If anybody received an odd email claiming to be from me, with either some crud about an iPhone or other links: It wasn't me. My Gmail account was hacked, and that was the result. Thankfully I caught it within about 20 minutes of it happening and was able to change my password (yay, thanks Jeff!), and it shouldn't happen anymore.
I do apologize if this caused anyone inconvenience!
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Monday, December 19, 2011
Olivia The Pig
I managed to snap some pictures of the finished Olivia quilt as the leaves were turning and Autumn was in its glory. As I type it's gotten pretty cold the past few days, the leaves are long gone and the outdoor icicle lights have just popped on, as the light already starts to fade at 4pm.
I do wish Fall lasted longer, the turning of the foliage is such a fast process. Over almost as soon as it's begun.
Pattern by Elizabeth Hartman
The back of the quilt is pieced. Two large dot fabrics that were 54" wide. The binding is Kona charcoal with some of the white-on-red polka dot fabric that was used in the quilt top. The background is Kona medium grey.
It presently lives on Miss Matilda's bed (it's not a bed-sized quilt though), where Lieam spends as much time sleeping on it as he possibly can!
I do wish Fall lasted longer, the turning of the foliage is such a fast process. Over almost as soon as it's begun.
Pattern by Elizabeth Hartman
The back of the quilt is pieced. Two large dot fabrics that were 54" wide. The binding is Kona charcoal with some of the white-on-red polka dot fabric that was used in the quilt top. The background is Kona medium grey.
It presently lives on Miss Matilda's bed (it's not a bed-sized quilt though), where Lieam spends as much time sleeping on it as he possibly can!
Sunday, November 13, 2011
NYCC Sunday Stash
While I was at New York Comic Con mid-October, it was nice to come home after very long days to find packages of fabric waiting for me on the porch.
Among the goodies some additional Ghastlies prints (who can resist? well, I certainly can't!) Different colorways of prints I already had:
The Ghastlies in smoke, and Ghastly Bramble in natural/tea(?)
The Ghastlies I got because I still need to piece together a back for my Ghastly Taffy quilt. And because the Ghastlies are just amazing. I was happy to read the other day that Alexander Henry is bringing them back again, and adding another new print too. May 2012 is going to be fun!
A charm pack of Summer House by Lily Ashbury.
I really love the vibrant, bright colors in this collection. I think the Audrey print in Bright Blue is probably my favorite one:
The vibrancy of this print gets me every time. Delicious.
I finally broke down and added to my Lizzy House collection by picking up 1001 Peeps:
I think this may be my favorite print from that collection in my two favorite colors:
The candles are adorable!
And what is possibly my favorite print from Jessica Levitt's Kingdom line:
Posy in Opal. The light in this picture really doesn't do it justice.
And each colorway of my favorite Happy Mochi Yum Yum print:
So cute and so colorful!
Now to clear more projects out of the way, and come up with things to do with this stuff!
Among the goodies some additional Ghastlies prints (who can resist? well, I certainly can't!) Different colorways of prints I already had:
The Ghastlies in smoke, and Ghastly Bramble in natural/tea(?)
The Ghastlies I got because I still need to piece together a back for my Ghastly Taffy quilt. And because the Ghastlies are just amazing. I was happy to read the other day that Alexander Henry is bringing them back again, and adding another new print too. May 2012 is going to be fun!
A charm pack of Summer House by Lily Ashbury.
I really love the vibrant, bright colors in this collection. I think the Audrey print in Bright Blue is probably my favorite one:
The vibrancy of this print gets me every time. Delicious.
I finally broke down and added to my Lizzy House collection by picking up 1001 Peeps:
I think this may be my favorite print from that collection in my two favorite colors:
The candles are adorable!
And what is possibly my favorite print from Jessica Levitt's Kingdom line:
Posy in Opal. The light in this picture really doesn't do it justice.
And each colorway of my favorite Happy Mochi Yum Yum print:
So cute and so colorful!
Now to clear more projects out of the way, and come up with things to do with this stuff!
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Snowtober
When they mentioned on the radio on Thursday or Friday last week that we might get a little snow, I figured it'd be a dusting, or an inch or so. Especially considering it was not yet Halloween, and snow is pretty rare to start before December here in NY (in my decade here at least), being that people start getting excited and hopeful that we might get some for Christmas.
And so late in the morning on Saturday it started snowing. And then it starting coming down really heavily. At about 1pm, as Jeff and I were enjoying a lazy morning in pajamas playing on the computer, we heard a really loud noise, and suddenly the power went dead. A tree behind the house had uprooted and fallen right onto the power lines.
Most of the trees still have their foliage, and the snow was really wet and heavy, so this combination caused havoc all over the northeast. Tree branches, so heavily laden, were just snapping off. Trees were getting uprooted. It was pretty crazy. Jeff and I went out for a walk later in the evening after the snow had stopped, and you could hear the sounds of creaking, cracking, snapping wood all over the place, as branches lost the fight with the weight of so much snow and leaves.
Heavy snow-laden branches bending down to the cars.
We were lucky though. If the tree had fallen straight over, which would have been what I'd expected, it would have crashed right on top of the house. This is a small house, and it was a tree that was at least 70 feet tall. Somehow, it fell right between our house and the one next door. It took out the lines coming in from the road, as well as the one from the pole to the house.
The tree in the yard on the side of the house.
The Tree.
While we were lucky enough that the tree spared the house and "only" hit the power lines, this left the household dead in the water. While the heat is oil based, the furnace requires power to run the engine that circulates the hot water through the radiators. Our stove is electric, not gas (which I hate, but as renters we have no choice in the matter), so we weren't able to cook at all.
Our first evening was kind of fun and romantic. It felt a bit adventurous... a snowy white world, we still had residual heat in the house, and candles on everywhere. The snow did cancel our plans to head into NYC to go to a Halloween Ball, which we'd been looking forward to for months. It was even less fun when we woke up in the morning and the house was stone cold. Also much less fun was the realization that this was going to take a while to fix, and that the Halloween party we had planned for Sunday afternoon had to be canceled.
Jeff had taken comp time and had a long weekend to himself, which we would now end up spending without power and displaced. We roughed it a couple of nights at home, spent days with friends or finding other ways to kill time outside the house, and thankfully were able to spend the past 2 nights with friends and the ability to have hot showers! I spent the past 2.5 days just hanging out at Jeff's office, a refugee of sorts.
This morning (Thursday), I came to check on our cats, and found that our landlady had sent in contractors to start clearing the tree. Just as I left late in the morning, a convoy of National Grid trucks pulled into our street and stopped at the house. Hours later, we have heat and power and internet!
In quilt related news: I did finish hand stitching the binding onto Matilda's Olivia the Pig quilt, whilst killing time at Jeff's office... haha! And I had a few packages arrive also, some this week and some a week or 2 ago, so there will be a stash post soon.
Hopefully nobody else had such snow troubles!
And so late in the morning on Saturday it started snowing. And then it starting coming down really heavily. At about 1pm, as Jeff and I were enjoying a lazy morning in pajamas playing on the computer, we heard a really loud noise, and suddenly the power went dead. A tree behind the house had uprooted and fallen right onto the power lines.
Most of the trees still have their foliage, and the snow was really wet and heavy, so this combination caused havoc all over the northeast. Tree branches, so heavily laden, were just snapping off. Trees were getting uprooted. It was pretty crazy. Jeff and I went out for a walk later in the evening after the snow had stopped, and you could hear the sounds of creaking, cracking, snapping wood all over the place, as branches lost the fight with the weight of so much snow and leaves.
Heavy snow-laden branches bending down to the cars.We were lucky though. If the tree had fallen straight over, which would have been what I'd expected, it would have crashed right on top of the house. This is a small house, and it was a tree that was at least 70 feet tall. Somehow, it fell right between our house and the one next door. It took out the lines coming in from the road, as well as the one from the pole to the house.
The tree in the yard on the side of the house.
The Tree.While we were lucky enough that the tree spared the house and "only" hit the power lines, this left the household dead in the water. While the heat is oil based, the furnace requires power to run the engine that circulates the hot water through the radiators. Our stove is electric, not gas (which I hate, but as renters we have no choice in the matter), so we weren't able to cook at all.
Our first evening was kind of fun and romantic. It felt a bit adventurous... a snowy white world, we still had residual heat in the house, and candles on everywhere. The snow did cancel our plans to head into NYC to go to a Halloween Ball, which we'd been looking forward to for months. It was even less fun when we woke up in the morning and the house was stone cold. Also much less fun was the realization that this was going to take a while to fix, and that the Halloween party we had planned for Sunday afternoon had to be canceled.
Jeff had taken comp time and had a long weekend to himself, which we would now end up spending without power and displaced. We roughed it a couple of nights at home, spent days with friends or finding other ways to kill time outside the house, and thankfully were able to spend the past 2 nights with friends and the ability to have hot showers! I spent the past 2.5 days just hanging out at Jeff's office, a refugee of sorts.
This morning (Thursday), I came to check on our cats, and found that our landlady had sent in contractors to start clearing the tree. Just as I left late in the morning, a convoy of National Grid trucks pulled into our street and stopped at the house. Hours later, we have heat and power and internet!
In quilt related news: I did finish hand stitching the binding onto Matilda's Olivia the Pig quilt, whilst killing time at Jeff's office... haha! And I had a few packages arrive also, some this week and some a week or 2 ago, so there will be a stash post soon.
Hopefully nobody else had such snow troubles!
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
WIP Wednesday #2
Miss Matilda's Olivia quilt is quilted, which I got finished before the Comic Con weekend. The binding has been machine stitched onto the front, and I'm in the process of hand stitching the back, which is about 1/4 done so far.
I started quilting it with uneven parallel lines, which became more and more wavy as I progressed across the quilt top. I like the wavy lines more, but the difference isn't all that huge, and after it gets washed, I doubt it'll be that noticeable. Certainly it doesn't bother me enough to take out the stitching on one side to re-do it. Live and learn!
Uneven parallel lines. (Sorry, not enough natural light to get good pictures!)
Wavy parallel lines.
This past weekend we also went to a ragamuffin parade with the kids, so they got to dress up in their Halloween costumes and play around at the carnival that was there too.
And that evening we carved one of our pumpkins with them, as they'll be with their dad for Halloween weekend.
We used one of the stencils that came with the carving tools: a Crow.
Besides that, the biggest WIP that's happening at the moment is the scrubbing of my kitchen! Woohoo!
I started quilting it with uneven parallel lines, which became more and more wavy as I progressed across the quilt top. I like the wavy lines more, but the difference isn't all that huge, and after it gets washed, I doubt it'll be that noticeable. Certainly it doesn't bother me enough to take out the stitching on one side to re-do it. Live and learn!
Uneven parallel lines. (Sorry, not enough natural light to get good pictures!)
Wavy parallel lines.
This past weekend we also went to a ragamuffin parade with the kids, so they got to dress up in their Halloween costumes and play around at the carnival that was there too.
And that evening we carved one of our pumpkins with them, as they'll be with their dad for Halloween weekend.
We used one of the stencils that came with the carving tools: a Crow.
Besides that, the biggest WIP that's happening at the moment is the scrubbing of my kitchen! Woohoo!
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Busy Busy!
Things have been a little crazy around here. For 4 days last week I was at New York Comic Con (October 13-16), helping Jeff out as his personal and live stream assistant at the booth that the company he works for was running there.
I've never been to a Comic Con before, though I've wanted to attend one. The one in San Diego is the comic con that seems to have gotten most of the name, so until last year I wasn't even aware there was one in NYC too. 120,000 tickets were sold for the 3.5 days, so this is no obscure event. Besides comics, which do make up the bulk of the booths (well-known and smaller and tiny indie publishers, independent stores, artists and writers), there are booths for console/computer games, and a couple of movies (like the upcoming Avengers movie).
Thursday afternoon was for the Press, and VIP ticket holders, so that wasn't too busy. After that, it was kind of crazy from 10am until the days ended at 7pm (5pm on Sunday). So, a couple of very long days, that started VERY early. We were lucky that our evenings weren't booked with other post-con events, so we did manage to get some sleep too. Overall it was a fun experience. I got to know a bunch of the people Jeff works with better, I was able to see little bits and pieces of the show, and also do some awesome things like get one of our Mouse Guard graphic novels signed by the creator (& author & illustrator), the hugely talented David Petersen. Mouse Guard is a really lovely series set in a medieval era with sentient mice, guardsmice who guard the mouse territories and cities. I was also lucky enough to get a hold of a signed limited edition print of Lady Mechanika, another comic series that Jeff and I like a lot. And at the Dark Horse comics booth, artist Jenny Frison signed a poster for an upcoming comic that she did the wonderful cover art for: House of Night. Good times, and I was glad to get my geek on a little in that way.
So that was the event that prevented my working on much. I did get the Olivia quilt quilted, and I have about a quarter of the binding stitched on (I like to hand stitch the back). Currently the house is getting a pretty thorough cleaning, which is eating up quite some time. But a tidy house makes me feel better about doing sewing. Between being away for a couple of weekends the past month, and having a lot of incoming stuff, things are a little more cluttered than usual. We're also planning on hosting a Halloween party this upcoming weekend, so time to get everything in gear!
I've never been to a Comic Con before, though I've wanted to attend one. The one in San Diego is the comic con that seems to have gotten most of the name, so until last year I wasn't even aware there was one in NYC too. 120,000 tickets were sold for the 3.5 days, so this is no obscure event. Besides comics, which do make up the bulk of the booths (well-known and smaller and tiny indie publishers, independent stores, artists and writers), there are booths for console/computer games, and a couple of movies (like the upcoming Avengers movie).
Thursday afternoon was for the Press, and VIP ticket holders, so that wasn't too busy. After that, it was kind of crazy from 10am until the days ended at 7pm (5pm on Sunday). So, a couple of very long days, that started VERY early. We were lucky that our evenings weren't booked with other post-con events, so we did manage to get some sleep too. Overall it was a fun experience. I got to know a bunch of the people Jeff works with better, I was able to see little bits and pieces of the show, and also do some awesome things like get one of our Mouse Guard graphic novels signed by the creator (& author & illustrator), the hugely talented David Petersen. Mouse Guard is a really lovely series set in a medieval era with sentient mice, guardsmice who guard the mouse territories and cities. I was also lucky enough to get a hold of a signed limited edition print of Lady Mechanika, another comic series that Jeff and I like a lot. And at the Dark Horse comics booth, artist Jenny Frison signed a poster for an upcoming comic that she did the wonderful cover art for: House of Night. Good times, and I was glad to get my geek on a little in that way.
So that was the event that prevented my working on much. I did get the Olivia quilt quilted, and I have about a quarter of the binding stitched on (I like to hand stitch the back). Currently the house is getting a pretty thorough cleaning, which is eating up quite some time. But a tidy house makes me feel better about doing sewing. Between being away for a couple of weekends the past month, and having a lot of incoming stuff, things are a little more cluttered than usual. We're also planning on hosting a Halloween party this upcoming weekend, so time to get everything in gear!
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
WIP Wednesday
On Monday I picked up my Flipside quilt again, and took what I'd assembled apart again (2 rows of blocks and the sashing between them), and reassembled them with some tweaking so that the inaccuracies are either gone or much less noticeable (spray starch with the pressing was a lifesaver here, smaller pieces tend to be so much easier to get pulled out of shape, and this stops that quite a bit). I'm much happier with it, though there are still 2 other rows that need to be attached, and the sashing will need to be duly tweaked, because those inaccuracies from having pieced almost half of each block on a terrible and inaccurate sewing machine before I got the new one certainly took its toll. Ah well, onward and upwards!
Here's what I have so far (Lieam made himself at home almost immediately):
And yesterday I managed to get the Olivia the Pig quilt for Miss Matilda basted. Apparently I need to do this during the day and not in the evening. For a start, the kids are at school for large portions of the day (though yesterday they were with their dad), and the cats are asleep most of the day, which stops Miss Isobel from lying on it immediately, and Mr Lieam from tearing across it as though it's a playground, as he is wont to do when I make the bed as well. Both he and Shiloh L-O-V-E it when you make the bed or fluff the sheets and covers. I'm not sure why it tickles them so, but it does.
Now, this isn't a large quilt at all, but man do your knees hurt after sitting that way for a while basting the entire thing. I'm a bit iffy about the idea of spray basting, though I guess it washes out completely? The fact that my knees wouldn't feel like I'm 85 when I get up after half an hour on a wooden floor makes it appealing though. Ideas?
I hope to get the Olivia quilt quilted tonight, it'll be some simple quilting, probably wonky lines straight across. I haven't decided on grey thread or white or possibly to go for pink. I made the binding a few weeks ago, so I don't have to worry about that, and can sew that on pretty easily. The binding will be Kona Charcoal with bits of the red with white polka dots interspersed.
Oh, and I extended the dining table and put the leaf in. This gives me a bit more working space, and also enough space on the table that I can keep project stuff on one end, and have enough room for everyone to sit comfortably and eat at the table. I do so long for a separate work room! I have to say I was a little bit envious of seeing Julie Herman's lovely new work space on her blog yesterday. So much sun and light in there! A very happy place to work in.
Here's what I have so far (Lieam made himself at home almost immediately):
And yesterday I managed to get the Olivia the Pig quilt for Miss Matilda basted. Apparently I need to do this during the day and not in the evening. For a start, the kids are at school for large portions of the day (though yesterday they were with their dad), and the cats are asleep most of the day, which stops Miss Isobel from lying on it immediately, and Mr Lieam from tearing across it as though it's a playground, as he is wont to do when I make the bed as well. Both he and Shiloh L-O-V-E it when you make the bed or fluff the sheets and covers. I'm not sure why it tickles them so, but it does.
Now, this isn't a large quilt at all, but man do your knees hurt after sitting that way for a while basting the entire thing. I'm a bit iffy about the idea of spray basting, though I guess it washes out completely? The fact that my knees wouldn't feel like I'm 85 when I get up after half an hour on a wooden floor makes it appealing though. Ideas?
I hope to get the Olivia quilt quilted tonight, it'll be some simple quilting, probably wonky lines straight across. I haven't decided on grey thread or white or possibly to go for pink. I made the binding a few weeks ago, so I don't have to worry about that, and can sew that on pretty easily. The binding will be Kona Charcoal with bits of the red with white polka dots interspersed.
Oh, and I extended the dining table and put the leaf in. This gives me a bit more working space, and also enough space on the table that I can keep project stuff on one end, and have enough room for everyone to sit comfortably and eat at the table. I do so long for a separate work room! I have to say I was a little bit envious of seeing Julie Herman's lovely new work space on her blog yesterday. So much sun and light in there! A very happy place to work in.
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