So many hobbies!

More quilting

 

This is pretty much all I've been working on this week and I'm happy to say I'm almost done.  As you can see, I've had help.  I've got maybe another hour or so of quilting still to do then I'll trim the edges and work on the binding.  I need to buy some black Kona cotton so that means a quick trip to Joann this weekend. 

Speaking of the weekend, I've got a full one planned.  Friday night with the girls, Saturday a spin-in and Sunday morning, a planning session to discuss our upcoming trip to Maryland for the wool festival.  Sheri, Rhonda and I leave next Thursday for a 3 day, 4 night camping trip for the MDSWF.  The long-range forecasts say it's going to rain but I'm hoping that'll change.  Of course, in my opinion, rain will be better than the steaming, hot weather we had last year.  I thought I was going to melt.

Have a great weekend everyone!

The quilt is done!

 

I took this guy to Cancun with me and finished sewing down the binding.  I love how it's turned out which surprises me because I was so not impressed with the colors while it was just a top.  It's 45"X56" so perfect for a throw or for young person.

 

The back turned out better than I thought it would, too. 

 

I've put it up for sale in my Etsy store, which may be optimistic on my part but I have to do something with all these quilts I keep making.  I certainly can't keep them all and maybe this way I can use the sale to pay for the fabric and batting for yet another quilt.  It seems like a good plan to me.

I'm home

Cancun was lovely and we had a great time.  I was ready to come home and see my babies but sooo not ready to go back to work.  Oh, well.  Here's some pics:

This was the view out our livingroom windows:
 

The water is even bluer than this picture shows.  It was gorgeous!  The hotel we stayed at, The Royal Cancun, had the world's best lemonade and they had fantastic nachos grande.  So very yummy:

 

I could have eaten these every night for dinner... and lunch, they were that good.  I might even go so far as to say they were the best nachos I've ever had.

On Thursday, my dad and I hopped on a tour bus for the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza.  The ruins were amazing but they got us there at the absolute hottest part of the day.  It was 90 in the shade and 90% humidity.  The only thing that kept me from melting in a puddle was the occasional cloud that blew by and an intermittent breeze.  I quickly abandoned the tour portion, which is too bad because it was fascinating, and wandered around taking pictures.  I never would have made it had I stayed with the tour.  Heat exhaustion was a concern although I made it back to the Maya Land Hotel sweaty but okay.

One of the first things you see is El Castillo (there's a Mayan name for the structure but for the life of me, I can't remember what it is - the Spaniards named it El Castillo and that's the one I remember).  It's rather impressive:

 

You used to be able to climb everything but they closed them a few years ago.  Apparently, people would climb to the top and then chisel off the carvings to take as souvenirs.  It blows my mind how stupid and selfish people can be and how it never occurred to them that taking away carvings nearly 2000 years old might be a bad thing.  These people ruined it for the rest of us.  It would have been cool to climb to the top and look out, seeing things the way the Mayan people saw them so long ago. 

This is one of the detail carvings from the Ball Court:

 

I don't know what it means but it's pretty cool.

On the way to Chichen Itza, we stopped at a rest area that doubled as a spot to buy lots of tourist stuff (I bought a t-shirt).  There was a young guy working a loom like a pro:

 

He had this system set up that shot the shuttle back and forth while he worked the foot pedals that moved the __________ up and down (sorry, can't remember the word...).  Naturally, I forgot to take a picture of some of his finished work.  Oh, wait, I've got another pic of him, I just need to go find it...

 

It's a better shot of the loom and you can see some of his blankets behind him.  I'm assuming he wove them but I'm not a weaver myself and I can't tell if the blankets are possible with this loom.  They're gorgeous regardless.  Sorry I don't have a better picture of the blankets for those of you who are interested in such things.

I managed to finish sewing the binding on the green/copper quilt - picture later this week - and it got a bath today.  Yes, it fit just fine in my suitcase since it isn't that big a quilt.  And I got about 3/4 of an inch knitted on one of my pairs of socks, mostly on airplanes.  The socks will be coming to work with me so I can work on them during breaks and lunch.

Now I have to scrounge up something for dinner.  I wish I had some nachos...

A quick post

My blog will be quiet for the next week.  I'm going on vacation to Cancun with my parents.  Don't worry, I'll take lots of pictures.  The camera is already packed.  In the mean time, here are a few pics of my quilt-in-progress.  The quilting is about half done.

The front:

 

The back:
 

And a detail shot of the quilting:

 
There will be similar quilting at right angles to what's already there.

Nothing to show

All I've been doing is quilting and until it's done, a few more quilted lines just isn't that exciting and not terribly blog-worthy.  My only excitement this evening was changing my sheets because Tyr helped me.  She managed to get under the fitted sheet and proceeded to move around looking like a big mole.  I managed to get her out but then Galen showed up and they started a wrestling match in the middle of the bed.  How did I manage to live so long without kittens?  They always seem to be happy.

Painter's tape...

it's not just for painting anymore!  It's also highly useful for quilting:

 

My big job for Sunday was to get my taxes done.  It took nearly 4 hours, but they're done.  The rest of the day was spent watching movies, taping my quilt and quilting. 

Today was so beautiful!  It was nearly 80F and I had the doors and windows open.  It was wonderful.  There was a breeze coming through the house and the cats spent the day in the open windows having a sniff fest.  It's dark out as I type but I'm loath to close the windows and doors.  It's been so nice, the thought of closing out the air makes me feel claustrophobic.  I can hardly wait for it to be beautiful like this all the time.  Soon.

I've been lazy

There's been a lot of movie watching and not a lot of crafting.  I guess I needed a break.  It doesn't help that I haven't seen the sun in days and days.  I don't do well under cloud cover.

I've done a little bit of work.  I put this quilt sandwich together and started pinning but that's as far as I've gotten.

 

Remember this one?  I finished the top of this quilt last summer and it's just been hanging around waiting to be completed.  (In case you're wondering, the movie on the telly is "The Chronicles of Riddick.")  I don't know if I'll get around to doing the quilting this weekend.  My spinning Guild meeting is Saturday and Sunday I need to do my taxes.  I really don't like doing taxes.  It seems to take forever.  <sigh>

 

Awww!

The last of the decluttering

Saturday I had a garage sale to get rid of all of my rubber stamping and card making stuff.  I only had 4 shoppers but managed to get rid of all but two boxes full.  I gave a bunch of acryllic and fabric paints to a friend.  This morning, I took the two boxes to Salvation Army and put my condo back in order.  It's amazing but my place physically feels lighter.  It's wonderful.  Oh, and Yen, I got rid of a few more books, too.

I'm afraid I didn't do a darn thing crafty this weekend, unless you count making cookies or ironing newly washed fabric.  I think I needed a crafting break.  Oh, I did design another quilt but it'll be a little while before I can turn the design into something real.  At the very least, I need to wait until payday to buy more fabric.  I washed a small handful of a Finn lamb fleece and it's gorgeous!  Pure white with a lovely crimp.  I'm going to have pull that fleece out and get it scoured.  Since I can't figure out how to not need a job, I wish I didn't need to sleep.  I could really put that wasted 8 hours of sleep to good use.  I have far more that I want to do than I have hours in the day.  Hey, maybe I could clone myself and Clone and I could switch off going to work.  That would free up some time.  I'll have to get right on that.