Wednesday, August 24, 2011

A peek at my designs wall

I'm getting ready to take a little trip and this is what I left in Studio A (the sewing studio) on the design wall.


On the left is a piece that I think may be about ready for quilting, I've been working on it off and on for awhile. The center pieced part is made of scraps of my first years worth of hand dyeing fabrics, from the early 90's, I couldn't part with them and so finally used them. The other two pieces I dyed this week with some leftover dyes just to use them up. I like both of these pieces but have no idea what I'll do with them, something for me to think about while I'm gone.

Monday, August 15, 2011

Idaho Senior Games

On Saturday my friend Barbara Huck and I went to Boise and participated in the 5k walk at the Idaho Senior Games. I came in first place overall!!! and won a $25 gift card to a running store. We both got gold medals for being first in our age groups, here we are showing off our medals.



That's Barb on the left and me on the right. We plan on doing this every year and since I'm 5 years older we will always be in different age categories. We were both very inspired by the competitors in the 80 -84 age group. Afterward we celebrated by first going to a Quilt shop and then out to lunch. After lunch we met up with Barb's husband Bill, and they went on to compete in the Table Tennis Tournament and they both won medals!

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Garden bounty

I love summer's fresh vegetables and fruit! This is what my garden gave me this morning.


Yesterday a neighbor gave us a dozen ears of fresh corn and a huge bunch of freshly pulled onions and a friend shared blackberries and freshly caught brook trout. I love it all!!

I've been busy in the studio, but don't have much to show. I've made and quilted six small quilts that I've donated to Project Linus and St. Lukes Childrens Cancer Center. I have two more to quilt. The pile below is the six finished quilts, one waiting to be quilted and a quilt on the bottom that needs repair.



Last week I taught a very fun creative group of women my method of pole wrapped shibori,a few other resist techniques and some dye painting. Unfortunately my camera was in the house and I never took a picture!

At the same time as the class in the backyard studio, the house was having central air installed and insulation being put in. We have a house that was built in stages, the first part around 1904, the last part 1940 and then various updates and changes since then. Since we bought the house in 2005 we've replaced all the windows(23 of them), remodeled the kitchen,and done various cosmetic changes. This summer when we went to start up the old swamp cooler it was obvious that it wasn't going to last much longer, so we figured it was a good time to install central air. While the air system was being installed we discovered that some areas of the house had no insulation at all, therefore we had insulation installed. Now with the new ductwork for the air on the second floor we will also have heat in all four bedrooms! Winter will be much warmer and summer is now pretty cool.