This morning my daughter sent me this little ditty…
Will I be stopped by a little bit of fog and drizzle? NEVER!!
BUT more importantly, who will HAVE a GS in this rain and fog? Sheesh….:o(
I hope that you have you have a SUNNY Saling Saturday and Happy Quilting!~P
Happy Retirement Day, Claire!
Today is the LAST DAY of work for my friend, Claire! She has been teaching for 32 years, in a total of FIVE different schools in the Victoria area. Let’s do the math…24 kids every year times 32 years…oh and she taught Kindergarten, so we have to DOUBLE THAT because she would teach one class in the morning and then teach another set of kids in the afternoon…makes me tired just thinking about it!! Let’s just say Claire has taught a mess of kids…well over a thousand!! It’s so time!! To look at Claire you would never think that she is retirement age…she looks young! Yes, she has weathered those rug rats well! 
SEW now Claire gets to do all the things that she enjoys doing, like…
…wool work…lots of wool work…
…and dyeing wool…
And of course Quilting~
…throw in gardening, shopping and raising her son…well I think Claire has plenty of stuff to do to keep her happy and out of trouble…plus throw her newly retired husband into the mix and well, let’s just say, I can’t see her missing those little ankle biters one bit! Well maybe just a little….nahhhh…
Claire we wish you well!! You SEW deserve a wonderful and happy retirement! Now do that {HAPPY DANCE}!!
Have a FUN Friday and Happy Quilting!~P
Slow News Day here on the West Coast of Canada…so I turned to my trusty camera for some advice on what to write about…and look at what she spit out!!
I CAN’T believe I haven’t shared these with you before this!!
And it’s such a sweet gift..and simple to make…just eat lots of peanut butter …and then scrub out the GLASS jars and give each jar a swipe of blackboard paint (and if you use the same paint to paint the lids you can write on those too). That’s it…done!! Each jar came with a piece of chalk inside! GREAT GIFT!! I love them!! And don’t they look pretty! Yup, I’m very lucky to have such sweet friends! Thanks again, Delores!! Every quilter needs a set of these…sure hope you bought some for yourself?!
Have a thrilling Thursday and Happy Quilting!~P
Last November I was lucky enough to go to Country Loft Quilt Shop’s Christmas Sale! If you are EVER in the La Mesa area in November then drive, fly, or drag yourself to this shop!! It’s a MUST see…in fact, it’s a MUST seen any time of the year! (It’s just outside the San Diego area.) You can read all about my trip HERE…and HERE…and ogle all the pictures! Yes, there are TWO days worth of blogging pictures…can you tell that I LOVED every moment!!
While I was there I spotted JoAnn Mullaly’s newest quilt called ‘Folk Branches’…GORGEOUS!! (JoAnn is the author of ‘Wool Crazy’!) I had ‘watched’ JoAnn stitch and create the blocks to make this quilt on her blog, so it was exciting for me to see the finished quilt!
This picture DOES NOT DO IT JUSTICE!! JoAnn’s stitches are perfect…(ahhh to take a lesson from HER!)
I knew that there was a book coming out with this quilt in it…so my thought was…NEXT YEAR…you are coming home!
Looks like I won’t have to wait for next year because I WON this book over at Cotton ‘n Wools Blog!! {insert a happy dance here!!} Yippppeee!! She’ll be coming home six months early!! Thanks SEW MUCH, Anne!! I’ll be waiting by the mailbox for this baby!! No rush…I’m not going anywhere…
In the meantime…check out Anne’s Market pictures for a full run down of all the other projects inside this book!! I love ’em ALL!!
Have a Woolie Wednesday and Happy Quilting!~P
Hey there is a new gal in Blogland…Her name is Jackie and she has just recently joined the Canadian Quilters’ Association (CQA/ACC) Board of Directors! Now this may sound boring (as soon as I hear Association and Board of Directors in one sentence, I tend to zone out)…but It’s All Good…just THINK about it…if we read Jackie’s NEW BLOG then we will be the first to find out the scoop on any and every Quilt Show or Quilt Conference in British Columbia! And that would DEFINITELY be a good thing!!
A little bit of background on the Canadian Quilters’ Association~ Formed in 1981, the aims and objectives of the Canadian Quilters’ Association/Association canadienne de la courtepointe (CQA/ACC) are:
All good things in my book! They want to bring quilters together and to showcase Canadian quilting talent… so every two years they pick a city from across Canada where they host a huge Quilting Conference…this year (or rather next year, 2013) it will be held in Penticton, B.C., Canada…May 6-13 are the dates to circle on your 2013 calendar!
In the meantime, make sure you visit Jackie’s new blog and find out more about our Canadian Quilters and about our Canadian Bloggers!!
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Jackie could unify the Quilter Shops of Canada and get the price of Fabric down!! Perhaps it would mean Quilters storming Parliament Hill…NOW that’s what I call a NEWS worthy broadcast!! (I’ll make the SIGNS and the Egg Salad Sandwiches…!!)
And speaking of NEWS Worthy…Look at what my friend, Marie found on her beach on the Oregon Coast…Imagine going for a walk and stumbling onto this!!
It’s a old dock from the Japanese Tsunami that has washed up onto their beach…
The authorities scrubbed and burned all the little creatures and seaweed off the dock before burying them in an 8 ft hole! I guess they were invasive creatures and would create havoc with the environment. Now the dock will be dismantled and destroyed.
Have a terrific Tuesday and Happy Quilting!~P
From this…
To this…
Yup, they’re like rabbits!
And no two are the same…they are multiplying like CrAZy!
Hope you have a MULTIPLYING Monday too! Happy Quilting!~P
What’s cookin’ you ask?! Wellllll…since YOU asked…let me show you how to make my family’s favourite dessert…
It’s called Napoleon Slice and it’s SUPER easy…all you need are these ingredients~
So you COOK the pudding according to the directions on the package and then pour it into a glass bowl and stretch plastic wrap over the top or put a lid on it and put it into the fridge to cool…
While it’s cooling…line your pan with graham wafer crackers…setting aside all the broken crackers.
..then whip the cream. DO NOT ADD ANYTHING TO THE WHIP CREAM! Spread it over the pudding layer….
Then add another layer of wafers…
See how you trim the wafers to fit nice and snug…
With the icing sugar make a runny icing by adding milk and a little vanilla.
Put a THIN layer over the wafers..as thin as possible…don’t worry if you can see the outline of wafers…
Take some chocolate chips (or a chocolate bar or large squares of Baker’s Chocolate…whatever you have!) and melt it with a bit of butter…
…stir until it’s nice and smooth and runny…
Drizzle over your dessert…don’t worry about globs…
…because you are going to run the edge of the knife through through the whole works..
…creating a masterpiece! Now put it into the fridge for several hours to set!
It’s time for the clean up…remember all those broken bits of wafers…
…well it’s time to dip and enjoy!! Ah common…you can do better than THAT!
Ahhhh NOW that’s more like it! Yum!!
Have a SUNNY Sunday and Happy Eating…I mean Quilting!~P
PS…Here is the formal recipe for an 8”X 8” pan…double it for a bigger size (I NEVER make a small size!!:o)
Napoleon Slice
1 pkg. graham wafers
1pkg vanilla pie filling (the kind you cook)
1 pint whip cream
2 chocolate squares
Topping:
2 C. icing sugar (I use less)
4 tablespoons of milk
1/2 tsp. vanilla
Hope this helps!
I have been doing so much hand sewing lately that it felt good to set it aside and just do some mindless piecing at the sewing machine last night!
With NOTHING on TV, I downloaded a Audio Book from our local library and I was in heaven! I picked a GREAT story, ‘The Litigators’ by John Grisham….nothing like a couple of bumbling washed up, seedy lawyers and a multi-million dollar case..oh and then throw in the ‘new guy’…a young lawyer hard up for a job…well let’s just say, hubby had to check up on me as I was laughing so hard! (no straight jackets needed…YET!)
So while listening to the Audio Book…this is what I pieced….bowties fit for any lawyer to wear…bumbling or otherwise!
I cut these out a long time ago when Bonnie Hunter offered the Bowtie Challenge…It’s an EASY block to make…you need two 2” background lights, two 2” darks and for the centre of the bowtie you need two 1 1/4” of the same dark fabric.
The idea is to get rid of all those small scraps…which is what I hope to do!!
Hey, remember how I said that I won those Wonder Clips on Anna’s Woolie Mammoth Blog…well I think by posting about it, it must have jarred the mailman into action because looky what was in the mailbox yesterday!
LOVELY labels for the back of my quilts (…guess that means I have to actually finish one!!)…and this sweet coin purse full of these lovely clips!
I finally got my thread keepers up…Sewing machine threads on the right and hand quilting and applique threads in the middle. Oh and check out my bobbin keeper…it’s an old yardstick that I found at a Garage Sale..
Here’s a close-up for you…
Every inch I put a small nail to hang a bobbin…and now the yardstick is full!! It looks like I am off GSing this morning…got to find another yardstick!:o) Ahhhh…it’s SEW good to have a purpose!
I still have to hang up my clock…and get rid of the crap…
…like this!! Is there anyone else out there who, apparently, throws NOTHING away?! What’s with this? And I didn’t even KNOW that I had a problem!!
Sheeesh!
Have a Super Saturday and Happy Quilting!~P
My quilting friend, Delores returned from a trip to the Oregon Coast and of course brought back some Show and Tell…namely some new quilting gadgets which she brought to Heritage Quilting to show us!
Now the special red binding clips by Clover (on the right) have been the talk of Blogland. Here in Canada we always receive things about a year after the fact! It’s like we live in Timbuktu…where everything is brought in by horse and wagon! The clips look great..and they each have a measurement on their tops so that you can have perfect hems/binding! (I won a package from Anna’s Woolie Mammoth in her last give away…and you guessed it…they are being brought in by horse and wagon! I can’t wait to try them out!)
Delores also brought in QTools Cutting Edge and Sewing Edge…
First let’s talk about the purple Sewing Edge…Now we have all, at one time, put painter’s tape on our sewing machine’s bed to help us achieve perfect seams…you know where the edge of the fabric follows the edge of the tape. Well this reusable purple strip is applying that very idea…you put it on the bed of your machine and it helps guide the fabric. They have kicked it up a notch by raising the thickness of the tape so that fabric nestles right up to the tape and can’t go over…hence you get perfect seams!! Plus it is reusable…so no sticky residue! Brilliant or what!
While Delores was telling us how the tapes work, Vickie, who had brought in her new magazine, “Quilt You Stash” for Show and Tell, pointed to the article reviewing this new tape…
It even has a picture showing us how it works…pretty nifty!
The orange Cutting Edge is used with your cutting ruler…let’s say you are cutting 1” strips, so you put the tape along the 1” line on the underside of the ruler…remember the tape is raised …so that the fabric butts right up to the tape and can’t go over…creating perfect 1” strips. Plus it provides you with a visual point to line up your fabric! Another brilliant idea!
So if you have used any of these products, what did you think?? Come on we want to hear from you? Did they work…or was it a waste our hard earned fabric $$?
Have a FUN Friday and Happy Quilting!~P
Yesterday morning found me weeding and planting bedding plants…finally the sun was out!!
At 10:30am hubby got antsy… he wanted to enjoy this new found sunshine too…but in the form of a hike! I dropped my trowel so fast, had a lunch packed and was at the door, with the dogs leashed before he knew what hit him! Yeah, recess time!
This is where we ended up…it’s called the Shawnigan Lake Quarry. The road leading to the Quarry is minutes from where we live and then it takes about 20 minutes to hike in. Years ago this use to be an old mining pit but has since become a lake..a VERY pretty lake!
I love the way there is a path right around the lake. The water is crystal clear and is really deep…perfect for swimming! No, my skinny dipping days are over but I’m just sayin’ my grand-dog, Lola, would LOVE this place!
All in all, it took us a couple of hours to walk around the lake, chow down and walk out…and I still had a whole afternoon left to do a bit more wedding and even a little stitching before dinner…YUP, it was a perfect day!!
And no one got the boot…not even the boot! 
Hope you have a Thrilling Thursday and Happy Quilting!~P
Yahoo!! The sky is BLUE…the most incredible BLUE ever…and that big yellow shiny thing is up in the sky!! It’s been so long since we’ve seen that THING, that I forget what it’s called…but I like it…
Yes, I like it a lot!! With the SUN shining (and no grey clouds on the horizon) I think I will hustle outside and pull a few weeds and plant a few pots…the bedding plants have been wait for just such a day!
For all you quilters who aren’t getting sunshine…or are getting TOO much sunshine…and IF you are looking for something to do…and have some small scraps hanging around (and who doesn’t??) then head on over to Cheri’s Blog…she has a wee quilt all cut out and wants us to join in!! NOW this is tempting because she whips up the cutest, most incredible quilts ever! If the clouds should roll in…then I’m off to her house, for sure!!
In the mean time…I’m going to take the time to smell a few of these beauties… 
And I managed to save the boot from getting the boot!! The other one mysteriously disappeared…(I’m thinking bottom of the pond?)Today I am going to replant this lone survivor and make it feel pretty…Oh so pretty..
Come on Hop-A-Long…we have a date! Stay tuned for the make-over…
Have a wicked Wednesday and Happy Quilting!~P
