It's been a very productive weekend. Yesterday Steve and I made our monthly sojourn to Winston to Total Wine and Fresh Market. Managed to spend a bunch, but it will get us through the month. Well, the meat, anyway.
I got my most recent fire quilt back on Friday and was thrilled to see that I still like it. I will have to think about where to enter it in the next year or so.
I am even more thrilled that I finished the coleus leaf yesteray. It was a bit wonky, so I threw a damp linen dish towel over it and pressed it and it took the waviness right out. It's more perpendicular than the Lily. So - here it is - what do you think?

Here is the whole piece on a black background. I haven't made the quilt backing for Jennifer to work her magic on yet. This took longer than the lily. Not sure why. Here is a closer up:



Got a lot of house cleaning, some birthday cards, and lots of laundry done. Wednesday, Sept. 2nd., is Steve's uncle's birthday. He will be 97 years old and still an incredibly alert and intelligent man. We get to visit him in 3 weeks when we make our New England trip.

I have to make a not-fun comment here. I have always liked WonderUnder as a fusible. I especially liked reusing the paper backing from it. I got a bad bunch back in the early spring and, after posting about it on Quiltart digest, I got the info to contact the company and complain. Michele was very nice and apologized and sent me an entire bolt of WU, along with their new paper-less WU, and some new thing that has a clear backing. Karen Fridy and I have had some problems again with the new bolts. It has to be a different product. The fusible webbing doesn't want to melt and stays quite stringy. At the same time, the backing is still peeling off in strips and small pieces. I am very unhappy and will let Pellon know. The fusible that has no paper backing is heavy and not a great find. I have been a little hesitant to use the new product, having had few reasons to use fusible at all this weekend. I will be contacting Pellon again. They really need a product control person to be checking this stuff.

that's all for now.

Okay - I'm not blogging very frequently, but I'm trying. Just too much going on. Gosh, it feels like I just bought that car last week.
But what was better last week was taking Sarah and fishing and....(DRUM ROLL) A NEW GRANDDAUGHTER!!! Iris Grace Williams arrived about 5 weeks early and we got to go up and see her. She is doing well, but at this time (born Sat. Aug. 8th and today is August 15th) she is still in the hospital. Ian and Laurie were hoping to take her home by the end of the week because she seemed to be doing quite well, but now it will be another couple of days. So here is the new baby beauty!

And my bonus son, Ian, with his beautiful daughter...

Last weekend we also took Sarah fishing. She had a blast, Keri had a blast, and even though he would never admit to "having a blast", so did Grampa. We went to Finch Park in Lexington, NC and this was taken by Keri and it looks so cool in black and white. You can just hear someone whistling the theme...

Sarah was so excited when she caught the first fish - it was very tiny, but the next one - a blue gill, was a keeper. She decided she caught it, but Grampa needed to get it off the hook. Keri had to walk back to the car for the bucket and after that, Sarah kept trying to feed the worms to the fish. (Guess he'd learned his lesson). But Grampa was explaining the high science of fishing to Sarah...and named her "Worm Girl" so she could bring him the worms. So we all became "Worm Mom", "Worm Grammy", and "Worm Grampa".


This is a photo of a really cool tree stump laying on the ground near the pond. I have not PhotoShopped it or done anything to it. I don't think it had been burned, but it was very cool. I will have to find a use for this, furshur!

Is that cool, or what?

I totally forgot to post this picture of my finished Dandelion Fuzz. I had threadpainted it months ago, but wasn't sure how I wanted to finish it off. So = I just did. I like the way it came out. It's a small piece - about 9" x 12"? I added beads for the "water droplets" and I like how they look.

I think you can see the beads on that, but just in case, here is a closeup.



This afternoon I had a visitor to my goldfish pond. It was really pretty funny because I collect frogs and have them posted around the pond. Some have been assimilated into the periwinkle around the stones, but some are very conspicuous. So - a real frog - the very first one - on a lily pad! He appears to be facing off against the big daddy frog I bought in Blowing Rock...


So today I worked on my next total threadpainting some more. Ran some errands. Bought some country cd's I'll give to Keri. And had fun. Tonight I made a new gelatin mold -(the one I made 2 weeks ago I screwed up - only put half the needed gelatin in), so I'm trying again. Tomorrow I will play with that again. After I give Bev a haircut... for those of you who don't know - Bev is my mother. Laugh-a-minute in-your-face-with-fun-Bev... Can't you just see it?