I've been challenged by my quilt guild and bee members to post more. I think that would require me actually doing more to have fodder for posts. Heaven forbid I should admit I watch a lot of TV.

Ok, so here is the latest news: We came back from vacation to a dead fridge, termite damage requiring the garage door frame to be rebuilt, a bill from the IRS for the tax on profit on mutual funds I forgot to report, and a dog.

Unique view of the Bay Bridge from the vacation:

 

I cleaned a little

Click to view interactively: http://360.io/vfEuwV

I've been playing with new apps again....

Holy cats! It's been ages since I posted. The world, my world has changed since then.

First, (because VE keeps asking) let me report I've finished one of the socks in the pair shown below, the other has been started, ripped back, and is now waiting for progress. Like you are with this blog.

Second, the husband retired in March with a buy-out option Census offered. Life has been interesting adjusting to this. I miss having him here at work in the building. He was good for a distracting email or instant message when I needed it. I miss the carpool parking pass which provided better parking ops. I like that I'm not loading and unloading the dishwasher as much any more, almost never, really. (Thanks Honey!)

I have a senior in high school now, and life is full of SATs, AP results, and college visits. Sorry, kid, we spent all your college money on vacations.

Antigua in June

I'll try to remember to come back again and post more.  

Sock in Progress

The Never-ending Socks: Done!

These socks for Fern are finally done!

Tubular cuff bind-off.

What I Did Over Christmas Break

If you scroll down, you can see the picture of this when I was laying it out on the conference room table. I spent a lot of time over break sewing the blocks together. I don't have any space large enough in my house to get a good look at it, my bed is the closest. The next step is to put on the borders. I'm hoping to borrow a friend's long arm machine to quilt this monster. With borders on, it'll be 116" x 90"!

Quilt Math

I got my sewing machine back from the shop yesterday. I had it in for semi-routine maintenance. The 'dashboard' has service symbols when it's time for an oiling or professional service. I oil my machine far more often than the light indicates. Maybe that's why the service symbol doesn't come on, I just bring it in when it's been a while.

Last time I had it in for service was in April of 2008. The tech provided me with some statistics from my machine's computer.

General sewing time: 25:39
Stitches: 6,802,510
Time using the embroidery module: 1:23
Embroidery stitches: 502,400
Time quilting with the stitch regulator module (BSR): 1:36
BSR stitches: 5,490,480
Total time: 28:38
Total stitches: 12,795,390

Since I bought my machine used, all the embroidery work was done by the previous owner since I don't have that part.

I asked for the same statistics this time, almost three years later.

General sewing time: 99:37
stitches: 2,572,174
Time using the embroidery module: 1:23
embroidery stitches: 50,240
Time using BSR: 1:43
BSR stitches: 773,830
Total time: 102:43
Total stitches: 3,396,244
Total time turned on: 6233:51


OK, so do you see the problem here? The first set of numbers is off. By a lot, a factor of 10. I'm guessing there's an extra zero at the end of the older counts. After I adjust for that what puzzles me the most is how I could have sewn 224,782 stitches with the BSR in seven minutes.

I guess it's a new form of quilt math I'm not aware of.

Quilt in Progress

Charm Pack Baby Quilt

This is a baby quilt I'm making for one of the guys in the office. I just need to put on the binding, it's already quilted and washed.

I made this from a charm pack, a pack of 40 or so 5" squares.

Keeping the order of the squares in tact, I sliced off 1.5" off each side, then the top and bottom; then shuffled the bottom center square to the top of the stack and reassemble the blocks. I then arranged the blocks on point in a zigzag pattern in the same order as the squares from the original pack. I added setting triangles and two two-inch borders. The checkerboard border was made from two fabrics that match some in the original pack which I got separately. After quilting, it finished to about 30" square.

I got to use a friend's long-arm for the first time to quilt this. It was way fun, even for a beginner. I wish I had the space and money for my own long arm. In the mean time I'll keep renting/bartering time on other machines.

Layout Challenges: Help!

view full image

I Hate Autumn

I love autumn, really, the low-angle light and dramatic skys, the changing colors, the cool crisp air, beautiful. It's probably my favorite season.

But I hate autumn.

We northern hemisphere homosapiens are genetically programmed to add insulation in the fall for the upcoming winter. The number on the scale gets larger every time you get on it. What doesn't help are the holidays: Kevin's birthday (cake), Halloween (candy), Thanksgiving (pie), Christmas (luncheons, cookies, more pie), New Year's eve (chips and dip), Super Bowl Sunday (more chips, more dip), and Valentine's Day (chocolate). You don't get a break until March, and by then the damage has been done. The hips are larger than ever and you're on the brink of having to buy yet another wardrobe.

So I've decided I'm cutting out carbs now. Well, actually, I started Saturday. No pasta, no candy, no bread and butter, no cereal. I plan on getting a jumpstart on counteracting this weight thing.

As I type this, I can hear the guys in the next cube talking about the bagels that were brought in today. Sheesh.

I can do this. Who's with me?

Jack....Jack....

How to turn an iPhone photo into a magazine quality image

My lunch of pesto cavatappi from Noodles & Company.

Original image

Cropped

Added saturation and contrast

Added point of focus

Playing With an App Called Snapseed

Playing With Photo Editing Again

The dark side

So I did it, I crossed over. I opened a twitter account.

I'd been resisting for a long time, I really didn't need yet another thing to obsess about, but a couple things perpetuated my decision to cross over to the dark twitter side.

First, my husband seemed to be having too much fun reading his feed, laughing at the funny ones, and occasionally quoting to me the best.
I want to have fun too!

Second, the author of The art of iPhoneography, the book I just bought, talked about posting photos to extend your creativity. She suggests twitter.

I created my twitter account, and picked some folks to follow. Then came the old tree-in-the-forest question: If you tweet with no followers, is it a tweet at all? Then a strange thing happened, I got followers, people I didn't know, and not the folks I followed. It is kinda creepy.

Last night I set up another account on Instagram. It's a social network for photographers mentioned in the iPhoneography book, a place where I can post pictures and have them exported as tweets. Already, I have a couple followers and I'm ok with that. I'm not sure what the difference is, why one is creepy and one isn't, I'm still trying to identify what it is.

Anyway, here I am, exploring the dark side.

Myrtle Beach -circa 2011

While I was at Urban Outfitters yesterday, I bought a book called The Art of iPhoneography by Stephanie C. Roberts. I'm finding it to be a great resource for the camera and apps and taking images with my iPhone. And a great source of inspiration.

I've just read through the first couple sections and now am inspired to take and post more photos from my phone or iPad. Like all my new projects, I'm gonna do this everyday! So, that is the first one, taken from the balcony of our beach condo just a little while ago.

This was taken with the ShakeItPhoto app on the iPad.

July

Ok, July is gone, but the heat lingers.

I still haven't watched Howard's End yet, the netflix disc taunts me continually. I did see the rest of the Harry Potter movies before the premier of HP-VIIb. I took Kevin to see the show at midnight. It was fun, getting caught up in the whole first-night frenzy, but I really want to see it again in a normal way, no craziness, no kids in school uniforms. Dan hasn't seen it yet, either, so I'm thinking "date night!" Every time I think I have an open evening, our darling daughter gets a call asking her to work, and no daughter means no supervision for Kevin.

Speaking of Kevin, Dan and I are discussing getting him a cell phone. There are many times when he's out on his bike, for example, and I want to get a message to him, like, "come home!" Last month when Dan was in California I'd hand my phone to Kevin so he could type out a message to his dad. Sometime he'd rebel, sometime he'd answer Dan's questions, and sometimes he'd just type back what was asked of him. Written echolalia. I'm afraid, on the other hand, he'll lose it, or it'll get taken from him; he won't be responsible for it, or he'll manage to run up a $600 phone bill. Fern managed to rack up an extra $120 last month, so anything is possible with The Boy.

I have a stack of Girl Scout vests I've been ignoring and many quilting projects that should require my attention. I've set a goal of finishing one by the time state and county fair entries are due so I'll have to get it done. I need to get another quilt done by October so it can be included in a book being published by the woman who designed the patterns. Add the monthly sewing obligation of the swap we're doing in my bee. Sheesh.

OK, that's enough for now, just listing it all out makes my head hurt.

Movie Time

June was British Movie month here at Anne's House.

I didn't plan it that way, it just happened. In no particular order (because I can't remember the order), this is what I watched:

Moulin Rouge!, ok, it's not a British film, but it's got the guy who plays the young Obi-Wan Kenobi in it and everybody knows Obi-Wan's British. I was surprised how much I liked this, even if it's a story-within-a-story-within-a-story story.

The Secret Garden featuring Maggie Smith as Mrs. Medlock. The book was a free download on my kindle so I got it, then wanted to watch the movie. It's a decent adaptation, but the book is better.

Maybe I should have called it "Maggie Smith Movie Month" because she was also in A Room with a View with Dame Judi Dench, which I'd seen before, but was confusing it with Howards End in my mind, which I have all ready to watch from Netflix. Both have Helena Bonham Carter so you can see my confusion. And as a bonus, Room has three fully naked men in it.

Our beloved Maggie was also in Harry Potter I, Harry Potter II and Harry Potter III. Since Harry Potter VIIb is opening next week I've been trying to catch up on all the movies.

Helena Bonham Carter was also in HP-V, HP-VI, and HP-VIIa but I can't list those this month.

This list of movies reads like a complicated family tree. Dame Judi, was also in The Importance of Being Earnest with the wonderful Colin Firth.

The last movie on my June list is Calendar Girls, delightful film with Helen Mirren and Julie Walters. And if that name isn't familiar, she was in all the Harry Potter movies as Molly Weasley.

I'll put together a July list sometime in August. What have you been watching?

Kevin

July 3, 2011
I'm sitting on the beach at Rehoboth, DE watching Kevin play at the edge of the surf. He truly is an amazing child. And not because I'm his mom and am paid to think that. If you don't know Kevin, he's my eighteen year old autistic son. 

Kevin is always happy, or nearly so. He finds joy in all that he does. He is perfectly happy sitting in the surf on a crowded beach on a holiday weekend where most of us would get antsy with the crowdedness. He scoops sand from a wet hole in front of him and pats it on to a mound beside him. Scoop, pat, pat, pat. Scoop, pat, pat, pat. He is never distraught when a wave laps up to fill in his hole and erodes the mound. He continues his mission when the water recedes. And for an hour or more he continues like that, building his shapeless mound, which gets larger as the afternoon wears on and the tide gets lower. Perfectly happy. 

At home he can be happy riding his bike through the neighborhood, or playing with legos for hours on end, or commandeering my iPad and slinging birds at silly green pigs. He is happy where he is and never complains of boredom; he takes care of himself. 

But more than that, he's amazing because he wants for nothing. He is very hard to shop for because of this, however. He just doesn't want anything. He's not the type of kid who peruses the Sears Christmas catalog and circles six things on every page. I'm reminded of a scene in Harry Potter I where Dumbledore tells Harry about the Mirror of Desire, it shows the true desire of anyone who looks into it (Harry sees a family, Dumbledore sees warm socks) and anyone who is truly happy will see only himself. I think Kevin would see only himself. 

It amazes me that in this materialistic world we live in, I have a child who is so happy and joyful with what he has.