Just popping in!

Good morning,

I have actually made it to my blog two days in a row. LOL I had thought I would be able to piddle today, but Kevin found out he gets paid this afternoon. He wants me to come down and get his check and take it to the bank. He figures the traffic will be less today than Friday. I hope he is right. Since I am only cooking for the two of us, I don't have many preps. Everything will be cooked tomorrow, including the pie. I will cook the turkey in my roaster which will free up the oven.

Since I may just mail this to Carolyn, I thought I'd better get a picture of it. This is a little wall kit that she picked up and asked me to make for her. It is cute, but those tiny little pieces were a pain to work with. (grin)

I hope she will like it. I also wanted to share about a Christmas fabric giveaway that I won from Nola. I love these. She packed it so cute. Thank you, Nola.

Aren't these pretty Christmas fabrics?

This is for Pat. I decided to take a couple of pictures of our sweet potatoes. I weighed this big one and it was just a hair over 2 lbs.

We only planted 6 plants this year and this is the resulting crop.

Pat, hope you enjoy seeing our sweet potatoes. (grin)

I guess that is it for me. I need to get a grocery list ready. I don't really need much. I guess that is a good thing. Right? LOL Everyone remain safe out on the roads this weekend. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Thanks for visiting and please come again.

The Sweet Potato Saga Continues!

Good afternoon everyone. I know how anxiously you all have been waiting for the sweet potato update. If you aren't anxiously awaiting it, I am afraid you will probably be disappointed with this post. (grin) I hope it might help someone who wants to grow their own this summer. Ok, I took them out of the south window on Sunday. They were started about 6 weeks ago.They have really bushed out. Too bad the other sweet potato never did take off. It had some little leaves, but no roots and the leaves never did grow. It was getting smelly, so I tossed it. I have 2 more started, but I think this one will give us all the slips we will need. What are slips, you ask? hehe They are the little plants that I twist off of the sw. potato. I just grab the stem firmly down next to the sw. potato and twist and pull. Here they are all laid out. Most are about 6-8 inches tall, a few shorter.Here is the poor, almost bald sweet potato after I robbed it of its pretty slips. I never strip it of all of its slips. I am afraid it will rebel and quit putting on more. LOLAfter I twist the strips off, I remove the bottom inch or 2 of leaves. This part of them will be in water to grow roots. If you leave the bottom leaves on they get slimey and foul the water. Rotten sweet potato water smells really bad. You don't want that in your house. Here they are, all ready to go join their siblings in the jar of water. Just look at that root system of the first slips I twisted off. Too bad it isn't warm enough to plant these. I still have 2 months till they can be planted. I am afraid I might have started these too soon. Usually it takes a long time for the leaves and roots to develop, but this potato was just made for reproducing. (grin) I think if I change the water on them regularly, they will be ok. I hope anyway. Here they are, in the jar and ready to sit in the window. They love that sun. This concludes the update to the sweet potato saga. I hope it was worth your wait. LOLI don't have anything to show today about quilting. I have been quilting on the Savannah Star. I'm about 3/4 done with it, so no pictures. I did finish 2 wallets and 3 change purses yesterday. I posted a link yesterday to the wallet tutorial. I'll post is again, because it really is a great tutorial. It is here. I made these wallets from scraps. Here they are all folded and snapped. This is the inside of them. Card slots at the bottom, of course. The corn lining is on the back of the pumpkin wallet and the orange on back of the wild wallet. (grin)Here is the back side of them all opened out. I am getting better with those snaps. They come in a little kit and I have to use the hammer to get them in place. Even though, I had done a few before, I guess I had lost my touch. By the time I got all of these in, they were looking better. I think I will wait till tomorrow to share the change purses with you. Otherwise, I might not have anything to share. (grin) Tonight is Biggest Loser. I hope they don't do the cliff hanger thing any more. I didn't enjoy waiting a week to see if 2 people had to go home or if they were all safe for another week. It is cold and windy here today. We had lots of rain again last night. Some of the area rivers are reaching flood stage. Well, I guess that is all for me today. I want to eat a bowl of soup, then get back to my quilting. Everyone have a nice day. Thank you for visiting and please come back.

Working on some purses.

I know I said I would post yesterday, but I got started working on a purse, and just couldn't quit. LOL I am sure you all were on the edge of your seats waiting to see my updated sweet potato pictures. Right? LOL So without further delay, here is what the sweet potatoes looked like on Saturday. You can just barely see the root system on this one, but it has a good one which I am assuming is why I am getting such great slips. The other one is not doing well at all. I have already broken off about 6 slips and have them in water. I noticed this morning that some of them have little roots starting. This is one month after starting them in water.

Here is a closeup. Sorry it is kind of blurry, but I think the leaves are pretty.Ok, enough about the sweet potatoes. LOL Yesterday, I decided to try one of my new patterns. A new pattern is always harder until that first one is made. This took me pretty much all day. I picked out 4 coordinating fat quarters and went to work. I think it turned out pretty cute.

This purse was made different than any I have made, so it took quite a bit of reading the directions to figure it all out. In fact, I read one section of the directions about 10 times till I figured out what they were telling me to do. This is the inside. The camera flash washed the color out. It is dark red/black. It has 2 pockets sewn on the inside.It would have looked better with a black zipper, but all I had was this navy blue, so I used what I had. (grin) Here is the top of it zipped closed. It looks lopsided in the photo, but it isn't. Photographer, I am not. LOLIf I make any more of these, I will change some things. There were several places in this pattern that I know it can be done easier. (grin) It has one pocket on the front. The pocket is deeper than it looks from this angle. Again, the photograher's fault. Well, what do you think? It called for quilted fabric, but since I didn't have any, I quilted it myself on the machine. I used a piece of quilting fleece on the back and quilted either 1 inch or 1 1/4 inch squares on it. (I can't remember right off hand.) I used my little quilting helper thingy. (Sorry, don't know what it is called, but it fastens to the foot holder and runs along the line of stitching you have just done so that you have even rows of stitching.) I sewed all the vertical lines first, then came back and sewed all the horizontal lines. I am sure this is much more than you wanted to know. Sorry.Today I have cut out another bag. I call this a hobo bag, not sure what the official name is. I want to get it sewed together, but also want to work on the beagle quilt. I sure wish I didn't have to sleep. I also have not done any hand quilting in a week. Can you believe it? I really need to get back to that, but I am also having fun making purses and bags. LOL Here is what I am working on. I put a couple of scraps of the fabric around the picture on the pattern front. The outside of the bag will be the blue with daisies and the lining will be the blue/white checked.
I think I will try to get the beagle quilt ready to applique the little dogs around it. I can work on the bag while K is home, but I want his quilt to be a surprise. So I need to get off here and get to work. Everyone have a wonderful day. Thank you for visiting and please come again.

A Slow Tuesday

I never did make it to JoAnn's. I guess you could say that was my dh's Valentine gift. LOL I didn't make him drive me through all the traffic in his old truck. It has a clutch, so kind of difficult in heavy traffic. I told him I would catch their next sale. Not like they never have them. LOL We went to a local deli and I got some chicken tenders and mozzarella sticks (oh my, those mozzarella sticks are so yummy!) and dh got some chicken gizzards. We were both quite content. He left the decision on going to Ryan's up to me. I decided I would overeat there. I know the deli stuff wasn't real healthy, but sure was good. We spent most of the rest of the weekend working on the car. I am the 'go-for'. Dh hopes to have it back on the road by this weekend.

I decided to do a fun project on Sunday evening, so I whipped this up.

I basically took a couple of different quilt patterns, mixed them, and changed a few things to come up with this. I have the binding sewn on ready to handsew on the back. I plan to do that this evening. Look at this picture. The cat quilt is hanging over my machine and if you look right over the top of it, you will see Callie's nose. I didn't even realize she was back there till I was looking at my pictures. I think it is cute. I have been busy the past couple of days. I decided yesterday that I wanted to see my desk again. It was piled high with fabric in sacks that I hadn't folded and put away yet. I didn't take a picture of the mess. I really didn't want anyone seeing that, although it might have made me do better about organization. (grin) I spent over an hour folding fabric around my 6 inch wide ruler. Then I piled it all on my cutting mat. Can you believe all of this was on my desk?

In the back on the right, I have 2 stacks that have fabric of 2 yards or more . I have a couple of stacks of 1 yard pieces, a stack of 1 1/2 yard pieces, a stack of 1/2 yard pieces, a stack of 1/4 yard pieces, at least 3 stacks of fat quarters, and a jelly roll. Whew! The last thing I need is more fabric. I also have at least 5 bins of scraps leftover from previous projects. I really need to make some scrappy projects. I had to clean some stuff off my shelves to make room for all of this fabric. So I worked hard yesterday, but dh noticed and commented on how nice things were looking. (grin)

I also got the quilting lines drawn on the tulip quilt and have it sandwiched. It is ready to quilt, but I am trying to hold off till I get the Savannah Star done. Not sure if I will make it though. This one just looks like it will be so much fun to hand quilt. When I do small quilts, I usually just use pins to baste the layers together.

Doesn't this look like fun to quilt? I have lots of handwork ready. Tomorrow I have to go to the dentist to have a tooth pulled. So I know I will not be too energetic for a couple of days. I plan to just sit, watch tv, and quilt for the rest of the week. Not much more that I dread than going to the dentist, but I don't particularly like pain either. I will just be glad when tomorrow is over.

Look how my sweet potato has grown. I should be able to start pinching the slips off soon. I started this on Feb. 1st, so it has really taken off. The other one has not done as well, but it is growing too.

Tonight is the Biggest Loser. So I will be sitting in my rocker, quilting away, while watching tv. I only lost 1 pound last week. The deli stop might have contributed to this, but it was good! LOL I hope to do better at my next weigh in. My goal was to lose 10 lbs in Feb. So far I have lost 9, so I am happy. I think I will go watch the rest of Judge Judy. Thank you for visiting and please come again. If you think about it, I would sure appreciate prayers for me to be brave tomorrow.

One more beautiful day!

It is going to be so lovely here today. They are calling for 67* with light winds. It is hard to believe that the wind was blowing so hard just a few short hours ago. Now it is mostly calm. Blew itself out I guess. LOL Anyway, a nice day like this is just begging for me to take a walk this afternoon with my crew. I think I will bribe Herc first, though, so he doesn't slow us down. Spring is getting closer, but I know we must put up with some nasty weather first. I believe rain is supposed to be coming in tonight, with colder temps the rest of the week.

I finished the Maple Leaf small quilt last night. It turned out pretty good. I am still not 100% pleased with one of the corners on the binding, but I took it out once and redid it, so it stays. LOL

I took an orphan block that I had and added some borders. Then I thought it was too plain, so I appliqued some little maple leaves around the border. My dh thought the orange border fabric was too bright, but I have seen leaves like that. I kind of like it. Here is a closeup of the center block.

Of course, here is a picture of the back. My camera flash really washed things out this morning.
I checked my sweet potatoes earlier. I had to add some more water, so figured I might as well take some pictures. It is exciting, how much they have grown in just 9 days. Look at the roots starting on this one. The little leaves are really shooting up. I think we will actually have some sweet potato slips to plant this year. Now if they just don't grow so fast that they rot in the water before I can plant them outside.
I am sorry this post isn't real interesting. I am sure you didn't come here to see pictures of sweet potatoes growing, but that is what is going on in my life right now. LOL I am not adding any more pictures today. They are uploading so slow this morning. I want to get out and enjoy the day, not sit here in front of the computer. (grin)

I talked to our daughter, Hazel, last night. She said they are doing fine. The kids are over their colds and little Izabella has 2 teeth in so far. I am sure it won't be long till she figures out how to use them. LOL Look out Noah, Sissie had teeth now! LOL

Tonight is the Biggest Loser, so I will be plopped in front of the tv. I have the Savannah Star ready to quilt, but may work on some applique as well. I am trying to do some needle turn applique, but I'm having trouble getting nice crisp points. I guess I just need to continue practicing.

Well, that sunshine is calling my name. (grin) I hope you all have a wonderful day. Thanks for visiting and please come again. I really do appreciate your visits.