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Tuesday, September 29, 2020

more questions this time about marriage

at a contra dance

 Questions from Ann      on      Marriage...

1. How did you meet your husband/wife?

I longed for a mate, and dated a long time, was engaged twice and had  5 men ask to marry me over the years, but turned them all away... I prayed for a mate and the message I got was "July"

Meanwhile I followed my heart in activities, did a lot of volunteer work, did theater, learned to paint, joined a cajun dance group... where one of the men asked me to go to a contra dance. That was new to me... I'd done ballet, tap, ballroom, and zydeco but contra? He was cute so I dressed up in a swirly skirt and belt of metallic hanging planets and drove to the local contra dance. 

During the first dance, I noticed someone moving toward me down the line, the room blurred and he was in focus. 

It was July 25th.

Contra dance is lovely... live music with a caller who sets out the moves for that dance that you and your partner do with each new couple along the line. Poor my current partner because I only had eyes for the guy in focus as he approached. 

He came up to do the set moves and said quietly, "dance with me next dance?" 

I answered of course... we married a year later. 

my art


2. How did you know he/she was “the one”?

I didn't pull away from him, or throw up roadblocks... I trusted him. I quickly decided that life would be better with him than without him, in fact we both quickly decided that. 

He was working with NOAH flying in hurricanes with the Hurricane hunters so I got to see him every month or so when he came down from school. He flew me up to visit him. We talked each night, he sent lysianthus flowers to my door, and sent letter after letter. My dog loved him and the first time they met, she flipped over on her back for a tummy rub, something she seldom did.


3. How did he propose?

During one of those visits we were dressed for a Halloween event I was volunteering at, and were standing at the back door letting my dog go out once more before we drove to the event. He casually turned to me, in a very few words (he's an engineer and is paid by the word) asked if I would marry him. 

"will you marry me?" 

no build up, no fireworks, while the dog peed. 
I smiled, then laughed a bit nervously and we went to the party. The next day he mentioned that I had not answered him... and I stopped laughing and said I assumed he was kidding. He said, "nope" Then I asked what he thought marriage was exactly. 
A few weeks earlier he had asked what I wanted in a mate. I outlined many things... kindness, intelligence, reliability, a desire to do better, someone to read in bed with at night, someone I could tell anything to, someone I could trust to have my back as I had his... someone I had fun with. 
Calmly he thoughtfully responded," I can do all that except have fun" seriously. I laughed," Well, I'll bring the fun, you bring the stability" 
Of course there was more in our discussion to it, but that's the gist. I never answered, still thinking it over although I knew by then, he was the one for me. 
The following day he asked again, and said, "well? shall we" and I said simply, jumping off the cliff of life into his arms, " yes" 
 
He was in a doctoral program and decided he wanted work experience, so he graduated with his master's degree in May, moved down south to me, and we had a simple ceremony and reception in July, one day short of one year from meeting. 
 
We went to the contra dance that evening, after the reception. 

4. Do you have any favorite stories from your marriage or about your husband/wife?

we didn't have pet names except TS which could stand for too sweet or too silly or too something. 
"okay, let's hit the road TS" 
We developed a couple's secret language over the years, private jokes, regular arguments we could label as fight # 6. I learned not to ask an engineer does this make my butt look big, because he is factual. He learned I will tell him what I want, not to imagine he knows. I learned he needs a list for everything including gifts. He learned to find a good book to read when I was cranky. We both have a respect for the gifts the other brings to the table, and we both make each other laugh. 
He is still a man of a few words, but a man of action. He takes care of me when I need it. 
 
We laugh at dating shows where the couples say pretty words but have no idea of the real work of being married, or the real benefits. There is a lot of day to day decision making. A lot of ignoring of certain habits and of acknowledging of kind things being done.  It's not always easy but mostly it is. 
 
One of the most important things in a union is shared values, not shared hobbies. An agreement of what's important. We both strongly believe in the rights of living things including the environment, we both believe in checking out facts, in not wasting, in comfort and safety and beauty. We believe travel is refreshing, learning something daily is good, food should be wholesome fuel to run your body on as well as taste good. Old cars are okay as long as they run, dogs are our children,
snore...
 
 that people should be allowed to express themselves but not at the expense of others. 

Not Afraid of Color: I still do...
honeymoon

 That every right comes with a responsibility.

linking to   https://tuesdaysplace.blogspot.com/

 

Monday, September 28, 2020

Monday questions

 


 

 these Monday questions are provided by:Monday Madness

 1. My uncle once... 

Uncle NC who had a booming voice and was always laughing, often told me I was his favorite niece!  I felt so special! Then at one family event, I overheard him telling the same thing to a cousin... heyyyyyy.....

 2. Never in my life have I... 

you want me to list all the things I never did?? 

I'll just say, never in my life have I ever tried to hurt someone on purpose

3. When I was five my parents 

took us on a cross country drive, from Florida to CA in the family car. We picked up an aunt and uncle in TX on the way, drove through the painted desert where our AC went out, stopped in las vegas where  I wandered into a casino at the hotel while the parent was in the restroom, and everyone stopped playing at the table. I got my first barbie doll there, as my birthday happened while we were on that trip.

 4. High school was... 

scary and fun. I joined groups and got a taste of belonging while becoming a unique person. I was in the French honor society, the marching band, a service group, and systematically lost a lot of weight by eating very little and learning to jog daily. We went out to shakeys pizza after all the football games, some of us still in band uniforms, we also TP'd friend's yards, and talked incessantly. I started going to a friend's church which became a second family to me.

 5. I will never forget to...   

?

 6. Once I met 7...

women in ballet class... I had finally lost a lot of weight, and always wanted to dance so I became brave enough to risk taking a class where I had to show up in leotard and tights twice a week. We all became close friends and did shows together. I was 18 years old!

7. There’s this boy I know... 

knew? I don't really know boys now that I'm of a certain age. But once, there was this boy.... I dreamed of dating him, holding his hand, being wanted by him for a girlfriend. He was cute, and funny, and we went out once. It was enough.

8. Once, at a bar, I... 

sat at the girlfriend's table while our boyfriends played on stage. Three men, three women at the girlfriend's table. We went night after night to be with them, heard their songs so many times, ordered sparkle water or a glass of white wine, danced together, laughed a lot. The guys would come around during breaks and hang out with us. A moment in a life...

9. By noon, I’m ...

just getting started with my creative day.... after lunch I head to the studio to work

10. Last night I ...

probably wasted the evening watching 90 day fiance and love island. These days my thoughts and worries swirl, dance in my head, hold hands and swirl around. I find watching something truly mindless helps to change my focus. Last night I went to bed with a clean poodle... grooming day is demanding but rewarding, after his bath and haircut, we wash all the bedding. Last night it cooled off here, oh we still had the overriding smoke from so many fires but it wasn't hot for the first time in a long time. Last night I continued to read my good book on the kindle... I am so tired at night I can only read a few pages before it falls on my chest. Last night, like every night, I go to bed hoping the loud car boy returned to college so we wouldn't be awoken a 2 am when he comes back to his parent's home from his girlfriend's house, but no he is still there... I went to bed hoping his school isn't closed again. 

Other answers are found at this link:  Monday Madness

 

Saturday, September 26, 2020

sewing red one more week

For this week's sewing round up... I did my improv log cabins in red for RSC, two hand pieced stars from Deb, and finished my Fall Home quilt for the online fall hop! 

That post is HERE and has two tutorials in it

blocks on the design wall

I got out my small red scraps and small white strips... lo and behold I have very few light scraps left after the last spate of sewing... and had to actually (horrors!) go to my yardage drawer of white. 

I was surprised to see a lot of light fabrics but very few that were tone on tone just for backgrounds. I don't tend to purchase those when I go shopping so I might have to actually buy some more. I love a mix of values in backgrounds. Where do you like to buy fabric online?

Gotta have a cow somewhere!!!

this is why I keep small pieces... that little cherry fabric strip was left over from a border print by Mary Englebreit... and it looks great pieced in.

Who knows what will become of all these improv blocks in all the colors I've done. I love them, and they are fun to make. Something from nothing. 

I have four red stars cut out to piece by hand, and after the big deadline push to finish Fall Home, I was glad to sit quietly in the studio on Friday, talk to my friend Diane in Texas, and hand sew on one of them. 


I wanted to paint on fabric,  I did a tree yesterday on paper with watercolors and thought how fun it would be to paint on fabric. 

 

Unfortunately we have so much smoke I get migraines when I spend any time on the patio nowadays (for many many weeks in a row now) but one day... soon I hope... I'll be out there seeing how this looks on cotton.


Halloween 

 

LINKING TO 
 scrap happy Saturdays

Friday, September 25, 2020

paint party Friday

 

Welcome to paint party Friday. 

I love watching paint move and blend, so I use watercolors. 

I cut out magazine words to lay on top above, kind of like it. I appreciate "real" in most circumstances especially friendship. Real doesn't mean say harsh things, it just s a way of having integrity.

Sometimes I paint what I see, sometimes I paint what I want to see

I really wet the paper this time and wanted to drop color on in pure hue and let it move around. 

I liked the effect but I couldn't resist pulling out the tombow markers in brown, and olive green, the staedtler black marker and what's left of my white posca ink, just for definition. 

We have been coping with smoke from the West coast fires, as well as the 4 large ones here in Colorado... for many weeks now. Our skies are not bold blue, they are gray and often block out the sun. I love Fall color, and hope we can recover from the smoke soon. 

If we do not take care of our environment we won't have clean air and water... it's true even if it's hard to hear, even if you must make some sacrifices, even if your leader pretends otherwise. 

linking to




Thursday, September 24, 2020

I Like Thursday #212

 

Welcome to this week's list of likes! 


 

1) The trees are beginning to turn color, but the temps continue to be very hot (hovering around 90) but the big problem is the smoke from so many forest fires. It's overcast all the time now, and the air is noxious. But there are a few things to mention in the "I LIke" list so lets get started...

2) I like this color orange for brightening up the patio! 

3)  I like that one of the wildflower seeds is turning (finally) into something... what I don't know...

 

4)  I like that the local nursery had their very expensive trees on sale so when we were forced to replace on on the tree lawn (between sidewalk and street) by our HOA, they were able to come out and do that for us without our having any physical contact. The guy sent pics for us to pick one. 

farming

5) well the tomatoes seem to be on hold...


6)there were 10 beans to pick


7) I like the cape we found on Amazon


 so when I cut dh's hair I no longer have to put him in a garbage bag lol! We put an old shower curtain under the chair while cutting.

Reading

I'm slowly still reading my ebook at night about the embroiderer

8) I finished two books on audio this week... yes I dragged myself through Crawdads... and felt manipulated by the author's ending... but started a grand book called:

charming reader and fun story set in modern day small town Texas involving a woman mayor and cast of characters

watching

 Joy invited me to come to her quilt guild's lecture by Lyric Kinard, and I did and it was fun!

the "Big flower fight" on Netflix a competition where designers make statues out of floral displays

 speaking of reading, I watched a lot of youtube videos on Ann Patchett and Anne Lamott this weekend...wonderful to hear authors talking about life and books!!!  here are some links

9) Salon author intetview with both Ann (e)s

10) anne and her son discuss their book 

Making

11) I spent the week making sure I met my deadline for this quilt...

the link is here


 Dining

12) Oy vey... I'm so tired of cooking.... this week we had chicken sauteed with lemon juice, lemon slices, garlic, olive oil, cooking sherry and artichoke hearts. 

we made a chocolate chip sour cream banana cake this week, which means we used some egg whites... and had some left to make scrambled eggs with cheese. We took english muffins, toasted them, spread on Blue Moose cheese dip (asiago) layered scrambled eggs to make breakfast sandwiches. Very good.

we also are returning to iceberg lettuce... in the time of pandemic, we feel we can shed some outer leaves, and wash the center and are liking salads as sides again, lettuce, sliced avocado and blue cheese dressing. good stuff.

Embibing

13) we ordered curbside pick up at total wine, so we now have wine again for the evening chat. Reisling is my favorite, along with rose or almond champagne

 

Milo's Moments


Mama: Milo do you want to add any likes to this week's list? 

Milo: Yes, I'd like to say how much I love my kong ring toy! Except... when it rolls itself off the porch into the gravel that hurts my feet!
when that happens here's what I would like to happen... I stare at it til you or Daddy get the message to go pick it up for me.
sometimes I get so tired waiting, and lie down... what do you two get up to that takes you so long to notice when something as important as a lost toy is happening???
 

so when you get it, I love to guard it, lay it on the table to chew on it,

play, "try to get my toy from me" with you two but you do have short attention spans and don't like to play as long as I do
fuggetaboutit! I also like to nap on my blue chair.

Please visit these people with lists of likes and remember to tell me in comments if you did a Like post this week so I can include you!

Tuesday, September 22, 2020

Fall Home

"Fall Home"  45" X 25" 2020

Today is my Fall quilt reveal day for the Fall Blog Hop at 
 (I will include the others posting today at the end but this is the entire schedule!) 
the images should enlarge if you click on them for details... it's been so smoky here, we don't have sunlight to get better images, sorry! 

Inspiration

My goal was to use my cute Fall fabric collection in making a fun quilt... 
I had captured this google image once and thought it would be a good format... with my tweaks of course!! lol
Our printer was on the blink and unknown to me, the link was only partially printed and the color didn't print well either. Well, I didn't know I'd use this as an inspiration when I kept this image. I looked and looked, for it again using the same words but couldn't find it to attribute it. I'll be happy to add it in if anyone out there knows who made it. UPDATE! it's here!
(thanks to Diane)
 
Milo photo bombs the design wall

design

I started by cutting out 6" squares, marking a diagonal line, sewing a quarter inch from each side to make two HST squares. The quilt is made of 32 squares, with borders and finished at 45" wide X 25" long. There are 20 HST blocks and 12 whole fabric blocks.

after arranging them on the wall, I sewed them into a center, and auditioned border fabrics. 
Originally I thought I'd do applique, but after sewing the top, didn't want to cover up the pretty fabrics. My friend Joy (she's here!)  suggested a word, like HOME. 

I wrote the word with a calligraphy pen, blew it up to size, placed saral paper over my word fabric and traced around with a pencil transferring it to the fabric

and carefully cut it out. The word went on the quilt and the cut out fabric was fused to some blue fabric (reverse applique) for another project. 

free motion stitching with copper thread

Quilting

I quilted with madeira sparkly metallic thread, YLI gold metallic thread, and brown rayon threads. In the ditch first, then diagonals, horizontal and vertical lines, then free motion. 
I even added a flower over one spider body!
 
 
after that was done I decided to add in some broderie perse... cutting motifs from fun fabrics and tacking them on with lapel stick til I could free motion around them

every quilt needs a cow right?


before binding, I put on a 

sleeve

trim the quilt and place sleeve fabric (double size needed plus 1/2") face down and baste. Draw a pencil line across it, not halfway, but just 1/8" short of it, and do a running stitch to tack it to the backing. Don't catch the front of the quilt! 

When you fold it up, you'll have that little eighth inch of clearance room for a rod so the quilt doesn't bow out when it's hung up. Catch the raw edges in the binding when you put that on.

I had just enough of this binding fabric. Make it work! When the last stitch goes on it's done, sleeve and all!

ooops... not done til you fuse on some crystals to catch the light, along with the metallic threads! This is going to hang over my mantle. 
 
I thought I would be making this year's Halloween quilt, and the top is done and on my design wall image above. I just really wanted to take out my cute fabrics and use them... so thank you to Carla for sponsoring this hop and encouraging us to do that! 

others posting today

 

linking to

http://www.inquiringquilter.com/ Wednesday wait loss
Midweek makers wednesdays


Saturday, September 19, 2020

sewing Saturday... where we talk about creating with fabric

 

I've been sewing a lot this week... for the first time in a long time I made a commitment and have a deadline. More about that in a minute... the above image is of my cut off half square triangle blocks in red, finished! 

To remind you, these were the throwaways when I made my lozenge blocks in Red for the RSC last week

 

 I moved them around til I created a new block, then found fun border fabrics... black with red circles, multi color circles, black and white stars... all favorites of mine over the years, all in my stash of pretty fabrics.


I admit to spending too much time deciding on a backing fabric for my quilts. On one hand wall quilts are not meant to show the backing layer, so use something you don't like... on the other hand, it's fun to see a surprise when you flip it over... this one has also been in the stash a while

quilt it using the walking foot...

I was not into the quilting this time, and it's a bit random but balanced. Trim the outsides and decide on a binding


I LOVE this binding fabric and am down to an 8th of a yard, horrors!


DONE!

Mostly this week I worked on my new Fall quilt for reveal day on Wednesday 23rd. 

finding a backing, batting, layering, quilting. It's 25" X 48, so there is more quilting than on the smaller one.... and decisions and new techniques to try...

this braid looks good on it but.... it would not be fun to put on so I doubt that's going to make it. I wasn't content with any of the fonts on my computer, so I wrote out the word home on paper. Blew it up to 11" and used that to form the word home. I wrote it with brush pen, and when you enlarge that the lines become thick enough to use for applique!

I will use the positive cut out but here is the cut away part with blue fabric behind it, reverse applique technique...

 

Before I could press the fall quilt I had to remove the remote from my iron, don't ask... using a magic eraser... chip chip chip

it's so much fun to work on... turkey pilgrims, recipes, pretty colors

but it leaves a big hole in the design wall while I'm quilting it!


LINKING TO

patchwork Sunday                    
oh Scrap Sundays 

 scrap happy Saturdays