I can't believe I forgot my blogiversary AGAIN!

It was yesterday.  After forgetting last year - which was my 10th anniversary - I swore that I would remember this year.

*sigh*

And now apparently I have to go do some more swearing because Blogger isn't letting me upload any pictures.

(@!&*(&*^%%&%$%$(&^^&*^$(&^

Excuse me.  BRB.

There.  Happy Blogiversary to me.

Gobble gobble!

Have a happy turkey day!

(I'm halfway around hand-sewing the binding down on On Ringo Lake!  Good Fortune here I come!)

As if life wasn't complicated enough...

So, this happened the other day.

I tried gluing them, but (true to my usual experience with crazy glue) just ended up gluing my fingers together, and at one point had the frame of one piece glued to my thumb.  (I also ended up with glue in one eyebrow and I can't even begin to figure out how that happened.)
I finally gave up and asked my dad for help.  He held the parts together while I tried to squeeze some glue. 
"Just a drop," he kept saying - "Just a drop!" 
"Dad, I can't see it without my glasses..."

Unfortunately (but not unexpectedly), the repair was impossible, since the bridge piece is just too thin to hold together with glue.  I'm overdue for a new prescription, so I'll be off to the eye doctor, but the earliest appointment they had wasn't for a couple of weeks.

So, cheap Walmart readers to tide me over.  Far from perfect, but at least I can read a computer screen.  (I just have to remember to take them off when moving around - the vertigo gives me nausea.)
I'll probably take another stab at fixing my real glasses, now that I can actually see them again.  Some kind of splint across the bridge, to fasten the halves to...  Yeah, that could work...
Wish me luck!

I turn my back for FIVE minutes...

He always manages to pop the hoop as he settles into his magical cat-nest.

Quick Question!

Does this look like a sunflower to anyone besides me?

Or is it back to the drawing board?

On the road again!

Heading for Maryland for Maryland Sheep and Wool.  Woohoo!  My first time ever, so I'm excited!
And going with my kids?  Priceless...

Don't know much about MacIntosh, don't know much laptoppy-speak...

What a wonderful world it would be...
(Some of you may now have a song stuck in your head.  You're welcome.)

Having a wonderful time!  I'm going to try to post some pictures.

Did it work?  (I think it did!  Nobody breath...)

We went to the National Zoo in Washington DC on Saturday, the whole gang of us.  My daughter and son-in-law, their two kids, my brother and sister-in-law, their son and his wife, and me.  Party of nine to see pandas, please.
The baby was having a nap, so all we saw was baby panda butt lolling on a log jungle gym in the outside enclosure.   But inside, the grownups were having afternoon tea, so we watched closely as they munched bamboo and

ate panda snacks out of a trick snack ball.  (The ball was designed to give them an activity, but this panda was way too smart for that.  He just laid on his back and shook the snacks out into his mouth.)

We also watched orangutans crossing way overhead on rope lines.

That last guy perched there for several minutes, posing for the many people taking pictures.  Though the way he was staring at us, it was a little unclear just who exactly was on exhibit.

And then I apparently put my camera back in its case and completely forgot about it as we spent the afternoon looking at all sorts of wonderful critters.

I did remember to haul it out when I saw these wild pigs, though.

Because, you know.  Pigs.

If it's not one thing, it's another...

So yesterday I was sewing along, minding my own business, trying to piece a couple of the 365 Challenge blocks, when suddenly my sewing machine made a 'chunk' sound.
'Uh oh,' I thought.  'That didn't sound good.'
I pressed down on the pedal to resume sewing.  Though the needle was going up and down just fine, the feed dogs were not moving.
'You have one job...' I said to them.
Figuring there might be lint caught in the mechanism somewhere, I started taking things apart.  When I unscrewed and removed the bottom part -

 something fell out.

It's a plastic gear that was the thing that turned the thing that made the feed dogs go.
Now this is the machine I bought back in 1987, and it wasn't an expensive machine even way back then.  The chances of even being able to repair it are slim, even if the cost wouldn't be more than the machine is worth.
I was very sad.
Then I had a thought.
What's the one thing you have to do first in order to start free motion quilting?
Lower the feed dogs, right?
My feed dogs are as low as they're going to get.  Pretty much dogless at this point.
I swapped places with my two machines  - putting the 'new' machine up on the table where I'm going to be quilting, and bringing my 'old' machine (the Singer I bought back in 1971) down to my piecing desk.
I'd been trying to practice FMQ with the old Singer, using a new darning foot, but I'd been having all kinds of troubles with skipped stitches.  And I mean really skipped - not one or two stitches, but for inches at a time.  I put the darning foot on the 'new' machine and took it for a test drive.
No skipping.
This is going to be great.

I think Making the Best of Things may be my superpower...

No cursing or screaming or tears. That went well.

Update - now running the new computer.  The setup went so smoothly that I'm expecting the tower to suddenly levitate across the room or something.  All I did was power down the old one, then pull out everything that plugged into it one at a time, and look for a likely place to plug it into the new one.  Looks like I guessed right.
So mini tower full of one TB of harddrive and a ridiculous amount of memory.  With Windows 10 on board.  So far so good with that...
On the other hand, all I'm doing is running Firefox, and I managed to install Dropbox.  Windows 10 seems to be crammed full of all kinds of crap that I'm never going to touch.  Or even see.  Irrelevance by the bucketful.
Let's see if I'm still not screaming by tomorrow...

Photo phun!

In my last post, my friend Val suggested playing with Pixlr, so I went to take a look.
I extracted the Monkey block from that group shot,

and then experimented a little.

And I had to play with a pig, too, of course.

Tee hee is right!

Oh, dagnabbit, not again...

 I've been stacking up components for various blocks as I pursue multiple projects, then assembling them when I have enough parts (and concentration) to make a whole block.
I pulled a nice stack of tri-recs squares for a Twinkly block, then gave it a second look.

Well, that's kind of dull.  I don't remember this particular fabric.  Odd.

So I turned it over.

Aw, crap.
And before anyone asks,

yes indeed, I did screw up all four of them.  (The mildest thing I said was "Are you kidding me?"  There were a few more colorful expressions also.  I'll leave it to your imaginations.)

I grabbed my BFF, the seam ripper, and started over.

Does anyone know if seam rippers come with shoulder holsters?
I need to work on my quick draw...

Happy Blogday to me!

Today is my 8th blogiversary!  January 12th, 2008, was Day One of what has been a fascinating adventure.  I started as a knitting blog, which morphed into more of a farming blog with knitting, and now I seem to have wandered off to be a quilting blog with occasional farming.  I've made a lot of friends, shared a lot of joys and sorrows, and I'm awfully glad I signed up for this!

This is also my 700th post.  Who knew I'd have so much to say?

Episode 25: Where our heroine vanquishes a behemoth and achieves squash

Cue the trumpets, here we go.
It's Hubbard time!

For an idea of scale - that's my little size 7 shoe there.  Big damn squash we're talking here.
It was a gift from my sister-in-law for our Thanksgiving dinner - she grew a bunch of them in her garden this year.  Her advice on opening it was to put it in a trashbag and drop it on a concrete floor.  Preferably from a second story window.
Well, I didn't have a second story window, but I had a trashbag and a concrete floor.
Step one:

 I closed the bag, heaved it up to chest level (I'm sure there's a weightlifting name for the move), and then dropped it on the floor.
Peeking inside the bag, I found no change.  Not so much as a dent.

Wrap, heave, drop again.

Nope.

I tried a couple more times, still with no results.  I would have tried lifting it over my head, but it was just too heavy.  Finally I bent my knees slightly, then rose up abruptly while throwing the squash into the air.  (Picture caber tossing, only with a squash instead of a tree.  Same technique.)  I managed to get it up about head high, and it hit the ground with a crunchy noise.
I got excited!  Success at last!

Nope.  But at least I chipped it!  Progress!
I launched it a couple more times and got  this beautiful crack.

 I tried prying it open at this point, but no go.  Two more tosses and I opened the bag to this glorious sight:

 Huzzah!
No squash in the verse can stop me!

 I piled the chunks on the table and started hacking off rind.

And hacking.
And hacking.
Finally I took the two biggest chunks left, piled them on a cookie sheet, and threw them in the oven.

 And finished peeling the last little piece.

 Done.  The pot is boiling and the tray is baking, and I'm resting from my mighty labors.

And trying not to think about the fact that my sister-in-law actually gave us TWO of those squashes.
The other one is still waiting for me.
I think I hear it humming the theme from Jaws...

Origami shmorigami

I fell in love with this origami rose this morning -

so I went to watch the video.



And then I gave it a try.

At the end of an hour I had this -

I think I'll stick to knitting and quilting...

Apparently locking the ruler in a desk drawer wasn't enough.

Oops.

I wonder how much it costs to rent a safety deposit box down at the bank...

Yikes! November 1st means that it's now November!

Somehow my brain had missed that connection, until a friend said something about NaBloPoMo.  I've participated in years past, but hadn't given it a thought for this year.
Shall I?  Shall I not?
While I'm dithering (my other big hobby, right up there with knitting and quilting), I'll drop this post as a placeholder.
If I decide to go for it, this satisfies day one.
If I don't, no harm done.
Logic, it is my friend.

(dither dither dither)

I haven't been abducted by aliens...

I'm just on vacation, visiting my daughter, SIL, and the grands.  I've brought knitting, so I'm surviving away from my stash.  (Though daughter has a sewing machine if I get too desperate...)  (Which would involve a trip to the fabric store, since said stash is hundreds of miles away.)  (Which is not a bad thing.)  (The trip to the fabric store, I mean.)  (Having the stash too far away to paw through is not now, nor has ever been, a good thing.)

So anyway.

If I remember to take a photo or two, and I can figure out how to post it here, I'll share some of my shenanigans.

In the meanwhile, having a wonderful time; wish you were here!

(Oh, and it looks like I get to start a couple more quilts as soon as I get home.  Huzzah!)

(And also?  It looks like more of this post has been parenthesitized than not.  It may be a new personal record.)

Further Adventures of the Last Lawnbender

Shortly after I last used the mower, (and it was totally not my fault, really and truly) the steering mechanism went all wonkity (design flaw, says my dad) and would get stuck in a turning position.  This was useful for mowing around trees (and around and around), or for making interesting polkadot patterns in the front yard, but it made going in straight lines rather difficult.  And though I always say, when questioned about my lawn-mowing, "I'm an artist;  I don't do straight lines", straight lines are occasionally useful.  Like for taking the mower down to The Flat.  (The thought of heading down the road in a series of big slow loops amuses me, but I don't really want to try it.  Well, not fervently, anyway.  Though on the other hand, it might be kind of fun...)
So the grass was deep again, and with the added feature of the big downed tree

and I had to keep stopping to drag branches and sticks out of the way.  Well, the ones that I didn't hit with the mower, anyway.  I'm sure the mower always wanted to be a wood chipper when it grew up.
But I want to go on record that I actually bent the entire lawn without having to call my dad to come rescue me!   (And for those who don't know me, I'm in my 60's and my dad is in his 80's.  Which just goes to prove that your kids will always need you, no matter how old they are.)

On the indoor front, here's something I meant to share earlier.  While I was assembling the last of the nine patches I needed to finish Katie's Star Patch, I found a 1.5" strip of Garfield fabric that was just long enough to make one more nine patch, with enough that I could fussy cut to get Garfield bits into each square.  This was a fabric from her childhood with great sentimental value, and I was patting myself on the back that I'd ooched out one more square with the very last of it

until I found these pieces in a box about an hour later...

 And for one more giggle, I was quilting the swap quilt (It's okay to look, Liz - you can't tell much from this photo) and realized I didn't have a marker pencil that would show up on the dark fabric.  So I did this:

safety-pinned a paper arc to the quilt, and quilted along the edge.  Then repeated that for each side of the square, then again for the other squares.
Do not try this at home;  I am a trained professional...

It might have gotten a little windy

Imagine my surprise when I went down to The Flat today and found this:

 This is an elderly willow (not the weeping kind) that's been in the back yard for practically forever.

There's about 8 feet of the trunk sticking up out of the ground like a proper tree.

However, the top part is now pointed west rather than up.

We've had some crazy thunderstorms lately.  Poor old tree.


In happier news, remember when I went to buy fabric from that nice lady last Saturday?  She said that if she had a lot left, she'd be running the sale again the following Saturday.
Which would be today.

Yeah...

Test... test...

I think I might have a workaround.

At least until I can find a card reader that works...