangerous if confronted.

South Padre Island

 Aggh.. it has been a long time since I posted anything, yet again. Sorry!

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I started work at an aerospace company in 1985, right before I graduated from USC (Master of Liberal Arts) and worked there for nearly 10 years, until the programming department was outsourced. I worked for the company that got the outsource contract for another 27 years, supporting the same customer. I finally had the chance to become 'A Real Girl' when the customer decided to employ me directly! I switched jobs on my birthday this last year and one of the things that came with the job was 50 hours of vacation. Now at this company you have to use your vacation before the end of the year - if you have time left at the end of the year, you can only save up to 40 hours and those have to be used by March of the next year. So what to do with my 50 hours?

We decided to investigate the southwest part of Texas (we have explored the northeast, the southeast and central so far). Plane flight to Austin the day after Thanksgiving and then we started our exploring. One of the things that was highest on our list was visiting Starbase in the very tippy bottom of the state.  We made it down there just before sunset and decided we liked the area a lot. 

One of the Starships

Sunset at Starbase

South Padre Island is near  to Starbase as the crow flies, but to get to it from Starbase means a 35 mile journey. We were looking for someplace to spend the night and decided we wanted to be near the water. We found a hotel with beach access and headed there.

View from our room on the fourth floor - you can just make out the water. The guy at the front desk said they USED to have full beach view, until the building in the back was put up.

Walkway to the beach

 Port Isabel Lighthouse

 From Port Isabel, you take the Queen Isabella Bridge. You can just make out Starbase (it was foggy a lot!)

We liked it so much that we spent most of the rest of our vacation days on South Padre, though we did take jaunts out to the surrounding area. It was fairly hot compared to the beach! We liked Los Fresnos and Harlingen. We explored Brownsville and Edinburg, but they are a bit noisy!

There was an amusement area. Tucked into a corner was this amazing sandcastle display.

I spent some time sewing up the Winding Ways blocks from my Go bag. I actually finished all 9 of the blocks and sewed them into a top. (It's going to be a table mat)

We went down to the beach every day, sometimes more than once a day.

View of the Gulf of Mexico.

Collected lots of sea shells.

I can identify most of them - there are several cockle shells, several oysters (the outsides of several look like they are rocks, but turn them over and you see they are really oysters), a partial mussel shell, a partial whelk shell, a baby's ear, a blue-edged scallop, a sundial, a clam shell, a lettered olive, a bonnet shell - could be a white scotch bonnet which the identification pages say is pretty rare, and a half-naked pen shell. 

There is a wee orangish cockle shell on the bottom right that has a hole - evidently Moon snails like to latch onto other mollusks and liquify the owner for their dinner.  

My favorite is the lettered olive - it has such an interesting surface - very polished and smooth. The pen shell is the most delicate - it traveled home inside the large oyster shell at the top. 

I need to find a way to display them. Probably need to get a shadow box.

And we made it back to Starbase before we left. Amazingly we got there just as the road was closing for the movement of the launch vehicle - the rocket part that will lift the Starship into space, back to its hanger. The guard was so excited!  We pulled over on a side road and got out just as it was passing by. It's HUGE!

Video of the launch vehicle being moved - not sure if this will work in the published version of this post - I can't get it to run in the preview. We shall see!

We went back up to Austin the day before our flight home so we would be 'in the area' and not have to rush to the airport. (We learned that lesson when we went to central Texas a few years ago..it was quite the wild ride and we were so frazzled when we got on the plane) We took a drive north of Austin to see more of the Hill Country. Since it was Fall, there were lots of gorgeous trees.

We want to go back to South Padre!

Trip to Washington

We drove up to Washington in May, to see our son, his wife and our new grandson.

We went via a different route up this time, so it would not seem totally like 'Groundhog Day'.

One of the side trips we went on was to Lassen Volcanic Park. It was too early for the park to be open since there was still a large amount of snow. But we got to see the first lake. 

It was pretty cold and rainy! We decided we really needed to get new windshield wipers, so we stopped at the nearest WalMart. And were we ever glad we did - most of the next couple of days it was either raining or spitting. We drove under a rainbow!

We saw lots of cool scenery.

and we finally got to meet the little man!

Son and his family live in a house with this view out their front window:

Isn't that the most gorgeous view? I adore the lilac bush...and the color combination is so pleasant.

Heading back home we saw some more interesting scenery - the apple trees and pear trees were in bloom

Did not find what kind of trees these were but loved the stand:

There were vineyards

and mountains

When the kids were little we went on a trip up to Washington and one of the amazing sights we saw were these colorful trucks by the side of the road. I always wanted to get a picture of that sight, but when we came back from that trip, it was dark out. I kind of remembered where it was - Black Butte, but wasn't really sure. When we saw the sign for Black Butte I got my camera ready and lo and behold...there they were! This was my chance to get my shot, and I think it turned out great!

From the internet, these are water tanker trucks for fire fighting that go all over the West. The guy delights in painting each new truck a different color.

Winding Ways Blocks

One of the things I picked up at Retreat was a project bag with several hand pieced winding ways blocks, already cut out pieces for several more blocks and the templates. I am having a blast sewing them up.

I made up kits of enough pieces to make a block. They are in my Go bag.

I had to cut a few more fabrics to make full block sets. Had a few left over. They were sitting on my ironing table. So I played with them. And sewed them up into this:

What is it, you say? I don't know! It could be on the label when I am done,

Bloomin' Bowl

Bloomin' Bowl

The working title of the bowl of fruit and flowers... not sure if that is it's final name, but I like this one better than the others.

The applique is done. I have some embroidery to do and some more accents with Inktense pencils.

Then I have to think about how to quilt it. Its not a huge wall hanging, so it likely will be done by hand.

This is been a long project!

20th Anniversary, Valley of the Sun Retreat

This was the 20th anniversary of the Arizona Valley of the Sun Retreat!

G drove me to Arizona so I could take Mama's Bernina - a 930 Record. I learned how to change the bobbin, how to thread the machine and sewed a lot. By time the Retreat ended, I was good friends with Nina.

It was held in a different hotel this year - last year was also not in the normal quilting retreat location. The old retreat location has been closed and even Google Maps does not indicate there is even a hotel at its old address. No one can tell us if its being renovated or if its going to be torn down. It was a perfect spot for us though!!

This hotel, the retreat room is much smaller. So we had two rooms, one for the sewing machines and one for the cutting mats and ironing boards.

Back to Blogging

Its been a long time since I posted anything. 

It was a long, painful slog thru Mama and Daddy's estate but its mostly finished now.

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I just had one of those 'when you are looking for something else and find something that you knew you had and have been looking for for a lonnnngggg time' events just a few minutes ago...

I was looking for a gift box for a present. Did not find the right size box. But I did find my collection of Invisfil bobbins and threads that I have been looking for for over a year! One of my sewing buddies and I bought two each of the 6 spool collections (they were pretty pricey even when we bought them a number of years ago.) Two boxes are pastels, two boxes are jewel tones. She took all of them and ran bobbins off each one...so each of us have half a spool of the ones we bought and a bobbin of the ones we didn't. Cannot believe where they were...how does that happen?!! Had my Sewline glue pen and my Bohin fabric pencils in there too. I must have been doing some applique project and put all the tools in the bag, then stuffed the bag in my gift bag storage. What possessed me to put it there, we will never know.

Cannot tell you how many times I went thru all my project bags and all the nooks and crannies in my sewing room, looking for them.

In Memorium

My Daddy passed away yesterday...my Mama is not expected to last more than another day. Theirs was a long and happy marriage - they married in 1952.  Unfortunately, COVID paid a visit to their house and they could not fight it off. 

Sis came down with symptoms first, got a COVID rapid response test and it lit up almost immediately. Sis was Mama and Daddy's primary caretaker. When COVID hit, she restricted the number of folks coming in to the house, but unfortunately, something got thru her gauntlet and infected first her, then my parents. Since both parents were on hospice care, there were a bunch of medical folks that came to assess and help with their care. They also had a caretaker come in for a few hours so if Sis had to do something out of the house, she scheduled it during that time. Sis did not actually go anywhere around any people since March when the first quarantine hit - mostly she drove her car for a few miles to keep the battery charged. What was the source of infection? We will probably never know. Not one of the medical staff seemed ill nor was reported to be later out with COVID.

Sis was still trying to care for my parents with a serious case of COVID - she had a bad headache, fever, body aches and stabbing sensations...and almost passed out every time she had to get up to care for either of them. The final straw was when the caretaker got COVID, leaving Sis to mange by herself. Her daughter came to help and we hope she does not come down with COVID. I would have tried to help out but I have back issues that would not let me shift either parent, I am immunocompromised and in the age range where bad COVID stuff is harder to fight off.

Their passing is not unexpected - they were over 90 and in poor enough health to be on hospice. It's just sad that this virus did them in. 

I owe a lot to my parents, not just for giving me life and a happy childhood, but for many other things, tangible and intangible. They gave me the best sister.

My Daddy made me many tools for my sewing room. Mama gave me the love of sewing and designing. They always encouraged my sewing endeavors and were genuinely impressed by my quilts.

Me as a baby with Mama and Daddy

I will miss them. A lot. My heart is broken at this point.

New Year's Sewing (and Cooking!)

Starting to work on my New Year's goals!

One of my goals is to learn ruler work. So, off to the Amazon Shopping Mall to see what they offer...lo and behold, I found the Westalee folks DID create a version of the ruler foot for the Singer Slants!!! Oh my gosh...I ordered that so quick - cashed in a few gift cards and its on its way - should be here in a couple of weeks - I think it might have to come all the way from Australia! Now I should be able to use Jenny Lind to learn ruler work. Comes with the arc template and Stable Tape (I think that goes on the ruler to keep it from sliding- but I will know better once the package arrives.) Yippety Skippety!!!

So to keep busy until that arrives (waiting with bated breath!), I am working on the secret project for Retreat. 

Since I can't show that...I will show my Hoppin' John that I made for lunch!

It was delicious!

My variation has black eye peas, wild rice, diced tomatoes, a carrot, some celery, a can of mushrooms & chopped shallot cooked in chicken stock...seasoned with curry powder, garlic, parsley and rosemary...topped with fresh green onion...