Lucky Me!

I won a giveaway and my prize arrived in the mail yesterday. The drawing was held at the blog By Your Hands and the hand carved crow stamp was made by Kristal from Rags-n-Tags. She has a lot of cool stuff on her blog and website - including a couple free patterns that you should check out.  She's really talented and I look forward to having fun with this. I'd like to try carving myself someday - maybe this will be the inspiration I need to get started.

This & That

My mom was here for a visit recently. She mentioned that she always uses a polyester fleece blanket to snuggle under when she watches TV or reads a book in the evenings. I convinced her that a quilt is so much nicer, so she chose a blue color pallette from my fabric stash and we worked out a design - simple appliqued hearts. I got this much done before she left to go home, and I will finish it up and send it to her at a future date - maybe for Christmas, or for her birthday in February.



She turned 81 on her last birthday and has never been to Yellowstone before, so a trip to that National Park was at the top of the list of reasons for her visit. We got to see lots of these big guys,

and of course Old Faithful performed as always, right on schedule.

This was a great time of year to go because there were absolutely no crowds or traffic jams. The weather was perfect and we really enjoyed ourselves.

I was at Sam's Club the other day and picked up a new issue of Country Home magazine, and what a surprise it was! Beautiful homes and not one single advertisement! Shocking, huh? If you haven't seen it yet, you should check it out for yourself - it's really nice.

My daughter took the new baby to have his pictures taken a few days ago and they turned out so cute I just have to share. Click here for the link to the photographer's blog where she has them posted. I can't wait to get some prints made. DD#2 had a dentist appointment last Friday so I got to spend some quality one-on-one time with the little guy while she was gone - YUM!

It's been a month since I injured my arm & shoulder stripping wallpaper and it's still giving me fits. I've started physical therapy and the therapist told me I had done damage to my rotator cuff and have a case of tennis elbow. He assures me that no surgery will be necessary, but I sure wish there was a magic wand I could wave to have me back to normal quickly!

Utah Hook-In

Yesterday was the 5th Utah Hook-in and this rug was the star of the entire day. Marianne hooked  this enormous 5' x 7-1/2' rug in about three months and it's her original design. I helped her carry it in and it is very, very heavy as you might expect. It won first place in the viewer's choice voting and I wish you could all see it in person - it's spectacular! Very graphic - hooked in a #8 cut - and the colors are wonderful!

This is the new rug that Marianne brought to work on for the day - she drew it up and hooked a little earlier that morning before making the one hour drive to the hook-in.......

........and these are the colors that will be included in it when it's finished. Love the brights!

We met at the historic Rio Grande train station in SLC - it's a beautiful old building with lots of good light and an airy lobby.



Here are some of the other rugs that were shared in the rug show.

And here are some of the rugs that we were able to enjoy 'in progress' during the day.

We organized a formal guild during the hook-in and are looking forward to more planned meetings and events, and eventually to bringing in national teachers. Our rug hooking community has grown a lot in the last few years and we'll only get bigger from here...... It was a really good day!

Name Tags

Saturday is our 5th Utah Hook-In and I offered to make name tags again. I'm not sure why I enjoy these projects so much, but I do - even though they the design changes several times from beginning to end! LOL This year I went with a fall theme and put wool pumpkins on each one. In the past I have used some vintage rubber stamps I have to do the names, but this year I just printed them out from my computer - if I had stylin' penmanship I'd hand write them! There are 33 gals signed up to attend - perhaps when we have 100 attendees (wishful thinking) it will be too much to tackle, but for now it's fun. So, without further ado, here they are.

We have some fun things planned for the hook-in and I think everyone will have a good time. One of my quilting friends will be doing a presentation about needle felting and show us some of the items she has made from thrift store wool sweaters - it's all fiber related and will perhaps increase the wooly love among our rug hooking members.

On a side note, I seem to have done some major damage to my arm from the three days I spent striping wallpaper in my kitchen. For two weeks I tried everything I could think of to get some relief from the pain, but nothing seemed to help. Finally yesterday I went to the doctor and got prescriptions for three different medications - today I am finally able to function and I almost feel like myself again. Whew! Nothing like that kind of experience to make me appreciate my normal good health!

I'm a Gramma!

My daughter had a beautiful baby boy on Thursday night - life is good!

A Few More Blocks

I got four more quilt blocks made up from the instructions shared on Cheri's blog. It's kinda nice to take a few minutes and make them up each time she posts a new design.

And I tried to do this basket block after reading Quilt Hollow and watching the Alex Anderson video she shared a link to  - the handle was a little tricky but I think I could get the hang of this after making several more.

Hubby & I have lived in our home for 30 years now, and one of the first things we did as newlyweds was hang grasscloth wallpaper in our kitchen - where it has remained all this time. However - it was looking really sad and we decided it was time to update the whole room, so I spent three entire days last week removing it as best I could. It had to be taken off in three layers - first the fibers that kinda look like burlap - then the paper backing - and finally the glue. Whew! Talk about exhausting! Never again will we have wallpaper in our house - even if it DOES come back in style! Now we need to repair damage done to the wall during the removal, then comes fresh paint.

Pickles Quilt Show

A couple weeks ago I was able to attend a small, outdoor, neighborhood quilt show. This is the second year that it has been held, and I love going to see all the quilts even though they are more cottagy than primitive. The setting is spectacular and it's so fun to see friends there! They drape the quilts over fences and clip them to clotheslines. A row of them greet you on the front porch of the house as you drive up. Joy and her group call themselves the Pickles - I can't remember the title of the book they took their name from, but it's a perfect fit. I think they meet monthly and take turns choosing which project to work on - then each of them make the same pattern using their own choice of fabrics and colors - it's fun to see how they turn out. Fun group! Here are pictures of the day.

Edited to add: Nedra told me the name of the book I was trying to think of, is the Persian Pickle Club - of COURSE! Now I remember! LOL