My new raggy quilt

I'm prone to migraines and 99% of the time as soon as I feel it coming on, I pop one of my prescription migraine pills and that's the end of it. Very very rarely does a migraine kick me in the butt like it did this week. Today is day 4 of a whopper. I've been taking the pills and necessary and it's allowed me to function almost normally, but it's "still there". It's times like this that I remember having migraines for years, before I knew they were migraines and I would suffer through them. Thank goodness those days are long gone!

My headache didn't prevent me from finishing the rag quilt that I was working on. I started it on Sunday and worked on it a little bit every evening. Last night Joe and I took it over to the laundrymat to wash it. I brought it home, stuck it in the dryer and when it was done, I curled up under it and watched a movie. It worked great!

Joe is such a riot (rolling eyes). He says it's nice, but it's not finished yet (due to the raggy edges). What do boys know?

I love it. I used quilt batting between the layers of fabric so it will be nice and toasty warm. It's plenty big enough to curl up under when watching TV or surfing the Internet.

Today we are headed out to do some running around. Two stops include a computer store where I'm going to get some much needed memory for my laptop and a great fabric store that I don't often get to visit (it's about an hour away). Tonight we are going to dinner and then on a haunted ghost walk with a couple we met through geocaching. Should be fun.

Have a great weekend!!

This is what I've been up to

I've been having a lot of fun. I am working on a rag quilt. I tried my hand at quilting a few years ago, but just as I was getting into it I had a terrible fall, shattering my elbow and breaking my arm in 4 places. It took almost a year before I was able to be crafty again, at which point I returned to knitting as sewing was still too difficult. I never really got the hang of quilting and had only made several very small quilts before the accident. I found that as accurate as I thought I was being, I could never get things to match up quite right and I found that very frustrating. I had a conversation on the weekend with a fellow geocacher who just raved about making rag quilts, so, after a quick hop over the border and a visit to Joann's Fabrics, here's my progress so far.

I still have issues with rotary cutting. It seems for every 6 I cut correctly, I have one or two that just don't turn out square. Any tips?? I've done a bit of surfing and I'm quite sure I'm doing it right. I guess it just takes practice?

I went to Value Village yesterday and purchased 4 pieces of flannel, thinking ahead of course to my next rag quilt and a piece of fabric that I'm imagining will become at least one more bag (as if I need it). I also got a great basket, I love baskets. This one is quite deep and will be a good place for storing fabric (I think).

Special thanks to my cat, Maia, for her "help" during the photo shoot!

A scary card and a scary bag

I spent all week working on another batch of cards. I love making them and they certainly are an ideal project to work on when I don't have much time. It's easy to start and stop without losing track of where I am. I've made a bunch of Christmas cards (no more store bought Christmas cards for me!), some cards to use as gifts and some very scary Halloween cards. I found some little wooden halloween shapes at the dollar store, they make perfect embellishments.



We are going to the casino tonight for dinner with some friends. I have some cute gambling themed fabric that I've been meaning to make into a bag for a long time. So this morning, after a bit of surfing I found this this craftster post and I was off to the races. I was so excited to finally have the time to sew something other than a card. I carefully cut out the fabric, applied the interfacing and proceeded to follow the tutorial very carefully. It was very simple until I got to the last step where you sew the lining to the outer fabric. I just didn't seem to have enough room to manouver the bag around the corners. I sewed and ripped, sewed and ripped and just when I thought I'd have to hand sew, I managed to get it. The top stitching is very messy. There was simply not enough room to make it nice and even. I am not going to worry about it. This is not a bag that I will be carrying very often.

Happy Anniversary

Yesterday was the worst day I can ever remember at work. I was asked to do something that I absolutely disagree with. I was asked (told) to remove a book from our library collection. I came home and cried. Last night was a terrible night. I can still hardly think about it without getting teary.

Anyhoo...on a much happier note, tomorrow is my anniversary. I have been with Joe for four years. If you ask him how long we've been together, he will still answer 6 or 8 weeks. He's such a boy. He came home from work tonight with beautiful roses and a card. Even though our anniversary isn't until tomorrow, he said he thought I could use these today. Boy, he can make me smile like nothing else can.

I'm officially a camper!

We attended GHAGAFAP on the weekend. It stands for Golden Horseshoe Area Geocachers Annual Family Picnic. It involved two nights camping and two days of awesome geocaching activities. It just so happened that it was also our 1000th geocache which was cause for celebration.

I am NOT a camper. There are many events like this one held all over and our geocaching friends were desperately trying to make me happy so that Joe and I would attend more of these events. When we arrived at the campground, our friends had set up a mammoth tent for us complete with a full size blow up inflatable bed. It was awesome. Our tent was referred to as the "Hilton Suite" for the remainder of the weekend.

When asked if I would do it again, I had to say yes. The actual camping was fun. It's the packing to get there and the unpacking and laundry once we got home that I absolutely hate.

Here's Joe and I in all our geocaching glory:



Please please please excuse the terrible hair!

I can't wait to get back to getting crafty again. I am making some cards tonight with some fabric sqares I recently purchased on Ebay. I'm finding that the evenings aren't long enough for me to jump into any major projects. I think about all I'm up to at the moment is cards, but I have SO many ideas brewing. I think that Joe is going away canoeing on Thanksgiving Weekend, so I will get some real quality crafty time then.

My new stamp

Yesterday, one of the secretaries at school had a terrible fall. I can completely relate to her because three years ago on a beautiful April day I fell, shattering my elbow and breaking my arm in four places. After surgery and three days in the hospital, it was months and months and months before I was anywhere close to my normal self. I am 99% ok now, but I will most likely never be able to lift anything heavy with my left arm (I'm left-handed too by the way).

I'm not quite sure the extent of the damage, but rumour has it she broke her nose (ouch!) and wrist. I am so excited to give her one of my new handmade cards. I've also bundled up a package of 4 (with envelopes, of course) for her as a little get well gift. I sure hope she likes it!



I had to get some stamps made for the library. While I was at the stamp store, I decided to get a stamp made for myself. Notice my new fancy-shmancy Trial Mix Designs stamp. It's a bit over the top, but then again, so am I. I love it.

A little weekend sewing

I survived the first week back to school. I was tired at the end of each day and didn't manage to get much of anything done.

Next weekend is our huge geocaching get-together. There will be well over two hundred geocachers at the day's activities and it looks like almost one hundred will be camping for the weekend. We are among the campers. I agreed to do this back in the winter under the condition that we got an inflatable air mattress. Well we got the mattress but it won't fit in our tent! So, kindly, a fellow geocacher has agreed to lend us a tent that is plenty big enough for Joe and I and the air mattress AND the two (big) dogs.

As a thank you to Laura, I've made her this camping tote bag. I'll give it to her next weekend. I hope she likes it.

I have become totally addicted to making fabric note cards. These are the ones I made this morning.

I know I've posted a lot of cards like these, but I feel like i finally got the hang of them this morning. This is the first batch that I truly love!Again, thanks to Randi and to Linda for their great tutorials that I used to make these cards!

Manly Craftiness

I can't resist. Joe is being crafty. Now his craftiness is geocaching related, of course. He's working on putting a cache together. We are going to the big geocaching event of the year next weekend. We are camping (thank goodness for air beds) and caching all day on Saturday with at least 200 other cachers.
Here he is using my modge podge and circle punch:

It's actually quite a clever cache he's putting together (my idea, of course). He's hiding a container with over 100 poker chips in it. 99 poker chips are the same, listing incorrect co-ordinates to the final cache. One of the poker chips has the correct co-ordinates for the cache. So, the seeker will have to sort through the chips and find the one with the proper co-ordinates before they can find the final stage. I'm such a smarty-pants.
He's whining that I'm not helping, but I'm involved in a little craftiness of my own. I'm making a thank-you gift for the woman who's lending us a huge tent for next weekend, a thank-you card, a sleeve for a banner (Joe requested) and a pouch for me. All the fabric is cut out, interfacing is ironed on and I think I'm too tired to actually start sewing now.
I think I'll go and supervise the poker chip production line.

In Stitches

Well, I've survived the first two days of school, but I am beat.

The highlight of the day by far was the little present I got in the mail. A present from myself of course. I broke down and ordered Amy Butler's In Stitches. I had a quick flip through the book and I already see several projects that I'm eager to make, but I have absolutely NO energy tonight to do anything.

I just offered Joe $1.23 to let the dogs out (kidding, of course). Why $1.23? That's probably about all the money I have left in my wallet until pay day.

Happy Birthday Bake Sale Designs!

One of my favourite bloggers, Rebbeca, of Bake Sale Designs is celebrating the first birthday of her site.
Happy Birthday Bake Sale Designs!
Look at the beautiful pouches she makes!


I hope that Bake Sale Designs celebrates many many more birthdays!

Christmas in September

Before we went to the cottage, I had ordered a charm pack of fabric squares to try to make quilted Christmas cards. It arrived while we were away and it was staring me in the face all day today just begging to be used. What's a girl to do?? Make Christmas cards, that's what, on one of my stressiest days of the year! I'm a nut. Anyways, here's my first batch of Christmas cards.

Looking at the picture it looks like the lighter green buttons don't match the fabric on the cards. I went back to look at the cards, and indeed they do.

Ok, that's IT! I still have a ton of stressing to do before I go to work tomorrow and I suppose Joe will want dinner at some point tonight.

Off to pack all my neat new things for work.

This is NOT what I should be doing right now :)

I should be catching up on housework, doing laundry and getting ready for back-to-school tomorrow. But I'm not. I decided that I needed a brand spankin' new pencil case for school. The outer fabric is from a thrifted apron and the inner fabric is leftovers from a previous project. I need to still make a beaded charm for the zipper pull, but here's what it looks like so far:


Now back to our regularly scheduled housework.

Back to reality!

I can't believe how fast last week went. Joe and I had so much fun at the cottage. We spent most of our mornings lounging around , drinking coffee, knitting (me, not Joe) and planning that day's adventures.
We did a TON of geocaches. My guess would be 30 or so. We were guided to some amazing places, the most of amazing of which was an artist's house near Burk's Falls. I have yet to do some internet research to learn more about the artist (I don't even know their name yet). The house is in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by huge fields. The fields are full of the most amazing sculptures.
Here are a few of the pictures I took:

One of the things I wanted to do while at the cottage was read through my camera manual and practice taking some pictures. When I dragged out the manual one morning to start going through it, I discovered that I had brought the Spanish version so my plans to learn more about my camera were quickly squashed. I did play around with it a little bit and here are the results:

I managed to finish another pair of mitts. I had forgotten how much fun they are to knit. I'm thinking that I may knit a few more pairs for Christmas gifts.

I could easily live up north. I'm not a city girl. Although, the one thing I did miss was my laptop and high speed internet! I have so much catching up to do and a ton of blogs to read!