4th of July Memories

Thought I'd share one of my favorite 4th of July memories. Several years ago, hubby had to attend a work conference in Maryland. When he was done, the rest of the family flew out to meet up with him and we were able to explore Gettysburg & Washington D.C. together. We spent the 4th of July on the National Mall. As evening fell, we gathered with about one million other people sitting on the grass waiting for the fireworks to start. We were listening to music being pumped out of the speakers that were set up everywhere. Suddenly, when the opening strains to "The Star Spangled Banner" started playing, the entire crowd immediately stood up and put their hands over their hearts. As we listened to the music, I was covered with goose bumps, and had tears running down my face. I'll never forget it - what a special experience it was! Another highlight of the evening was the fact that we got to see fireflies for the first time ever - I'm sure the locals were laughing at us as we exclaimed over them, but oh well! LOL

Trash to Treasure

I'm a regular at the local thrift stores, like so many others in blogland. I'd like to share one of my most recent trash to treasure projects with you. Found this terribly outdated clock cupboard a few months ago - paid $2 for it - and could see the potential for something fun developing with a little work. So - first I took a razor blade to the paint on the glass door, and painted/distressed/stained the wood. Then I measured the door opening where the clock used to be, and hooked a small rug to fit right in there. I have a thing for little houses - maybe because I'm such a home body! Anyway, here are the before and after pictures of my trash to treasure experience.

In Progress

I've started a new rug hooking project - this one has been in my mind for several years. They're long skinny rugs to put on the stair risers going up into my studio. I need to make six of them, and at first I had planned to personalize each rug to reflect the members of my family. It proved to be too hard to depict hunting, fishing, 4-wheeling, snowboarding and stuff like that in a primitive manner, so that idea was scrapped. I finally decided to just use some simple folk art motifs on each rug, with the same border treatment to tie them all together. Here is a picture of the first one almost finished. The designs came from various rug hooking and quilting books that I have in my library - some had to be enlarged to fit the space - what did we ever do before computers and scanners? They sure do make life easier, huh?

A couple recent projects

I recently offered to teach a beginning quilt class to a group of women at my church, and I thought maybe 3 or 4 people would sign up. Boy was I surprised when I got a list with thirteen names on it! Realizing that the project would need to be a simple one so the beginners wouldn't get frustrated, I chose to make a Buggy Barn Star quilt. The Buggy Barn ladies use a unique method of piecing that makes precise cutting and sewing optional - with great results! I decided to make a gift of the quilt to my sister-in-law.



Then I decided to make a coordinating hooked rug to go with it. The theme was different, but I used the same color palette. The design was adapted from a free pattern published in a recent issue of Create & Decorate magazine. The purple background was a lot of fun to work with because it's not a color that I use very often in my rugs. I dyed all the wool for this project also, which was a lot of fun.

Hooray!

A couple years ago I discovered the series of books called The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith. They are so delightful - in a way that's hard to explain. There are no fast car races or crashes - there are no steamy love scenes - just a quiet, peaceful, enjoyable story with a bit of quirky humor and believable characters. Anyway, I'm so excited because I just got an email from my local library saying that my name finally came up on the list - so I'm heading out to pick it up and start reading the newest story - I know I'll enjoy it! I've heard that there is now a TV series about this book on HBO - unfortunately we don't have HBO, so I'm hoping it'll be available as a DVD on Netflix eventually.