Reading blogs!

Dear Readers,
I just finished enjoying the blogs I look at every day.  (You can see my list on my profile. It doesn't show very well with this background, and I didn't choose that color for the link that will bring you to it... well, I'm just learning this blogging thing.  It's under that paragraph.) Most don't blog every day.  In fact, I just started one that has not blogged in over 2 years, but I love to look at a different part of it each day, and when I've finished seeing all that is there to see I'll probably cut it loose from my list.  I just appreciate the "eye candy" and the sharing that goes on even after the blogger has moved on to some other interest. The sharing and caring is lovely!  I was so excited to see that one of the blogs I really admire left me a comment.   I feel like I've been visited by a celebrity!  (Well, let's just throw caution to the wind and try something new - to put a link here to her blog...)  http://exuberantcolor.blogspot.com/  Wanda blogs every day, sometimes twice a day - and that is really impressive in itself, but then most of those days she also has new quilting done to show us, or pretty bird or garden pictures to share.  She is  inspirational. (I suspect that there are more than 24 hours in a day where she lives.)
I enjoy the trips I have been on while sitting here in my easy chair.  Today  at  http://athomewiththefarmerswife.blogspot.com/ we went to a living history museum in Tennessee. I love that!  I've been to castles with http://jellybeanangel2.blogspot.com/ and on Holiday with http://nostalgiaatthestonehouse.blogspot.com/ to Scotland and places around England. Reading blogs has found me lots of fun things to make, and shown me how to make them on tutorials at many different craft blogs. Here's one for a cute "recycling" project. http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-pendants-and-charms-from-old-CDs/  I won't show you all the tuts I've saved on my favorites.  You might be getting something for your birthday or Christmas from one of them. 
I even love reading blogs in foreign languages.  It's fun to see what their language looks like and try to read it.  Here's an example of one I like in Norwegian.  http://solvi01.blogspot.com/  There usually are  pictures to help.  Suffice it to say, I love reading blogs!  And that is why I'm writing one.  I want to pass on some of my enjoyment.  Keep on reading!
<3
Terri

Cross training...

Hello My Pretties...

Since I haven't any cards to show you - I've given them all - I'll show you a piece of Zentangle I've been playing with.

I like it all except the four petal flowers... maybe some spikes on them will improve their look. I especially like the scalloped vein with the dots in a wavy pattern. I like my doodling.  I thought I might - someday - use a doodle to design a quilt.  I've seen some that have the curves in them.  I have instructions on how to... just not the courage, I guess.  I've decided the quilt du jour is going as a Project Linus quilt or two.  I'm not enjoying the making of it for the previous purpose.  I enjoy the making more if it's for charity.  Quilts tend to turn out better when they're going to be for a charitable cause.  The previous purpose can be better accomplished by come purchased item - shopping time and effort only. 

Well, I guess I'll get back to it.  I had a really clever post made up earlier, but had to edit and finally delete it cause I couldn't get the text to stop wrapping around the "picture".  It didn't show up in the input section... only once I published it.  (Hope it works out this time.)

Promise to get some cards on here soon.  Maybe a tutorial or something.  Anything you'd like to see?

Love you,

Terri/Mom/Grammy

Innovations!

It only took me (so) many years to figure this out... it may have been obvious to many of you, but I had to figure it out the hard way.  I've been having to jump up from the sewing area and check the previously sewn and ironed seam allowances to see which way they went... Now

I put a paper arrow on my row to show which way the seam allowances were pressed on that line, and won't have to check back.  Genius, right?  How could something so simple elude me all these years?  Anyway, that is it for today!
Love to you all,
Terri

There's a new fabric store in town!

Hello Friends,
Thanks for stopping by my blog.  I really appreciate all my followers, and your comments - please leave more.
While driving in Folsom, a small town near us, we discovered a new fabric store has opened up. Hurray!!!(Folsom has a wonderful quilt guild so it always seemed odd that they didn't have more fabric stores.) It is Sew Fun at 150 Natoma Station Dr. Ste. 200. That's a street just off of Folsom Blvd. Lyon's Real Estate is the biggest place in this small shopping mall. If you need directions, call them at (916) 353-2700. The two ladies there are really helpful and very nice. I got 3 pieces and could have bought 10 others... they have really nice choices. Here's what I bought.

The scan does not do justice to the coloring.  The two on the right come in alot of other colors, and it was agony to settle for these only.  I will be shopping there again! 

Got all the squares for the current quilt done... sewing them together today, (and probably for the next week).  Wish I could show it off, but that'll have to wait for a few weeks.

Over and out - for today.  Keep cool!

Love ya,

Terri

What a day!

Sunday was filled with "Old Folks Fun" as I call it.  We went out for lunch (Wendy's dollar menu and senior drinks) and as we drove through Folsom, we went slowly past a grove of eucalyptus.  That's it! That's the fun stuff.  We love the scent it puts in the car for a few minutes.  We open all the windows and turn on the A/C and breathe deeply.  You young un's don't know what fun this is.
Oh, and then later on the way home we drove past the local park - soccer fields and a vast field of natural grasses, vernal pools (now long dried up) and studded with ancient Valley Oaks.  He says - all excitedly - "there's a fox".  Well, we had to double back because I did not see a fox... Turns out he didn't either.  It was a coyote.  Quite a tame fellow, too, cause he didn't run when I rolled the window down and had a little conversation with him.  It's quite unusual to see one this near to a road, especially in a residential area, but then it was quite near the river and the wilds surrounding.  We have seen them before, but always from a distance... get out the binoculars kind of distance.  This one wasn't 30 feet from us!  (Once, down on the river walk, we saw a baby coyote.  So cute.  And  Hobby  has seen a mountain lion when he went for walks along the river walk alone. That scares me.  For a while we called him "lion chow", mostly to impress on him how dangerous walking by himself really is. 
He's had quite a few "Indian" names.  The first was "Hunts with Tissue" because of the spider killings... and since his sister, Wonderful Woman, took up the naming practice there have been a whole series of funny names for him.  She named me Woman of Courage or WOC, but we won't tell why.
Well, for you youth, there is a glimpse into the world of fun-to-come.  Enjoy all that other stuff while you can.
No pictures today... gotta get to the laundry and the current quilt - more old folks fun.
Love to all you followers,
Terri

over 200!

Hi again,
So we were sitting on the back patio and enjoying a day that didn't even get to 80!!!! in August??? unheard of!  Anyway he starts to count up the Halloween plants... Just counting ones that actually have green shoots (not the ones where a seed was planted and has not yet germinated) there are over 200 - if you count the ones in the house, too.  We usually get close to 200 trick or treaters, so I should be done.  Oh dear... that is just too final.  I have lots of plants I want to make cuttings of yet, and decided I now know why the cherries, etc aren't germinating, so I've hatched a plan to put a few into the refrig for a few days to see if that'll help.  Picked some day lily seeds today, and planted them into yogurt cups.  I tell you it's alot of work, and I love it!  How can I stop now?  I guess I'm one of those obsessive personalities.
We had lunch at Costco and then shopped.  Got a few of those lids from boxes that will be really nice for the little plants to be conveyed to the garage.
Here is a bit from the past - one of my UFOs.  It is almost sewn together, but not in this picture.  It is only 8+years old.  9 patches in orange, yellow and red.  That'd wake you up, wouldn't it?  Again I'm having trouble getting it to go extra large.  Do you see a blue shadow around the picture?  I think that is where the image should be.

So that's all today.  Have a great weekend.  :~)
Terri

Pocket ID

Hi Friends,
Today I have scanned a picture of the pocket I put on the back of Granddaughter II's quilt.  It's paper pieced and I use the pocket to house the birthday card, and to be the label on the quilt.   Here's the pic.

   

I don't know what caused this long break, something to do with the photo and wanting it to be extra large.  Maybe it will rectify itself once published???

 I'm catching a whiff of rosemary on myself.  I've just been out in the garden/patio putting my neighbor's name on a pink rosebush.  Last week or so I told her hubby that I had a rose with her name on it, and had to make sure it did.  Anyway, any time you brush against rosemary she scents you.  I picked beans before lunch.  We got some for supper and to freeze and to give away with the rosebush.  Carrots are doing okay, and there are more tomatoes - still green - and one of my peppers is turning red!!!!!!!!!!  Transplanted a 2" tangerine for S & E, today.  Gotta transplant a bunch of other Halloween plants.  They are getting root bound in those yogurt containers. My little ones are growing up.  Sniff.  Soon they will be off to find their own way in the world.  Hurray!

    Found another quote I like:

"When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us."    ~   Helen Keller

This one is so true in my life.  I've been looking at a closed door for over 44 years!  About time to turn around and see the beauty in this other doorway.

   Well, I'm off (really - off my rocker, literally) to work on the latest quilt.  Gotta go cut some more fabric...

Cut, Sew, Quilt!

Lotsa love,

Terri