Sunday, September 4, 2016

When we left for the Sunshine Music Festival yesterday morning I was thinking, “I know there will be music but will there be sunshine?”. I dressed warmly with long pants and long sleeves with a sweater and blanket for the evening; the sun shone most of the day but I was only feeling too warm for a brief period of time. I went to the festival only to see Jill and Matthew Barber; Jill is one of my favourite singers and I’d heard and liked one of the songs she sings with her brother. I had to sit through a lot of acts I didn’t care for until it was their turn. They didn’t disappoint and, thanks to Elizabeth, I have them in my iTunes playlist.

There were a couple of other acts that interested me. Iskwé is an Irish/Cree/Dene woman with a very powerful voice and message. I’ve learned not to purchase CDs at festivals because I seldom listen to them afterwards but I was very tempted by her performance. The last group of the day, Jack Garton and the Demon Squadron, were interesting. Garton handled all the vocals as well as playing the accordion and trumpet (one handed) all at the same time! It was getting quite cold so we left before the group finished but it was a fun sound.

I finished the handwork on my cards this morning – I’ve been doing a few stitches over the last couple of days while I sit and have coffee in the morning. Pat helped me find a suitable arrangement for my Blossoms and I have the sashing on the blocks done. I have come up with an alternate option for sashing from what the pattern suggests so I need to check that out with Pat to see what he thinks. I also got the centre circle attached to my Colour Wheel so it has been a productive day. There is still plenty of day left though so I’m going to get to work on some cross stitching.

Can a day get any better than stitching and good music?

Friday, September 2, 2016

As a finish-it-up Friday project I pulled out the colour wheel I pieced when we were in France. I thought it was ready for quilting but realized I needed to do some appliqué stitching on it first. Once that was done I took it downstairs to the kitchen island to sandwich and pin. Some (actually most) people suggest I use too many pins but I can’t seem to stop myself!

From the class instruction I knew that I was going to do some straight lines. My batting calls for quilting every four inches so I had to do some extra lines but they went very quickly. I amazed myself by getting the sleeve and the binding stitched on before running out of energy.

All that is left now is the circle in the centre (we haven’t agreed yet on a colour), a label and hand stitching the binding (I’ll add it to my ever growing pile). Hopefully everything will get done this weekend.

I can hardly believe I have an actual (almost) finish!

Tuesday, September 1, 2016

How can it be September already? Although, if I look out my window, I might guess it was January; it has been cloudy and showery all week but today we actually have rain. It won’t be a very nice weekend for the music festival and I’m a fair weather fan so if it isn’t nice out I won’t go.

I’ve been working almost all day getting ready for the Guild meeting tonight. I didn’t do any work on the Library documentation all summer so there were new books to add to various lists, new lists to print, and inventory books to update. My library committee partner will be away for a good portion of the fall so I had to decide what books I’d set out on my display table tonight, as well as write my report on the blog and Facebook page. We have a quilt show meeting before the main meeting tonight and I still have the boutique forms to print off. I’m not heading the committee but the person in charge asked me to print them off so she could review and edit them. That sounds like there will be more computer work for me to do in the future!

I would have liked to get at some Cranberry Hall paper today but I’ve decided I’d rather do my vacuuming – so you know how much I enjoy the Cran Hall work! When that is done I’ll spend some time doing the hand stitching on the latest cards.

Wednesday, August 31, 2016

I really wanted to get my stack of cards finished today but I didn’t manage it. I have a stack of hand stitching to do, two tops done and another top that I didn’t even get started. I’m not sure why I didn’t get them all done, but I do know there was a flurry of Cranberry Hall e-mails this morning that distracted me. By the afternoon I was making some really dumb mistakes and, had I called it quits earlier, I might have managed to get closer to meeting my other goal.

My cross stitching goal for August was to have all but the backstitching done on this. I almost made it and I’ll add it to my September goal which was to get this panel finished (I still need to do the charms). On the positive side though I was very pleased that the lines across the bottom and down the right side lined up!