Sunday, April 20, 2008

Stole a Little Time


I took advantage of a couple of free hours yesterday afternoon and finally sandwiched and basted the small Ohio stars quilt. This involves me taping the backing to the living room floor, stacking the other layers on top and then crawling around the edges trying to get everything smooth and even, then trying to baste without disturbing the top. There must be a better way.

I'm going to quilt it in a diagonal grid--just utility quilting, nothing fancy. My fingertips are protesting, though. They don't appreciate having to go through all those heavy seams.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

This Post Stinks!

Warning: Not for the faint of heart...

Last week walking through the kitchen after dinner I caught just a whiff of something--enough for me to file a mental note to take out the garbage as soon as I was done with what I was doing.

A half hour later, as I was walking through the kitchen again the whiff had turned into an aroma, slight, but still there. I opened up the garbage pail, but no, the liner was new. Under the liner? Who knows what could have leaked in there. But no, the pail was clean and the smell was not coming from there.

I looked around. On the counter top were the usual things: cutting board, knife, package of crackers, loaf of bread, fruit basket. Nothing to cause any kind of odor. I looked inside the microwave. Nope. Under the microwave. Nope. Since I was still in the middle of something, I decided to get it finished and come back to really investigate.

Fifteen minutes later the smell had grown into a miasma that filled the kitchen. I could almost see wavy lines and a yellowish haze hanging in the air. I checked the microwave again. Under the microwave. Behind the microwave. The sink. The oven. The refrigerator.

All this time the odor was growing and I was beginning to get frantic. Maybe a squirrel had managed to sneak in the back door and die. Nope. Possum? Goat? Rhinoceros? Maybe an escapee from the zoo crawled into one of the cabinets when no one was looking. Elephant, for heaven's sake???

All this opening and closing of various drawers and doors attracted the attention of my husband who was watching a movie in the dining room. He glanced over with mild interest, and I said, rather desperately, "Can't you SMELL that? What IS it?"

"Oh," he said, "I bet it's the Limburger cheese."

Limburger cheese? By then the smell was beginning to roil around me. I looked down at the counter in front of me. There it was. A knife with a slight residue from the cheese.

"I can't have this in here! It smells terrible! It's awful! Like a dead animal!" But as I was saying this, I could see him nodding happily, agreeing with me but in a friendly, distracted way as he tried to turn back to his movie.

"You HAVE to get that out of here--I can't stand this smell!"

"Okay," he said over his shoulder.

What I thought: problem solved.

What I should have thought: he gave in waaaaaaay too easily.

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Fast forward a couple of days.

I was calling my sister on my cell phone just at twilight. I have to do this from the back deck because although my phone has fantastic reception just about everywhere else it won't work in my house. I was pacing back and forth as I was talking and I caught another whiff of you-know-what.

Wow, I thought, I am so glad we got rid of that cheese. The smell is actually strong enough to get through a plastic bag and out of the closed garbage can. (We keep the garbage cans next to the deck during the winter.)

And then I turned around and saw it. A block of Limburger cheese on a cutting board sitting on the railing of the deck.

Limburger alfresco!

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My husband tells me that he began ordering it for his father on-line because no one carries it locally. (Can't imagine why that would be.) He tells me that he really likes it now, too. He tells me that since he keeps it in an air-tight container in the fridge and only opens it out on the deck he has solved the (my) problem.

Okay.

Check out this link. I am definitely siding with the doctor from Louisville on this one.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Busy, Busy, Busy


This week is turning out to be the bear I thought it would be. Meetings, conferences, more meetings, more conferences...Not much time for sewing or even thinking about sewing.

If I were able to get up to the sewing room for some quality time, I would probably be working on this little baby quilt. This is something I started in a "square in a square" class last summer. I finished the Ohio Star blocks on the day of the class and worked on the setting blocks and the borders at a quilt retreat in the fall. All I need to do is sew on the turquoise outer border strips and get this thing quilted. It is destined for my baby great nephew in Iowa. Hopefully he will still BE a baby when I get the quilt finished.

Somehow I always seem to stall out when it comes to finishing the borders.


Right now I can't even remember how I did the triangle borders; I just remember a lot of muttering and long calculations on the back of an envelope. I think I saw the border idea in one of the Nickel Quilt books, but of course I had to do all my own calculations to make the border fit this quilt. I really like the way it turned out, despite all the math I had to do to make it work.

Next week needs to be better.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Six Little Blocks

These are the six little blocks I finished last week. There is a seventh, not quite finished, but I may redo it because the applique center kind of migrated north during the sewing. Still haven't solved that problem--even with heavy-duty basting. I had thought that I had only done three applique blocks, but there are a four of them!

I'm going to be cutting fabric for a few more blocks tonight after supper. This is my only free night this week, so it will probably be sometime this weekend before I get anything more sewn.

Next week is beginning to look like a bear, too...