Fun, Busy and Productive Weekend

The first thing I did this weekend (Friday evening) was put together the Carol Doak October Block of the Month paper pieced quilt block. I'm having the basement refurbished, so who knows when I'll have access to my sewing machine again, so it seemed prudent to do the block ASAP.

Saturday, the SigO and I took it easy and went "shopping" for a big screen LCD TV. By shopping, I mean to say we went to a few places and looked at the outrageous prices. We started out at Best Buy thinking to ourselves that at least there, they would come out and install the TV for us...and they would...for a whopping fee of $500! So, then we went over to Costco and looked at some of the exact same TV's for hundreds of dollars less. We just need to figure out how to get the dang thing installed.

After that shock to the system, we headed out to Tim's Rivershore Restaurant and Crabhouse for some beer, live music and crabcakes. The table next to us was getting down with the crabs, and I was tempted, but such work! Especially given the variable of a permanent crab smell to First Sock Part Deux, which also enjoyed the scenery very much.

Pretty hard to see it in the picture, but there is a sailboat tacking against the wind far out in the distance. I have a weak spot for sailboats. They're so elegant and romantic...so much classier than the motorboats crowded all around the area! I also thought the crab-traps a nice touch, given that we were eating at a crab house...it is a little disturbing though to think about eating anything out of the Potomac. Such a filthy river. I was really surprised to see some kids swimming around in it and their parents watching from the back of the boat. Perhaps they're unaware that the sewer backs up into this unfortunate river everytime it rains.

Sunday we did one of my favorite hikes at one of my favorite local national parks, which remains un-named here because, so far, it is still largely undiscovered, and while I recognize that not only do very few people read my blog, but many of those who, do don't even live in this state...still, I'd rather not take the chance of this park being discovered by the "unwashed masses" as the SigO jokingly likes to call them. After the 7 mile trek, we wolfed down some waffles and headed home, where I finally managed to finish his first sock.

Only one more to go, then I have my brother's, sister-in-law's, mother's and best friends to knit...all before Christmas...what are my chances, do you think?

The weekend where progress was made and gifts were given

Well, I finally got around to filing my taxes this weekend. So, first, let me tell you, I have never ever had to pay taxes before. In fact, I always got a big ole honkin' refund. Last year, when you combined my federal and state refunds, I received almost $5,000! This year, I was stunned to find out not only would I not get that beautiful little refund, but I would be paying...more than $5,000! I'm still not sure how much it's going to be after penalties and all that. Obviously, from now on, I'll file on time. Because I always got a refund, and because I didn't expect much this year, I wasn't in any kind of hurry. I suspect the sting of penalties in addition to the pain of roughly $6K in taxes will get me out of the starting gate on time next year! You know how you always hear stories of people who have financial, or housing, or illness - related problems, and they post their problems online and help comes pouring in? Yeah, I'm not holding my breath!

So, what did I do when I discovered my entire savings would be wiped out to cover my taxes? I went shopping! Duh!! Some people go pub hopping, I go yarn hopping. I just opened up my traveling knitters sourcebook and started plugging addresses into my navigation system. I found Crazy for Ewe in the quaint little square of downtown Leonardtown, MD; where I picked up a wool, silk, cashmere blend of black yarn and a pattern to knit it in.

Next I found Ch'naca fiberworks in Prince Frederick, MD (more sock yarn purchased here!) and right next door to her was a nice little quilt shop where we gushed over what great people Carol Doak and Jinny Beyer are! I finished up my sulk-fest at Balducci's where I picked up a bottle of Kim Crawford (best Sauvignon Blanc out there right now, especially at this price!) and a crab and mango stuffed avocado, which I paired with Valhalla's 2005 Rheingold---a perfect combination! I was concerned the tropical notes in Kim Crawford would be too much with the tropical notes of the mango...but what is this? A food blog!? Moving on...

After wallowing in self-pity for the first half of the day, there was only one thing left to do...knit! So, I attacked the most recent square for the afghan and got that finished up.

I picked up the first sock several times and contemplated working on it, but I'm just not ready to tackle the gusset. The heel has turned nicely though, and the third iteration does look a lot better than the first two...due in part, no doubt to the fact that it's only ankle length. I just didn't have it in me to do a full calf-length sock for the third time.

But the redeeming factor of the weekend was the gift from the SigO. He went on a road trip with his daughter this weekend and stopped at Wool Gathering in Kennett Square, PA to try to find something to cheer me up. You gotta hand it to him. Nothing cheers a girl like cashmere!! So, even though I'm pretty down hearted about the taxes, I did manage to make progress on the never ending afghan and I did get a pretty awesome gift...so, the weekend wasn't a complete write-off!

Quilt Odyssey Weekend Continued

I didn't tell the story of the weekend very well in yesterday's blog since I was so eager to post all the gorgeous pictures of all the quilts I saw. So, let me try again today.

As usual, my SigO made the drive (two hours) so I could knit on the way. I worked on the infamous afghan, but didn't even get more than 1/4 of the way through a block. I'm doing a chevron block and for some odd reason it's really giving me fits. It's nothing but knit and purl, but I keep miscounting, which, of course, totally whacks out the pattern, so I have to keep tinking back a row.

Before we went to the Quilt Odyssey, we had to go find a yarn shop. I diligently researched the best one for us to visit in the area...you know, if I had been this diligent in college or my career, I'd probably be a multi-millionaire by now! There were about four shops in the general vicinity of Hershey, PA and I settled on The Colonial Yarn Shop primarily because they had Tofutsies sock yarn and I've been wanting to check that yarn out for a while now. I mean, how cool is it that there's yarn made from the shells of crabs and shrimps?

I left the store with one skein of tofutsies, one skein of Opal Feelings, two skeins of sock yarn the SigO picked out for himself and eight hanks of Kollage's Cornucopia in Brandy Colorway. More importantly, I met two really awesome knitters there who were both wearing the Zephyr Knits "Green Gables" top that they had knitted up using TyDye. We all decided the Cornucopia would look great knitted up in that same top...it really doesn't take much to convince me to buy more yarn.
After the yarn shop, we headed over to the Quilt Odyssey where we saw all the gorgeous quilts in yesterday's post. Usually, I would have then gone to Show and Tell with the rest of the quilters, but the SigO and I were celebrating our sixth anniversary. Six months that is! Obligatory "Enjoy it while you can" inserts here.

So, we had dinner at Alfred's Victorian where the atmosphere is wonderful and the food is ho hum. A tad disappointing, obviously, but we did have a nice bottle of Chianti which masked the yawn of the food prettty well.





And so, finally, Carol's class! Sunday morning I showed up in class a full two minutes before start time...that's shockingly early for me! But, after all, the instructions did say to show up early in order to learn the machines! Unfortunately, the instructions also said to pre-cut all your fabrics. So, I only got 50% of that one--OK, 10%. I guess two minutes before start time isn't really considered "early" to some people! But, Carol was very patient, not to mention an awesome teacher.

This is the quilt we were inspired to re-create in our own creative way. Since not only had I not pre-cut my fabrics, but I also needed to leave early; I didn't even get one full block finished. Right now, what I did get done is laid out neatly on my sewing table as are all the pre-cut pieces all nicely organized and ready to be sewn up. Just another victim of "startitis" that will undoubtedly sit patiently for several months before I pick it up again. Luckily, I've ordered Carol's DVD on how to paper piece, so when I finally do get back to this I'll have a virtual Carol to help guide me through the process again.

Here's Carol teaching us all how to paper piece, wasting the least amount of fabric and creating perfect points.

and here she is showing some of her gorgeous quilts. This one is called Mardi Gras and I think it was my favorite of the lot...although that was no easy trick picking only one favorite. I especially love the quilting she did that looks like fireworks coming out of the stars.

So, it was a great class and a great weekend. I met lots of wonderful ladies, as I always do at these things and learned some new tricks and found some new toys. Of course, I spent way too much money. Not least of which was spent on some incredible African Indigo's...more about those tomorrow!

Quilt Odyssey Weekend

This will be a picture-heavy post, naturally, since there were many gorgeous quilts at the show. Unfortunately, the $100,000 prize winners were not allowed to be photographed, and they still haven't posted this years pictures, but the quilts I was allowed to take pictures of are still fantastic. In fact, shows like this make me 100% certain I will never enter any of my work in any show, since as I'm looking at these, I'm thinking "OMG, this only won THIRD place??!!"

So, anyway, in no particular order, here are some of my favorite quilts from the show:

There's a magazine out there somewhere that tells the story on all these quilts, but honestly, I just took pictures of the ones I liked the best, which in many cases, means I liked the color selections.



I guess that means I never grew out of the "Oooh, Pretty!" phase of my life!

This quilt of the turtles made me long for Hawaii!

And this one makes me want to go back to Africa!

This one made me think of Halloween---my favorite holiday of the year!

This one was my LOML's favorite. LOML, of course, stands for Love of my Life---obligatory "Awwwwwww!" goes here! The ugly line across the bottom is tape to keep people from getting too close! I appreciate the sentiment, but it really messed with a lot of my pictures...don't they know It's ALL about ME!?

This one made me want to go out and garden! And I might actually consider such an effort if my yard got ANY sunshine at all!! So, of course, absolutely nothing blooms back there! But that's a rant for another day!

This one is a close up of one little tiny piece of the quilt. I didn't think taking the whole quilt would do it justice. The details were incredible, as you can see

Notice the hummingbirds in this one? I ought to do that since hard as I try, I can't get any in my backyard...back to the no sunshine rant!

This one won best in show. This picture can't possibly do justice to the quilt, but what you need to know is the back was just as spectacular as the front, as it was reversible. She called this quilt Sugar and Spice. This is side one.

and here's side two

Just a few more shots. These three are all just gorgeous colors and of course spectacular work!

And this quilt was pretty spectacular in the shape of a kimono (but not really a kimono)

Final Quilt! Check out the perfect points!

This just covers Saturday at the show. Tomorrow I'll finish up on the weekend's activities, to include the class with Carol Doak. She's an outstanding instructor and a spectacular quilter, but BlogSpot really can't deal with me putting in all these pictures! It keeps putting in about 2,000 extra lines per photo that I have to now go through and clean up, and by the time I'm done with that, I just won't have it in me to post another one! So, until tomorrow!