10 minute goal

This is the fabric for the baby quilt I've been working on. It's a wee bit blurry and you can barely see the quilting. I was a little naughty and didn't baste it and now I am producing some minor wrinkles around the edges. I figured, oh, it's small, it doesn't need basting in a hoop! Wrong answer. I'm making stead progress, though. Hopefully soon I will be binding that sucker!

I also started working on my new purse. I cut out all of the pieces and bought a zipper for it today. With any luck I'll be able to work on it tonight post-kiddie bedtime, jog 10 minutes of quilting & shower. Yeah, I'm probably not going to get to work on it.

Oh and I see I didn't get any bites on the Pay it Forward. Not to be selfish, but I'm kinda glad. Last night at the guild meeting I volunteered to sew pillowcases for the hospital and on top of all of my other stuff...I just probably would have taken years to get a home made giftie out.

Last chance for Pay it Forward!

Tomorrow is your last chance to sign up for Pay it Forward! This will be an easy payment for me if nobody signs up. He.

Laura over at Quilting Diva issued a challenge last month to quilt every day for ten minutes. Well, I missed it last month but I'm going to try it for (ahem, the rest of) this month. She had a post today showing some links from others who took the challenge and what they accomplished. For now I would be happy to accomplish finishing up that baby quilt. I thought I could whip that up in a few weeks but those few weeks have quickly multiplied. I hope 10 minutes a day will have it done by the end of April so that I can finally ship it off. And hopefully that trip to the post office will see Joyce's giftie off, too!

So April goal: finish that baby quilt, in 10 minutes a day!

In other sewing news...I bought some really cute fabric to make a purse. The fabric and pattern both arrived yesterday and I am thrilled with the look of the fabric. The line it was from was called Ginger, I think...maybe from Michael Miller? I had also decided I was going to make a dress and I got fabric for a pattern I already had, too. The fabric though doesn't seem to have the right hand for a dress. It seems more like a short or capri weight to me. So I am thinking on it. I guess that will teach me to buy fabric over the internet for a purpose besides quilting.

I've been listening to a lot of podcasts, and one called Sew Forth Now has caught my attention. It is mostly about fashion sewing and hence the inspiration to do a bag and a dress. Every episode she interviews someone and she has had some really interesting guests. You can catch it on iTunes or have a look at her blog. She is having an anniversary contest at the moment so if you're looking for prize potential stop over.

Sigh, my last day of being 33....

Pay it Forward

Hey everybody! Some time ago, I agreed to participate in a Pay it Forward game on Debbie's blog and I'm finally getting around to posting about it. Here is how it works. If you would like me to send you a homemade little something, then you sign my comments saying you would like to participate. But here's the catch: you have to pay it forward to three other people. You snarf the pretty picture above and put it on your blog, and you ask for three people to sign on and participate, and you send three chosen commenters a little homemade giftie, and then they do the same, and etc. etc.

If I get more than three people asking to participate, I'll draw the lucky three. I'm going to hold this open until my birthday, April 12th. (Hey, I didn't mean for that to be a hint or anything. Ok maybe deep down I did. But it's a day I won't forget so it's a good mark for me.) I'll contact the participants shortly after that.

Oh, and btw. Some time ago...ok, in NOVEMBER...I gave away a little prize to two people to celebrate my second blogiversary. I saw Freeblady, so I just delivered hers in person. Poor Joyce has been patiently waiting for me to get off my bum and get to the post office for months! What's really pathetic about it is I've had the little giftie since January. I'm so sorry Joyce! I did jokingly say that it would take me awhile to get the gifts out but I didn't mean for it to drag out so long. Hopefully I will have it out to you soon.

In other news...Freeblady and I went to a really fun event yesterday. The Original Sewing & Quilt Expo! It was so much fun. We had a free-motion quilting class with Sheila Finklestein, and a binding class with Connie Spurlock. I got to try out a pretty fancy (for me) Viking machine in the free motion class. I signed up for the binding class because I was hoping they would have some advice about binding an inside curve on a quilt. The Girl's quilt has about a jillion inside corners to bind. Of course the instructor did not really know, and her basic advice was, "don't do it." Oh. Um. Huh. Well, then...

And I almost forgot to mention: Freeblady won a prize! Unfortunately not a sewing machine, but a prize is a prize! Woohoo!

Calico Clues

For some time I have been looking for Barbara Brackman's "The Clues in the Calico". It is supposedly a really great book for helping to determine the age and history of a quilt. I don't know why I never thought of it before but I finally looked at the library for it. My branch didn't have it but they requested it from another branch for me! How wonderful! I can't wait to get it.

Oh, and if you look to the left there you will see that I finally set up my blog for RSS feeds. At least I think that is what that little icon means. Wee!

Checking in

Well of course I fell off the blogging wagon for awhile. It seems to happen to me periodically. I guess the main reason that happened is I made a big stink about wanting to lose weight at the beginning of the year. I lost one pound and then promptly gained it back. Now that I have lost a grand total of 3 (yes you read that right, 3!) pounds I am feeling like I can blog again. February was just stagnant but I've made progress in March. I've been weighing myself almost daily for a week to be sure that it wasn't just some weird dip where I spontaneously weighed less than usual. Some days I've only lost two pounds, some days 4, and some days 3. So we'll go for an average and say 3. I'm so glad to finally be making progress.

And here's the kicker. I didn't do it by dieting, really. Well, it is but it isn't. I decided that I was tired of eating so much processed foods & meats and I should be trying to eat closer to nature. I wouldn't call myself a vegetarian because I am still eating meat, just not very often. Ok, the last three days I ate it. But today is Friday and I'm Catholic so today I'll be meat free. I've also made a real effort to eat more salad and fresh fruits and vegetables. Take today...so far I've had oatmeal with raisins, a dried cranberry, sunflower seed and peanut snack mix (made it myself!), a whole wheat pita with roasted garlic hummus and avocado slices. (I am very proud of my little pita sandwich...it was tasty.) I'll be downing a little baggie of carrots, a banana, and an apple by the end of the day, too. Not sure what is on tap for dinner but I've been working a lot of hours and so that will probably be up to The Husband. That means it most likely will not be "nature" food. Oh well, you can't win them all. Also I am supposed to be training for a 10k run in May but work has put a damper on that this week. I'll have to take it up again next week. Oh, and I'm not training to win the 10k. I'm training to be able to finish the 10k.

On to quilt things. I stopped work on all other projects to work on a little blankie for a friend's baby. The baby was born in September and I really have to get my butt in gear. I kept postponing because I wanted to make her something but I finally realized the poor kid would be in college before I could make her what I really wanted to make. I saw in a quilting magazine not too long ago (sorry, I can't remember which one) that a fun way to make a quilt without doing patchwork is to get a nice large-patterned fabric and just quilt the lines on the fabric. That's what I'm doing for little Liesl. I wanted it to be a yard square to keep with the tradition of giving babies a yard of cloth for luck. I read about that in a Fons & Porter book...the Quilter's Complete Guide. (It was my first quilting book and I love it dearly! So dearly it is falling apart.) I'm about halfway done with the quilting on it, which I am doing by hand. This week work has been stomping on all of my quilting time so I didn't progress too much this week. I hope to have it done by the end of the month.

In other news...The Girl got glasses. She apparently is "extremely far-sighted" as the doc put it. Really? How on earth was she able to function? I can't figure it out. But she is happily wearing her new specs without any argument, in spite of being three and having very definite ideas about what she does (dresses) and doesn't (pants) wear.

Oh and t-ball is about to start for The Boy. I can't believe it is already time for that again. This year he seems much more eager. Some friends of ours got their son on the team too so now he'll have a team buddy.

I'm so glad Spring is on it's way. This is Ohio so I know the cold weather could drag into May. I sure hope it doesn't, though.

ding ding ding!

Yesterday was my first weigh-in day.  I decided to weigh myself once a week, starting from New Year's day so that makes Tuesday the scale day.  

Guess what!

I lost a pound.  At least, I think I did.  It is really hard to read our scale.  But the needle is definitely at least a pound shy of where it was last week.  Hurray!  Who knew that not eating like a pig would have an impact?

1/2 way to goal #1

I made it through one week! Ok, so it wasn't a full week because it started on Tuesday. But I went jogging three times, watched my portions, and only visited the snack machine one time. Wee! One more week to a new pair of jogging pants.

Today I went to order my dress for Chalicat's wedding. She graciously asked me to be her matron of honor (that sounds so old) and it was time to order my dress. Get this: I got to order a size....drum roll....8!!!

Unfortunately I didn't get much quilting done this week. I started on block number two of the sunburst quilt, but I only got a quarter of the pieced circlet done. Maybe I can get to some more of it tonight.

Happy New Year!!!

Happy New Year, everyone!

So the first post of the year is all about goals. I have so many, they are all competing for that small bit of attention not taken up by life in general. The big one is I want to lose weight. I've slowly been gaining since I returned to work post-The Girl. I did lose most of my pregnancy weight (though is there such a thing as a toned belly after kid 2???) but now weight is slowly creeping back on. Obesity is pretty rampant on both sides of my family, and the advice I seem to hear from them is that preventing fat is a whole lot easier than getting rid of it. So. That said, my main goal here is to lose weight. My initial goal is 5 pounds. In January, I will be trying to do that by:

• Exercising no less than 3 times per week
• Only visiting the snack machine 1 time per week at work (I have to give myself something, otherwise I'd go bonkers and start snarfing everything in sight.)
• Watching my portions (which is vague, but really what I mean is being careful to eat a single serving.)

[Note: I don't actually expect to lose a full 5 pounds in a month with only these modifications.] As you can probably guess, I am easing in to this a bit. The thing about the exercising is, my exercise of choice is jogging, and darned if I don't hate to run in yucky cold and snowy weather. I also have two little tidbits planned for myself: if I can go two weeks and meet all of the goals, then I can shop for a new pair of running pants. If I make it to the end of the month, I get a new running bra.

I started it off well -- this afternoon I went for my first jog in probably more than two months. I went a whole mile! Yeeha! Now if I can only resist eating something naughty as a reward. I won't be going major distances until the weather is better. I suppose that leaves room to sneak in a longer run on those occasional nice days. Anyways, the lesser goal will keep me from giving up as easily.

In other more quilt-related news, here are my sewing goals:

• Finish binding The Girl's quilt
• Baste, quilt & bind The Boy's quilt
• Finish at least 10 of the hand-pieced blocks for the sunburst quilt

I already finished one of those blocks. Though I finished it yesterday so I guess I still have 10 more to go for the year :)

Other goals...post more often, try to improve my wardrobe, be more patient, savor life!

Here's looking forward to a great year!!!!