Donkey is gone...

 This is a post that I really didn't want to write.  Our precious cat, Donkey has passed away.  It is funny how attached we get to these little pets and how much they mean to us.  

I just couldn't bring myself to do this yesterday.  Richard found him yesterday after we got back from Church.  We live on a farm and Donkey loves to go in and out of the house.  We have a little outside dog and they get along great.  Donkey loved to run, play, and catch the mice from the feed stall.  :)  So it wasn't anything out of the ordinary that he was outside.  

Richard found him laying out there by the firewood pile.  He didn't look like he had been attacked or anything, he didn't have a place on him.  It wasn't even that cold out so I know he didn't freeze.  Not even sure what happened to him because he seemed fine a couple of hours before.  

 He will be missed so much.  I will miss the crazy ways that I always found him sleeping and I will miss him playing with my quilting stuff too.  Poor little Hunter is heartbroke, that is just kills me.  

 Poor little Hunter is heartbroke, that just kills me. He was such a good cat....
Kristie

Design Wall Monday

 I'm still plugging along on my Rocky Road to Kansas blocks.  Here is where I am at this point.  I know it looks like that blue really pops out but I think it is just the camera flash.  It doesn't look that bright just looking at it.  This is all of those blue scraps that I have and this is only half of the blocks so it will be spread out more evenly in the whole quilt.  

I'm loving this quilt so far.  As I mentioned I am now halfway through with 15 blocks.  I am shooting for 30 so that I can do a 5x6 setting.  I need to see what kind of yardage that I have for the border.  

Not sure how much sewing that I will get done on it today.  I have to get that quilt finished that I have on the frame.  :(  

We've had a very busy weekend, I'll catch you up on that maybe tomorrow.  Right now I need to clean the house up real quick before I head up to the sweat shop and finish the machine quilting.  

I'll leave you with a photo of Donkey.  He found a nice small box up in my sewing room and decided to cuddle up in it.  

To see what others are working on, check out Judy's blog.
Kristie

Wrapped In Red...Progress

 Today I was able to work on my red/white quilt.  It is actually called, "Wrapped In Red", but I can never remember the name so I just call it my red/white quilt.  As I mentioned yesterday, I had broke a needle and my machine was skipping.  Richard just didn't feel like adjusting it yesterday so he is up there doing that now as we speak.  So tomorrow I will be back to the grind.  I really need to get this quilt off the frame and off to the owner.  


So today I got to sew for myself since my quilting machine was down.  In my last post, I showed the units put together like this.  This is the center of the blocks.  I worked on these today and now have 14 of the 25 needed.  

Now I need a million of these units.  Well, not actually a million, but 256 of them....close enough right?

I did go ahead and lay out this block with all of the pieces.  The blocks will be set on point and I need a total of 25 full blocks and then all of the pieced setting triangles.  

So the next sewing day that I get for myself, I will be cutting out the 256 white rectangles and 596-- 2.5" squares in red.  I'm sure that I will take me a while to do.  But at the end of the day I am pleased with my progress on it.  


I also pressed 60+ of my blue HST's!!!  At least that is a start on the  1100+ of them.  I have the little tub sitting on my ironing board so I just press a few at a time.  It will be slow doing it that way but at least maybe I will not get overwhelmed with them.  

Late last night I finished up another basket blocks.  Makes me a total of 23, I think.  I have 6 more prepped, so I will work on them a  little during the evenings.  

 Oh and here is Donkey!  He has been just going in and out all summer and staying outside most of the time, but this morning he came upstairs and napped as I sewed.  Doesn't he look comfy?

 That is all for today, just waiting for Richard to adjust my machine and if it cools off up there I may do some machine quilting before bed.


Have a wonderful and Blessed day!
Kristie

My machine has been humming....

I finally got my aunt's boat quilt finished yesterday! I started on it Monday evening and finished it yesterday. I did not get a photo the finished quilt, she was here right before I got it off the frame and I just forgot to get a final photo. Actually in this photo, I am standing behind the machine quilting it. Richard took the photo but I looked horrible! LOL! If you are wondering....I have the end of my machine off, I was cleaning it and just didn't put it back on. :)I finished the boat quilt up around 11am and loaded this little lap quilt on the frame. Nothing fancy, just some Halloween yardage with a border sewn around it. Hunter asked me if I was going to get it quilted before Halloween THIS YEAR! He wanted it quilted last year but I just didn't get to it. It is still on the frame and I will finish it up in a few minutes! Yesterday while I was quilting it, I took a short break and just didn't get back to it. So my goal for today is to get it off the frame and get the binding ready to go on it.

Other quilty news....The baby YBR that I made and quilted a few days ago was given as a gift. A lady that Richard goes to nursing school with is having a baby boy in a few weeks. They had a small baby shower for her yesterday. He said the quilt was "well received" It is always nice to know that people appreciate the work and time that goes in them. Oh and I am still working on the handwork part of the binding on my Country Wife quilt.

Monday I had to make a trip to Ashland, I stopped by the quilt shop and picked up a few little things. The larger piece is a 1/2 yard cut and the others are fat quarters. I also picked up a few red fat quarters for the red and white quilt that I want to make....someday. Not sure I like all of these red/whites but maybe they will blend in with other fabrics that I use. I guess they are just not my usual style of fabrics. The shop didn't have a huge selection of reds so I'm not sure how I will come up with enough red scraps/fat quarters to make the quilt.
Here is a photo of Donkey that I snapped last night. I have been packing and sorting stuff and I have a huge pile of boxes near the front door, Donkey loves to lay on them. :)
He looks like he is hiding or in "time out" LOL!

House news.....Richard got my countertop, sink, and faucet installed!!!! As of right now I have 20 ft of countertop! That may not be much to some but since I currently only have 8ft...I am excited. We still have a 7ft island to build but that will come later in the Spring. Oh and I sink is deeper than the one that I currently have too. This new one is 10 inches deep, with the tall faucet it should be great for big pots and stuff. I know it is still all dusty but with all of the work going on out there you just can't keep things clean.
It is almost 9:30am, I think I will go up to the sweatshop and finish quilting Hunter's Halloween quilt!

Kristie

A little Donkey time...

It has been a week since my last post. Not a lot of quilting going on but lots of other work. I have put up so much fresh corn and green beans that I could cry! I am extremely thankful for having it but it is also a lot of work and rather messy.

I have also been doing a little bit of packing, as you can see here. Now I just need to find more boxes. My house is a wreck!! Just don't feel like cleaning too much, with all of this rain just makes me stiff and my hips and legs ache.

If you have read my blog for a while you know how much that Hunter hates school....right? Every morning it is a fight just trying to get him up to go. I have a horrible time trying to get him to do his homework and he is constantly begging me to home school him because he just doesn't want to go. He loves his friends but just doesn't like school work! Every evening when we are doing homework, he complains about it the whole time and swears that he doesn't understand it and doesn't know how to do it. I guess you get the idea....right?

So this morning around 11am, the phone rang and the caller ID had his school's name on it. So I'm thinking....he is sick. The lady on the other end introduced herself and said she was the "special education" teacher at his school. So I'm thinking...."OH CRAP!" Not that there is anything wrong with it and if I thought Hunter needed extra help I would gladly welcome it. But I have always thought in Hunter's case he was just being lazy. So she begins to explain the reason for the phone call......something about "rank 1", "graduate school" and a "masters degree" and that she needed to conduct a case study for HER EDUCATION. So I'm listening to all that she has to say. And she needs to conduct a case study and they need to be the same gender, same age, and same class. She will study their habits, hobbies and stuff like that and see how it affects how they learn and stuff. She said she needed a "high functioning male" and a "low functioning male" to conduct this study. So you know at this point what I am thinking....then she goes on to say something about Hunter being an extremely high functioning male. And I am like "EXCUSE ME?" LOL! I started to explain to her what a hard time that I have with him about school in general. She laughed and told me that he was "playing me" :( She said that his scores showed that he was the highest scoring male in his grade level at his school! Imagine my surprise!! LOL! I am always proud of my children and all that I expect is for them to do their best. So now this little guy has some explaining to do when he gets home.... Here I thought he was struggling. hmmm....

Oh and I must add that if we agree to this, at no time will these children be studied together at the same time and they will not know how the other one is doing or even if they are the high functioning or low functioning student. That is one thing that I asked about, if Hunter was the low functioning male I would not want it thrown in his face and made to feel bad. I don't expect my kids to be perfect and I know that each one of them are completely different. Even if Hunter is doing that well, I still believe that he does struggle with it. And if we do agree to this, if at anytime one of the parents or students want to stop, it will stop instantly. She will be sending lots of papers about it for us to read. I don't know who the other student is and neither will Hunter but she said that the parent and boy seem to be very excited about it all. So we will read all the paper work before we make any decisions.

Now on to some "Donkey Time" He doesn't go outside now because he has glaucoma and I'm just afraid that something might happen to him out there in the big world. LOL! So now he just stays in and is getting extremely fat and lazy! Here he is trying to get cozy in my bucket of beans.

I swear there is a sewing machine under there! LOL! I had it apart cleaning and oiling everything, took a break and this is what I saw when I started back to it.

Here he his still holding that sewing machine down and toying with a seam ripper.
And last but not least.....he is watching me getting his food ready! Silly cat!Now I guess I had better get my butt in gear and get some stuff done. I have a long day tomorrow.....grocery shopping, mailing a bunch of packages, and picking up a load of horse feed.

Kristie

Sleepless nights have paid off...

Another sleepless night...it is 1:08am and I am wide awake! :( This is driving me crazy! So I've done what I always do when I can't sleep, SEW! They are all finished! All 224 Courthouse Steps!! Can you believe that???

224!!!

I never meant to finish these anytime soon but there is nothing else to do during these sleepless nights except to work on them. All of my other sewing projects and fabrics are in the new house, so the only thing that I have in here is one machine, these strips, mat/ruler/rotary cutter.
Now I don't have a clue as to when I will sew these together. There are so many of them that I will probably take them out to the new house so I will have plenty of room to lay them all out. But first I have some other things that need to be finished up that are already out there waiting for me. I mentioned before that I was paper piecing these and I'll tell you why. Most of these pieces were just scraps and some where strips. The scraps were all just a bunch of odd sizes and I really didn't want to go through the whole part of measuring every little piece. This way I could just pick it up and sew, perfect when you can't sleep and are too tired to concentrate. :) Anyway, I made a huge mess when I was trimming them up and Donkey had to get right under my feet. I looked down and he was covered! LOL! Crazy cat! Poor Donkey is not doing too well, he has glaucoma and it is pretty bad so I don't let him outside much now. I'm afraid that he will not be able to see well and get hurt. So he now spends his days inside doing exactly this...
And of course, Jasper had to get a pic taken too! Isn't he so cute? I didn't get a photo of Smokey but he was snoozing in the recliner and snoring very loud! :)And last a photo of Zoey before she went home. Hunter had some clothes and a quilt on the couch and Zoey just made a bed out of them. She was so happy to see my sister when she picked her up. I'm off to clean up my mess and maybe do some laundry or watch some tv.
Kristie

I'm sewing!

I'm sewing!!! Not quilting on my frame like I would like to because I can't go upstairs yet! But I am working on a UFO! So see that is a good thing! That will be one less UFO or PIG whatever you want to call it! I had this one started and had about 80 of these 6 inch 9-patches sewn together. I am just sewing them in rows and setting them on point. My setting triangles are blue. You can see one of the blue triangles in the bottom right corner of the photo. I got all of the 80 9-patches sewn together so now I am working on piecing more 9 patches from my 2 1/2 inch scrap squares. I have a tote full of them so this will be a good way to use some of them up. It feels almost like a FREE quilt top when I don't have to cut into my stash. Anyway, I'm planning for this top to be a full/queen size in the end. This is the reason that still can't go upstairs to use my frame....we started staining the stairs! The weather has turned off cool and rainy so we stopped because the stain just will not dry the same. We didn't even get the first coat on all of the stairs but at least we got a few of them done. This is what it looks like after the first coat. Now only 2 more coats and 2 coats of poly! :(

I stepped out this morning while it was still sprinkling...before the heavy rain started and took this photo of my flowers. They just started blooming this morning! Don't look too close because the weeds are taller than my flowers! LOL! I didn't even touch my flower beds last summer because of my hip and leg injury and this spring, I just haven't got to them yet!
And my sweet Donkey hiding in the weeds! LOL! He has been going outside a lot since the weather has turned warmer and he has lost a lot of weight, but he seems to love it outside. That's all for now...I have to strain the goats milk and get it put up then back to sewing!!!
Kristie

Just tinkering around...

I've had many "family things" going on this past week and just haven't been in the mood to sew. I did work on a little bit of binding but not enough to really show a photo of. But I guess this week I will just suck it up and get back to quilting.....maybe. It's just been a very stressful week.

Anyway...I have been tinkering around and boxing up a few things and moving them out to the house. I figure if I do a little at a time it will not be so overwhelming. Boxed up some China and stuff like that. I had three sets, one set was my grandmother's and the others are just mine. So they are boxed up and out in the house. Not sure what I will do with them, I really don't have a way to display them, I just keep them stacked in the cabinets.

Another thing that I boxed up was these....I'm really embarrassed for you to see all of the dust in that cupboard. I have this little cupboard that is only about 32 inches tall and it has a solid door so you can't see anything in it but when I opened it I was embarrassed by all of the crud/dust in it. I have collected odd china cups over the years. I usually pick them up for about a quarter a piece at the junk store or yard sales. Some of them are not real old but some of them are really old. So these all got washed and packed up and I also cleaned the dust out of the cupboard too.

When I went to get the box to pack these in this is what I found...

I also took my big tote of orphan blocks out to my new sewing room too. There is probably enough orphan blocks in here to make 3 or 4 bedsized quilts. There are also a few stitcheries that I made a few years ago.

I did get my new sewing room cleaned up some in the new house. Richard had a bunch of scraps of sheet rock and plywood piled everywhere in it. Of course, he will still be making more messes in there. He still has to run the electric wire and install my rescessed lighting over my frame and finish mudding and sanding the walls so that I can paint. This will have a wood ceiling so that will have to come later. He doesn't have all of that sawed out yet. Anyway, he had a ton of stuff piled on my frame so I cleaned that off too so now I can pin a quilt on there and get back to quilting. You can see that I have some stuff already stored in there. This is the view of the other side of the room. In the end I will not have all of those supports in there, I will still have a couple of them, but they will be replaced with huge oak beams when the time comes. If you look close you will see that I have some hollow core doors laying in the floor over there. Richard is going to make me a sewing table out of them. I put them over there because I was thinking that I might sit the table there. They measure 36x78 each so that should end up being a good sized sewing table. I'm sure I will be moving everything around once we actually get moved in. But I do know one thing, I don't want anything blocking my window. I love my window and we had such a hard time getting that thing in there it is 4ftx8ft and with me being only 5ft tall, I feel like a midget when I stand in front of it. LOL! I guess that is about all for tonight, hopefully I will be back in a couple of days with some quilting to show you.

Kristie

Meet the Girls!

Our little farm got a couple new additions today! We've had Cocoa, our milk goat for a while and love being able to have fresh milk. She and Hunter are big buddies too, he takes her out in the yard and she plays with him like she is a dog or something. It is soooooo cute! Anyway, here are the new additions that made their way on our farm this evening... They are Lamancha goats just like Cocoa. They have great tasting milk. Haven't named them yet, but Hunter is thinking of names for them. I love how excited he gets over getting new farm animals.Here is Cocoa, making sure that they know she is "the boss". The lighter goat that we got is her full sister and the darker one is some kin to her too. I'll get better photos of them all tomorrow when it is daylight.

Here is Festus way up in a tree. Not sure why but he was up there when we got back home.
Richard and I have been working our butts off in the house the past few days. This is what we finished today. This is Andrew's room. We got all the sheetrock up on the ceiling and walls and it is ready for the mud and sanding. Hopefully I will start taping the seams next week and Richard will go behind me mudding and sanding. This room is fairly big, it measures 16x20. The ceiling is angled with the roof. On the short end the ceiling is 7ft and the tall wall behind the headboard is a 12ft wall. I really got excited about getting this much of it done today so we had Andrew's bed stored out there (as you can see from all the dust on it) that I just had to set the bed frame up to see how it would look in this room.

We also got a few other things done out there too, but they were just small things. He did finally get my frame put back together for me. I think I will quilt a baby quilt of mine on it first just to make sure that nothing is out of whack on it from moving it. I have 2 customer quilt that I need to get done. If everything works out as I plan, I will start on those by the middle of the week.

I did get some hand sewing done today on a customer binding. I should have that ready to be delivered by Monday. I love working on binding, I find it really relaxing.

And now I will leave you with a photo of Donkey! He is sleeping with his big butt stuck in a lamp shade. This is Andrew's lamp, I'm sure he will be pleased to know that Donkey got his "butt crud" on it! LOL!!!

Have a great weekend!!!

Kristie

Goodies...

Well I still have not decided which pattern that I will make with my scraps that I pulled yesterday. Just really haven't had much time to think about it today. I did get these goodies in the mail today. Last week I placed an order with Connecting Threads. I got these two kits that were on sale and a spool of orange thread. I needed some pumpkin color thread for a Halloween quilt that I want to quilt later. I don't have plans, as of right now, to work on either of these kits so I just put them away for later. Tomorrow I have plans to get my frame put back together. I have 2 customer quilts that I need to get quilted. But I think after I get it put back together I will quilt a very small one of mine before I do the customer quilts. I know the last time that I took the frame down and moved it, I had to do a lot of adjusting so that is why I want to do one mine so if any adjusting needs to be done it will be on mine.


Here are a few photos of Andrew and his new toy! He is so excited with his truck. As you can see in the photos it was raining and his truck was a little dirty.

Here he is taking me and Hunter for a ride.
And here, he is getting ready to take mom and Chantal for a ride too.

Oh and here is Donkey, holding down all the papers on the table! LOL! Silly cat!
I made a decision late last night to go on a diet! :( I know they are not fun but I would like to get rid of about 30lbs. I've really enjoyed taking walks the past few evenings so that will certainly help, not only with losing weight but also getting the strength back in my hip and leg. I did put on several pounds this past year after my fall because I was not able to walk. And trust me....laying flat on your back makes your butt grow!! LOL!

Kristie