A Bigger Bird

As you can see I figured out the picture thing.

Here are some quick updates to my last post.

We got just over a foot of snow. That's the easy part. The hard part is the low temperatures for the next week will hover right around zero, and the highs won't get above 24F for another week.

The New England Patriots won the AFC Championship and will play in the Super Bowl in a couple of weeks. Didn't see that coming last August.

I took Cat's quilt out for beauty shots, but it was windy so I didn't get many pictures.  It's a really pretty quilt and it's going to make Cat very happy.

The big snowstorm caused the Y to postpone the start of the Tai Chi class till next week. Works for me!

In my plans to make an extension of my Liberated Birds tutorial, I have made a bird twice as big as the "standard" bird, and with my hand next to it you can see how it is bigger. I've got lots of plans for the new tutorial, and it's going to take some time.

I do want to remind everyone that all my tutorials on my Etsy shop are 25% off until the end of January, so now is a great time to buy them.

Update

 I've been working on updating all my tutorials and my presence on Facebook, and I'm almost finished. There's a lot I don't understand about FB, but I'm working on it.

My computer had an update and I have to do a bit of magic to get my photos show up, and I'm tired of wrestling with computers, so this post won't have any pictures until I can figure it out. The good thing is that I'm posting SOMETHING!

So... what's up with me?

Like everyone I'm keeping an eye on the big snowstorm that should be hitting this weekend. It's a bit early but our weather guys say we might get as much as a foot of snow and the temperatures will be well below normal. I'm in New Hampshire. I'm stocked up.

As you may remember, I am a New England Patriots fan. We have won six Super Bowls and the last few years have been difficult. This year we all expected to be rebuilding - but we never expected to be fighting for the top spot in the AFC! So I'll be watching that.

I never made it outside to take beauty shots of Cat's quilt, and given the cold temperatures expected for the next that might not happen any time soon.

I've been going to the Arthritis Swim Class three times a week since the end of October, and Chair Yoga once a week since then and I am amazed at my improved flexibility and balance. There is a Tai Chi class starting next week, and I've already signed up. Who'd have thought bouncing around in a heated pool with water up to your chest would help so much?

I'll be meeting with the gals at the Night Owl Quilting Studio in the coming weeks about classes I will teach there this year, so I am working on my presentation to them.

AND... drumroll please...

After many requests I will be writing a sort of "Bird Extras" tutorial that will cover making tiny birds, very big birds, hummingbirds, flamingos and anything else I can think of or anything anybody suggests that I think is a good idea. Don't hold your breath just yet, I have to work it out in my head first before I put anything down on paper.

In my continuing effort to pare down my stash I am figuring out what my next quilt should be. In the meantime I would twenty bobbins, so when I figure it out I'm good to go.

I have discovered Bookish on PBS, and Ludwig on Britbox, both of which I enjoyed very much.

That's it for now. When I get over getting annoyed with my computer, there will be pictures.

Christmas Already?

 

When I was making the Kangamangus quilt I liked the way that six scrap slab triangles made a kind of a star.

I thought it could be fun to show them off as stars in a quilt for Christmas.

So I dug out my Christmas fabrics and made slabs, and then cut triangles. 

Here are a few of the blocks on the design wall.  I have no idea where this is going yet. Arranging them this way is too much like the Kangamangus quilt, so I will definitely change that idea up. Generally when I make a Christmas quilt I limit myself to Red, Green and Gold, but that might be a challenge in this. At any rate, I'm still playing with the idea. It will change. It's very much an idea in progress.

This is a Scrap Slab Triangle Quilt, and you can get my tutorial for them here, at my Etsy shop.

In other news, I have been following a "pre-diabetic" style diet by tracking my carbohydrate intake and doing all the other things that diabetics need to do. I have been testing my blood daily and tracking my glucose levels. 

I went through all my cookbooks (I have over 100) and separated those that listed Nutritional information for each recipe. When I am planning my meals for the week, I reach for those first.

My A1C is where it ought to be, and I have so far lost 8 pounds. It's not just about the food. It's a complicated process, but I do not want Diabetes, and am fully aware this is a diet/lifestyle I must follow for the rest of my life. Because I plan to be here to live it.

Baking and an Update

 

My baking frenzy for Christmas went very well. My family members all left on Christmas with a box full of about fifteen different cookies. It was fun. My Mom called later and said it was a good thing I have her and her boyfriend their own box of cookies because they might have come to blows otherwise. (Sound effect of Lynne laughing),

It was even more fun to hear my granddaughter and son got together to make his favorite brownies, and she even made the whipped cream to eat with them!

I know I haven’t been blogging much lately, but I’ve had a lot going on. Now that the Holiday Season is over, I have taken down and put away all the Christmas decorations and got the house back to “normal.”

I have also decided that I am not getting another cat. It was a hard decision. I have offered a colleague all my cat supplies - kitty condos, tents, cat hammocks, etc and she has agreed to take them (She has three cats).

Since I was able to get rid of all the cat stuff I had room in the office in the closet so I could reorganize my pantry. I bought two wire shelving racks and put them in the closet and then reorganized everything. I was able to devote a couple of shelves to some of my roasting pans and Dutch ovens and my big stock pot.

This is it, above. It took a lot of thought. And I had to rearrange a couple of shelves after I put the racks together. I realized that it access was important, and that I didn’t want to bend down to get something I used a lot (like canned tomatoes.) I need some “liners” so small items will sit on the shelves better, but those are on order.

AFTER I DID THAT… I sat at the desk and went through the huge stack of bills and old statements that were weighing on my mind. Now that’s all done, and I can’t tell how how good that feels.

2022 was a hell of an up-and-down year for me. Some stuff really sucked, and some stuff was pretty awesome. I had made a list of things I wanted to get done around the house, and I managed to complete a lot of them. My office is no longer the pit of despair. My guest bath is no longer tired, dated, and impractical. My kitchen is pretty and organized. My spa bathtub is no longer a catch-all for junk. Some of those things have been weighing me down for years. No longer.

I’ll be in the studio sewing before you know it. 

I'm OK

I got an email from a reader who wondered how I was and pointed out it had been 10 days since my last post.

I'm OK.

Had a bit of a fright this past week and ended up in Urgent Care getting an abdominal CAT scan. Naturally at my age I expected the worst. It wasn't but they want me to get a colonoscopy ASAP.

It was a lot to process and a scary brush with the concept of my own mortality has left me a bit shaken.

I did take a ride up to the best quilt shop ever, Quilted Threads, last week and chose some blues. I might make a Trip Around the World Quilt for my dining room table. Or a Boston Commons. I don't know. I'm still pretty scattered.

I've been trying to take care of myself, eating well and resting and reading. I think I've gone through three books this past week alone. And I'm intermittently binging and catching up on Masterpiece Mystery's Inspector Lewis, which I just loved the first time around, and love it equally much the second.

I also loaded up the car and made a trip to Goodwill and brought them a bunch of old dishes and my old Tupperware canisters, so I am slowly making progress back to the land of the living.

Thanks, Susan, for the gentle nudge.