Happy Leap Day

I wish we had an extra day every week! It seems like there is never enough time for everything I want to do. I've had the mixed blessing of catching the flu this past week. Here I am, living proof that the flu shot doesn't always work. I call it a mixed blessing, because, if I hadn't caught it, I would be at work right now, instead of sitting here typing on my home computer! Since I've been working in Pre-Admission Testing interviewing & inputting patient medical histories, I just don't feel like sitting down to blog. Hence the sparse posts. I tend to snap quick photos here & there & Facebook with my phone these days, rather than the slower more thoughtful posts that belong to blogging. 

This is just a bit of what's been happening in the past few months for us.

This is a work in progress, started in my Rayna Gillman class last summer, it hangs in my studio & morphs every now & then. 

This was our house-guest, grand-cat Boy. He stayed with us for most of November, because he was very sick & there is no Vet in Nome where my son lives most of the year. He had to be in the hospital for almost & week, then came home with subcutaneous infusions. He is in chronic renal failure. He's a sweet boy, & is back home whit his own family now.

About that same time, we started ripping up our upstairs bathroom for a remodel.

The new tub became part of the Christmas decorations in the kitchen. It's still there, & will probably be there until my next birthday ! 

I made this flower for our annual ornament exchange,

& these suet feeders too, as well as the suet. For someone who doesn't eat beef normally, the process of making suet was disgusting. The smell made me gag, but the birds loved it!

This is my dear friend Mindy. She taught me how to pull glass. It was awesome. I could get addicted to the whole process. I only pulled 3 long stringers, each about 7 feet long.

I broke up 2 1/3 of them & laid it out into a circle (below) with a layer of clear glass, & fused it.

The white on it is just a flare from the flash. It will be the start of my 2017 calendar quilt, which is an oxymoron, "Fire water".

We had a pretty good earthquake not too long ago.  A 7.4. Woke us out of a sound sleep. We stayed in bed & rocked away, wondering when it would end. The next morning we got up to assess the damage & found minimal. A few broken dishes. The crockpot that walked itself from underneath the shelf in the far upper left was pretty amazing.

The saddest damage was the favorite of my kitchen roosters lost his head. I consider us very lucky.

Most of my spare time for past several months is being spent on this quilt. My dear friend Carol Wight Jones had been trying hard to finish the applique on it in her final days. I promised her, we would finish whatever she didn't get done, & pass it on to her family. My calendar girlfriends Jan Wills, & Mary Lee & I finished the applique od 3 borders, & I've pieced the blocks together in an unusual arrangement to make them fit the borders.

& I've been quilting...

& quilting...

& still quilting, but making progress.

I've finished this Mola Bird, which was a block I bought at the quilt museum in Tillamook, Or several years ago, & the red pieces on it I bought at the Quilt Zone, where she takes trade in fabric for store credit. Someone traded these in, & I bought them. They were 3 pieces, that I cut 1 into 4 pieces & used the other 2 whole, & just added on the black to complete the piece. So the quilting & button embellishment was really the most creative part on this for me. It will go into our small quilt auction in the fall, unless someone would like to buy it for a $100.00 donation to St Jude's Children's Hospital . It's 14 inches square.

This little piece below is 6 inches square. It began on a day where I needed some mindless activity. I needle felted wool on to a satin fabric. I liked the contrast of the 2 very different textiles. I bordered it with bits of my had painted cotton, that I'd printed with Oil Paint Sticks, so it's a bit of a mixed media piece. I quilted it with a variety of threads.

Here is one more mixed media quilt, that's almost finished. I still intend to do some beadwork to secure the glass pieces ( made by Mindy of course). Some nice cabochon beading ....as soon as I figure out where I put those perfect green beads I know I have somewhere...

The "print" pieces in this one were just quilting doodles I did with black thread on muslin then I colored them with Inktense pencils.

This little rooster was a gift from out white elephant exchange at Christmas. I was quite thrilled with him.

I made a tail for hem, 

& now he holds a little pair of scissors for me.