Don’t even say “but it’s a good kind of hurt”...

...or I’ll show you what hurt is! ;-)

So Thursday I sewed for 3 hours, Saturday I sewed for about 6 hours. Sunday I got the bright idea to break down boxes in the garage from our move, wedding gifts, and things we’ve purchased. Several of them were already broken down (thank goodness), but it was still quite a bit of work. The outcome of that effort is a corner of the garage with donate stuff, a 4’x8’ space of broken down boxes to offer on Freecycle (plus four boxes of packing material), three boxes of Styrofoam for the garbage (I HATE THAT), a box of stuff plus some bundled cardboard for the recycle bin over the next couple of cycles. AND you can see more of the floor in the garage than not, and that’s been a long time coming. Unfortunately, I now feel stiff and tired, and I think I’m trying to come down with something as my face is hot and the rest of me is cold. :-p

In other news, in preparation for Bill’s parents’ arrival, I’ve been told I need to clear the pool table since Bill’s dad likes to play pool. Can I just gather the blocks and chuck them in the craft room?? Of course not! ;-) I’m putting as many as I can on the design wall, and finding out that I need to plan a little better. I counted the blocks (I’m sure there’s a formula for figuring out blocks on point quantity, but I don’t know it, so I did it the old-fashioned way), decided how many of the “pretty” blocks I have, and have a plan. My design also took a turn, inspired but another pattern I saw. I can’t lay it out exactly like that design, but it does help with the focus. I’ll still have some blocks to put together and to take apart and put together another way, but I know I’ll be much happier with the layout once I’m done. :-) So that’s one of my projects for the week.

I showed Bill my 1/4 compass that I did Thursday night (with a LOT of help) - he was impressed. Now I just have to get on that track, but I should have time in the evenings next week since Bill’s parents will be staying with other relatives during the week. I’ve written down what I can remember on how to do the technique... we’ll see how much I remember when I go to do it by myself. ;-) And the ideas are coming together for that quilt... it's been nice to "think out loud" with Bill since the quilt is for his brother and he has a vested interest. :-)

I guess that’s it for now... I really just wanted someone to whine to about my achin’ bacon. :-p

Blessings!
Kristin

News and notes and nattering

My current afore-mentioned project for which I now have a makeshift design wall (see previous post) is on hold. I’ll tell you, however; a wall vs. a floor makes a HUGE difference!!!! I have blocks I’m ripping apart now for various reasons (too much of one color, needs more cowbell (inside joke), etc). I have a lot of those done and after other things are out of the way (or I get frustrated beyond belief with my emergent projects), I get to make NEW blocks out of the old blocks! :-) Sound tedious? It is. But this quilt is for ME (okay, our spare room). I love the fabrics (and probably chopped them all too small, but there’s nothing I can do about that now) and I’m flying without a pattern for the first time, so I want to take a little more time and planning so it can be as close to “I like it” as I can get it.

Why is it on hold, you ask????? Mom gave me the baby quilt to appliqué (not going as well as I had hoped - the design isn’t terribly forgiving ), so that’s one emergent project. What’s the other one, you ask?? So even though I have this nice list of projects that I actually look at now and then, I FORGOT that I wanted to make a quilt for Bill’s brother for Christmas. WHOOPS!!! The theme is pirates (arrrrr...) and I have a large panel, so that helps TONS for reducing the amount of the piecing I have to do. One thing I want to do (about the only thing I’m sure I want to do) is to put compasses in the corners, so I’m going to be doing some paper piecing. In fact, I’ll be starting that tonight at Girls' Night Out with Roxanne Carter. I get to “hog” Roxanne for a little while since she said a while ago that she knew an easy way to make them. So easy even I can do it? That remains to be seen.

Speaking of Bill’s family (and I was, but you probably forgot by now because I ramble), his parents are going to be here October 10-22. We’re not going to get all our pictures hung, so we’ve got to get them all out of the spare bedroom :-) and get that looking more like a bedroom than a storage room. We only have a few décor touches left in that room, so that’s cool!

Further décor update: The kitchen was the first room we decorated since it had been updated already (the only room in the whole house)... that’s been done since last year. The master bedroom walls are now fully populated (don’t even talk to be about window treatments in ANY portion of the house yet! :-p The spare bedroom walls are done as well, so we’re making progress. We’ve got one wall of the living room done (two to go), and some of the photos we want in the hallway. We’re hoping for more family pictures from Bill’s siblings’ weddings - we have two (plus one from our wedding). Bill’s Mom said that it took a while before they thought of taking family pictures, but we’ll see what she comes up with to bring out with her that we can copy. We have one picture hanging in the dining room... how sad is that? ;-) Hopefully we can handle hanging up the five remaining things that are going on that wall before the company arrives. There might be a few accent mirrors might be added to that workstatement, depending on how it looks when we get the main things hung). Then we have a whole other wall to deal with in the dining room (let’s hear it for windows!), but we don’t have frames for all those prints as of yet. I have an idea where the bathrooms are going, but they’re a little harder since they haven’t been updated since 1977 (no lie), so I have to “make” my desired décor look right with a butterscotch toilet and funky linoleum. ;-) I’m pretty much ignoring that in my decisions, and there’s a shelf I want to use that I CANNOT find anywhere!! I thought I’d seen it recently (before I wanted to use it), but I can’t find it again. I guess I’ll have to spend some time in the garage and see what I can find. Dumb dumb dumb since one part of the ensemble was in a craft room box, one was in a family room box, and who knows where I saw the shelf. *think*think*think*

Another note in the décor realm, I am SOOOOOOOOOOOO proud of myself. I bought some 5x5 beveled mirrors and some 5x5 wood frames, and guess what I made? Accent mirrors!!! I’m such a smarty pants!!! ;-)

And speaking of smarty pants, No, Jana, I DON’T have pictures yet. :-p But feel free to keep bugging me... that’s the only way I’ll get to it eventually.

That’s it for now... stay tuned (ha). ;-)

Blessings!
Kristin

Monday, Monday

Okay, a few Monday Mondays ago. ;-)

You know how I said September 5-7 I had been on a quilt retreat? Well, I’ll share a little more about that and about the day after. To give you an idea where my head was at and after the retreat... There were a couple women there that were... well... they don't think before they speak and I was in a "sensitive" mood, so even though I got a lot done and enjoyed chatting with a few people that I normally don't get the chance to, I was somewhat disappointed and frustrated by the whole experience. In addition, a missionary friend of mine was going to be in town from Oregon and had asked me a few weeks prior if I would open my home for an open house on Monday the 8th for people that couldn't come to the other one she was having over the weekend. So Sunday night after the retreat and all day at work Monday I'm still frustrated from this retreat, and then I'm going to open my home to people I don't even know. I'm grumpy, I'm tired, and why didn't I just say I couldn’t host? :-( Bill was sweet enough to clean up the house, but I still had some "decluttering" to do in the rooms I thought people might see. So knew I had to get home, run around getting things put away and neatened up and just plain detoxify my attitude so I wouldn't be a total wench when people arrived. I didn't know what time Karen would be there, but I knew that she had told people the open house was from 6:30 to 8:30. Two hours, and I'm not the focus. I can handle it. I hope. Bill had a meeting he was going to that night (which was okay), so when I got home at 5:15, I knew I had to scramble - just me and the kitty. ;-) The first thing I did when I got home was check the mail. There was an envelope in the box addressed to me (ME!) from my SIL Kathy that had a sticker on it that said "God Loves You." I can't tell you how much I needed that at that moment - God is so good!! I just cried (and I cried as I wrote this many days later, just telling the story) and thanked God so much for His timing and for a wonderful sister-in-law. ;-) I have no idea why she didn't send it to Bill and me together (except maybe because I specifically asked her for CDs of pictures from the family reunion in August).

Once Karen got there (with gifts! I was so surprised and blessed!) with the food and her presentation materials, we were visiting until other people arrived. I told her that I was a bit out of sorts from the weekend (sniping women and not enough sleep), and then I showed her the wonderful envelope I got in the mail that day that blessed me so much. I knew (or assumed I knew) what it was, so I hadn't opened it (I was running around most of the time before Karen got there anyway). She encouraged me to open it (she couldn't believe I hadn't), and there were the CDs and a nice long note written to me (to ME!). I didn't take the time to read it then, but read the note later (more than once). Again, I’m so grateful for Kathy, and how God has blessed me through her!

To finish the open house story, no one ended up coming to the open house... and that's how God wanted it. Karen and I had a great chat (which we hadn't done for a while, and not terribly often at that). She stayed late enough (9pm or so) that she was able to meet Bill, which she had really wanted to do, so that was very cool. I got to communicate with Karen on more of a personal level and learned more about her than her ministry newsletters gave (though she almost always throws in personal happenings in her life in addition to ministry updates). Even though I was pretty tired after she left, it was so glad that I hadn't told her "sorry, I can't" when she asked for me to open my home, and very glad no one else had shown up (for a couple reasons). I'm a lousy hostess - the most talent I have is setting tables and things like that - I'm not even bright enough to offer a guest a glass of water, and I was so thrilled to have Karen “all to myself”. I wish I had know at the outset how nice that evening would be (even though Karen had to ask for her own iced tea, hee hee)... but then I probably wouldn’t have been blessed so greatly by Karen, Kathy, and God as I was.

Blessings,
Kristin

Wow! Look at this! Three updates in two days!! (Don’t get used to it, LOL)

Hi, all!

I just wanted to let you know how my quilt project is going. I went to a quilt retreat September 5-7. I was working on a modified (slice and dice twice) nine patch block. Okay, more than one block. ;-) I’ve been working on these at Girls' Night Out with Roxanne Carter for a while, and making some progress, but it was awesome to be able to work on them for an extended period of time. By the time I left the retreat Sunday afternoon, I had 236 6” blocks trimmed and ready to play with. I had a few (less than a dozen) that the seams didn’t line up (1/4” or greater), but I kept them in case I found out at some point that my pattern would hide such defects.

Once I got home, I laid out a bunch of blocks on the pool table, fussing and mussing to see what configuration I might like to pursue on a larger scale. I decided early that they looked better on point, so at least one decision was made. I waded through a few more flips and flops and got something I thought I was going to like. Well, the pool table is hardly bed-sized (at least not the size of the bed it’s going on), so I decided the best place to play with the blocks was on the spare bed. That’s where it’s going, so why not? ;-) Well, that worked for a while, but then I figured out that blocks don’t hang too well vertically. :-p

My next epiphany was to take a queen-size sheet downstairs and put the blocks on there. The quilt will be about the same size as the sheet (except a little longer). I felt like a real smarty until the sheet kept getting lumps in it, even though I had taped it down. *sigh* So now I’ll be transferring the blocks to the carpet and see if that gets me anywhere.

I have a good handle on size, but I’ll need to get the whole thing laid out and then figure out how well it blends. I didn’t really plan for anything but random as I was making all the nine patches, but I don’t do random well. I’ve already decided what the outermost blocks are going to be, keeping in mind the fabric I’m going to use for the setting triangles and the border (I don’t want to have the same fabric bumping up against the border - I’m retentive that way). As of last night, I had the same number of blocks side to side and end to end, but the corners didn’t want to line up. Okay, the last corner didn’t want to line up. I’ll blame the wrinkles in the sheet which will hopefully go away once the sheet is gone. It also might be the fact that I didn’t do one row at a time - I did the outside blocks first (just like the puzzle that it is), and I might not have hit 90 degree angles on all my blocks. Now that I know what goes where on the outside, I can start row by row and make everything line up (ha). I also noticed in my playing that I missed squaring up a block or two. If I were smart, I’d have my small mat and tools with me so I can trim them on the spot... we’ll see if I end up being that smart.

I’d love to tell you I’ll post a progress picture, but I took a picture to show my mother “where it was going” and it turned out so yucky. :-p With flash, without flash... Blah. Maybe on the floor it will be better (I took that one when it was on the bed). We’ll see. I’m sure the camera won’t do the fabrics justice, but maybe I can show you something half-decent. :-)

Well, tonight is our 10-month wedding anniversary ;-) so Bill and I are going to picnic in the park and enjoy the weather, the water, and the mountains, plus some pizza pizza. ;-) Kind of an unconventional picnic item, but when you have sandwiches for lunch every day, it doesn’t sound to appealing for dinner, no matter what the atmosphere.

Toodles for now!!

Blessings,
Kristin

You can learn a lot by a walk in the rain

I had an errand take an interesting turn on a certain Wednesday afternoon in August. Please indulge me as I plead a little drama here.

I decided a while ago that I wanted mirrored closet doors for the spare bedroom. I found what I wanted at a reasonable price at Lowe's, but my parents were with us at the time, so I couldn't fold the back seats down. So, smarty little me had some errands to run after a dentist appointment and before meeting a friend, so I went to buy the doors. It's been a while since I've had to do anything on this scale by myself for a while (if ever), so I was a little out of practice. But, I felt victorious (or was that extremely naïve?), so away I went!!

I know from experience that Lowe’s does not put carts inside the store. So on my way into the store, I grabbed a flatbed, soaking wet from the rain. This will become relevant later.

I almost didn’t find what needed... the only doors in the size and color I needed were behind the display. Those display doors don’t stay swung the other (“open”) direction very well. I’ll also have to check the packaging to find out how much the doors weigh... I’m guessing 40-50lbs, but that could be the drama talking. ;-) (Note: The weight was not on the packaging, so I’ll never know if I’m a wimp or an amazon.)

So I get the wet flatbed cart with the door to the cashier, and after a few minutes of not being able to find the barcode :-\ I pay for the doors and she asks if I want help out. I thanked her but declined, telling her that it would probably be counterproductive since I’m a control freak (hey, it probably gave her something to talk about to her coworkers - I get to be the sarcastic snotty woman. :-) What I didn’t tell her is that I have only seen one Lowe’s employee (EVER) that had any sort of brains or customer service savvy, and it’s never been the dud(e)s that help you load heavy stuff into the car. One guy even danced passed me and my flatbed while I was there... no eye contact, no hello, no excuse me, just a little “you’re in my way, fat broad” dance.

Background: Bill went to get a BBQ grill from Home Depot a few months ago. I didn’t go with him on purpose (note the “control freak” comment above), and I have not regretted that decision in the least after hearing about his grill-loading experience. The guy who “helped” Bill load the grill into the trunk was several fries short of a happy meal, including trying to disassemble a factory-sealed part and put two pieces of 3’ long shrink wrap on the back. Hello???? I don’t think they’re hired for their brains, and how much can a person care who’s making minimum wage and helps people cram stuff into cars all day? The most fun they probably get is putting up the gates to close the aisles for the guys who get to drive the forklifts, and maybe they get to cut a piece of pipe once in a while (woooooooooooooooooooooooo!). So, all that to say, I preferred to do it myself, and even though it wasn’t the most convenient thing I’ve done, and would I do it again? I don’t know. But I did it, and now I have that sense of Princess satisfaction. You know, that feeling you get when you “help” your DH by carrying the garbage can in from the curb just to be sweet, and then you expect accolades for two years because you were so wonderful to help? :-p

Lessons learned:

1. My car does not accommodate 80" long doors without having the trunk open, even if I put the seats as far forward as I can and still be able to (sort of) drive. My ankle was killing me after about 10 minutes because it was at a 40 degree angle to use the gas pedal.
2. I now know (kind of) how to bungie my truck closed. I'd never done it before, and I called Bill but he couldn't remember how he did it before since I don't have good locations to hook anything (and he’s only bungied my trunk a couple times). After about 5-10 minutes (in a moderate rain), I found a configuration that I was relatively satisfied with. Most of the weight of the doors was in the car, so I wasn't worried about them sliding out, but I was concerned that the trunk lid would bounce on them.
3. Corrugated cardbard tends to melt when exposed to water. It started on the flatbed and didn’t get much better. I had a blanket with a somewhat water resistant side, but you know, given enough rain, it’s going to soak through. 4) Taking surface streets from Lynnwood to Kirkland is about 11 miles and 30 minutes out of one's way, and the streets are bumpy. Not good with long pieces of glass. If one is not concerned about things sliding out the back, take the freeway.
4. It is possible to be thankful for heavy traffic. I was driving the freeway at rush hour, and I didn't have to go 60mph until the last part of my journey. Though I have to admit that the tailgaters disturbed me more than usual (HUGE pet peeve of mine) since I had about 6" of closet doors sticking out of my trunk.
5. I can get 80" mirrored doors from the shelf, through the checkout, into the car, out of the car, and into the garage without breaking a nail or giving myself injury. Who knew?
6. I have friends who are more understanding than I would have expected about my canceling shopping / dinner engagements due to my errand "taking on a life of its own."
7. One can find an amazing plethora of lost items when one puts the car seats in the full forward position. I found my compact umbrella I've been looking for for months, plus four plastic water bottles.

To close the story, after I got the doors to the garage, I didn’t even want to know if I’d broken them or not. I didn’t hear breakage nor did I see any breakage exposed (though I didn’t look too diligently because I just plain didn’t want to know). In the FANTASTIC news realm, the doors (in the appropriate number of pieces) are hanging in the spare bedroom and look wonderful. Someone told me it’s bad feng shui to see ones’ self in a mirror when in bed... it’s not like it’s on the ceiling, for goodness sake! ;-) I like the fact that you can see the accent wall at the head of the bed from anywhere in the room now, and it makes the room look a smidge bigger (though there aren’t enough mirrors in the state of Washington to make the room look “big”). I still startle myself when I walk in the room, though.... I’m used to those nasty dark brown closet doors. ;-)

It feels so much better now that I know it had a happy ending. I had my doubts as I was driving around like a drenched rat with my knees in my nose. Thanks for reliving my journey with me.

Blessings!

Kristin

Another update to tell you why I'm not updating :-)

Hi, all!!
I haven't been updating, mostly because all the "interesting" material has been nothing but drama, and I want to toss up a happy post once in a while. You know, "if you can't say something nice..."

I went to a quilting retreat a couple weeks ago, and I'll tell you about that soon and what I've been working on (YES! WORKING ON!!!! LOL) since then. Other news is that the in-laws are coming to visit in October (YAY), so that will be fun. :-)

Okay, there are the teasers. Back at you later, hopefully in less than a month's time. ;-)

Vacation Update (part 1)

Just a quick note to tell everyone I'm still alive and give a few notes from our vacation to Minnesota August 2-11. I was emailing someone with a short vacation debrief and thought I'd copy and paste to give my faithful viewers (both of them, hee hee) a little bit to read.

No heatstroke or mosquito bite to report. (Really!)

We had a great vacation, though the reunion (Fri-Sun) was a little interesting - I'm not used to being around 80 people, 30 of which were under 18... Good thing the camp was big. ;-) I donated my shoelace to a scavenger hunt and found out that Bill's sister Peggy and I are the only ones at the bonfire that knew the song "Arky Arky" (or part of it, anyway). What are they teaching these kids today? ;-) Bill's brother Jeff plays guitar, but he only knows old bluegrass folk songs, most of which are extremely dark. I'm thinking I'll have to learn to play guitar before the next reunion (3-5 years). I've been wanting to learn a few Jars of Clay and Jennifer Knapp songs, anyway... maybe I'll have to actually do something with that.

We learned on the plane ride back (okay, I'm assuming a little bit here) that unaccompanied minors board the plane last and sit in the back row (presumably for better supervision by the flight attendants). This must be a new FAA ruling since people picking them up can't come to the gate anymore. It also sounds like if they're under a certain age, the person picking them up has to sign for them. We sat right in front of three 10-12 year old girls that had never met and are now lifelong friends. Note to Bill - never pick seats at the back of the plane and next time Kristin asks if she should spend the money for noise-canceling headsets, the correct answer is YES! :-p I saw some headsets the day before we left (we were on a mission for something else) and I thought about it... Might have been worth the $50.

More another time... still wading through email.

Blessings!
Kristin