LaVieEnRosie

It's a dot thing but not a polka dot thing...

I don't know what it is but I have a really hard time making up my mind.  

I recently had to get a handbag.  Okay, I didn't HAVE to get it but I didn't have one that was perfect for a specific occasion.  So I "needed" a new bag, okay?

Should I get the red one?  I love red.  Red is always good.  But white is so much more versatile.  And practical.  But it gets dirty so easily.  Black?  Black is good.  Black is classic.  Forgive me but black is boring.  Tan?  See Black.  Yellow?  Very trendy... but that's a double-edge sword.  Pink!  I love pink!  Also in today, out tomorrow.  

I have a really hard time making up my mind.  (I finally got the red one.)

The point of all this is that I also like different things -- red for this, black for that, blue for something else.  The same goes for quilts and fabric styles.  Some days I feel like sewing something reproduction-y and Jo-ish.  Other days I want to bask in the soft light and loveliness of a Fig Tree.  

Even with working with so many different styles of fabrics, I was a little surprised when several people told me that Fresh Palette didn't look like me at all.  

I had to laugh because the "next one" was already finished at the time and if Fresh Palette wasn't "me", then the next one was going to be an even bigger surprise.  

Nine Dots?

Have you ever heard of the Nine Dots puzzle?

To solve the puzzle, you must connect all nine dots using no more than four straight lines.  The lines must be drawn continuously -- they must connect and you cannot lift your pencil/pen while drawing the lines.  

To solve the puzzle, you have to think "outside the box".  Put another way -- The puzzle only seems difficult because we imagine a boundary around the edge of the dot array.  The heart of the matter is the unspecified barrier which is typically perceived.  (That's what it says on Wikipedia.)  (There is another good solution to the puzzle here.)

All this brings me to this...

This arrived the other day.  Work has started on the two project quilts, a big version and a Schnibble version of this...

This is the computer image -- seriously, I sew fast but not THAT fast!

I also have two other quilts planned and I keep looking at the stacks and thinking how good it would look in all six of the new Schnibble patterns -- coming the end of July.  

It goes without saying that I will have some to share soon... if this is your sort of thing, of course.  :)

I'm told this will be coming in August.  When its hot.  Or hotter.  

By the way... on a little side note.  I received a very nice e-mail the other day from someone wanting to send a care package in my direction.  Dove Peanut Butter chocolates for my Mom, yogurt-covered biscuits for Rosie and a magazine with Johnny Depp on the cover for me.  But then she realized that with the heat here, the care package would arrive as a melted, gooey, messy box.  Like I would mind!  Johnny Depp covered in melted chocolate?  Calories... schmalories!

On that note, I'll say goodbye for now.  

Stay cool.  

 

Because it is Saturday...

And I don't have anything else to write for today.

I was cleaning the drawers in my desk -- okay, I was really looking for something I couldn't find and found this instead.  That got me side-tracked and instead of continuing to look for what I needed to find, I scanned this in instead and decided to post it.

It's okay to read quilt blogs though.  They're inspirational.  

Right?

And cooking blogs.  

After finding this recipe a few weeks ago, I made these earlier this week.  Very, very good.  But then I'm biased -- I love chicken, cheese and quesadillas.  

Grilled Quesadillas with Grilled Chicken, Tomatoes and Onions.

Have a great weekend!

Did you ever have one of those...

Days?  Weeks?  Months?

So this is my life right now -- my computer decided that it needed to upgrade my Windows Explorer.  Seriously, it does a lot of this stuff without my knowledge or consent -- and truthfully, like I would understand it anyway.  Ever since it has done that, my Typepad Dashboard doesn't work in Explorer. 

Thank goodness for Apple!  When I first loaded iTunes on my computer a jillion years ago, it downloaded Safari -- also without my knowledge, consent or understanding.  The upside is that Typepad works in Safari.  Go figure that!

It also confirms what I have known for a couple of years, I'm switching back to Apple and Mac.  I was a Mac girl years ago but switched to PC because I was nuts.  There is no other explanation.  Just ask an Apple person.

Look what I made these past few weeks!

Pretty cool, huh?

Okay.  So I didn't actually make this.  But I could have -- well, I would have the supplies for it.  All it is is strips of fabric that are twisted, rolled and stitched to the canvas.  Fabric I've got.  But the twisting and artistic rolling part would have messed me up as I don't know how to do that.  

Anthropologie.  Of course.  

I saw this when I was at the mall last week.  Can I tell you a secret?  Even though I work at a mall -- it's an outdoor, open-air mall so it doesn't really count -- I don't like going to the mall.  I would rather have root canal.  But I've got these candles from Anthropologie that I really love, that I just finished the last one, and that I can't order online.  I mean, I could order it but having a candle in a UPS truck all day in Phoenix in the summer is not a good idea.  The UPS truck would smell nice though.  

Everything here is fine.  My Mom is adjusting to new medications as the doctor has determined that the old one isn't working for her anymore.  As a good friend likes to phrase it -- we are adjusting to a new reality.  For the time being, she's more tired than usual.  We're told that that will improve as she gets used to the new medications but it still means that we've been making changes to our normal schedule.  And I've had a lot of shifts at Williams-Sonoma the past week so that's kept me busy.  

The new Schnibbles have been photographed and they go to the quilter tomorrow.  I'm getting cover proofs by the end of this week and those should go to press in another week or so.  With a little luck, new patterns will be done and ready by the end of July.

Have you seen that there is a new Stephanie Plum book out -- Smokin' Seventeen?  Number Eighteen -- Explosive Eighteen -- will be out in November.  And the movie -- One for the Money -- will be out in January.  The article I read also stated that Debbie Reynolds will play Grandma Mazur and Sherri Shepherd will play Lula.  I think I like Debbie Reynolds as Grandma Mazur.  (By the way, did you read that Debbie Reynolds owned Marilyn Monroe's famous "Seven Year-Itch" white dress?  And that she sold it at auction last week for $5.3 million?)

I have to tell you that I've found the last couple of Stephanie Plum books a little "disappointing"... in that I thought they were very predictable, and not as funny as earlier books.  So I kept telling myself that the last one I read would be the last one I would read.  But I keep hoping that the new one will be better so I keep reading.  So I pre-ordered the book on iTunes and it was available last night... which of course meant that I had to start reading it immediately.  (We can discuss my issues with impatience some other time.)  After staying up until about 2:00 this morning reading, I'm about three-quarters of the way through and it is... a little "disappointing".  Let it suffice to say that if you loved the last couple of books, I think you'll love this one.

As for me... my favorite book right now is "The Greater Journey" by David McCullough.  I'm about halfway through that.  I also read Carte Blanche, a "new" James Bond novel, and I really liked that.  (I'm also looking forward to a late-July date with Gabriel Allon.)

I wish I could tell you that there are all sorts of exciting goings-on here but I'm mostly catching up and getting ready to take a little break this coming week.  

But one last thing to share for today -- do you like neat little sewing things?  If you do and you don't want to know about something you might possible "need" to have, I suggest you stop reading right now.

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Still here?

If you're still reading...  Like many of us, I have a fondness for all-things sewing and stitching related.  In addition to spools of all kinds, sizes, ages, colors and origin, I really love thread cards.

These are from Sajou, the French sewing company.

These are vintage cards.  

Then the latest of Vignette, the beautiful little magazine by Leanne Beasley -- Leanne's House of Australia -- arrived.  (I order them from Perri at Stitches in the Bush.)

And Leanne, who stitches with Lecien's Cosmo floss, showed these.

So.  What was life like before Google?  You remember... back in the days when you would see something in a magazine and if the magazine didn't tell you where to find it, oh well.  Out of luck.  Too bad.  So sorry.  

If you're interested, let me save you a little bit of time -- Under the Mulberry Tree in Australia.  That is where I found them.  They also carry Vignette magazine, past and present.  (I am hoping the thread cards will be available in the US but I haven't seen anything yet.  One of the Lecien girls -- Monica, Brenda, Pam, Meg or Anne -- will definitely know more about that.)  

 Uh... never mind.  See below.

That's all I've got for today.  

Which, by the way, has been a pretty good day.

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P.S.  It's official.  Everybody and her sister has the Cosmo cards!  Everybody but me!  I really do have to get out more... of course, it would have to be someplace other than Phoenix because I don't know of anybody in town that still carries the Lecien Cosmo threads, much less the cards.  One or two shops carried "some" of the threads for a little while but I haven't seen it in a little while.  

I really do have to get out more.  

 

Leitmotif...

\LYT-moh-teef\

Just in case -- it means a dominant or recurring theme. (I only know what it means because an English professor I took a class from loved to use this term. Ad nauseum. And no, he didn't use that term but by the end of the semester, my class sure knew what it meant... but I digress.)

My leitmotif -- or "theme" -- this year seems to be tardiness and/or absenteeism. Though it must be said that a cursory inspection of my attendance record while in school would show that it isn't a new or recently-developed theme.

First things first -- my Mom is fine. Rosie is fine. It has just been busy. Not crazy, hectic, oh-my-gosh busy... just that regular, everyday, not-enough-hours-in-the-day-to-finish-all-the-stuff-on-my-list sort of occupied busy. You know how that is.

But there are a couple of things to tell you about so let me get right to it -- there has been a magazine recall that you need to know about. Have you seen this magazine?

Quilter's Home magazine -- June/July 2011 issue.

It is a lovely issue, chock full of all sorts of terrific articles, need-to-knows and all-around fun things.

But the editors made a really big mistake, one that they have corrected.

The issue wasn't re-published. It was the sort of mistake that a big black Sharpie could fix.

The corrected copy looks like this --

:

As in... the really nice folks at Quilter's Home included this little blog here in their lovely list... only I haven't been around since the issue was published!

I confess that I'm quite flattered but feeling very undeserving... notwithstanding that whole absenteeism thing. Several of my very favorite blogs are on the list. The Happy Zombie? Yep. Read that one. Jacqui at Tallgrass Prairie Studio? Been bookmarked for ages. Elizabeth Hartman at Oh Fransson? Rita at Red Pepper Quilts? And the Stitchin' Post in Sisters, Oregon, the home of Jean and Valori Wells? And the list goes on with lots of very familiar and all-together terrific blogs. So if you're looking for some amazing inspiration, there are 54 places to go.

So what exactly has kept me busy? I've been writing patterns, filling orders, doing a little bit of sewing, running my Mom and I around to appointments of one kind or another, and getting back to a couple of regular shifts at my "other job". New fabric arrived from all sorts of different places, including Nine Dots, the next Rosie collection that will be coming in late July or early August.

(More on that later this week -- I promise!)

It's also been kind of disjointed getting back in the swing of things after sort of gearing up for Market and then having to change those plans. I actually got a lot of work done and maybe that is what messed me up. I wonder if this is how racehorses feel when they're not in a race... they sort of run around a bit and then when they realize there isn't anybody smacking them on the rumpus with a little stick, they just loll around in the sun munching the grass. Just wondering.

I'm getting a couple of new Schnibbles to the photographer this week... finally. I think they've been sitting on the cabinet for a week or two now. As soon as I have good pictures of them -- mine are always poorly lit and either on the floor or the wall -- I'll show you what they look like.

There's one missing, it was still on the wall and I forgot to get it into the stack. I'll do that before I forget -- it wouldn't be the first time I was halfway across town and realized I had forgotten something I was supposed to take with me.

I am very, very happy to say that no swearing was involved in the making of these new Schnibbles.

Though the patterns are finished yet so there is still time.

I've also been getting some "fun" -- as in, not related to work -- stitching done. While I've been working on it off-and-on for what Ginger will tell you is forever -- and she's not far off -- I'm going to finish this this week!

This is one of my friend, Ginger Sanchez', designs. The leaves and basket will still get a little stitching for definition but all that's left are the red flowers, the basket and the berries. And then it will have to be finished off. It makes Ginger absolutely nuts but I turn most of my penny rugs into pillows. What can I tell you? The pillows get used and enjoyed but the penny rugs... well, I don't get to enjoy them as much. The funny thing is that Ginger knows this but it still annoys her that I turn them into pillows. It isn't like she doesn't already know that I am a habitual, un-repentant Flat Surface Abuser.

I have to finish this one soon so that I can maybe, possible, probably not get one of her newest patterns done by Christmas. This is one of my favorite designs she's ever done and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Ginger will do this one as a class this summer.

Wouldn't that make a really cute pillow?

There isn't any chance at all I will get this one done by September or October. But I might start it anyway... it would also make a terrific Fall pillow.

While on the subject of wool, did you know that Bonnie Sullivan of All Through the Night fame has published a book with the lovely folks at Quiltmania?

It is titled Bonnie's Garden and it is beautiful. Quilts, punch needle, stitchery, little projects -- the book has everything. C'est magnifique!

While you're there, take the time to look at Yoko Saito's book, My Quilting Life, and Shizuko Kuroha's book, Indigo and Sarasa. Both books are in French and English, making these the first English-language books by both quilters. I particularly loved the Indigo book as everything from the quilts to the information presented is exceptional.

That's all I can think of right now.

But I'll be back.

Eventually. Maybe even sooner.