Yes, we’re here in the new house near Heidelberg finally, and the move is “over,” sort of. I’ve been busting my butt plowing through the mountains of boxes, and trying to get organized in the new space. “Mountains” is not an exaggeration, by the way. I continue to be amazed at the amount of stuff we had packed into the other house since I’m filling this one up rather quickly as I unpack boxes and arrange furniture, and it’s 1,000 square feet bigger just in living space, with more storage and a garage in the bargain. Where the heck was all of this stuff before? I swear it multiplied in the truck on it’s way here or something!

I’ve also realized a few things during this whole process, such as:

I’m not as bad a housekeeper as I thought. This comes home to me (again) every time we move, because when I set my mind to it, I can clean a house and it will be spotless. When we leave a house to move to another, we kill ourselves cleaning it to within an inch of it’s life, and this last one was no exception. Unfortunately, the houses we move into are never as clean as the ones we leave, and this one followed suit. I’ve spent a good bit of time cleaning years old dirt, lime deposits, etc. out of this house since we arrived, and don’t even get me started on the state of the dishwasher. Suffice it to say that it was a perfect example of why we thoroughly rinse our dishes before they ever get near the dishwasher. Read the rest of this entry »

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I was digging around in my browser bookmarks the other day, and thinking how badly they need to be organized. I have hundreds (maybe thousands??) of bookmarks, some of which probably date back to the beginning of my serious Internet usage more than 10 years ago. I’ve been carting these bookmarks around from computer to computer, and from browser to browser for all these years. After all, if whatever it is was important enough to bookmark once, it must be important to save it, right? Well, maybe. Yes, I’m just as much of a packrat on the computer as I am in the rest of my cluttered life. Inside my Firefox Bookmarks folder, I even have folder of Internet Explorer Bookmarks from the time of my great sickness back when I thought IE was the only browser in existence. (Psst! Get Firefox!)

I’ve decided to plow through a few of these sites weekly with the intent to cull and organize, so that hopefully when I open my bookmarks folder, it doesn’t look like this—Eeeewww:

And guess what? I’m going to share a few with you every week as Monday’s Melange! This week, I’ll start with some (related to) quilting links, since that is my “thing,” but obviously not all of my bookmarks pertain to quilting, since I do have a life outside my studio (an unfortunate fact, sometimes!). As I’m sure that my readers have that kind of “life outside the quilting” thing going on too, I figure that there might be something of interest in the “non-quilting” bookmarks, even for quilters.

Without further ado, here is the Melange on this happy Monday:

San Francisco Stitch Company—Okay, this is not a bookmark from years ago, this is a very recent addition, like from just yesterday. Their machine embroidery designs are really beautiful and got my creativity totally spinning off the map, and the design packs are downloadable and reasonably priced, too. I found this machine embroidery design company via Irene at Sunimp. She’s made a beautiful quilt (top?) with some embroidered medallions from San Francisco Stitch Company. Love her blog, too!

Treadleart—Heh, I’m already seeing that this bookmark exercise will probably cost some $$ as I rediscover things I’d forgotten about! Treadleart is a fine example. They carry Shisha mirrors (the page includes a great explanation of the different types of mirrors), made popular in the quilting world by Ted Storm, as far as I know. Treadleart also has Tidy Totes which you can buy already made up in various fabrics, or they have the kits including the pattern and kit refills to make your own. I’ve always wanted one of these, but I’ve never run across the pattern anywhere, and maybe now I’ll just buy one ready-made. Lots of other cool stuff awaits at Treadleart, but my only complaint would be a lack of a shopping cart system for online shopping. I could put on my Web developer hat and fix that for them… Read the rest of this entry »

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(I purposely did not say “skin a cat” because we don’t skin cats here! And where the heck did that saying come from anyway?) I sent one of my creative works in progress into the wild yesterday, with everything needed to finish it included: pattern, cutting and piecing instructions, and necessary fabrics (except batting and backing, though I can donate those too when the time comes and not even miss them out of my stash!). Other members of the Black Forest Quilt Guild will finish the quilt, and the Guild will raffle the quilt at the Quilt Show next April. I had a quilt plan for this project at one point, and then when it came down to it, realized that I didn’t have enough of the print fabric to make that plan happen, so I had to call in reinforcements to redesign the thing yesterday, when it’s already partly done. Nothing like designing under pressure!

Hands All Around is a block that I just love, though I don’t think I’ve ever finished a quilt with the block in it, now that I think about it. Piecing-wise it’s a bit difficult; I would call it intermediate, but I’ve been told that’s putting it mildly. The curved seams in the middle have to be pinned every step of the way, and then there are bunches of three way, “Y” seams around the outside edge. I can deal with it and most of the time enjoy the precision sewing, but some folks (students in years past when I taught this block in quilting classes) think I created this block as a torture device just for them. Just for the record, I didn’t design the block, I just modified it to look a bit prettier, and at this late date I can’t remember where I saw it first. Read the rest of this entry »

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