I finally got around to taking a picture of the purple batch of fabric I dyed last week. It was supposed to be a plum to fuchsia blend, but the fuchsia is so strong not much of the plum shows. You can see bits of the plum in the light spots since the fuchsia reacts so quickly and the purple takes longer to seep in. If I try this blend again I'll have to use more plum powder and half the fuchsia. It's so hard to tell what you're going to get in the end by looking at the bags, these looked like beets in the beginning, but they rinsed out so pink.



I started yet another batch last night, this time using the new dye I ordered from Dharma: peacock blue and kelly green. I did an eight step blend instead of the usual six but the end colors are pure, (there's no green in the strongest blue bag and no blue in the strongest green bag).

Follow my logic here: if the school nurse can send a kid home with pink eye, then she could say it's not, right? Good, so the nurse looked at Kevin's eye and said his lid was swollen and red because of a sty, not conjunctivitis so I didn't have to take the poor boy to the doctor or deal with eye drops!

Happy Dance Time!

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Do you spell-check your posts? Have you noticed how horrid this spell-checker is? I checked the above paragraph and it didn't like sty or conjunctivitis. And, I had them spelled correctly! sheesh.

I got a new pilot light yesterday for the furnace so it was nice and toasty this morning. The bad news is the bearings are about shot in the blower motor and we need a new furnace anyway.

Oh well.

Now I have to pick up my son from school which hasn't even started yet and take him to the doctor to have his eye checked for pink eye. The new furnace I can deal with, it's the prospect of putting eye drops into my autistic son's eyes that pushes me over the edge. I just don't know how that's going to happen.

I never got any quilting done yesterday, boo!, but the house got vacuumed and the laundry is on the home stretch, just down to the sheets and towels. Yay!

It's about 54°F in my house this morning and about 18°F outside. I've got a sick kid upstairs and I'm waiting for the furnace guy to show up. I've turned the oven on the "clean" cycle to generate some heat and I'd say it's a lovely day to get some quilting done! I really should continue on the laundry, got a lot done this weekend, but yet, there is more; and I should get some vacuuming done, too, but that would mean I've got to pick up kevin's pile of letters which I'm not allowed to touch while he's awake in the house. I guess I'll do the Flylady thing and set the time for 15 minutes and alternate between the should do's and wants to's.

Oops, there goes the smoke detector, gotta go.

I just got this text message: Got 100% on exam!

When we got Fern her own mobile phone last summer I hadn't expected to get science grades sent to me, but it is certainly nice!

I was standing in my bathroom in my pajamas at 7:44 yesterday morning when I got a call from my boss. Could I be in by 8:30 for a meeting with Bob? I hadn't showered yet, and I couldn't leave until Kevin's bus came, who wasn't even ready yet. But somehow, Kevin got the bus, and I beat it out of the neighborhood while it was turning around, I got a whole string of green lights in a row, found a decent parking spot and got to the meeting by 8:33. We really needed to meet with Bob and this was the only time he could meet with us. It's things like this that make my life fun, when things just fall into place.

I love those PC and Mac ads on TV, well, mostly because my home laptop is an iBook. The ads are true (although a bit snobby.) Macs are so easy. If a hotel has wireless all I have to do is open the laptop and start surfing. It just finds the network. If it's a secured network it prompts me for a password, it's smart enough to know what's going on.

CG came over this morning to use our wireless so she could submit her work for her new reporter job since her internet connection is still out of commission. She opened her non-Mac laptop and it couldn't find our wireless automatically; it's so convoluted. Nor did she want me trying to force the connection because the laptop then might not find her network when it was working again. yowza. Sorry for the trouble, but get a Mac already ! =)



I finished the second batch of hand-dyes yesterday (batch on right, the ones on the left are from Saturday). They are so pretty! (The top picture was taken right after the pieces came out of the bags.)

I made two test blocks for retreat mystery quilt this morning during our two-hour snow delay. I'm leading that too. Can you believe it! If you want to sew along, let me know and I'll post the directions here, too. I'm trying not to do too much extra stuff, really! I finally finished the Vincenzi books so that's off my plate now; more room for more mischief..........

I couldn't wait until my new dyes came so I dyed a batch last night with dyes from my stash.


This set is Kilt green blended with hollandaise yellow. The green is so strong and very blue you can hardly see the yellow much past the first piece.


This is my second attempt using the kilt green and yellow. This time I used a quarter of the amount of the green dye powder: 1/2 tsp in a cup of water to start. I use half of that in the first bag and fill the cup back up to the cup line. I keep that proceedure going for all six bags. I do the same thing for the yellow using two tablespoons of dye powder to start but put in the bags in reverse order.

Take this test and post your scores.

I'm "Brilliant!"
(Did you expect anything less?)

I love the Internet! I got an email this morning saying my order from Dharma was filled and already on its way to me. So as soon as it gets here I'll do a test run by dyeing some quilting fabric in my new colors. I ordered a bright green and a peacock blue, so I think a 6-way blend of the two will be fabulous! Ooooh, I can't wait. I'll have to start thinking of a watery-like quilt project....

I can't wait for my quilt guild's retreat next month. It's usually a wonderful time, away from the kids and spilt chocolate milk, staying up late, sewing until your hands fall off, starting way too many projects to ever finish.

I volunteered to lead a fabric dyeing workshop one afternoon. I have no idea why I do things like that. Especially since I haven't dyed fabric in about eight years. I've been looking at my old notes and am I'm slowly remembering how to do it, I even placed an order at Dharma for two new colors of dye. I decided I needed to practice dyeing first so I'll round up some of the girls and moms in the neighborhood and lead a class one afternoon. AM said she'd bring her girls. I figured if I could teach them, the adults at the retreat could not be harder, right? My plan is to show them how to do a six-step two-color blend. Is that too much for the girls? Am I crazy? What colors would you blend?

I committed myself to entering four quilts in our guild's show in March. Only one of them is done. Sheesh. I'm entering the green quilt I posted a picture of last week, I've got about a quarter of the binding done. I'm not sure about the fabric choice but I'm not going to change it now, maybe after the show if I'm so inclined. It might be fine once it's all on.

The third quilt is the one I made for GC's daughter for Christmas. I had only one edge bound at gift time and the rest of it was clipped down. Now it's almost half bound. I'll spend American Idol time working on it. I know I really should be doing more constructive things around the house, but AI audition week is so darn captivating, watching others do something badly. Anyway, it's a great time for handwork.

The fourth quilt is the one that's not even quilted yet. It's Kevin's Autism quilt. I'm still not sure how I'm going to quilt it. I'm sure inspiration will strike. Soon. I hope. I plan on working on it at the guild retreat next month.

I'm almost done with the third Penny Vincenzi book, Into Temptation. I always feel this pull when I'm reading a long book and wanting to do other things too. I tried reading during AI last night and it didn't work well. I want to finish the 2000 page saga so I can get on to these committed quilts. I'll be sad when I'm finished though, I've been with these characters since the middle of November. (The illegit kid count is holding at 8, if you were wondering...)

I'm back from Myrtle Beach and I'm sore all over. Dan gave me a two-day golf school for Christmas which was scheduled for this past weekend. I got video-taped and analyzed and made a bazillon practice swings and hit another bazillion balls. I need to go to the practice range to reinforce what I've learned. But I'm too sore. And it's too windy out today. I could go over to Andrew's AFB and hit a bucket at lunch time. Hmm. Have to think about it more. It's tempting...

The weather was great; it was hard to remember it is January. Fern brought a friend along and we spent a couple hours on the beach one morning. Here's my attempt at abstract art:


Another day we went to the Brookgreen Gardens. This series is from a spot in the Children's Garden:





Brookgreen is south of MB, down near Pawley's Island. Delightful place, especially if you like gardens and sculptures. One of the statues:

Have you ever walked out of a hotel room without your key? Or didn't have a pocket to put it in when you went down to the pool?

This past weekend we took the kids to the promised land: Great Wolf Lodge. This time in the Poconos. This promised trip was how we got Kevin out of bed for the past five months, how we got him to take his bath or put his shoes on or do his homework. You get the idea. He was so excited the week before, packing suitcases, squealing, flashing his ever radiant smile. Of course he didn't pack what he really needed. More like what he didn't need, like a suitcase full of things from my lingerie drawer.

We arrived about 3:00 pm Saturday afternoon and our room wasn't ready yet, but we got our wristbands and changed into our suits and hit the waterpark. The indoor waterpark area is bigger there than the GWL in Williamsburg. A while later I got our room keys: more wristbands. These had sensors built in so you waved it next to your door and you got in. No keycards to lose or forget! The kids could even be trusted with their own key. I wonder how'd they go over with the business traveler?

The trip went well and another trip is planned for June. How else do you think we'll be able to get the boy going in the mornings? My only complaint about the trip was the very very low water pressure in the shower. I hate that. One of these days I'm going to take my own wrench and remove the stupid water saver filters. I can't stand taking a shower one drop at a time, taking 20 minutes to rinse your hair, forget the conditioner with a showerhead like that. But that's another blog...

Today I'm pondering blogworthy things: are the little black specs in the ladies' room sink that look a lot like whiskers substantive enough to blog about? Or are they just little things in life that make you go, "Mmm?" Did some guy stumble in there this morning at 6:30 not quite awake enough yet because the coffee shop doesn't open until 7:00 to notice the "Wo" in front of the "Men" sign on the door? Or am I not supposed to make such observations?

On another topic, did you know it takes two and a half to three hours to transfer 9263 songs onto a new iPod? The famous "As seen on CNN" iPod hit the garage floor the other day and was replaced last night with a new 80GB iPod.

I finished Something Dangerous over the weekend and started the third book in the trilogy, Into Temptation and the children out of wedlock count is up to eight, but there is a mystery about one so it could be only seven. Still.

I'm working on the binding of this quilt: I finally settled on a rusty orange for the border. I couldn't find any green I liked. It'll hang in our guild show in March. If I can get the binding done....

CG/AM is going to give me back the quilt I made for her daughter for Christmas so I can finish the binding on that too. (It was given with clips around the edge.) I'm going to hate binding when it's all over. I'll post a picture of it when I'm done.