Win Some, Lose Some.

I'm sewing the binding on my Mom's bird quilt.

She was really excited to see it and came over to check it out.

She loves it, and thinks it is just wonderful. 

Great stuff!

I received this beautiful Amaryllis for Christmas, and like all pink Amaryllis's, it was very slow to open, but it had two stalks and twelve blooms. And like other pink ones, it was VERY tall. I have a special stake to hold it upright.

However, gravity rules.

Stylish Bag for Stylish Gal!

 

This is the finished bag I made for my DIL. She's so stylish. I was so happy to find this fabric in my stash (had it for years). I knew it was perfect.

The bag is from a pattern by Jeni Baker and you can get it here.

I;ve got another Amaryllis coming up. Pretty sure this is some version of pink and white or red and white, which isn't giving anything away as all Amaryllis are red or white or pink or some combination thereof. The only other color I have ever seen is a very pale green.  

I have a Magnum (deep red) and a white (above) one also growing. I get mine at White Flower Farms and although they are pricier than the ones you'll find at the grocery or department stores, the ones from WFF always have at least two stalks. As you can see, the one above will have three.

Three More Rows of Boxes & an Amaryllis Update

 

I'm working on the fifth row of boxes. I sewed the blocks of rows three and four into rows yesterday. Sewing the birds into the rows is a little bit fussy because if I want them to stand in for boxes, they have to be positioned properly (meaning they have to be centered),

Here I am sewing row five to the bottom of rows three and four.

Here are rows three, four and five sewn together. For those who missed it, you can find the pattern here.

Here is an Amaryllis update. Magnum, at left, has had ten blooms. One stalk had four, the other, six. There are three left. In the middle is Bogota, which took it's sweet time to grow and bloom, but both stalks had four blooms each and all eight are open right now. At the far right is Double Delicous. It had two stalks, one had four blooms, which have now passed, and the second had six, which are all open. But there is a third stalk growing. Color me big time surprised.

Here are a couple of closeups of Bogota,

It has been a good year for the Amaryllis's.

So Clever... Not!

 I had intended to post something rather clever and witty but I got sidetracked. A reader asked if I could list the dimensions of my finished quilts in my tutorials, so she could gauge the size and scale of them. I thought it was a very good idea, but the problem was I have not been as attentive as I should have been to measuring them and then storing those measurements in a place where I could easily retrieve them.

(Now my friend Julie has a perfect system, but then...  well, that's the way she is. Me, not so much.)

 

So I opened up my computer and started a document with the list of quilts for which I needed measurements. Then I had to go searching for where I could find them. I did not want to drag each quilt out of the closet, unfold it and measure it. Not only that, I am not in possession of all of them. First I went through the appraisals, then I searched my blog, then I dragged them out of the closet and measured.

And of course it took W-A-Y longer than I anticipated. Here is the list, and my dimensions are listed the same way paintings are catalogued by museums, Height precedes Width.

These are listed in no particular order, but as I was looking at the list something really struck me. I remember seeing Julie's Flying Monkeys quilt and thinking it was massive, but my Colorado Quilt is a bit bigger. Of course both are dwarfed by Valerie Levy's Kona Nerds Unite quilt, which is 100" x 81" (which is not on the list because THAT, I already had. Go figure.)

I'll leave you with a comparison of the Double Delicious and Magnum Amaryllis's next to each other. Magnum is quite a bit darker, actually closer to violet (or blue) than the other one. AND check out the base of the double one, just above the moss. A THIRD stem is sprouting. In all my years I have NEVER seen that. Tres cool!

 

IF YOU WANT to get your Amaryllis to bloom again, follow the instructions here.

Amaryllis

 There seems to be an Amaryllis thing going on, so I decided to join the fun.

Around Thanksgiving my pal Julie sent me a gift certificate to White Flower Farm. I knew I'd get an Amaryllis. Actually, I bought three. This, above, is Magnum.

I had to bring it into my home office so I could enjoy it while I work. These blooms truly are big. They are 7" across and equally tall.

as you can see. The color isn't quite right in the photographs. Magnum is a very deep, very dark red.

It looks like Magnum will live up to its name. One stalk has four blooms, but the other will have six.

(You can get Amaryllis at your grocery store, but you will be lucky if you get one that has two stalks. The ones from WFF are certainly pricey but each bulb is guaranteed to have two stalks.)

This one is "Double Delicious." Indeed.

Quite lovely.

This is my third one, "Bogota." As you can see, this one is taking its sweet time.

But I am pretty sure it is going to be worth the wait.

I know how to get these to come back year after year, so they are actually an investment.

Royal Velvet

The Royal Velvet red Amaryllis has finally decided to bloom.

Eleven blooms on three stalks.

Wowza!  Talk about worth the wait!

Beating the Winter Blues

I love Amaryllises.  When the company I work for was in our "old" building (we've been where we are now for 18 years) I had a south facing office with an ten foot wide by eight foot tall window. There was a nice wide brick windowsill.  The first year I worked there I bought an Amaryllis bulb from the grocery store and put it on my desk. Every year I'd get another one. I'd buy them on sale at the end of the season, when they were marked down. I figured out early on how to get them to come back every year**, so after I'd been there eight years I had a big collection and my coworkers used to come to see them every day. One year I had a red one that had two stems (a rarity) with six huge blossoms on each stem. I have pictures, but they're packed away.

When the company moved to the new building I was in a cube farm with no windows. The Amaryllises languished. With a pair of cats at home growing a tall plant was risky too.

My new house has a wall facing south, with very good light, so when the garden catalogs started arriving at Christmas offering beautiful varieties of Amaryllises I'd never seen before, I had to indulge.

They were almost prohibitively expensive - at least three times what the ones in the grocery store cost - but each of them have had three stalks of flowers, and the fourth has two, so that was a real bonus.

One of them grew spectacularly tall right away, three stalks of beautiful striped flowers.

I had to order special stakes to hold them up. It's a good thing. The stake on this one is 16" tall and as you can see, it barely reaches high enough!

 This beauty is called "Santiago", and although the flower itself is smaller than the normal Amaryllis blossom, it's quite spectacular.

Here it is next to another one. The striped ones tend to bloom first, then the whites, and the reds are the slowest. The one on the right is a deep red one and as you can see that has three stalks as well. I can't wait to see that one, but it has been a real pleasure to have these growing in the house and blooming during these cold months.



**UPDATE... 9:00 PM....
Here is a link with information to get your Amaryllis to bloom again next year. Click here.

I bought these four Amaryllis bulbs from White Flower Farm.