I'll take a cup of Spring, please

It's springtime but the snowfall doesn't seem to realize it. Since we'll have to go with the flow, here's my favorite mellow snowfall music.  Drifting gently, softly, silently ... enjoy!






Sew forth and sew on...

Am I a slacker?

Three things to be happy about:
(1) remembering when
(2) hard peppermints
(3) great neighbors

This is my progress to date on Allietare - I pushed part of it aside so I can walk through the living room!

So, am I a slacker???

Nah - other things just claimed my attention is all!

Sunday they actually plowed our street, it was like looking down through a canyon.

The only thing is, they pressed a wall of snow against the cars on both sides of the street!

Went out Monday to ransom my car!

Somewhere under here there's a blue 2011 Honda Accord...

Getting there...

That's all I did before stopping, was getting wet feet and starting to sweat!

Yesterday, a pleasant surprise ...

Thanks, Eric!  What great neighbors I have!

And it gets better and better!

My neighbor across the street, Rachel, told me about the great stuff she finds when they take their stuff from the farm to the dump.

There's a little shed where they place things that are still good to use ... she's found fabric, clothing - even a quilt!

I told her to grab the 100% cotton shirts, people pay for those at the Goodwill!

She gave me a whole bunch that I can de-bone and cut into usable yardage.

Not only did she give me shirts, but she also gave me some ground beef from their cattle and tomatoes that she put up last summer.

I tell you, great neighbors are - great!



That's it for now, finish digging out today, help a neighbor out, sew forth and sew on...

Happy birthday to me!

Three things to be happy about:
(1) Longaberger baskets
(2) hot coffee
(3) animals playing in the snow

Today is my birthday, I've reach the ripe ole age of 65 - yes!  That means three significant things to me - (1) I'm eligible for a reduction in my DC property taxes - 50%!
(2) I can get the "senior citizen" rate when booking flights, and the most important thing
(3) I got the Birthday Dollar!

This birthday dollar is very important to me, you can read the full story on this post

Yesterday was a snow clean-up party kind of day in my neighborhood!  Some cars got dug out...

and another dig-out of the sidewalks

someone had music playing, you could hear it for a long way... and notice the beer cooling in the snow at the bottom right of this picture!  I like that kind of neighborhood comeraderie!

I didn't participate in the shoveling, but I hung out at my neighbor's for awhile and enjoyed a delicious bowl of 18 bean soup.  I took over some of my quilts for an impromptu show-n-tell, and saw this super cute quilt that 3-month-old Colin's grandmother made for him...

so cute!  She's a self-taught quilter who made her first quilt when she had her first grandchild - three years ago!

Yesterday was a no-sew day for me, just a hang out and watch Netflix kind of day.  Sew forth and sew on til later...

Progress

Three things to be happy about:
(1) red delicious apples
(2) quilting magazines
(3) peach cobbler

My sister called me just to make me drool - she was planning to make a peach cobbler for Sunday dinner!  Big sisters - you just gotta love em!

You gotta love neighbors too!

Shortly after I posted yesterday's blog, my neighbor Eric came over and shoveled my sidewalk and steps!

Even the kids got involved; they were having a ball "shoveling" with their dust pans!

I took this picture around 7:30 pm last night, I thought the street lights made such a pretty snow scene...

If you compare the flower pots in this photo with the one above, you get an idea of how much more snow we got.

And finally - Allietare progress!

I got all the rows sewn together except that middle diagonal seam.  Today I'll take care of that and trim the setting triangles; I don't look forward to squatting on the floor doing all that trimming though  :*(

At this point I doubt I'll scallop the outer border - but who knows, that decision is weeks  away!

That's it for now, sew forth and sew on til later...

Snowin' and blowin'

Three things to be happy about:
(1) discovering unused VCR tapes - kitsch!
(2) reloading your stapler
(3) hot oatmeal

I'm still happy about hot oatmeal, especially today!

We've had our share of snow, as you can see.

Yesterday the snow started around 1 pm drifting like feathers.  And it never got any harder, just a steady meandering down...

It's funny to see how much of my neighbor Joe's truck is covered up - and that's not a small pickup!

See that car behind the red one to the left, that's almost hidden by the tree?  Dig city!

My car, directly in front of my house, doesn't look too bad at this point, it's only halfway up the wheels.

Nope, not going out yet - it's almost level with the bottom of my storm door!



So, I've had my oatmeal, it's still snowin' and blowin' - now I'm going to get sewin'!

Keep safe, have fun, sew forth and sew on ...

Timing is everything

Three things to be happy about:
(1) opera glasses
(2) Christmas cactusses still blooming
(3) hot oatmeal

Snow!  If you could take the You Tube video I posted two nights ago and rev it up to three times faster, that's the way it would seem now!  So much snow predicted to be coming our way, so many people panicking, with behavior they wouldn't have even glanced at a week ago.  The Federal Government will close early today, with employees who report to work given permission to leave 4 hours early "but no later than 12 noon."  Can you feel the panic?

When a major storm is predicted, the TV news has a way of giving minute by minute "updates" of the problems... "oh look how slow the cars have to drive down this street"  "oh, look at this delivery truck actually sliding out of control" "oh, look how empty the shelves are in this store".

All this "coverage" just makes people panic even more.  I've decided not to participate in it this year because (1) I know snow is coming (2) I know it is expected to be major (3) I know it will last long enough that cleanup will happen Monday, and (4) I know I have enough food, water and meds to take me through it.  Everything else is secondary; I don't need to hear it over and over and over, getting upset!  I won't be watching the coverage.

So that's my soap box opinion, now on to more pleasant things!

Look what came unexpectedly last night!

I want to go forward with making a pinwheel quilt or wall hanging, but it's so tedious to cut so many 2-1/2" squares!  I ordered this die from Amazon on Wednesday the 20th, it was scheduled to be delivered on the 25th - but it came last night, in just one day!

I couldn't wait to start using it!  First thing this morning I dove into some gifted scraps - you know the rules I live by: "OPS's (other people's scraps) are more interesting than your own!"

For this size die, Accuquilt suggests cutting an 8-1/2" piece of fabric and these scraps are such a nice, generous size!

Looking good!

My one concern though, is that one of the blades must be set a bit too high?  Part of the fabric gets wedged tighter in than the other parts, causing the square to fray just a bit when I remove them from the die.

Here we go - a nice pile of 2-1/2" squares, ready to become part of my textured pinwheel quilt!

The die cuts 9 squares, so I have a big plenty to start with.



That's it for now; go safely, carefully and thoughtfully into the storm ...  sew forth and sew on...

Wonderland cometh - again

Wonderland, as in "I wonder where Linda's been so long??"  More on that later!

Meanwhile we got 11 inches of snow between 8 o'clock or so last night and 6 am this morning, whoa!  This picture is just the accumulation on the flower pot on my covered porch.

Look how high it comes up on my tires, but it's a soft snow so it should come off with no scraping if I do it before the other snow falls.

When I got up around 8:30 this morning someone had kindly shoveled my steps and the sidewalk in front of my house, what a blessing!

snow to the left of me!

snow to the right of me!!

Now, as to where have I been??  Shortly after my last post my PC crashed, oy vey!  The good news is, it wasn't a virus that took me down, it was a hardware failure.  My PC was pretty old (a Gateway, you probably know how long they've been out of business!) and (so I was told) something called a heat capacitor died and couldn't be replaced because parts are no longer available.  I went ahead and bought a new PC - the other good news is they were able to transfer all my data files.

Now for the bad news - data files can be transferred, but not program files, so I had to buy new stuff.  The kicker is I had a backup disc for my MS Word Suite but I couldn't find the key, so it was no good.  I lost the fully loaded professional version of Photoshop that I was using to edit my pictures (which I got for nada when I was working); it's not even on the market any more.  I had to purchase Photoshop Elements which I don't like half as much and I'm still getting used to it.  Likewise I lost the full version of Acrobat - I want to be able to create pdf's, not just read them.

All together now - "whoa is me!"

I was happy as a clam with Windows XP, which is no longer available on a new PC - so now I'm using Windows 8 which I don't like as much and I'm trying to get used to it.  Looking for my files is like going on a hunt in my sewing room.  Whoa is me!

Okay, it hasn't taken me THIS long to get back up and running, but every time I sat at the PC I realized something else needed loading... EQ, Kindle reader, having to retransfer all my Audible books, for some reason I can't access the backup file that's supposed to be there - the audible program itself... I was pretty frustrated for awhile.  PLUS having to deal the Microsoft and Apple and Audible and Adobe and the Geek Squad and Verizon... 

I think I'm pretty well set up now, so on with the rest of my life!  This was a pretty long post but I think if you got bored you're not reading this, LOL.  For the rest of you, enjoy your day, get that snow shoveled!  Sew forth and sew on til later...

Just a little bit

A little bit of snow...

now you see it, now you don't - what a difference an hour can make!

We got just a dusting in this area and the winds are blowing, blowing, blowing!  Virginia seems to be in worse shape because some of the schools are closed, I understand the road surfaces are the reason.

Just a bit of sewing...

to be sure yet again that I didn't want to go with light sashings, I laid some houses out on a piece of off-white fabric... I just don't like it!

I went ahead with the black sashings but I cut them down by 1/2 inch...

My sister Ruby would call it "majoring on the minor."  I'm going to finish this little top today after I run an errand, put it in the done pile!

The good news is I went to Costco yesterday and got a $45 refund on my printer - I didn't even have to take it in!  I just showed them the receipt and after a lot of fiddling - for some reason the computer kept rejecting the coupon code - I got my money refunded.

Does anybody remember way back in the last century when we didn't even have computers??  If you wanted a refund the clerk would bring out a bedraggled ledger book, look up your info, call over the manager to authorize it and refund your money? 

No cell phones, no social media, no apps, no iPads, no Facebook, no rotary cutters, no blogs - OMG what did we do without blogs!??

Sew forth and sew on...

S'no surprise...

that we got it!

They were calling for snow for today but I hoped they were wrong... but we did get some


view from my front porch, to the left... to the left...



to the right... to the right

I went to bed early last night and woke up around midnight when I heard car wheels spinning.  When I looked out and saw it had started snowing, I said "oh man!"  It's not really heavy but the icy patches are the tricky part. 

I had a pleasant surprise when I got up around 8:30 and looked out the front door, though...

someone had shoveled my steps and walkway, woot woot!!  I'm just seeing it now, but they took a couple half-hearted swipes at my windshield too!  I think it was my neighbor directly across the street, I'll have to thank him or give him a neighborly wave when I see him. 

Anyway, the tv news is saying how bad the icy patches are and we're in for freezing rain, event cancellations, yadda yadda yadda... so the executive board has cancelled our guild meeting today. 

It looks like a stay at home day for me - no worries!  I have plenty of cleaning, neatening and sewing I can do today, I hope yours is a good 'un!

Sew forth and sew on

Snow on top of us, get ready to dig out... or in

Four inches?  Six? Ten??  Well, it's anybody's guess because the weatherman sure doesn't know.  We got SNOW and at this posting it's still coming down, a far cry from our 40 degree weather Tuesday.

We had snow on the ground when I got up, that they said would turn into rain (but they forgot to put the word freezing in front of it)!  Because of the 4-10 inches expected to start by evening rush hour, around 11:30 OPM notified government agencies we were excused 2 hours before our normal time. Yeah, right. I left at noon.

At this posting, a lot of people are still trying to get home, some of them left work at around 3:30 in the afternoon.  Multiple accidents, running out of gas, buses and 18-wheelers stuck, sliding backwards on hills, the Beltway a parking lot...   It's a nightmare out there, I feel bad for those people!

I took these pictures from my carport at the back of my house around 8:30 pm.  The lighting in the alley makes it look like daytime.

The one below is at the front of my house, looking at the snow-covered cars. 

This all accumulated in the last 5 hours, I have no idea how many inches we got. They're saying it will all start to come to an end in the next hour, but that doesn't help the people still stranded out there, I hope they get home safely. 

Well, that's my rant; I told my team leader not to expect to see my face on Thursday, I'll be working from home.

Update 6:15 am:

Most people made it home last night but a lot were stranded on the roads for 12-15 hours.  The snow DID stop but because of the abandoned vehicles and accidents, it's hard for the snow plows to clear some areas.  Thousands are without power, mainly because of trees falling on power lines.  DC government is closed, lots of schools closed today, Federal government on a 2-hour delay with an unscheduled teleworking option. 

It's not that we can't handle snow, it's just that this one hit so hard and fast.  Right now the temp is in the 30's with highs going up to near 40.

Slippery Tuesday!

Three things to be happy about:
(1) a coffee jump start
(2) hot cinnamon coffee cake
(3) teleworking from home

Today is a slippery-slidey day for sure! 

We had sleet and freezing rain starting around 9 pm last night, so this morning's commute is impossible except for all but the lion-hearted. 

I have icy steps and a slippery sidewalk, not to mention the street!  They're saying the main roads are "just wet" but getting there is 90% of the problem because I have to negotiate the side streets... so I'll be teleworking today thank you very much.



This is NOT me in the video, but you see my point about icy roads.  This isn't intended to be "funny" though.

One decision made

Three things to be happy about:
(1) cheddar-pepper muffins
(2) your favorite old quilt
(3) drifting off to sleep

A few days ago I showed you my first quilt, this trip around the world.  I was debating how to finish it off but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it's not worth the effort of picking out the quilting and redoing it "properly".  Besides, I quilted it with invisible thread!

Since the backing was wide enough, I decided to trim away the excess batting, fold the backing to the front and top stitch it with a decorative stitch.  I believe that's all the loving care this little quilt needs.

I ended up with a handful of trimmings...

Since my UFO #3 was AWOL, I'll consider this one a substitute.  It won't take long at all to finish this off!

The snow we got was just enough to make the roadway slippery on some side streets.  Unfortunately I live on the shady side of my street, so the sun didn't have a chance to melt much of it in front of my house.  It would have been nice not to have to shovel!  I poked my head outside about a hour ago - windy and cold!  I pulled it back in, quickly.