highlights from this weekend

boo went camping with boy scouts.... i went to the ballunar festival.

snappy and i had front row grass for viewing the balloon set up and inflation on the opening night. is that the proper term for a hot air balloon? inflation? anyways - it was pretty cool. that empty patch of grass above later contained the engergizer bunny balloon. that is one GINORMOUS balloon. my pics of the hot hare are not so great...i was too close and it looked like the rabbit was going to come down and swallow us up.

the balloon glow was fantastic. they would do an "all glow" and a "twinkle burn" according to whatever the MC would call out. oh hey! that diagonal thing on the picture above? that's the hot hare's ear while still being inflated. the twinkle burn made it look like twinkle christmas lights.

i was going to accompany snappy on saturday morning/afternoon while he set up and ran a us navy booth

last night, i finally got to try out a recipe i found online for pumpkin ricotta lasagna.

yummy, but it needs some serious tweeking still. first, the person who posted the recipe can't write a recipe. half the ingredients that are needed last are at the top of the list or they're completely out of order. second, they "forget" to say chopped, minced or sliced on any of the veggies with the exception of the spinach. and they wanted you to divide the ricotta pumpkin mix in half for only two layers. when you use a 2 lb tub of ricotta cheese, that's not feasible.

this will definitely be something i'll make again, but it'll be my recipe instead. less ricotta, more pumpkin. more spinach and mushrooms. either no or less bechamel/white sauce. the lasagna is already creamy and squishy...there's no meat to hold it together. thicker noodles that cover more of my pan. and nutmeg. the addition of nutmeg to the pumpkin would be fantastic. i already adjusted the recipe to add egg to the ricotta since we all know that it gets watery-runny when you bake ricotta and don't have a binder.

then i finished up most of my blocks for the QBE swap for october and all my bee blocks. i have one more block to make for QBE and then i'll be done for the month.

i got one!!

i got a bag slot with tia! sometime soon, i will be the super-proud owner of a camp follower bag in the cathy style. i've been poking around on her website trying to figure out what fabrics i want her to use after i send my hubby's bdu pants and patches. i've even got his johnny cash's and some of his old working whites. he started collecting all his old uniforms that the navy said "bye bye" to and setting them aside for me to have tia make bags out of. i did have to tell him to stop and that we didn't need THAT many.

ooh...i just realized i've got some dress blue bellbottoms too... 13 buttons... i may have to figure out something special for him with them. hmm...

houston int'l quilt show finds

i actually didn't get too much this year. i was a good girl. :) i think my hubby got more stuff and he definitely played with EVERY longarm machine he walked next to. yes, they are fantastic and i love to play too. i didn't today. i'd really want one more than i already do if i had.




these are most of my purchases today. not shown are the three handquilting stencils, a pencil extender and a set of awesome socks for one of my nephew's christmas present. i love the mismatched knit socks. i want some for myself.

below is one of my favorite things from today's show and one of my hubby's purchases....



hand-marbled silk. isn't it luxurious? the little blue rectangle on the bottom left is a scrap piece and not part of the big splotchy one. he bought me two yards of the big splotchy marbled silk because i was drooling over it. it literally was the first booth we went to while waiting on my MIL. all the ladies there were jealous of my hubby for the purchase. it's a belated birthday present replacment and i get to make something beautiful to wear with it.

now this little guy is one of my absolute favorite quilts from the show today. bad me though...i can't remember the name of the quilt or the quilter!! i am SOOOO sorry i did not write it all down. this guy was supposedly up for auction at the IQA section, but we could not find the silent auction form for him. i wanted to bid on it. he was actually a pretty good sized small quilt too. maybe 18" x 24" or a bit bigger.

my dogs are tired and it's good to sit down again. i did manage to finish this show faster than last year by about an hour. i didn't stop at as many booths and peruse, but i walked the whole thing.

checking off...

three sturdy and good sized cloth bags.... check.

comfy shoes.... check.

scraps of 2 fabrics.... check.

camera with charged battery.... check.

husband.... check.

debit card and some cash.... check.

mother-in-law..... meeting us there.

verbal warning to hubby and MIL that it's a LONG day.... check.

tickets to QUILT FESTIVAL.... you betcha!


i'll be back this evening and i'll share my new finds and some of my favorite pictures. this is a good part of living in the houston area. easy access to the quilt show.

as seen around my house

as i was walking from my kitchen through the living room to my bedroom, i saw this:




i had to stop and do a double take.




there really isn't much room between the piano bench and the bottom of the keyboard. mere inches. and while the above photo doesn't show how flat she really was, i can guarantee that matisse was squished in there. she of course gave me that look of "what?! why are you taking pictures of me?"

and this is what i saw when i went outside for fresh parsley:



moss! my pretty moss is coming back since we have had deluges of rain here over the past week. it had dried up in all our heat and drought this summer, leaving sad brown and crispy reminders of the soft bright green loveliness.

we're trying to buy the house we currently rent. it's going slowly, but the patio is one of the many things we'll redo if we do indeed get to purchase it. it was never laid properly and settled in a way that floods in rains. plus, it slopes towards the house instead of away from it. snappy and i want to do concrete pads or stone that allows the grass or the above moss or another ground cover to creep in. i love this moss. it'd be a shame to have it go away.

wonky progress

so i'm making progress on my wonky log cabin xmas quilt for john's quilt along. the top and backing are pieced, it's all sandwiched and look!!!

me attempting to machine quilt...

i'm doing a loop-de-loop quilting on this one. i had really planned on doing some neat tree quilting with a christmas light stitching on the border of whatever i made with these fabrics. i've had the border stencil for a few years and the tree one since last year's houston international quilt festival. oh well. another time...



so as you can see, some of my loops are great and others are not so great. i wasn't going to use this picture on any posts, but boo took this one and the one of me at my machine. how could i turn down my sweet 7-yr old budding photographer? umm....you don't.... :)

and holy cow! look at the dust/lint bunnies below!!



all this from one single little quilt. this wonky quilt is not that big. it's about 56-58 inches square if i remembered how big my border fabric is...i could do calculations correctly... long day. i don't want to think anymore!

but - i talked to my best friend tonight. he's another sailor and i've known him forever. they found out that they're having a little girl!!! apparently, she was not shy during this ultrasound. so, now i've got to get cranking and finish the blanket i'm knitting for this little one. and the xmas present for my nephew...and the mini quilt for my in-laws...

blogger's quilt festival

welcome to the fall edition of the blogger's quilt festival sponsored by park city girl!!

this is my first time to participate in the quilt festival, or any quilt festival for that matter, in any way other than as an attendee. how exciting!! so, i'm bringing you my latest fully-finished quilt and my second ever paper-piecing project.

front view

this mini quilt was made for a swap through flickr's swap til you drop aka STUD group. september marked the first anniversary of STUD's formation and first swap, so many of us chose to do an anniversary themed quilt. we were able to interpret that any way we chose.

i chose to represent several of the traditional and modern 1st anniversary gifts: paper, peridot and gold.

detail of fabrics and quilting

i used a peridot green fabric, accented with "gold" triangles and binding. the main fabric is paper print! it's a travel journal - you can pick out the eiffel tower, the great wall of china and the leaning tower of pisa. how cool is that fabric? if only the store sold it in bolt form instead of a couple rare fat quarters (i bought all of them...). plus, i paper pieced this mini quilt, so there was even more paper for that first anniversary.

well fellow bloggers, i hope you enjoyed seeing my little quilt. i had wanted to show you my wonky log cabin from john's quilt-along, but i had a couple setbacks so it's not sandwiched yet. tomorrow...

qov #4 - a sampler/bee style

this is my latest QOV, all stitched up and waiting for my longarm assignment. yippee! this makes QOV #4 for me. not as many as i had hoped for the year, but still a big feat. i do have to thank the longarm quilters for helping me finish these quickly since i'm a handquilter...

this one is different for me and special. different because i used mainly blocks that came from two flickr swap groups: the 6-12" mini quilt swap and the quilt block exchange group. blocks used in here all came from the august swaps where i asked for my blocks to be made in red, white and blue. the ones from QBE were to be of any style while the ones from 6-12" were stars. i made 6 blocks myself, a combo of stars and others. the remaining 2 blocks were made by snappy and boo...my boys learned to sew a little!! i'm so proud of them. i know boo was very excited to sew and to make something for the wounded. he's been wanting to make an entire quilt for them by himself. we'll work our way to that.

on friday, i got my copy of quilting for peace in the mail. what a fantastic book!! *note: i just found she has a blog under the same name...awesome... this book is so inspiring and i've already read the book from cover to cover twice. i've been making my QOVs now all year long and i've got a box ready for "newborns in need" that need to be shipped off. the charity quilting bug has bitten as well. maybe you'll be inspired to make something warm and wonderful for someone else too.

my neck is starting to feel better, thanks to some great muscle relaxers. no, i didn't quilt anything that required straight lines that first night. i could barely move my head and moving...nope... not happening. some stretches, no sleep and more drugs later, it's moving some. thanks torticollis! i love you too!