In the Interest of Full Disclosure

I the interest of full disclosure I have the following numbers:

(I think, according to the sidebar anyway)

4 that need binding
8 that need quilting then binding

.....and now a Red/White/Blue quilt for Cousin Karen that will need to  be finished to a top and then a backing found and quilting done and binding......whew!

And........

Alll the others on the sidebar list that need finishing in some way or other.

And you know what?  I have not done a thing in the sewing room yesterday or today.  Not a thing.

I have been dealing with CAAWS, Frank, and finding where they keep the blizzards at Dairy Queen.

Today, for example, I researched/priced/negotiated/and ordered a cage bank for the Cat Room.  This will clean up a trashy corner of their Cat Room and help them look more professional and adoptable when visitors come to look at cats.

The pictures are pre-construction and during construction.  yes, I had two construction sites i was managing at one time!  Can you say "bang your head on the wall"?

Our cats roam free in the room, but when fosters bring the off site cats in for Adoption Day they need to be separated from the territorial in house herd.  Cats can be pretty snarky with the occasional short term cat visitor and we don't need that display.

They need to look cute and cuddly, not mean and frightening!

Speaking of the twins...........

Local Woman Does Housework, Then Quilting

Debbie Nelson from Spanish Town

Ladies Auxillary

Note:  To see the photos larger, click on them to make them enlarge.


 The housework is a given, the quilting not so much.  I have errands to do but it is still difficult for me to drive.  I can neither grab the steering wheel nor spin it to make a turn.

So Monday yesterday  (on Sunday I had to meet a donor at the Little Village Restaurant, this is such a tough job!) when I had to go meet with a CAAWS donor, Frank was able to rearrange his schedule and be in town.  We had lunch at Copeland's New Orleans (I had the Eggplant Pirogue.  A "pee'-roge " is a little, flat bottomed skiff like boat that is used to pull in your crawfish or crab traps. One man can handle it since it is like the size of a canoe.) ( that way you don't have to share your crabs if you only get a couple dozen!) I guess the flatness of the pecan crusted eggplant rounds filled with crabmeat and French bread stuffing and topped with some marinated crab claws look like a little boat!  You know Popeye's Fried Chicken?  Al Copeland and my father were good friends.  Mr. Al loved to run his cigarette racing boats in Lake Pontchartrain, and my father would get sick every time!  But that was nothing that some good stiff bourbons couldn't cure!

Cats

I set the Roomba up for the front room.  And I have intentions of clearing off the counter in the kitchen. I'm have no idea how it gets so cluttered with junk.

Zig Zags

There are so many things I need to do that requires two hands,  two GOOD arms.  While my arm is getting better, I still can put no pressure on it.  Sometimes when I make a twisting movement like when opening a door knob, the pain can bring me to my knees.  And pulling on my tennis shoes did just that last night.

Oriental

Thanks to Patty the Quilt Lady's awesome suggestions I ordered some fabric that has a novel printed on it that reads in the style of Hemmingway.  awesome, indeed!

OK.  here are the three tops I completed at the retreat.  And the zig zags from Sujata Shah's book Cultural Fusion.


There is also  the Saint's quilt top but I cannot find it anywhere at the moment.  And no photos of it.  Geez.

I am pretty sure it happened!

Blue RibbonFriday Plan for Quilting and the Cats

Cali

I took the cat in early this morning to get a fluid dialysis done.  She was not a happy kitty and once again, cursed like a sailor all the way there, demanding to get let out of the crate and released.  Cali is an interesting kitty.  She will take out her frustrations on a dog when she gets home, otherwise she leaves them pretty much alone.

Whitney Dallas

Whitney Dallas would go hunt up a dog when she wanted a challenge.  All my Swissys had their noses handed back to them on occasion by that tiny cat.  And she was a huntress.  She eliminated all birds in the area of our house in less than a year and kept them gone for the next 16.  She taught all my dogs manners.  I miss that girl.

Chips

Chips was the garrulous old guy who weighed in at 22 pounds of svelte catflesh, but was as timid as a mouse.  He was beaten up by the girls regularly, and any cat who happened to know where the big guy lived.  He was not a friendly guy, but I do miss him.  He was a good guy.

Oh, yes, I am working on my Paint Chip Challenge once again.  I have gotten the blocks quilted and nearly together and now I am looking to have the borders on by this weekend.  I really wish I could show you the fabulousness of this quilt, but it will be judged at the August Meeting and no one can know it is mine.

I know there are some who have their friends keyed in to their pieces so the votes can go that way, but I  think fairness is best.  So no pictures or description until the day after.



Hopefully with a nice blue ribbon!

glen

Now for the cat.......

Cali

I have one cat left, Cali.  She is a muted Calico and a very tiny cat.  Even though she is 18 years old and in great health we still call her the kitten.  She was much smaller than the other two and younger.  Whitney Dallas and Chips the 22 pounder are both gone to Kitty Heaven now.  We are not really sure Chips actually got into Kitty Heaven, but he headed that way.

Cali has this really bad habit of sleeping between your knees at night.  It is a fight to turn over, she is not happy to be awakened by a peaceful sleeper changing position.  She has been known to bite a leg or foot to show her displeasure.

She also talks.  She say "Milk" plainly when she wants some.  She is very polite and says, "Thank You" when you let her in or out the door.  She will ask a question when you have not added more food to her bowl by lifting her voice up at the end after several syllables asking, "More food?"  It is uncanny how she can say, "Out" when you ask what she wants.

Chips

Chips would huff and puff around when he was agitated, but Cali has always cursed like a sailor, spitting out deep throated cat epithets when she is annoyed by a dog.  And she is not above taking off a nose and handing it back to the offending dog.  They all have learned to keep their noses well above striking distance.  The Bassets are not that high and both have slashes on their muzzles to demonstrate their slowness.

Cali

So last night, I fell asleep on the sofa and Frank was in the bed.....with Cali between his legs.  He has these vivid dreams all the time.  And he will talk and move according to what he is seeing in his mind dream.  Last night he was dreaming he was fighting with super heros and doing karate.  He karate chopped his evil opponent and the backed away to karate kick him.

When his foot landed in his mind dream on his evil nemesis, in the night reality he landed a solid kick on Cali.  She began to do her deep throated yowls yelling "OOOOOOUCH!  OOOOOOOOUCH!  OOOOOOOOUCH!  OOOOOOOOOUCH!"  on and on and on and on.

Cali

She continued to loudly yowl for what seemed like an eternity!  I raced back to the bedroom thinking the cat was dying.  DiNozzo was padding down the hallway, alert to the horrifying sounds emanating from the bedroom.  Chloe stopped at the door, unwilling to enter the room for fear the cat would fly at her in revenge.

OOOOOOOOOOUCH!  OOOOOOOOOOOUCH!    OOOOOOOOOOOUCH!  Cali yelled on.  Frank was trying to calm her, stroking her back, feeling her legs, looking at her head.  He finally looked at me and said, "What do I do?"

I couldn't answer him.......I was (as usual) rolling on the floor, nearly peeing on myself with laughter!

Winner announced! CATZ! made!

About 4 posts back I had a little giveaway and I would like to announce the winners.

Since only four of you loyal followers posted I think that I shall reward ALL of you with a pattern from my pattern group.   Say it, good for me for diminishing! 

Swooze, stephanie, jill and marie.  (Stephanie, DiNozzo will be in the mail as well, he ate his 9th pair of sunglasses and learned to open the cabinet that holds the doggy bones.) ( and see below for more bad behavior.)

So send me your name and address in a private email to

obed101 (at) cox (dot) net



I will add two more to the pile and you will each get one.  I need to charge up my camera from today's cat activities to take the extra pattern photos so you will have to wait to see what you won.  I thought about asking you which one you wanted but was afraid one would be so popular and three would get their feelings hurt so I will make the decision blindfolded and just stuff one into each envelope without regard for names.

That is the most fair and least work for me!  Which is what make it attractive, the least work for me part.



What an angel!





What an innocent baby.



While we were at the CATZ! class, DD Carrie stopped by the house to steal  borrow the Spot Bot.  I didn't ask what for because they have concrete floors through the house.  Hmmm.  She brought lunch with her from Taco Bell and set it in the middle of the breakfast table while she took the dogs out to pee.  She put DiNozzo and Dutch inside while she went looking for what Chloe was barking at way in the back.  She returned to no lunch.  She called me quite perturbed and said she assumed it was DiNozzo and that I needed to watch him because he ate the wrappings too and that I owed her a lunch.

I KNOW it was DiNozzo.  Dutch is the GOOD dog!  The way I see it is DiNozzo owes her a lunch so I stopped and bought a bag of dog food for her.

Here are some pictures from the CATZ! tutorial I did today.  We did have some help from the real cats.  Freida wanted to give us technical advice on cat making. 

Ann's is the blue paisley.  It makes a stunning contrast for the cat.  I think each of her cats will be a different color.  She is using some bright colors so it will be a fabulous piece when complete.  And best of all -- Ann did curved piecing with ease!  And she kept thinking it would be difficult - oh ye of little faith!

Paula decided to practice the paper piecing portion.  Hers will be all different colors as well, but her kitties will be Country Barn Cats. 

I am doing batiks leftover from the extra I bought for the BQ.  I will take a picture later when I get a whole one put together.  Remember, I was teaching too!  LOL.

Charlene was the first to finish a whole cat.  And an orange cat!  The rest of us did bits and pieces of a cat here and there.  The best part of the day was the laughing.  And the highlight of that was when Charlene cut -- not once but twice -- the wrong part of her section she had just sewn on to the foundation.  Every time I would look at her exasperated face, I would crack up again.  And you know how laughter is contagious.  Pretty soon we had everyone laughing!

Which is probably why we didn't get too many more finished!  And it wasn't because of that chocolate wine or the pasta e fagioli I made for lunch.  Or the "real made from a pumpkin" pumpkin pie.  But all that helped!

glen:  next time you'll want to come, huh!

CATS!

Here is the test block for the CATS! project I will be teaching in two weeks.  I absolutely LOVE it!  I used the freezer paper method to do the sawtooth.  And I didn't do the curved piecing like she says, I used an easier way. 

Cats just look oriental, don't they?  This one does have a tail but I drew the opposite facing tail and didn't have time to redraw before the dogs needed feeding. 

It is a good thing I tested it out first before I just started in on it.   I see that the body of the cat needs to be a different color from the sawtooth back part so you can see both his legs.  And I need to match the bottom of the sawtooth with the chest of the cat rather than the edge of the bottom when putting them together.  Little things like that.

There were several things that I can do to make it easier than the pattern. 

In fact I think the pattern intentionally makes it more difficult.  The cat picture is given in a diagram form with letters for each section of the block.  Good.

Then the pattern begins to talk about E.  There is no E!  Not mentioned in any diagram, not in the narrative, not in the description.  No where.

So I finally figured out what E was just as I was gearing up to email the pattern creator.

Thanks for making it more difficult than ever!

To top things off, I made a big mistake in cutting the BQ quilt out.  So I had to spend time this afternoon buying more background fabric.  Now I have a lot of 2 1/2 inch strips of the wrong color!

glen:  Some days you are the bug, some days you are the windshield

Organizational Wednesday

I want to promise myself that I will not come out of my quilt room without organizing something.  Anything.

Here it is nearly 11 am, and will be by the time I complete this, and I have not yet achieved that goal.

But I did sit with my dog a bit.  And I made myself a cup of coffee to sip with him.  And that was a good use of my time.He had gone out to sun a while and came in frantic about something.  Not sure what it was.

I am preparing for a paper piecing class I am teaching.  It is the precursor to a project I want to do and thought my group would like to learn a new technique.  I am going to do tessellated cats with them and then turn it into a baby quilt.  A sneaky way to get a project done from my stash! 

But they will be pleased I think to "donate" their blocks to the cause.  This is not the pattern I am using but it is a cute cat tessellation!

To the right is a quilt pattern by Jan Miller called Sawtooth Cats.  I want to make this soon.  If I get the people interested in making cats, maybe it will be sooner than later!

glen

PS:    See, I am doing anything to get out of cleaning up the quilt room.......

I want to just stay home and be

Yesterday I spent most of the day at Valerie's putting together the last of MY Charity top quilts.  It is the very same pattern as the others but we laid out the blocks in a different order.  So we now have three in three different layouts.  I love doing that!  The blue on the left is Valerie's layout.  She stepped out of the box on that one as her second charity quilt.  My black one above it all is more modern looking.  This is one of the very few I have found that looks better in person than it does in the pictures.  The picture forces you to see the crosses, while in person you see more of a lattice work in the black part.

 

And Toastmaster meetings last night.  Then this morning doctor's appointment and on to the CAAWS building.  Martha and I spent all morning cleaning up the office.  Now that "cave" is loosely called an office.  It is used to keep Patch the Cat separated from the rest of the group because they seem to dislike each other.  Now that Frank and Greg put up the new glass doors you can see into the really really messy cluttered office. 

We spent about 3 1/2 hours working.  There was a half inch of dust and enough cat hair to fashion three additional cats.  OF course Patch is semi-long haired so he had hair everywhere!

Martha and I tossed out 2 computer CPUs, 7 keyboards, 3 telephone systems, 3 boxes of Mardi Gras beads, 14 (count them) 14 old phone books and tons of old mail from the 1990's.  The place is not totally spotless but it is actually looking good! 

Now I just want to take a good bath and be left alone in my own little corner of the world -- my quiling room!

glen

What....No way!

My cat lady friend called me about 3 weeks ago and told me she had shingles.  It caught her by surprise, however when thinking about it, she knew she has been dealing with a heavy lot of stress lately.  And stress is one sure thing that brings out the shingles virus. 

Then about 3 days later, she called and told me a mutual friend also had been diagnosed with shingles.  And since they do not socialize with each other there had been no contact for several years.  An odd coincidence.

So I have been calling my cat friend every day, checking on her, being a contact with the outside world for her and generally trying to keep her spirits up while she endured the itching and pain of her shingles. 

I went to my surgeon today for my 6 months check and he said this was the most perfect job he has done ever.  He wanted to use my before and after photos to show prospective patients how wonderful they too can look.  He took numerous pictures, and I mentioned never having been in a porno shoot before!  So I guess if you see a perfect pair when considering your own surgery, they are mine!

Right before I left I asked him to look at a spot on my back, and he casually said, what do you think it is?  I said, shingles.  He agreed!

So I went to see my family guy this afternoon who also agreed.  Both assured me it is not contagious and I could not have gotten it from either friend.  But I want you to know that the three of us, even though we have not been "rubbing elbows" in the last several months, ALL have shingles. ( I wonder why they call it shingles?)

I have my anti-viral meds, I talked to my cat friend about what worked for her in the way of itch and pain reduction, and am armed with lots of my wonderful homemade baklava!

So with a few pain pills in my coffee, the baklava and I should be just fine!  And I have it all planned out, I am going to tell Frank that the doctor said I can't cook, clean anything or run errands.  I can't be under any stress, I should be in my sewing room all I want, and that I should not have to walk to get anything or let a dog in or out.  I think I can milk that for a week or so. 

glen