Randomday and a finished quilt top

Oh, I have missed Randomday! During my long blog hiatus I would often think of a humorous event or observation and wish to share it on my Saturday posts, which I then never got around to making. 

 The impetus for starting up blogging is also the impetus for finishing a project left over from early this year, which had languished largely untouched since January. This is the quilt top for On Ringo Lake, last year's Quiltville mystery. There was a lot of seaming to do, and it was all on the diagonal. which meant it had to stay on the family room floor from the time I laid it down (Tuesday night?) until I finished it late last night. There were periodic times when I had to rearrange some of those tiny pieces because the cat messed them up.

Thanks to Steve for holding the quilt up away from the wet so I could get a photo of it in daylight.

This is a collage from last winter when I was working on it. My new version of Photoscape can probably do collages, but I haven't figured that out yet. I just love how the colors of this quilt mimic a sunrise on the rippling waters of a lake. Finishing this quilt top (not getting it quilted, that's another hurdle for another time) was my requirement of myself to participate in the new mystery quilt. Which I am doing, and it is fun. I have been dealing with my photo storage on my phone, and getting ominous messages like "your iCloud storage is almost full." One technical challenge at a time, but I was able to go back today and delete a bunch of these process photos from my phone. They have served their purpose. But whenever I look at this quilt I'll remember early morning walks with Emma to school last year, and all the beautiful sunrises we saw together.

The tree is up but only partly decorated. The local elves are teenagers and either have better things to do or a short attention span. I put up the cherub in the snow cloud on the shelf, which I think is much nicer than the creepy "elf on the shelf" and anyway, I've been doing this since before I ever heard of that weird trend.

We've had a Christmas bear in the scrollwork sleigh every year since the boys were little, although it wasn't always this bear.

I loved all the coverage of the state funeral this week. It felt refreshing to have something on television that drew us together for a time instead of trying to divide.

Last night I made a recipe from the Redwall Cookbook, "Mole's favorite deeper 'n ever turnip 'n tater 'n beetroot pie." This may be my only autographed cookbook; yes, Brian Jacques himself signed it. There are several good recipes in it. This one is kind of like a vegetarian shepherd's pie, with mashed turnips and carrots layered with mashed potatoes, and cheese on top. The beets are pickled, served on the side along with a crisp salad. Other recipes we have liked from this book include "Shrimp and hotroot soup" and "Roast roots and baked spuds."

We went to a pancake breakfast and silent auction for the Sheriff's department explorer program this morning, which a friend of Quarta's participates in. Steve won a basket that included a gift certificate for Home Depot, which we have already spent.

Tomorrow dinner will probably be Apricot Chicken, a recipe I discovered in the early 90's. You mix an envelope of onion soup mix, and about a cup each of Catalina dressing and apricot jam, and you pour it over chicken, and then bake it and serve with rice. You can do the same thing only substitute cranberry sauce for the apricot jam, and it's Cranberry chicken, which is also good.

And that's it for this re-inauguration of Randomday.

New Year

Welcome 2018! I have attempted to give the blog a new look. Gone are the dandelions blowing, and I am attempting to clean up some of the sidebars. It may take a few tries to get it the way I like it. I hope everyone who reads this enjoyed a good end to the 2017 year, surrounded by loved ones.

We had a nice Christmas, with Daniel home from Virginia, and Peter home from college in Pullman.

 Christmas Eve it snowed, and we made it safely to Grandma Chapman's home through the Portland snow and freezing rain.

 Christmas morning it has always been the tradition to open the stockings first. The children used to look a lot more excited, but they have become too cool, I guess. And some of them need coffee to function in the mornings now.

 Steve and I are working on the art of selfie taking.

 Steve's mom is looking very sweet in this picture.

I finished the socks from the yarn I bought in Annapolis for Daniel. These and the Stashbuster socks for Peter were my only handmade gifts this Christmas. I have two more pairs on the needles right now which may be future Christmas presents, or "just because" presents, for Steve and the boys. But I am a little bored with sock knitting for the moment.

New Year's resolutions: actually, not anything specific. Read more, blog and write more, knit more, finish more quilts; improve the Latin for Duolingo course, which now has more than 650 learners on Memrise (ironically, a better host than Duolingo); get the house organized, organize health and dental care for those of us who need it, organize Tertia's affairs as we are now officially her guardians. Mostly, we have some major purchases and expenses that are overdue; many are holdovers from 2017, which was full of unexpected expenses. So very unpoetical, but that is why the creative things are important.

Wishing everyone a happy, productive and healthy 2018!

On Ringo Lake week 5 Link-up

I am sneaking this link-up post in at the last minute. You can find the link-up for this week's clue at Quiltville. I had fun with the flying geese this week, but it was Christmas, after all. So they are not all done, about 70 percent maybe. I played with all the patches so far and came up with this as a possible arrangement:

 I'm guessing tomorrow's clue will include some neutral triangles to match clue 4, and maybe the final reveal. I'm sure we're pretty close!

 My ironing board needs to have the mouse ears removed after I clip the units apart.

A lot of mouse ears fall off at the machine, too.

This week's collage: I snuck in a snow-selfie, Quarta singing Hamilton tunes, and a Christmas pie, but they are kind of in the general color scheme. We had snow on Christmas eve, and the lessons and carols service was canceled. But it was a nice night to stay in.

Merry Christmas, and happy stitching to all of you!

Randomday in Black and White

My cousin Scott challenged me to one of those Facebook thingies, where you post a black/white photo of "everyday life" every day for seven days. I don't usually take anything other than snapshots, but this was actually fun. Maybe changing a color photo to black and white makes it artsy. It's kind of a telegraphic version of my week.

 Go to church on Sunday

 Sew patches on a soldier's uniform on Monday

 STAR WARS on Tuesday

Turkey on Wednesday -- just because

 Kitty on Thursday

 Christmas tree on Friday

Bake Christmas pies on Saturday

I'll let that be it for Randomday. Have a very Merry Christmas, and God bless us, every one!

After Christmas, Mystery Quilt Progress

Christmas was great, and went by fast. We were able to get someone at church to snag a picture of the whole family:

 And Steve took one of the kids. That's pretty much it for family photos this year, everyone is in such fast transition. We only have the boys for a few more days, and it may be quite some time before Daniel gets back.

It has been harder to get multiple blog posts in a week this year, so excuse me for sneaking in family photos. But for some reason, Christmas season also kickstarts my lagging quilting and knitting, and I like to document them on the blog. First up is the En Provence Mystery quilt, and I'm linking up to Bonnie Hunter's blog with lots of other people sharing their progress: Part 5 Link-up

 I was able to get clue 5 done pretty easily. My purple stash is pretty well depleted at this point.

 I have the pieces for the mystery quilt in a small storage box, and since I finished this week early, I decided to work on some other sewing projects that had been lying around.

 Everything except the borders of Allietare had been done since last January, so I finally trimmed the edges and put the borders on. I think it's just a stunning quilt pattern, and I'm really happy with how it turned out.

You can't see it, but Orca Bay is underneath it on our bed. That was the first mystery quilt I did and I've been hooked ever since. This is the sixth straight year I've joined in. If you are happening to hear about this for the first time, you have a chance to get the clues for the current mystery still, at the website linked above. And you want to grab them while they are freely available, because Bonnie takes them down at some point so they can be included in a future book. I never thought I'd enjoy doing mystery quilts so much, but these are really quite addictive. My only concern is that I've fallen way behind in getting them quilted.

The other thing Bonnie got me hooked on is organizing my scraps. I still haven't perfected it, but I have been cutting strips of various commonly used sizes as I have different fabrics out, and today it was time to organize my 1.5" strips. Here's how they looked midway through. The box was completely overflowing when I started.

 Here's me laying them out in color groups,

And here they all are, fitting into the same bin neatly with room to spare! It made me really happy to get this done today! I'm partway through with the 2.5" strips as well. The 2" and 3.5" strips had to be organized to do the previous steps of the mystery quilt.

One other bit of sewing got done today. It was sad, considering the untimely death of Carrie Fisher, but I threaded up my machine with black and went ahead on these Star Wars boxers for Steve. I had wrapped the fabric for him, with the promise to sew it up after Christmas. Got it all done today, start to finish.

 And both boys were very happy with their handknit socks... they put them on right after unwrapping them.

So they fit, the boys like them, and it looks like I could knit socks and sew boxer shorts and my menfolk would be happy for Christmas presents and birthday presents. Seems like a pretty good deal to me! I still wish I could figure out that trick like they do in Harry Potter to make the needles knit by themselves, though. It takes me about a month to knit a pair of socks. 

The (annual) Post-Christmas Post

Wow, it is so easy for an old, worn-out Latin teacher to fall into slacker habits in blogging, even when trying to reform.  (I can only imagine what Donald Trump would say: "Kathy Chapman is a low-energy person. I like people who blog regularly and say nice things about me. What a loser!")

So in the annual tradition of blogging Christmas, here are the photos from 2015:

 The tree, a real purchased one this year! Without and with flash.

 The girls both had new sweaters, bought for the Christmas morning pics.

 And Quarta didn't give up until she found the perfect red scarf.

 Hopefully not too American Gothic.

 Pretty impressive, getting three big kids on the "throne"...

 ...while the Elf distributes the presents.

He seems to like it!

Other themes in the gifts this year: flannel shirts; Greek NT, lexicon and grammar; adult coloring books and pencils; a Dr. Who Christmas showing at Clackamas scheduled for tomorrow; promises of "dates with Dad"; Southern Literature; Star Trek boxers; Inside Out, Cinderella and Minions videos; smoked salmon and fat quarters.

Muffin had her picture taken before Christmas. She's still pretty shy on Christmas morning and avoids noisy, crowded events. But since we lost Bilbo (still sad about that) she has become almost friendly and lets us pet her occasionally.  It doesn't seem right to have Christmas without a cat under the tree picture, so I'm glad she put up with this one.

The meal was ham, Christian's potatoes, green beans, garlic squash, salad, and three kinds of pie - apple, blackberry and German Chocolate. The weather was nice enough that Steve and I had a walk in the afternoon to walk some of it off.

I will be taking kids shopping over the next few days, I think. We're also planning the Last Noel -- this, year, it's a week earlier because of Peter's school schedule.  I'm sewing when I can and keeping up better than I thought with the mystery quilt.  That's all for now!

Randomday after Christmas

Somehow it always works out.  Christmas is stressful, we don't take enough family pictures, we eat too much ham and pie and candy, the youngest in the family has at least one meltdown and we become groggy, irritable and lethargic at least once during the evening.  We're not the kind of family that posts gushing Facebook updates about "best Christmas ever" or sends out those perfect family picture greeting cards.  We don't mock you if you are.  In fact, you are the impossible ideal and we have been forced to adopt a policy of admiration from afar.  No, perfection is not achieveable in this life and we aren't trying anymore.   But we still have pretty nice Christmases and they don't last long enough.

 I like this picture of Steve's mom, who joined us about 10:00 am for the opening of presents.  She was a good sport about not getting too many gifts herself and just watching while the rest of the family did their thing.  She enjoyed the homemade eggnog, sampled some of Daniel's plum wine, and I think she won all the games of cribbage she played.

 Peter bought Quarta a set of Minecraft paper animals and she spent most of the day crafting her menagerie.  Steve put together my old bedframe that has been in storage for years and we are going to get her a new mattress since the one she has been using is at least 50 years old.  She also has a Minecraft account of her own now, and fuzzy Minnie Mouse pajama pants.  Tertia has fluffy pink pajamas and a brand new Facebook account.  It may be the beginning of a whole new era.

 Steve gave me a hammered dulcimer for Christmas, which pretty much tops last year's gift of a Kindle (also spectacular), and was totally unexpected because it was, in my mind, in the category of Unachieveable Things that Might Materialize in the Far Distant Future.  I've always wanted one since I first started listening to Celtic music more than 3 decades ago, so I guess now is the far distant future from then.  Apparently in this futuristic world, one learns to play hammered dulcimer by watching youtube videos.  Or, since I'm kind of an intuitive learner, I just dived right in and started picking out things.  I can play Simple Gifts, Good King Wenceslaus, and the Star Wars theme (for Tertia) without too much trouble now.  I'm working on Come Boat me Over and an old harp tune that is NOT called Nonesuch but is similar, only now that I looked up Nonesuch I can't remember it and am picking out Nonesuch instead.  Such is the way my brain works, very prone to distraction.  I won't be earning money playing at dances and weddings anytime soon, but I am managing to make music.

My gift for Steve was a sweater he helped pick out himself when we were shopping at the mall, and the board game Ticket to Ride (Europe).  We played it last night and he, predictably, won by a large margin (yellow).  It's a fun game and I would like to play it again now that I have the feel for it.  I was green, Daniel was black, Tertia was red and Quarta was blue.  Afterwards we watched Peter's video of Guardians of the Galaxy.  Apparently this was the only thing he asked for for Christmas (it was the movie I took him to see on Family Day after Basic Training).  I'm really glad he remembered to ask for it again right before Christmas or I wouldn't have been able to snag the next-to-last copy at Target.  It finished after midnight.

Today was a nice lazy day.  I celebrated my 1 year anniversary of using Duolingo by finishing my German "tree", and Steve and I took a 2 mile walk, and Daniel is catching up on the last few episodes of an entire missed season of Doctor Who (with the girls' help) so that maybe tomorrow we can watch the Christmas special.  I am trying not to eat all my chocolate, and there will be our traditional Ham Pasta dish for dinner, and there are still a few slices of the Chocolate Bourbon Pecan Pie that I didn't make for Thanksgiving.  Soon enough we will start the after-Christmas shopping trips to buy clothes, and the kids will choose their annual "date with Dad."  And soon after that school will start up again and we will need to plan the Last Noel.

Braces and Baby Steps

 Tertia and Quarta had appointments at the orthodontist today. It was Quarta's day to get bands and upper brackets put on. Tertia is now wearing rubber bands to pull her lower jaw into alignment with the upper.  She cannot put them in herself.  I can put them in, but it apparently takes 20 minutes to do it.  I'm hoping to improve that speed.

 Quarta seems a lot taller.   She is also much more verbal than Tertia, and will be sure to tell me if she's in pain.  That doesn't mean that I can do anything about it, of course.  Tertia is nearing the end of her braces adventure: she'll be wearing a retainer then, and biding her time until she can get some dental implants to fill that big gap on top.  With one family member or another, it seems like I practically live at the dentist's office these days.

It's Christmas time, and I'm not really doing anything about it.  I'm taking baby steps on the Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt... this is clue 3, a little more than halfway done.  The mystery link-up is technically for clue 4 but I'm happy to be this far along.  I really like the green and white checkerboard with bits of black.

Here's what I should be doing, but am not: cleaning the house; organizing all the new orthodontic supplies and cleaning the kids' bathroom; baking cookies with no nuts or sticky bits to get caught in braces; writing thank-you notes for all the teacher loot I received; grading and updating the SchoolSpeak database; shopping, cooking, and menu-planning; writing Christmas letters; making New Year's resolutions to be much, much more organized and productive than I have been this year.  Nope, I don't think so.  I'm finding the amount of cooking and cleaning I'm doing is therapeutic, and so is the quilting.  Not going to push it beyond that!