Monday
May 12th
2008

Feasting and Festing for Mother’s Day

Our sleepy little town of 5,000 woke up and partied all weekend, and continues to party today since it’s Whit Monday here in Germany. We’ve discovered that there are advantages and disadvantages to living three blocks from the local castle.

The great part is that we’re able to walk to the fests that take place on the castle grounds, like the Angelbachtaler Pfingstmarkt that’s been going on all weekend. We were treated to fireworks on Saturday night, and we didn’t even have to leave the house for a great view! It was really the best view of fireworks we’ve had in years.

(Note: I didn’t take these pics. They came from the brochure for the fest, since the pics I tried to take of the fireworks didn’t turn out well, and an aerial view of the castle is quite beyond my capacity…I also forgot to take my camera when we wandered over to the fest for lunch on Sunday, my bad. I do tend to be quite lame when it comes to pictures…the brochure is great though, even if you can’t read German, since there are lots of pictures of the fest and the goings on.)

After ITMan fixed waffles for breakfast for Mother’s day, we all went to the fest for lunch. The girls promptly disappeared to ride the ferris wheel, and we headed for the food tents. The local associations and clubs provide food and drink for the fest, and we discovered that the tennis club makes very good Schupfnudel mit Sauerkraut (my favorite fest food: potato noodles with sauerkraut and bacon or sausage bits, or both which is even better), and some yummy cakes and tarts as well.

We passed on the nighttime festivities at the castle, which included a music and laser light show, not being so in the mood for crowds and figuring we could always catch it next year. It would have been a pretty late night for all of us, since Monday wasn’t a day off for Americans of course, but we probably should have just gone anyway since as it was, we heard the whole thing loud and clear, which would be one of those disadvantages to living so close! The other downside would be the traffic: it seemed like every single fest-going car full of people parked on the streets in our neighborhood, or tried to at least. It was quite the full house.

The girls are headed back over there today for lunch, since they fell in love with the pizza they had on Sunday. Maybe I’ll have them bring back some more Schupfnudel mit Sauerkraut for me!

And yet more Inchies!

I did get these done a couple of days ago, but I’ve been overcome by “non-quilting-stuff” since then so too busy to share. Maybe I should turn that “non-quilting-stuff” into a formal acronym, since it seems to interfere in my quilting life waaaayy to often to really suit. “Non-Quilting-Stuff,” I hereby dub thee NQS for short.

Anyway, here are the last two sets of twelve Inchies that all came from the same fabric (click for bigger pics, but in the pics below, they are close to life size, at 1″ square):

And here are the other two sets that you’ve already seen, just so you can see, all on one page, how different they are even though they’re all from the same original piece of fabric:

I did have six more Inchies from the same fabric chunk, but I decided that I didn’t really like them after all (they were kinda boring) and I was tired of working with that particular fabric. Also, I really need to experiment with some other materials, as the Timtex I used for the innards of the Inchies is really too hard to hand sew through to attach the beads. I was going to toss them in the trash, but ITMan stopped me, believe it or not!

I have some ideas for alternative materials, and I have a tiny sample chunk of Fast2Fuse that I got at the Houston Quilt Show the year it came out (that was 2004, the year of the books about Fabric Bowls and Boxes) that I’m going to try shortly, maybe tonight after dinner. See, this is why I keep these things! This little bitty sample is coming in handy now, isn’t it?

I’m completely hooked. My family thinks I’m nuts, but it’s certainly not the first time, and probably won’t be the last. I’ve picked out the fabric and all the beads and embellishments for the next (small) set with the Fast2Fuse sample, and I’m movin’ out! Then I have to hit the LQS for some other materials for the innards that I want to experiment with…and maybe some more beads, threads and embellishments while I’m at it. I’m in love with my quilting again!

Edit: Here’s a pic of the original fabric that all the Inchies came from (click to see it bigger):

More Inchies!!!

Note: Today’s Monday’s Melange post has been preempted by Inchies. Sorry, but I wanted to spend time making Inchies, not looking through bookmarks!

Inchies: It’s what’s for dinner! That’s what I told my family when they asked what was on the meal plan today. Okay, not really, but I wanted to! Here’s another set of Inchies that I’ve finished (click the pic to see them bigger):

My mind is workin’ overtime thinking of a way to use these in a bigger project, and I’m starting to get scared. That’s what usually happens when my mind works overtime; I have this sudden overload of creativity, and then I get involved in too many things and there aren’t enough hours in the day. But these Inchies are soooo fun, I just might have to throw caution out the window and go with the gut. The gut says “make more, more more!”

I sent a link to the first post about Inchies to my mom, along with some other ideas I have for projects that require LOTS of Inchies, and this was her response: