🎶🎶🎵🎵🎶🎵

Yup, today is my birthday.  I am celebrating, mostly celebrating having survived the last few years.
As I've said before, you have to be grateful for what you have, because it can always be worse.

And when my ongoing headache gets me down, I start counting my blessings.  There are plenty of them, I am very lucky in so many ways.

Last night, we had a pot luck dinner at the studio, for my weaving friends.
We had so much fantastic food, we drank a little wine, we talked and laughed, and for just a little while, we forgot about Old Man Winter.

This is the cake that Lois made for me.   I'm so glad to know that I'm not getting any older.
Who knew??

We did a some  sharing of our weaving ventures, always so much fun, and always an inspiration.

We hope to have these get togethers on a monthly basis.

Today two of my daughters and three of my grands, came to have lunch with me.

And now you know what to do with your empty cones left over from weaving.


I missed my third daughter, and her two children, but she couldn't be there.





 Tomorrow I will get back to my weaving. 

Maybe the sun will shine.

It's good to have a birthday.  Age is nothing, really.  I have an amazing family, and so many good friends.   I have this incredible studio where I can weave every day.  I'm still on my feet, and doing OK, in spite of some bad luck and revolting turns of events.
I am still dreaming and planning and life is still good.
Happy Birthday to me.

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Getting Through February

Finally got my dishwasher hooked up, and the new countertop installed.   I decided to keep my old stove, even though I had to push it to the edge of the doorway to make it work.  All this was because of the post in the corner.......the dishwasher wouldn't go over any further.
I just don't want to give up my old stove.

 

 I also don't want to give up my four prints over the stove.
I guess I want an old fashioned kitchen.

I've been slogging through the cold weather, pretty much like everyone else I know.

I weave on Möbius shawls, then mohair throws, then Fiesta rag rugs, and occasionally 16 harness dish towels.
Whatever keeps me engaged.

It has been brutally cold, but we have had sunny days.

The southern side of the house is bathed in sun on those days.

On other days, I've been "engaged" with sweet baby Dale.

She warms up any day, that one.

Also spending a little time with my other two girls.    We made  time for a little COLLAGE.

I'm shooting for  April 1st, counting the weeks off.
The way I look at it, only a fool would expect winter to still be around on April 1st.

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A new design!

A while back I saw this image and pinned it. I thought it could make a really great quilt block design.

It's been rolling around in my head ever since, contemplating colors/fabrics and I knew at some point I had to give it a try. There's a bit of fear working without a pattern - no picture to refer to and no way to know what the final outcome will be. But I went for it in a combination of navy, gray, aqua and mint. And here's the result...

The block is really so simple, but makes a nice graphic impact.

I think you could really play around with different settings and configurations for the block.

You'll find a similar pattern here.

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Juggle

I've become a big fan of fabric design by Bonnie Christine for Art Gallery Fabrics. So when "Winged" came out, I went for the Fat Quarter bundle. I wanted to make something simple. Something that showcased each of the beautiful pieces in the line.

I ended up choosing a Thimbleblossoms pattern (I know - another one!) called Juggle. The nice size hexagons seemed perfect for this fabric.

As always, I added a few stash fabrics, but not too many this time...

The quilting is done with Stitch #4 on my Bernina - the Serpentine. I did adjust the length and width a bit to get the look I wanted. I had forgotten how quickly this quilting design goes!

The backing is a pretty floral from "Winged" and the binding is Art Gallery Squared Elements, which I seem to be using again and again for binding.

It was time to switch out some rolled up quilts in my basket, so here is it's home for now - that is until someone needs a pretty quilt for a nap...

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Winterish.

While I try not to talk about the weather, here in the northeast, as well as a lot of the rest of the country, the weather is right in our faces.
Snow storm after snow storm, bitter cold, shoveling, paying for the plow man, feeding the birds, bundling up like you were headed to the Arctic just to go to the store, doing all the worrying and work that comes with WINTER.  There, I've said it.

We even shovel a path for Roy so he can do his thing without being in 2 ft of snow.

This week, my car is being fixed, from my unpleasant meeting with a tractor trailer.  It will be there all week.  My insurance would have paid a whopping $20 a day for a rental, but what would I get with that?  Something that would get through the snow without breaking into a cold sweat? 
I think not. 
So I am getting delivered to the studio in the morning, and picked up later, by DH.  It's not like I am up for any traveling other than that anyway.
I can do it for a week.

So alone at the studio, I looked around for what I would get into.

Today, I decided to go with "winter whites/gray skies".

 Besides I have a lot of this sock stuff lying around, and I wanted to get it woven and get the rugs put on the shelves.

I love these rugs, so reminiscent of birch bark.  They are heavy, and solid, and earthy.

 

See my old boots by the door.  I've been wearing them every winter for 14 years.   I like to get my money's worth.

 

These first two rugs off the loom, another finished and probably 3 more to go.

 

The rest of the afternoon calls for a hot cuppa tea, and my new book.

Yup, more winter.

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All the news that is news, and some that ain't.

The bad news is that winter is sticking around for longer than I want to think about.

Oh, and Bart attacked me every time I tried to collect eggs today.  And filling the waterer was almost impossible.
He definitely has my number.  He is totally making my chicken farmer routine very unpleasant.

Continuing to make the day interesting, I dumped almost a whole bag of pellets on the floor.
Which I had to pick up quick, as someone thought it might be a new kind of CAT LITTER.
Not saying any names.

I spent the afternoon tying on a new warp, for more mobius shawls.   Not a problem really, just tedious.

 The good news is that my friend's husband came and took Bart home with him late this afternoon.   Last year, all his chickens but one, were killed by a marauding group of raccoons.   I gifted him with four of my young hens, to give him five.  
He went into the coop today, grabbed Bart by the legs, and took him home.   Bart promptly jumped up on the roost with the new girls, in his new digs.  He probably crowed.  Fickle b******.

Bart doesn't know it yet, but his new owner is not going to put up with any crap from him.  So maybe it will work out.
I will miss him crowing.  And that's about it.
Anybody know of a rooster recording that you can program???
Maybe I need to invent that one, for all those "roosterless" hen houses.

I am so excited, now I can go into my hen house, without being assaulted.



 Speaking of excited, tomorrow I am going to pay this little lady a visit.
It doesn't get much better than that.

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An Irish Chainish Quilt?

I have a finished quilt to show today! This quilt came about after trying to organize my overflowing Anna Maria Horner stash. I thought it would reduce the volume - but somehow that never seems to happen! I guess when she continues to release these gorgeous, irresistible lines my efforts are futile!

I really love this quilt. It's kind of designed like a simple Single Irish Chain.

It's created with a simple 6" finished square and a simple 6" finished Nine Patch. The only tricky part is that you do have to lay everything out so that your Nine Patch squares match the corresponding print square. I also added a border around the edge that incorporates 2" squares to finish out the pattern.

The background is a light gray {even though it looks kind of beige in these pictures} - Moda Bella Fog. I did some diagonal straight line quilting through the small squares and a simple quilting motif in the 6" squares.

I'm sure there are future AMH fabric quilts in my future!!

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