Among my other activities and in my spare time (HAHAHA), I belong to a knitting club called CHIX. We meet once a month and last night was my turn to host.
Food first!! I whipped up some chocolate chip biscotti over the weekend which were a big hit.
Since I really don't love knitting and didn't have anything ready for working on last night, I decided I should find a hand-sewing project I could substitute. You might ask WHY I belong to a knitting club if I don't love knitting... that's for another blog post! In my defense, there's another woman who also isn't much of a knitter who was sewing down a binding on a charity quilt!.
I also didn't have anything in process so I did a quick survey of my piles and found a mini quilt I'd made and quilted some years ago (I must confess that I have ABSOLUTELY no recollection as to where, when or why I made this!) which needed a binding. ( I do have a very vague recollection of deciding on the variety of reds for the setting triangles, but that's about it!)
What's the lesson here? Don't leave things "almost done"? Be sure to use labels?? Not sure.
So I quickly found a fabric, sewed on the binding and I had a hand sewing project for when my fellow CHIX were visiting, sewing down the binding. It kept me busy the entire time I had my friends over, so it was perfect. And it is now hanging on my wall with other small quilts.
Can't say, though, that the completion reduced the pile size by much nor did my stash get reduced much...the gold for the binding was maybe half a yard! ;-)
What next??? hmmmmm. I did start that mini I showed you earlier this week, starting to cut out my squares and backgrounds for the snowball blocks! Stay tuned... I'm feeling in the mini mood and completing things is sounding really appealing to me!
And in typical Randy fashion, here is the back:
I spent a lot of time working on this basket quilt. I had the input of my old friend Bonnie, inspiring me to use old filler pieces... quarter square triangles, four-patches, old basket blocks etc etc.
Making quilts like this is challenging, although I find it so rewarding once it's done. It's a challenge to put something together without a specific pattern, but I love doing it. I need to do this more, especially with all my orphan blocks, which are quite voluminous!
One thing about this quilt that I'm proud of is that the blocks are SO varied. At the same time, I wish they were all the same so it would have been easier to put together! Oh well.
Vegas? Great fun. This is our gang! Let me let you know that my flashing red sunglasses were from an Elton John concert 4 yrs ago. My friend and I had to replace the batteries, which was pretty challenging. The concert was fabulous. He's a great performer and musician.
There were many quilt patterns along the way in Las Vegas, which I couldn't resist.
When we were in Las Vegas, we went to the Mob Museum for a very interesting experience. Las Vegas was the home of many gangs and they established a fabulous collection of memorabilia and photographs. Of course, this section was my favorite, about a very prominent defense attorney!
Loved this picture about prohibition!
We also walked around to some of the other hotels (which are quite a scene) and found these in one lobby!
And this in celebration of the Chinese New Year. I couldn't resist this!!
This tell you something about my sense of humor~!!
I flew up to Bend to check on my mom, who is slowly doing ok at the assisted living. However, yesterday she started to cry when she was lamenting about her lost identity from her past life.
On the other hand, her cognitive abilities really are declining. I have to explain things to her over and over and she still doesn't remember or grasp what I'm saying. She has had trouble with her cell phone so today I tried to get her a landline. I'm not sure she'll be able to figure out how to use the phone. So terribly sad... she manifests to me the expression, "the lights are on, but no one is home". Tomorrow I'll meet with the staff to get an updated assessment.
