Snow in June

What a crazy spring! I set out tomatoes May 15th, and they immediately got frosted, so I set out more the next week. They were surviving if not actually growing, and danged if it isn't snowing today, June 7th! All my corn is up, onions and potatoes should be fine, and the lettuce looks jubilant, but some of the warm weather stuff will probably have to be replaced.
Friday night we went to a wedding in Shell, for Travis Marshall. We've known him since before he was born - his parents were our best friends then, and we watched him grow into a horrible brat and then out of the brat stage into a fine man. He's in the army, and we're so proud of him. And Cara, his bride is gorgeous and nice!

His lab, Bear, was the ring bearer, and performed perfectly!

My favorite month

May is my favorite month. On Friday, May 1, I made an executive decision to cut our shop hours by 12 a week. Back in the heyday, when we were the first big fabric shop on the internet, it took us all day to cut our orders. We're still the first, but now there are hundreds of others, and our orders are less than a third of what they were in 2000. So my people spend the last two hours of every day looking for something to do. Its silly to pay them for that. I don't want to lay anyone off, my help is the best in the world, so this works. We'll open at 11 and close at 5. On Saturdays we'll open at 9 and close at 3. If the economy picks up, we'll go back to normal, but less utilities and payroll will help with the cash flow. (Lots of orders would help, too!)
Then on May 2, we had Victory Club, and it was bigger than ever. Over 40 people came, had lots of their blocks done, and other inspiring quilts at show and tell. I'd show the pictures I took, but they are in my camera at work and I'm home (it's Sunday night.)
About noon, I went out to our property about 2 miles south of town. We've got raspberrys planted and fenced, and the garden has been tilled once, and I planted potatoes. Today I planted beets, onions and radishes. Most of the work in the garden is still picking up rocks. I've got two goodsized piles now, from what I pick up in the garden. But its planting time, and I love working out there. A mule deer came thundering up to the garden, looked at me and took off in a different direction. There were two pheasants in our ditch, courting. There was an eagle soaring around, and my neighbor's six horses graze on our property and theirs, because we don't have a fence up between us yet. Dave is working on fencing our garden so they don't wreck it. Our other neighbor has longhorn cattle, and one of them is kind of a pet. I took this picture of him, and I'm going to make a quilt from the picture as a surprise for them. I'm pretty sure they don't read this blog, I don't even think they have a computer. They call him Smokey, and he comes when they call for a neck scratch. I'll post the quilt in progress. Tomorrow is our art quilt club meeting in Cody, and I've got to get a couple other ones done for show and tell. I'll post them soon.

Busy Week

It's been a busy week. Lots of trips to Cody. On April 14 I had my second cataract operation in Cody - so now both eyes are done. Other than the fact that I don't need nearly as much light to read or sew, there isn't a whole lot of difference. My distance vision was always good, and still is, and I'll still need readers to see closeup. (But not ten million watts of light.)
On April 15, we had to go back for my checkup, and since we were there, and totally agree with the tea party philosophy that Washington has gone crazy, we went to the Cody Tea Party. It isn't a democrat or republican thing, both parties have lost touch with reality. The weather was atrocious for standing outside in the park, but hundreds of people showed up and signed the petition.

Then on Thursday, I went back to Cody for our state quilt guild retreat, which ran thursday thru sunday. Basically we just sewed our butts off. No classes, but they feed us and we can sew from 6 in the morning til midnight if we want. I got lots of ufos done, or at least the tops. Mostly scrap quilts. I'll show pictures when I get them quilted. Got two charity quilt tops done, and two big bedsized ones. Plus an art quilt. On Saturday night after supper we have show and tell.

Several of the girls from Greybull showed the quilts they made from Sherry's Bargello with a Twist class - they were all made from the same block.


Sunday afternoon (today) I drug myself home, sewed out. The dogs were glad to see me, and Dave was too (but not as excited as the dogs). Good to be home, but the retreat was wonderful. Tomorrow I'll put new fabric on the website, and catch up on all the new books and patterns Sherry has put in my 'to do' basket.

I went to an organizational meeting for textile artists in Cody Monday, and we formed TAGY - Textile Artists of Greater Yellowstone. I'm so jazzed, some of my favorite people were there. I haven't blogged for a long time, because I've been so busy in my art classes. My quilting has mainly been finishing up ufos in order reclaim some studio space.

We still have sewing in the shop on Tuesday nights, and my friends have been hearing about my painting classes until I'm sure they're sick of it. They kept bugging me to bring some of my paintings to show them. So I did - I filled up the design wall with paintings. A plethora of mediocrity. The next day, about half of them went in the dumpster.

On the second Saturday of each month, we do arty stuff. I'm looking forward to tomorrow, when I get to get out my paints and beads and play!

On to the next project

I finally finished my mystery quilt, well, I got the borders on. I'm going to send it out for quilting, so right now I'm working on putting a back together for it. It isn't really big enough for a bed quilt, except maybe for a kid. I did decide not to overdye it, since I had so many comments saying it wasn't all THAT bright.
I've got incipient cataracts, and until I get them chopped off, I have a bad sense of relative brightness.
We had sewin last night, and Shirlee brought her one block wonder top to show us.

Isn't it cool? That pattern makes the neatest quilts!
Marquerite was working on her latest Victory Quilt, she's making it out of
'Indian' fabrics, in honor of Eleanor Anderson, a full blooded Cheyenne Indian that was a much loved member of our community. She decided on blue corner stones, with lots of input from the peanut gallery.

Double Delight Mystery Quilt

I've been sewing my mystery quilt for 3 days - I finally can see what it is going to look like. I should have gone for less contrast in the nine patches, this quilt is busy busy. Oh well, I couldn't see sewing 1170 one inch squares and having them invisible. Red and yellow seemed like a good idea at the time. Live and learn. Bonnie has just posted the borders, so once I get all these diagonal rows sewn together I'll finish it up and get it off my design wall. You can see the steps at www.quiltville.com.
Tomorrow I'm going to have a lot of fun. Since our Victory Club interests all the people who like to do block of the month type of things, and follow patterns, I wanted to do something with those customers and friends who are the opposite - the original people, the art quilters. So, on the second saturday we are going to do fun, unscripted quilts. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of overlap here. I am an overlapper - I like to do patterns, but I also sometimes feel like just sewing stuff together and seeing what happens. So tomorrow, I'm going to put out a smorgasboard of stuff to play with like paint and foil and fibres and beads and ideas, and just let people play! It will either work or it won't, but the people that I know are coming are fun people, so we'll have a good time. If we all turn out to be uninspired, we'll eat chocolate - how bad can it be?

Been sewing

I've been sewing like crazy since Christmas. This quilt is made for our Victory club. For our First Saturday club this year, we decided to do the blocks in Eleanor Burns' Victory Quilt book. Once you start making the blocks, its kind of hard to quit. I made blocks in three colors, but only have one color put together as a quilt. Our club met last Saturday, and over 40 people showed up. I can't wait to see all the different interpretations - sampler quilts are really fun. Eleanor has it all over her quilt in a day website (http://www.quiltinaday.com/), even with videos of making this quilt. She dressed in period costumes and uniforms for the videos, and darned if my friend Shirlee didn't show up in uniform for the club!

Then, a bunch of my online friends are doing Bonnie Hunter's latest mystery quilt. You can play, too, if you want to, its on her website www.quiltville.com and it is really fun - lots of itty bitty pieces. The nine-patches are 3 inches finished, and there are a bazillion of them. I'm not as happy with my color choices as I could be, but I've got them all cut out, so its going to be in these colors. I still can't get a feel for what it is going to look like done, but after tonite's Tuesday sew-in, I got all the blue and yellow units done, and most of the brown ones. So, that's why I haven't been blogging. I'll be better this year - at least once a week.