I got the binding on the "County Line" quilt out of the Paris-inspired fabrics last weekend, but it was too rainy all last week to get a photo of it outdoors:



The colors are a little different from what I normally use, but I like how the quilt turned out.

Here's a close-up of one corner that shows the quilting better, and also shows the binding. I was glad I had enough of the sashing material left to make the binding, I don't think anything else would have looked quite as good:



I also got a "surprise" afternoon off from Youth Group - there's a bad 24 hour stomach bug going around town (I think I may have had a touch of it last week; I had some stomach cramps, tiredness, and loss-of-appetite that, at the time, I blamed on being female, but what might actually have been a very mild form of the bug. I generally do not get intestinal things as badly as other people do; I assume it's because of the large amounts of yogurt I eat). Most of the kids in my group are down with it, so we decided not to meet tonight.

(It's OK - the lesson I prepared will keep until next week. It's on Yom Kippur - I'm doing a little background on Biblical/Jewish history for the kids - and I see that Yom Kippur is actually not until Monday the 28th. [and if there is anyone who's reading this who is Jewish and has something in particular you want me to teach the kids about it, please let me know. I went to a couple of Judaica websites for background and stuff I didn't know about it already, but I realize that there are different things emphasized in the different Jewish groups...])

So I also took some time and re-decorated my mantel, seeing as Tuesday is the first full day of fall (yay!) So I did a fall theme again:



I had been wanting to get some "fairy lights" (though I guess, technically, fairy lights are the plain white ones) to use for fall. And Target had these nifty orange LED bulbs (so they consume less power, and also should last longer). I'm not sure how I feel about the LED Christmas lights - they seem a bit glare-y to me - but for fall, I rather like these.

And yeah, I do "fall," rather than specifically Hallowe'en, partly because I tend to think of Hallowe'en as "mainly a kids' holiday" (Even though I know many adults go all out in celebrating it - in the latest Martha Stewart magazine* they had full-size, three-dimensional glittered skeletons (including a green one, which looked really disgusting...I kept thinking of lichens growing on bones) for something like $150.)

Besides, with 'fall,' I can leave it up and enjoy it for longer.

(*I got that magazine when the Mary Engelbreit one folded. I am not resubscribing; it seems the magazine is aimed at people with a lifestyle perhaps $25K richer per year than I am, or, people who are more willing to shell out lots of bucks to impress their friends.)



Most of the stuff is last year's, pulled out again; the LED lights are new, as are the glittery things in the vase on the right. I really do like those lights. I may leave them on when I have to go out in the evenings so I have something friendly to come home to.

One other thing I did over the weekend was change the mantel decorations. (I decided that as Sunday the 31st was Pentecost, it was high time to remove the Easter decorations I had up).

I went sort of minimalist this time.



It's the little collection of china dogs I've acquired over the years. I haven't added to it recently, partly because I haven't really been looking (I don't, at the moment, have a good "permanent" space to display them; they sit on one of the book case shelves in front of books, which gets in the way when I want to take one of those books off the shelf).

I think the last one I bought was the little poodle (second from the right in this photo) and that was maybe a year ago:



It's funny how I can develop little collections of things. I guess some people have the collector tendency and others don't. I have friends who would be aghast at the level of "clutter" I have in my house - lots of things hanging on the walls, shelves of stuff, bric-a-brac...I knew someone in college who said one of her life's ambitions was to own few enough things that all of her life's possessions would fit in a backpack. (My response was: what about books? And she agreed that yes, books would be a problem - in many places you could rely on libraries, but part of her life-plan with the backpack was that it would allow her to travel to and live in remote areas...where there would be no libraries.)

I wonder if there's some fundamental insecurity that drives a person to accumulate things. I realize that's not a very pretty observation but the why of it does make me wonder.

Or I wonder if people who spent lonely childhoods, in a way - mine was kind of lonely. I was an only child until I was 5, and while I had friends, some of them lived across town, and the others were part of large families themselves - and I spent a lot of time alone as a child. I liked it but I also do think that that kind of thing affects a person's personality. Perhaps the fact that I spent a lot of time making up stories in my head - that I spent a lot of time playing by myself with my stuffed toys or my little plastic zoo animals - led me as an adult to feel more comforted with things that I could look at and (if not make up fanciful stories about) remember where and when I got them.

I wonder if people who grew up in large families have less of a tendency to collect things. (I am sure someone will now post a comment disproving that hypothesis).

The other thing is - those "clean and spare house" shows be darned - I LIKE my clutter. Yes, it makes dusting more complicated, yes, it's not many people's style, but it makes me smile when I come home and see the little china dogs lined up on a shelf, or when I am brushing my teeth in my bathroom and I can stand and look at all the souvenir plates I have found and hung up on the wall. I think I'd feel kind of lost and maybe in a strange way, lonely in one of those spare, all-white houses where all the family heirlooms and such have either been hidden away or banished to the flea market. (I don't watch those house-decluttering shows much, but I've seen enough clips to make me cringe: homeowner holds up some object and talks about how it belonged to a grandparent. Decluttering maven cringes in horror and demands that they sell the object. Homeowner meekly goes along. I'd be a bad candidate for those shows because if some decluttering maven made noises about my grandfather's Columbia Encyclopedia of Literature or the doilies that came from my grandmother's house, and suggested I sell them to "free up space," they'd be met with a rather rude response in the negative.)

Actually, speaking of grandparents, I do know WHY I started the little collection of dogs. My grandmother had, on one of the little wall shelves, a small china bulldog standing next to his little china doghouse. Like many things from her house, I don't know what became of it (when she passed away, my own parents were in the process of moving, and one of her other daughters was not well - after retrieving a few "important" items, the house was rented out and I don't know if a lot of the stuff that remained was stolen, or sold, or just thrown out). But one day in an antique shop here, I found a little china bulldog that, while not the same as the one my grandmother had, was similar enough to remind me of it. It's the second from the right on this photo:



And then, of course, I decided I wanted other dogs to keep the bulldog company. And so it goes.

I really should put up a little wall shelf somewhere to give them their own permanent home.

I probably should have just made the chocolate cake FIRST, instead of trying the fancier cake, based on the response I got. Everyone (or at least everyone who likes chocolate and cake) seems to like that cake. (It IS a good recipe - not too fiddly, nice crumb, nice texture, and the resulting cake isn't overly sweet).

****

Grace, thanks for the article link! That's what I was talking about. I think it's interesting how they are combing through old maps (and doing what we GISers call "ground truthing" - going out and looking at the site to see if what's on the map is actually there). And it's an unusual use of GIS.

That said, I'm not sure how I'd feel if I owned property with one of these "ghost roads" on it. I'd be uncomfortable if it were my homesite, thinking the state could come through and decide that I'd have to cede a portion of my property close to my house for a road.

And I do think it again brings up the issue of "what is civility? How do we manage to live together?" I keep thinking about that hay farmer and his comment about how 90% of the people who came through his land, he was perfectly happy to give the right of way to, but that there were a few who made him re-think that choice because they behaved badly.

I think that's one of the big challenges we face as a society. I don't know if the "special snowflake" problem (people acting as if they are the only ones that matter and doing things that abuse the hospitality of others) is an increasing problem or if we are just becoming more sensitive to it.

Oh, and Charles - I think is is a White Owl cigars ad. Now that I think about it, I believe one of my grandfathers used to occasionally smoke White Owls.

I should just go out some day and take some photos in my town; there is some interesting stuff to look at and right now when a lot of the ornamental trees are flowering there are some pretty plants, too.

***

One thing I did this past weekend was decorate my mantel.



I found a couple more pieces of "cottage ware" at an antique shop in McKinney (it's a newer shop called "Heirlooms" and I'm happy to see that it has kind of taken up the mantle of the dear departed Antique Collection in terms of what it carries and the style of how it's displayed).

I like this stuff. I suppose there's more of it out there - I'd be willing to bet there's at least a teapot in this style.

And I suppose, because once you have more than two of anything, you're a collector, I will probably now start looking for more of this stuff. But it does make me happy; it's just so cute.



I also put up a few Easter things. Decorating for Easter is something I've never really done; it seems to me that if you observe Lent (which I do, in kind of a half-hearted way), you don't put stuff about Easter up until the day of - and by then, it's kind of a lot of effort for a short time. But I decided to, this year.

The big bunny in the middle is from a Wee Wonderfuls free pattern; he was made using scraps my mom had saved from a dress or top I had when I was a little girl, so the fabric is (I guess) "vintage" (more than 35 years old - I probably would have been about 4 - counts as "vintage" now, I think.)

The "chocolate" rabbit is actually resin but it looks and feels very much like the real thing. And the fuzzy chick was so cute that I had to buy it - that's what made me want to do an Easter mantel.

(The sparkly eggs are covered with German glass glitter. Now that I think of it, it probably would have been cheaper to buy the foil-wrapped chocolate ones. But leaving them out might have attracted ants.)

Ellen: no, no lying in front of doors. Then again, I don't have a drawing room or a tureen to worry about ;) (I do keep most of my amigurumi; right now they are decorating my bedroom. Yes, I realize that most people would view that as kind of childish; I really do not care.)

It was a nice, peaceful weekend. (The best kind, I'm convinced.)

(Piano update is at the very end in case anyone is bored by it and wants to skip that section).

I worked a bit more on the Sock Monkey quilt - all the pieces are cut, the simpler blocks are sewn, and the first of the more-complex blocks (two "pinwheels" set with solid squares) has been made. (No pictures yet; I think I'm going to wait until I lay out the quilt).

I also read a bunch for a fire-ecology class I'm helping teach (and yes, the students have already begun doing the Beavis and Butthead impressions. I think that's kind of required in a fire ecology class).

And I finished my first-ever pair of toe-up socks:

They even fit.

As I said, I'm going to use some Regia that I had deep in the stash (I think I got it on sale somewhere, and when it arrived I was kind of like, yuck, why did I buy this color? so it will be good experimentation yarn) to try out a modification of the pattern with a deeper heel flap. This is an attempt at "perfecting" the fit because I do find I have a couple stitch patterns I want to plug into socks, but that would only really work starting at the toe.

I also started a new scarf:



Diann, remember this? The yarn you said you bought because you liked it and then realized the color was wrong for you? I'm making just a simple feather-and-fan scarf out of it. (I really had planned to for a couple years, but just never got around to starting it).

I like the opal-like quality of the colors and I think it works well with the feather and fan pattern. (Really, sometimes, I think the simple old stitch patterns are the best - this is probably the most basic lace pattern out there)

And here's the January mantel. I like the "icy" effect I've done the past couple years (with candles in all kinds of clear glass holders) that I did it again. Here are all the candles, lit:



(Forgive the shakiness; it was taken with the "extreme night" long exposure time and the "tripod" I jury-rigged out of books wasn't as stable as I thought it was)

Also, one of my favorite things, which always finds a place on my mantel, regardless of how I have it decorated:



These are little copper tealight holders. You can see they have words punched out of them so the candle light shines out through the words. My dad got these for me for Christmas several years ago. They make me very happy.

I did other things - put in a couple more hours of practice on the piano (and discovered that the piano in the Fellowship Hall has a much better tone and doesn't have an annoying "click" in the G above middle C. My church has a great abundance of spinet pianos but most of them haven't been kept up well and they're either badly out of tune or have sustained some damage somewhere).

And you know, I've learned two things already:

1. An hour is the absolute limit I can sit at the piano in one "chunk" and work productively. As I close in on the hour, that's when I begin to make mistakes.

2. My piano teacher was absolutely right when she said that consistent practice is better than a big chunk one day and nothing other days. I didn't disbelieve her on that, after all, she has years of experience and it makes sense - but I really saw it in action this weekend. I think it's like learning anything - if you sleep after learning, somehow it gets "set in" better. I could play the little Mozart piece MUCH BETTER today than I could either yesterday or Friday. I'm even beginning to notice and do things like, "Ease up on the left-hand chords; they are sounding too dominant" and being able to put in legato where there's legato and staccato where there's staccato.

And one of my big worries - and I think this goes back to some bad advice I got from a music teacher years ago (I don't like to speak ill of the dead - and he did pass fairly recently - so I'll just describe it as bad advice). It kind of doomed me to thinking that I could only learn to play "technically proficiently," that I would always play like a machine and not be able to put FEELING into it. But I'm beginning to hear the hints of feeling in my practicing. So maybe there's hope yet.

I am tempted to go a bit "rogue" and see if I can find some copies of the Well-Tempered Clavier books and buy them to have when I feel like messing about on my own. There's one piece extracted from Book 1 at the very end of my performance book. I tried it out today and while I am far, far from perfect on it - it brought me so much joy to be able to do it. To play it, and to hear it, and to recognize it as a piece I've heard before. It's all based on arpeggios so it's not that hard (It's also "arranged," and therefore made less hard. But still).

I may also ask my folks to dig around in the music chest they have at home and see if they can find the old exercise books I had years ago - I think maybe I had one of Clementi's books (did he write for piano? Or did I have that book for clarinet? I don't remember).

I will say I will be so glad when my piano arrives (less than 2 weeks, now.) My plans for my day off tomorrow are to move the necessary furniture and clean so there is a space for it. I envision being able to practice for ten or fifteen minutes in the morning before heading out the door to work, and being able to sit down and "decompress" at the end of the day by practicing. (Right now, I usually switch on the tv to one of the all-news channels. It is probably spiritually healthier for me to sit down at the piano instead. And there's at least a half-hour there most days that's "empty" time otherwise). I know I will be able to make time to practice, especially once the piano is here. (One of the men in my Sunday School class has often commented that "people find time for the things they value" as a response when he hears about someone claiming they "don't have time" for this or that. While that may not be strictly true 100% of the time, I do think there's some truth to it - thinking of all the quilters and knitters out there with far busier lives than I lead, or the people who sing in choirs, or who read far more books than I do.)

I found the energy to do some stuff this weekend.

First, I got the daffodil and crocus bulbs in the ground. I had been concerned about this, that it would get too late and be too cold to plant them. (I find I worry almost as much about not getting this kind of thing done as I worry about work.)

I had a 25-bulb "bargain bag" of mixed daffodils. (I think it was a "bargain bag" because most of them had secondary bulbs growing off the main bulb. I divided a few of the larger ones but left most intact). It will be interesting next spring to see what I got - I tend to like "grab bags" like that where you don't know exactly what you're getting. I also planted 15 "tete-a-tete" variety daffodils, which are a smaller variety. And a bunch of crocus.

I also took the time to drain and put up the hoses and to put the winter covers over the spigots as we were supposed to get a hard freeze last night (I don't think we actually did).

Then today, after church, I made a batch of split-pea soup (why didn't anyone tell me how EASY split pea soup is to make? Unlike typical bean soup, you don't have to do the boil-then-rinse and let-sit process. It does take about an hour to make split pea soup but the vast majority of that is unattended cooking time). So I have soup in my fridge for the rest of the week. I used to hate leftovers but I find as I've gotten busier, I'd rather do my cooking on the weekend and then eat leftovers the rest of the week than stress about how I'll find a half-hour to cook something during the week.

I also found the energy to put up my Christmas decorations. I put on the "holiday music" channel on the digital cable - it's kind of Christmas at Motown day, which actually I think is preferable for me right now than listening to the old familiar CDs I have...it was one of those that set me off the other night. (I did sniffle a little when "The Christmas Song" came on...you know, the one about the chestnuts roasting on an open fire). It may just take a little while yet.

I started with the mantel. I hadn't cleared the decorations I put up back in spring off yet, so this was a big change from what it had been.






These little glasses are new to me; they were an antique store purchase. I just liked them; I wasn't thinking about decorating with them for Christmas at the time. (They have gold pine cones and sort of blue-green pine boughs on them; I realize now they don't show up that well in the photo).

I also dug out all my different Christmas-themed pillows and pillow-like objects.



These "flatsy" dolls - this is Paddington bear and a little Scots girl with her dog, all dressed up for Christmas - are sort of representative of a type of toy that was very common when I was a child. You could buy them in any fabric store, sew them together and stuff them. I know I had a pink cat named Charlie, and a blue teddy bear, and a giraffe I called George (I still have George; he's in the bedroom I sleep in when I visit my parents). It's funny - when I was a tiny child I loved these things, but as I got older I kind of rejected them because, well, they're flat - the perspective is kind of funny sometimes (George's legs, I remember...the "off side" legs looked very funny because they were behind the "front side" legs). But now I kind of like them again; they ALMOST qualify as pillows but they are still teddy bears or toys or whatever.

I think they still sell some of these kind of flat printed toys in the fabric stores but I've not looked recently.

They also used to make these a lot as advertising promotions. I had a Tony the Tiger doll that my mom sent away for (I remember loving that Tony the Tiger when I was about 4; he was the toy I took with me when my family went on trips). And I had a Green Giant. And there were lots and lots of others made over the years, starting many many years ago (I think there are some of those toys that were made in the 1920s and before).

And I decorated the tree. I tend to believe that if some is good, too much is even better when it comes to things like this. So I put on most of the decorations I have.



Most of them are the standard glass balls and bells (most of which are made in Mexico, now, it seems, judging from the packages. Or maybe that's just where I live.)

I also have some more whimsical things on the tree.


I've had this Snoopy ornament a long time; I think it came off a box of Whitman's chocolate.


I also have Hello Kitty on the tree. Yes, Hello Kitty. Yes, I know she has even less of a connection to Christmas than Snoopy but then again, Christmas trees aren't exactly out of the Bible, you know? Besides, I like her. She amuses me.



I also lined up some of the critters under the tree. You can see that Rupert is making an appearance again. Hi, Rupert!


Some of my surprisingly-large collection of bears. The bear in the green sweater is a souvenir of Aer Lingus (the Irish airline); my mother bought it for me a couple years ago when they went to Britain.


I also got the binding put on the fall-foliage themed quilt:




I used the same fabric to bind it that I used as the inner border. I didn't think I'd have enough, but I did, and I'm glad because I think it's the best looking binding. (The other option was to use some of the yellow left from the block background, but I don't think that would have looked as good).

It's been a little while since I finished a quilt top.



This is the "Straits of Georgia" quilt top from the Fat Quarter Quilts book.

Here's a closeup:



This took me longer than it should have, but as it turns out, there's only one RIGHT way to sew all four of those pieces together, and there's at least one WRONG way. Which I kept doing. So I had to unpick.

And then, last week, as I was working, I realized that because fat quarters are very typically cut SMALLER than what the books assume they are (I suppose that's because the fabric companies make fabric narrower than the assumed 45" width), I wasn't going to be able to make the 8 blocks of each color.

And I got unhappy, because I thought that would mess up the cool diagonal setting I was planning, and I'd have to go instead to some kind of random setting. So I put the quilt in "time out" for a while. And then, I realized, I could still do the diagonal setting, it would just have to be a little shorter.

I'm happier with the quilt now that it's finished. I still don't think it's a "best ever" (I wound up having to do an awful lot of squaring up of blocks and there are a few irregularities), and the colors didn't work quite as well as I had hoped.

I also decided maybe it was time to take the snowmen down off my mantel (maybe now we'll stop getting wintry weather).



I wasn't sure what kind of theme to go with. First I thought of St. Patrick's Day, but once I put out the little cottage salt-and-pepper shakers and the glass with the etched triskele (you can't really see it in the photo but it was a "favor" at my cousin's very Irish-themed wedding), I realized I lacked much stuff that smacked of Ireland.

So I changed my mind and went with "favorite British children's book characters."

Well, it is *my* mantel, after all.

So here are some close-ups:



Doubtless you recognize these. They were all made from kits or from patterns (Tigger, Eeyore, and Piglet from kits; Pooh from a pattern).



These may not be as immediately recognizable but they are supposed to be Ratty, Mole, and Mr. Toad from Wind in the Willows. I made these up myself; kind of designed them as I went along. Mole is my favorite - you can't really see it in the photo but he wears a tiny pair of spectacles made of very fine wire. I'm not quite as satisfied with how Toad came out but it's hard to get an accurate portrayal of an amphibian.

This last character is probably the most difficult to recognize, both because he's not a particularly "true" portrayal based on the illustration in the book, and because he's an extremely minor character.



It's Bill the Lizard, from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I wrote about making him a long time ago, back here and here.

I re-made myself a Bill the Lizard partly out of nostalgia - as I said in one of those entries from 2004, I always felt a little sorry for poor Bill when I was a child, he seemed to get the dirty work, and then he got shot up the chimney for his trouble...

I guess designing non-mammals is harder for me; I'm not totally satisfied with either Mr. Toad or Bill.

I'm going to leave the contest (see Friday's entry, below) up for one more day so I'm sure to allow everyone who wants a chance to enter. I'll announce the winner tomorrow.

I worked some on the interminable i-cord for the Greek pullover (yes, I do want to get that sewn up sometime). I have one section of the i-cord done and am working on the second. I also finished sewing all of the strips together for the Straits of Georgia quilt and began cutting the individual pieces to make blocks.

But, in the middle of this, I decided I needed some "almost instant gratification" knitting.



This is a little (note the hardback books for scale) knitted alien dude, from the pattern at Bittersweet (she has some other neat toy patterns on there).

I didn't have exactly the right color green, so I just used some Lion Wool I had in the color they call "Lemongrass" (which is my favorite color of Lion Wool.) I decided I wanted my alien to have arms and hands, so I just made some short segments of 4-st i-cord, which I then increased to 8 sts for the hand part.

His name is Barney. You know how they say television signals float out into deep space, and supposedly life on other planets could pick it up, if they had the right equipment? Well, the planet Barney's from was picking up 1950s television shows, and his parents were big fans of a particular one. In fact, Barney has an older brother named Andy.

I also spent this weekend redecorating my mantel. I hadn't done much with it this summer, because summer is always kind of a "meh" season for me - I'm "meh" about a lot of things in summer; it's only when it starts to cool down that I feel better.



Yeah, yeah, I know I once said I hoped I'd never turn into that kind of woman who had silk flowers for every season. Whatever.

I finally got around to updating my mantel decorations:



It's kind of a "wetland" theme, I guess, with the china thing with the birds on it (those are actually calla lilies, I guess, which aren't so much a wetland plant, but the colors and the leaves make me think of wetlands). And there are the little river rocks.

The two bears are actually a salt and pepper shaker set I've had for years - bought them at the venerable "Treasure Mart" when I lived in Ann Arbor. (The Treasure Mart is one of the things I hope is still in existence...it was a wonderful place. I used to go there a lot).

And what's that off to the left, hiding in the (artificial) grass?



None other than my tiny garden gnome, who had lived on my bookcase for quite a while!

I did the March (spring, really - with a few additions it can serve for Easter) mantel decorations yesterday evening:



This is an overview. You can see there really aren't many candles this month (mainly because I'm a bit concerned about the silk apple blossoms).

The apple blossom garland was something I bought - it's funny, a few years ago I would have rolled my eyes a bit about this kind of a "dustcatcher" but now I think it's quite cheerful and nice.

I also have my "Little Nutbrown Hare" stuffie in there - I think that was a gift from a friend some years back. He's there on the left, under the silk flowers.

One of the really fun things about doing these mantel decorations is that I get to pull out little odds and ends of things - little critters from my collection, stuff I've bought at antique stores, interesting plates or things like that.

Here's a close up of the "spring" blocks I bought:



The little hedgehog is one I made a number of years ago from a kit. The little turtle (that's what the guy on the left is) was being sold as a dog toy (if you can believe that). I think he makes a nice decoration instead of a dog toy.

You can also see (in the back) my lovebird-vases. All three (two are identical and one is a little different) were made by the same company - they are from Japan and the only other marking is a little symbol stamped in orange that looks like the Mercedes-Benz trademark.

I've turned the heel and done the gussets on the first Feather and Fan sock, and this afternoon I'm finishing up cutting all the pieces for the Tumbler quilt (I realized that you can cut 3 1/2" strips FIRST, and then just use the template to get the angled sides of the tumblers - much, much faster.) I will probably have a picture of the first row (or more, if I get more done) of the quilt tomorrow. And maybe a shot of the sock, too.