Wednesday, March 8, 2017

On the Beach was a book I read as a teenager and I have never forgotten it; I’ve probably read it three times over the years. The original book was on Mum and Dad’s bookshelf and when we were clearing out Dad’s books it was the one book that we all would have liked to have taken home with us. That got me thinking about classic books.

Dad often purchased “the Classics” on the sale tables at Coles. Books by Dickens, Tolstoy, Eliot, and Austen came to me via him, I think mainly because no one else in the family wanted to read them. They were good stories and I’m glad I read them but I haven’t gone looking for any since Dad stopped passing them along.

I have a collection of classic books from my past on a shelf in the hallway. They include Pat of Silver Bush (my first L.M. Montgomery book), A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (from Mum and Dad’s shelf), The Sun is My Undoing (again from Mum and Dad’s shelf) and Ada Blackjack (because Dad enjoyed the North so much). On the Beach will be added to this collection, as well as a couple of others that I haven’t read yet (Icemaster, From Here to Eternity, and For Whom the Bell Tolls).

What do you consider your “classics”?

Tuesday, March 7, 2017

Since all I did yesterday was quilt, quilt, quilt there didn’t seem much point in writing about it. I’ve done the same thing today but I hate to miss too many days or I may never come back to it. I’m going to go to Maple Ridge for the last week of Spring Break to spend some time with Dylan and Taylor. There is no way my sewing machine is going with me (on the bus) so I’ve had to revamp my schedule to allow for the days I’ll be away. The new schedule has me attaching the binding (the last step by machine) on April 2nd. That cuts it close but what can you do!

I like how the quilted blocks are turning out – I just wish each block didn’t take so long. When I realized I was really going to be pushing it to finish the quilting, I could have taken an easier way out. I’m glad I didn’t. I’m following (somewhat) a suggested quilting pattern I found online. While I’m not able to do some of the fancy feathers and curlicues they have used I’m able to substitute something from my own imagination. I’m also falling back on some standard meandering – a year ago I would have been staying as far away from meandering as possible and now it is a “standard” for me. I’ve come a long way.

Here are a few of my favourite bits.

Sunday, March 5, 2017

I’m already two days behind on my quilting schedule. It is a good thing I’ve allowed some catch-up days.

When I finished quilting on Friday I was looking forward to an early finish to Saturday’s schedule and maybe even a start on Sunday’s work. As it turned out the stabilizing took way longer than I allowed for, but I still thought I could make up the time because the stabilizing also took care of the quilting for most of the medallion and all of the borders.

All my planning though didn’t allow for a sick day on Saturday. I was up most of Friday night vomiting and then trying to vomit when there was nothing left. Finally, about four in the morning I took a Gravol and managed to sleep until one in the afternoon. About that time I moved from the bed to the couch where I slept for the rest of the day. I was in bed before eight and slept all the way through to this morning.

Because of all that time spent in bed my back is really aching today. I’ve been doing some quilting but making sure I get up and move around lots. On one of my move-around breaks I walked over to the library to return a book; I never go without my library card and today I picked up two more books from their new fiction shelf. I’m really going to hate it when the library moves.

With what is left of the day I will switch to some cross stitching – different movements and a different chair might be good for my back.

Friday, March 3, 2017

I picked up my new SUV last night – my Janome SUV that is! It doesn’t do a lot of stitches but apparently it is great for free motion quilting. Purl (my current take-along machine) has a few fancy stitches but no free-motion capabilities. This new machine will allow me to quilt my smaller projects during the bee. It will also mean I can have Ruby set up for quilting a big project and still have a machine to use for something smaller that needs to get done.

And speaking of SUV’s – I wish I had one of the vehicle kind. I went out last night to go to the Guild meeting and my car was completely dead – AGAIN! There is something going on that is drawing down the battery even when it is parked in the driveway. Fortunately, so far, it has always been dead in the driveway but I’m going to buy some jumper cables to keep in the trunk in case it dies further away from home. The mechanic, who is married to the fabric shop owner, picked the car up at noon and will keep it over the weekend and into next week while he tries to sort out the problem. The last time I had the car in the shop I joked with him that I gave more money to his wife than I did to him. The bill I get this time may change that!