This and That

Yesterday I had to take Hunter to see his podiatrist because he has been having a lot of pain in his left foot.  He has special made inserts that he has to wear all of the time and I had just bought him a new pair of Nike's last week so I figured it was because of the new shoes.  She said he was having the pain because of a growth plate in the heal area that was strained, irritated, and inflamed.  So he is now on crutches for 10-14 days.  She told him that it would not get better unless he stayed off of it.  This is only day 2 and he is about to go crazy!  :(  He is very active so it is hard on him not to be outside running through the woods.  He went back to school today and he hated it.  To make him feel a little better last night I put some camo duct tape on his crutches and made him a little pouch that attaches to one of them so that he can carry his little cars and such around.  :)  Today he said that his friends thought his "camo crutches" were cool.  Things we do to make our kids feel better....

I'm still plugging along on my quilts...here is my Hugs & Kisses.  I only have a little over half of the blocks made.  In the end, I'm hoping for a king size quilt.  

A few more of the blocks...

I'm still working on the hand applique on my Dresden's during the evening while sitting with the family.  

A few of my Butterscotch Pie blocks.  Only one of these are actually sewn together.  The others are just on the design wall so that I could lay them out and spread my colors around.  

A close up of the ONE that is completely sewn together.  

That's all for tonight, I have to run downstairs to get ice for Hunter's foot.  A mother's job is never done...
Kristie

Catching up

 Is anyone out there still reading my blog? :)  It has been a little while since I have posted.  Life just gets busy and I get behind.  So here is an update on the past couple of weeks...

Richard and I had been sick.  Feeling much better now.  Hunter's school closed one day last week because of sickness.  I heard yesterday that they were thinking about closing again for a few days.  Just so much flu and stuff going around.  

Hunter burned his hand.  He grabbed my curling iron and burned himself pretty good, three fingers and his thumb.  That was a trip to the doctor.  They gave him so cream stuff to put on it and some antibiotics.  He was very sore for several days after it started draining.  

A couple of days after he burned his hand, I had to take him to the dentist to have a tooth pulled.  :(  For some reason his teeth do not want to loosen up.  So he had a tooth coming in through the gum line above his old tooth.  That all went well, just a little sore.  

I have been sewing a little bit.  If you remember I was wishing that my scrap string quilt that I quilted a few weeks ago was bigger.  I wished that I had made it large enough to fit my bed, but I didn't.  So I started another one!!!!  I pieced almost 300 of these little 5.5" blocks!  They are all finished and sewn into rows.  I may try to get those rows pieced together today.  

As I was working on those string blocks, I also pieced some sections for my Butterscotch Pie quilt.  

I still have several more sections to go but I will get them done.  

I got this old girl out and pieced my string blocks on her.  She sews great!  She is very fast and I like that when piecing string blocks.  

Then on Valentine's Day, Richard brought me home a dozen of long stem roses.  I put them in a vase so that I could enjoy them for a few days.  

 Now that brings us to Andrew's birthday.  My boy turned 20.  :(  I am sad that he is grown but so proud of the man that he has become.  The Lord has Blessed me with 2 wonderful boys.  Mom wanted to take him out to eat and buy him a gift a few days before she had to leave for work.  After he got out of class on Friday we met him and she took him shopping, then we stopped and ate at the Outback.  Hunter was with us because that was the same morning that he burned his hand and I had to run him by the doctor first.  :(

 Here he is a little embarrassed because they were singing Happy Birthday to him.  LOL.  

 Here his is showing me some new stuff that he learned to play on his guitar.  

 Hunter and his friend are listening to Andrew play music.  This was Friday when they had cancelled School.  

 That is about it.  I've been walking a few miles a day when the weather permits.  Just trying to loosen my hips and back up a little.  The rain has set in this morning and we are supposed to get lots of rain and snow all week.  
Kristie

Another loss...

 Here is my design wall.  I have several things going on right now.  I am still cutting and piecing on my Butterscotch Pie blocks, that is the star in the center of the wall.  I am mostly cutting for it right now.  

 If you remember a few weeks ago I quilted my scrap string quilt and I said that I wished I had made it larger, well.....I dug out my strings and I guess they will be my leader/ender project for a while. You can see I have some of those blocks up at the top of my design wall.  Right now there is a lot of yellow showing up but I will spread that out in the quilt.  I'm planning on a queen size so I have lots of blocks to make.  

I finally bit the bullet and started sewing down my dresdens.  I was very excited but also very nervous.  This is my first dresden quilt and I was afraid that I could not get them sewn down straight or without them being "puffy"  So far I am pleased with them.  They are taking me forever because I am so slow and I'm trying to hide my stitches.  

 Now on to some sad news...This has been a long week, the pump decided to die this past weekend and as if that wasn't stressful enough....Smokey, my precious poodle passed away.  Just broke my heart.  He was my constant companion and made very step that I did.  He had gotten to the point that he could not go up and down the stairs so I would have to carry him up and down so that he wouldn't cry when I was in my sewing room.  

I got up Sunday morning and Church was canceled due to the slick roads and snow.  First thing that I noticed, Smokey couldn't walk.  He was trying to pull himself around with his front legs and his backend was completely not working.  Within something like 10 minutes he was gone.  Not at all something that I was expecting to happen.  Broke my heart and things are just not the same without him.  I keep catching myself looking for him.  I will miss him so much.  Hunter is having a hard time with losing him too.  If you remember we lost Donkey, the cat just over a month ago.  :( 
Kristie

Staying busy

 I feel like such a slacker for the past month.  I'm so behind on blogging, reading blogs and answering emails.  Life just seems like it has gotten really busy and I have nothing to show for it.  :(  I guess it is just me.  Oh well, I will get caught up....I hope.  

In my last couple of posts I showed a few quilts of my own that I had quilted.  That felt so good to do some of my own.  I have the bindings finished on all three of them.  Look how close I came to running out on one of them.  I was starting to panic because I didn't have anymore of that fabric.  

I loaded a king size log cabin quilt on the frame to be quilted.  It is not mine but belongs to a friend.  I've had it on there for 3 days and I only have one pass with the machine quilted.  :(  Not good at all.  

I broke a needle and now it is skipping stitches so I need to do some adjusting on the machine but I just don't want to mess with it right now.  I know that is bad, isn't it?  LOL!  I just can't get myself in the mood to do it.  

So while I have been busy doing NOTHING, I got out a UFO to work on.  It is called, Butterscotch Pie.  It is an older pattern and I started on it several years ago.  I saw it in my stuff while digging for something else and I thought, "hey, I want to work on that"  I was so excited about working on it and then realized that what little bit that I had done were NOT the right size!  ugh!  Some of the pieces I can work with and some of them are really off in size.  Not even sure what happened there.  

Here is one of the blocks that I did this morning.  It isn't completely sewn together but I just put it on the design wall to make sure all of the pieces would fit together.  

 There is a pieced sashing that goes between the blocks that give the quilt a total different look and design.  I want to piece all of the blocks before I start on the sashing.  I'm using lots of leftover bits and pieces from other things.  I think that today I will work on a bunch of those triangle pieces.  

The weather here has been crazy!  Tuesday it was in the 70's, yesterday morning it was in the mid 60's with heavy rain.  Today it is 29 and snowing!!!  Hunter's school let out early yesterday because of flooding in the area and there was not any school today because of the high water.  He is a happy little boy!  :)
Kristie