Update

A year ago almost exactally, DH, bebegirls and I went on vacation for 4 days.  When we got home we discovered there was a power outage while we were gone causing all the pumps in my reef tank to turn off and mass amounts of death in the tank.  Do you know how bad an 18inch anemone smells when it dies.  When the nitrates dropped below 20ppm I started adding critters to the tank again.    At Christmas I added some frog spawn corals and recently I added a $10 sized zooanthid colony to the tank.    I took this photo first thing in the morning before the lights turn on, so the colony is still waking up but you can see the zooanthids spitting and growing.  I should be braver and put more stuff in the tank and it might recover faster. but the spreading of the zooanthids is a good sign.

Bebegirls is off in with her Grandparents for two weeks.  She is having a great time.  Here are some pictures I took last week when we dropped her off.

MMMM tomatos fresh of the vine

The Dog isn't sure about always being held.

Two weeks of Bebe free time have lead to lots of quilting time.  I have three different tops I am working on. atm.  I have made alot of progress.  I might have one of the 3 tops pieced by the time she comes back.  One of the tops is a king sized quilt so I work on the other two when I need a break.  The smaller of the two will be a 50x 40ish lap quilt  and the larger will be an 80x80 quilt for my nephew for when he gets his big boy bed.  The twins turned 1 a month ago but as he never got his baby quilt I figured I might as well make his useful.  I didn't take a picture of the large stacks of fabrics of the works in progress.

attack of the giant jelly fish...

I mean yarn monster

DH failed to follow directions today.  I said please only run the dryer.  don't touch the wash machine I have some skeins of yarn soaking in there.  instead he went oh the wash is full of water with no clothes in it and then put clothes in there on top of the soaking yarn and then ran the wash machine. and this tangled mass is what came out

finished tops, projects and other such stuff ie eye candy

So it has been a while.  spring fever i guess just way too hard to sit in front of the computer when i have quilt ideas pouring out of my head faster than I can work on them.  

mid march we went to pick up my trout quilts from the long arm quilter.  I was trying to document them with some nice photos and bebegirls was being as bad as a cat about helping.  so here is the sequence of photos.  

1 the obligatory out of focus shot 

2 ooooh mom is doing something interesting i must get involved

3  and now i got to help

4 now you are trying to photograph the big quilt.  my assistance is defiantly needed.

this is what 750 ft feet of binding look like all nicely wrapped up ready to be sewn on.   The current status is binding is sewn on the front of the king sized quilt and I have two sides hand sewing the finish

Last weekend I made my totally horse obsessed bebegirls a zebra print dress.  The pattern is Macy Giggles by Izzy and Ivy.  the skirt flares out so nicely when bebegirls spins

So I mentioned the quilt ideas flowing out of my head faster than i can sew or have time to sew.  so here are some of the works in progress as I am working on them.  and I have two more fairy quilts in mind and a castle quilt

horsey quilt for bebegirls birthday.  mostly have to work on it after bed time as you can see her help again.  i am going to put the borders on after she goes to bed tonight.

this is a wall hanging.  the quilt really is square the carpet is lumpy making it look lumpy

and now for the bestest quilt ever

isn't it pretty.  and it came to me before coffee on a Sunday morning.

Now to decide which border to go with.

Attack of the Bebes

yes that is marker and yes that is my sewing table. no she will not get another marker for along time.

the marker did come off sorta.  the laminate top is stained even after magic eraser and such.

Spring is here

spring comes early in these parts of the world.  The crocuses, daffodils and day lilies are all sticking their heads up.  Driving to Santa Fe yesterday to take my quilts to my long arm quilter up there, the hills were starting to green up, well as green as it ever gets here.  The predominant colors here are dirt with blue skys. Lots of colors of dirt, red, brown, yellow, white, even green and pink dirt.   And rocks lots and lots of rocks easily accessibly.  Good thing when you are a geologist.  but I digress.  I finally got my batting for my large fish quilt and then I got a backing it isn't exactally what I wanted cause they didn't have enough of that.  So I got a beige batik with the thought if I over dye it with a black I could get a really lovely charcoal grey batik.  well it was good intentions.  The Procion MX black dye is a blue based black dye so instead of going grey when diluted it goes umm navy blue. Not really what I was intending.  but in the end the very large whole cloth piece I got for the back of the quilt works with the quilt in it is navy blue-ness.  the batik print still shows through,  so it works.  after quilting and washing it will crinkle up and give it a nice mottled texture for the back of the quilt.  So with a backing and a batting ready, my quilt was ready to go to the long arm quilter. And yesterday that is just what we did.

After dropping the quilt off at the long arm quilter we went to santa fe quilting, and finally 6th store is the charm found water soluble thread to do the trapunto basting for the animals on bebegirls story book farms quilt.  So at the store I went in for a $3.50 item and came out spending $65. as one of my friends pointed out the $40 worth of stuff i bought for the bebegirls doesn't count.  The item I purchased for me were the absolutely incredible quilt blocks from Olde America Antiques.  They are vintage fish prints printed on quilting fabric and they are beautiful.  and I have a wall hanging planned with them.  I then went to the web site and found so many other beautiful prints they have.   so many pretty prints to make my heart sing. 

After the quilt store we got some lunch and took the bebe to the play ground.  we didn't stay long cause a storm was starting to roll in. hence the grey light in the following picture.

and I will leave you with the end result of some of the fabric I got in santa fe yesterday.  Horsey pillow cases for the bebekins.

Doll Quilts, blogiversary and finished objects

This is my blogiverdary post.  I started just about a year ago.  I did 41 posts last year.  this year will try for at least that many

Last week I went to Seattle.  I left the cold state of New Mexico to the slightly warmer state of Washington.  I had two reasons for my journey.  First my best friend lives up there.  I hadn't been to visit her in over three years.  I was pregnant with bebekins last time I was up there.   The husband and the MIL took care of the bebe while I was up there.  The second reason which is what time the trip when it was was Cake was having a concert in Seattle.  I love cake, they are the most awesomest band ever, especially in concert.  the first time I saw them live was on the pier in Seattle the summer I worked at a national monument in Oregon. while I was in Seattle i drug my best friend who is a some times quilter to some quilt stores.  We went to The Needle and I near her place in Everett and then we went to Undercover Quilts in the Pike Place Market in Seattle.  I got some stuff up there.  mostly some random Seattle novelty prints and  and other prints that I haven't seen at home.  I picked up to horse novelty prints for the bebekins.  she is going through a horse obsession.  everything has to be horseys and it is even better if they are zebras.    I was planning on making her some tote bags or something of the like to carry her horseys in.  she helps me unpack and the fat quarters are immediately re appropriated to be blankets for the the horseys.  I took the fat quarters and paired them up with some fat quarters in my stash free motioned quilted them took some extra binding fabric and the bebekins has two doll quilts for her horseys. 

at one of the quilt stores in Seattle i picked up two pillow case kits.  I loved the prints and who can't use more pillow cases.  This weekend I spend an hour and put them together and then the bebekins re-appropriated them for her bed.  That is fine I can use them next time they are washed.  I love both the prints on both of these.  

Back in October Bebekins, Grandma and I went to the Taos Wool Festival  I came back with two lovely skeins of yarn one I made into a jumper dress for the bebekins, the other is a skein of handspun cashmere lace yarn from a farm in Colorado.  I found the right beads to go with it in November and then in January I found the pattern it wanted to be.  the pattern is Ophidian by Sivia Harding.  I spent a month working on it on and off and here it is.  absolutely beautiful. and feather light, and soft as a cloud.  Before it was blocked the bebekins thought it was hers and you can see it on her in one of the horsey pictures. 

Snow the evil white substance that falls from the sky.

We are on day 4 of closed schools for all of 4 inches of snow where I live. down in the valley there was like only an inch of snow.  tuesday was kinda understandable. the roads were icy and no one in NM knows how to drive in the snow.  But I still had to work cause my boss doesn't believe in snow days.  if he can walk into work then we are expected to be there too. Wednesdays closures were a joke. the roads were bone dry but it was exceedingly cold for here.  The high was 7 degrees the low was like -10 which were record cold temps that day. I know this isn't cold for a lot of the country but damn it it is cold for here.  Thursday the school district couldn't get the buses started. so no school. The cold temps have caused a natural gas shortage in the state so yesterday afternoon the Governor declared a state of emergency and closed non essential state government and the university was closed  and then the city government. today schools, state/city gov, and university are all closed cause of the natural gas shortage. and I still have to be at work cause my boss doesn’t believe in days off.  So instead of getting snow days to stay home and play with bebe and do some quilty/crafty stuff, I went to work and grumbled about it.  I have to mention while this whole weather BS was going on we had the roof mid re-roof at home, so we had no heat.  we had space heaters which did the job to keep us from freezing.  This morning it was warm enough and decent enough weather for the roofers to be back working on the roof.  Never in my life been so glad to smell roofing tar.  but means we might be able to use our heater again this weekend.

I did finish a shawl this week.  I made the wren shawl with some of my hand dyed yarn.  it is an alpaca/merino blend sock yarn.  I think it came out quite nicely.  This morning bebegirls found the shawl blocking on the floor and decided to wear it. so I let her wear it while she was playing in the snow before going over to grandmas.