Friends...
aren't they nice? We had a very pleasant lunch together- too short, too short!! But it was such an unexpected surprise for just the chance to see each other so I'll take it and try not to whine about the brevity of our time. I ate too much shrimp. What's new? I was able to hand-deliver her quilt to her and a couple little gifts. I'll post a picture, next, maybe. The kids got a little visit in, also. We are planning a tiny retreat of our own in June for our birthdays- Sarah's mom volunteered to watch a couple kiddos. Brave woman, that. Sarah's DH told us how to change a water pump in a toyota truck- I must say, I am fascinated by all things mechanical, and thought he should blog about it- it was a funny story with a happy ending. Who couldn't use one of those? Sarah told how she wore a complete stranger's less than clean pants to her Grandma's funeral- come on, DSarah, it was funny. We just had a really good visit.

News From Sarah...
I just heard from Sarah. Her Grandmother's funeral was last night. She said that they were married for 62 years. I know that her grandfather must be so sad. She sounded tired, but she is on her way home.

On a brighter note, she will be coming through Indianapolis around lunchtime. Quite a coincidence, eh? We will be meeting her for lunch. Joe's Crab Shack, here I come! Bill and I are taking the girls since they are good friends of Sarah's two knee-munchers. I got her presents all wrapped up- ok, it's a plastic bag, mostly. Only one little thing looked like it needed wrapping. Even added jingle bells. Well, I need to go try to pull a brush through this mess I call hair. I am so excited to see Sarah. Isn't that a great Xmas present? But I won't turn my nose up to the big box that mysteriously appeared under the tree, this morning. Has my name on it. hmmmm....

Well, it's 3:30am and I still can't sleep...
This is another of my very first quilts. My second peiced one. My first scrappy one. This was in the same magazine as the red school house quilt and I thought it looked like a lot of fun. Figured that if I couldn't do it, I'd just play around with the different blocks in it. There were so many, that I thought I'd try to complete one, a day. That's when I discovered how much fun it can be to play with things like that for short little bursts, without making a huge time-commitment out of things. I had five busy little boys, at that time, and I'd get frustrated if I tried to work for very long. So this was a really fun quilt to do. It was also my first experience with applique. The angel was done like Eleanor Burns suggested(I seem to mention her quite a lot, but, back then, she really was the only quilter you could watch on public television. There weren't many other books out there. And I still think she's brilliant. Maybe a bit kooky, but in a nice sort of way.)- sewing two layers together and then turning, and blind stitching it down. I didn't care for the end results so much as they tended to be bulky and it seemed to muddle the detail. The horn, I just needle-turned and wow! was that ever fun and I really liked how flat it sat on the quilt. By the time I got to the WELCOME, I was having a lot of fun with applique and it is still something that I enjoy- even if my results are mediocre. The fishy on the right side, had a frontal lobotomy. Poor dear. Had his eye pulled off and it created a little rip. I have been intending to applique a set of fins on him and give him a prosthetic eye... but another thing I have yet to get to. Hmmm... could be a pattern... nah. My favorite thing about this quilt is the border. I usually don't mess with peiced ones, but I loved this one. All those little squares were sewn together, one at a time. I had the boys take turns sitting next to me and putting them right sides together and then handing them to me. Some of them got sewn wrong-side up, but that's ok. This is also my first try at quilting. I did a lot of stitch-in-the-ditch, and then I even hand-quilted in some of the spaces. There are some areas I've been meaning to... oh, bugger bombs... it is a pattern.

It's 3am and I can't sleep...
Maybe it was too much diet Coke...maybe too much knitting... I swan (as my great Aunt Margaret would say) knitting seems to put you to sleep while you're doing it, but once you try to lay your head down, you're still trying to slip that needle under that yarn, pull the thread over, loop the needle under, slip the loop off... well, it's just stuck in your brain like a scratchy record. Maybe I'm a bit obsessive. Anyway,

This is a picture of the first quilt I ever made that was, what I would call, peiced. My first actual quilt was an Eleanor Burns' Trip Around the World. I made a queen one for our bed and was pretty pleased with myself. It took me longer than the day she said it would take, but it was something I actually finished, so it couldn't have taken much longer. I made 3 more, but alas, the two I kept are in shreds in a landfill somewhere. Wal-Mart fabric, a ton of kids, and I just tied it- which is hard on a big quilt, 'cause of all the pulling. You eventually pull holes in it where the threads are. And you know kids, once there is a hole big enough for their fingers to fit in, out comes the stuffing. Tragic, but true. But they got my feet wet and I was hooked. I saw a pattern for this one in a magazine. It had a lot of things in it that I had never tried, but thought the directions seemed good. I had such a blast. I still remember the cool June breeze coming through the window and Sarah Brightman singing loudly on the stereo- DH had gotten me the CD for my birthday. This quilt is also tied, but it has held up better. I have been meaning to quilt it with swirls- for snow, but just haven't gotten to it. I backed it with a bath blanket(try saying that really fast, 3x!)- a very heavy cotten flannel-type thing, so the kids love to cuddle under it. It is very "early 90's", but I still like a lot of things about it- such as the star sashing.

Evabeth's Feast...
This is DD Evabeth. She's 6. She had her feast and she fixed breakfast for everyone. That girl can really multi-task! She was baking cakes in her and her sister's Easy-bake ovens- we all got 2 each, she was making waffles in the toaster and quartering oranges all at the same time. Oh, and she was reminding me to set the timer. In case you ever need this vital peice of information, it takes 8 minutes to bake a cake in an Easy-bake oven. She made 22 cakes! She had scrambled eggs, bacon, polish sausage, and sausage gravy and biscuits. The cakes she just sprinkled powdered sugar on top. But the funniest thing about her feast, was her gift. She gave each of the kids their own can of whipped cream! They are always wanting to squirt it into their mouths, but I won't let them. It was so funny when she was handing them out. The boys laughed their heads off! They were sitting in the TV room later in the evening, watching a movie, with their cans of Reddi-whip. Looked like a bunch of depressed women on a binge! Evabeth is such a sweetheart and she insisted we put "fluffy-stuff" on the seats in the kitchen- "...so it'll be more comfy for them." We used old batting scraps. She also wanted to decorate the table with a baby Jesus. I have a thing for nativity sets... but there is one vital rule I never break when acquiring a new one. The baby Jesus must be swaddled. No hands or feet outside the covers. Have you ever noticed how he looks like he's flailing when his poor little hands and feet are all sticking out? What kind of mother would Mary be if she left a little new-born baby all hanging out like that?

The little quilted peice is the wallhanging I am working on for Eva for Xmas. She drew me this beautiful picture- "Mom, I have quilts in my head." She asked if I could tell that she "...did it like a quilt?" Maybe you can see part of her drawing over on the left. This is a little out of my realm, but I just loved her drawing so much and thought that she would enjoy having it hanging in her room. I did my best to keep true to her art- figuring that even if I am not the artistic type, her natural flair will come through. I am finishing up the binding and then I am going to embellish it. I'm not much of an embellisher. I bought some pretty glass beads- like the ones on her headband. And then a fringe of beads for the bottom. I also wanted to embellish her dress with some little seed beads. I bubble-jetted (is that a word?)some fabric and plan on making a fabric color-copy of her drawing to stitch onto the back of the one I made. That way she'll always have it. Evabeth was diagnosed, yesterday, with epilepsy. She isn't scary or anything. She just takes little trips. She says her brain is talking to her and she has be be very still and quiet so she hears and then, can "snap out of it." But you know what? All of that doesn't matter a bit, because she is beautiful- inside and out- just the way she is.

Recipe for Sausage Gravy

• Brown 1 lb of sausage- get a good quality sausage
• 1/4 cup butter- don't drain the sausage- I never said this was lowfat. But if the sausage is quality, then there shouldn't be more than a tablespoon of fat from it.
• 1/2 cup of flour- stir the flour into sausage and melted butter. This should look pretty dry. Cook for a minute or two.
• Now is the tricky part of knowing how much liquid to add. This is how I do it on my stove, in my pot. Pour milk over sausage mixture until sausage is just covered. Stir and cook until very thick.
• Now, again, pour milk over sausage mixture until covered again. I'm guessing about 5 cups, total. Stir until smooth. Cook on low until thick. If it is still too thick, just add a cup of water. Simmer until the desired consistency- this is just a matter of preference. It'll get thicker as it cooks. So if it is thicker than you like, just keep adding milk or water. If you add too much, just cook longer and it will recover.
• salt and pepper to taste- lots and lots of pepper and the salt depends on the sausage. We also like the hot sausage, but pick the kind you like. Serve hot over hot biscuits.

Hope everyone is healthy and happy! Blessings on you!

Paul's Feast...
Isn't this a funny picture? DS Paul had pulled up a patch of moss and other flora from the bank of his Grandfather's creek when we were there a couple years ago. He called it his coonskin hat! Paul(10) had his feast, Saturday night. He was celebrating his, finally, finishing the fifth Harry Potter book. If you know anything about those books, you know they each weigh about the same as a small child. He was pretty thrilled, and when he invited his "guests" into the feast, he says, "Come in and wreak havoc!" They have a lot of experience doing that. He had 13 orders of chicken sticks from the local Chinese restaurant for his appetizer. He had even made Butter Beer- apparently, from the book, and the kids weren't too sure they wanted to drink anything that had butter in it, but they were good sports, and everybody tried it. Then they moved onto the Mountain Dew Pitch Black. Need I say they were all hyper by meal's end? He had chicken Parmesan and corn and bread sticks. Then he made rice-crispy treats with chocolate rice and fruity rice. It was carbohydrate heaven. Paul never does anything halfway. He gave the other children Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans aka Jelly Bellies. Just looking at everything that he made makes me feel woozy from diabetic shock! But the kids didn't seem to mind- fact is, they thought it was all rather tasty. Well, it is a once in a year event, right?

I have been knitting up a blue streak- as much as I can with the gimp finger and I am really not a knitter- how do you fix mistakes- and I make many? So I usually stick to crocheting, but I have been using that eyelash yarn, and it is impossible to see the stitches, so knitting it is. Haven't made too many mistakes, ok, maybe I have, but with that yarn, you can't tell. I made myself a scarf- that was the practice run. then I knitted one for each of my girls. Now I am working on another one. They go pretty fast. I have been watching movies late at night as I work on them. Return to Me, Fools Rush In, The Librarian and Cinderella Man were all good. The Wedding Date and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind were both lousy- to the point of being painful- each for completely different reasons. Just to let you know. Well, I'm off.

Finished Sarah's quilt...
the other day and it was a good feeling. I had to order more thread and the guys at King's Men Quilting Supply came through for me. It is a very pretty quilt to begin with, so I hope that the quilting I did on it doesn't take away from that. My mom wanted to see another picture of it- I see another log cabin in her future. The quilt is so large (108"x108") that I couldn't lay it out to show all of it. But you get the idea, eh? Sarah called me when I got to work, yesterday, to tell me that her grandmother had suffered a stroke and wasn't expected to recover. She is on her way to Wisconsin. I am concerned for her as we have had some pretty bad road weather, but they do have 4x drive. I know she would appreciate everyone's thoughts and prayers. She told me to hold onto her Xmas box as she is hoping she can persuade her DH to stop back by this way on their drive home... With all the small peicing in that quilt and three cones of thread, it weighs alot, so it would be nice to hand it over in person- Stacy is always saying that the quilts made, today, aren't as heavy as they used to be... well, this one, with cotton batting, might be a hit with him.