Saturday, January 19, 2013

Time Travel

I was preparing my Sunday School lesson for tomorrow. I teach the five-year-olds in Primary. That’s our name for Junior Sunday School. I have eight kiddos in my class. The class name is Choose The Right or CTR.
 
Since it is the beginning of the year and the start of a new class, I was making a prayer chart. Boy my kiddos love to say the prayer! I always have several hands up to say opening or closing prayer.

 They want to say both prayers in one day, they say they haven’t prayed in a while… Wouldn’t it be great if adults were that eager to pray?

It’s exciting this year because almost all of my kids can say the prayer themselves. It oftentimes is funny, or strange, or just very sincere.

The chart is my way of keeping track of who has said a prayer so everyone gets to have a chance to say an opening and a closing prayer before we start the whole process over.

I decided I wanted to have the CTR class shield at the top of the chart. I copied the one from the lesson book and set out to color it. 

I looked in my office cupboard. It is an old metal cabinet that I found in the closet of my Aunt & Uncle’s home. I love it dearly.


I was looking for my new crayons, the 64 box, but couldn’t find them. I’ve obviously taken them to use with my school or Primary students. I do have, however, a wonderful, vintage box of crayons. These are the ones that I colored with as a child. I mean real child. Starting at 2-years-old and on until I didn’t color anymore. My aunt kept them in the cabinet under their TV. That is where she kept the games, coloring books, and crayons for the nieces and nephews to play with.


Marie's coloring book
One of Marie's coloring books
When my Aunt and Uncle died, I inherited everything in their house. Maybe later I can tell you about that and what fantastic and kind people they were.

I love coloring with crayons. Nowadays children tend to color with markers. I don’t like the way you can’t shade the colors and every stroke of the pen shows up. 

If you stay with me on the blog for very long you’re going to find out that, although I’m fairly young in middle age, my “older generation” personality is growing every day!

Back to the crayons. They are lovely. Burnished with time. Can crayons be burnished with time? I guess so, because these are.

I finished coloring it and enjoyed every sensation of it. The smell of the crayons, the feel of the waxy stick, the sight of the old, age-darkened paper and the “old” names of the colors.
Now it’s time to go back to my prayer chart. I still have the rest of the lesson to prepare after that.





Wives and Lovers

Here it is Saturday afternoon. I slept in till 8:30--blessed. Got up and immediately went to my quilting room. I have been here for seven hours, except for a little intermission for breakfast.

Just a few minutes ago I went into the bathroom and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Yikes! I was still in my "pajamas"; well actually I didn't need a mirror to tell me that. My "pajamas", because I haven't done the laundry for about five days are a grey turtleneck and flowered bottoms of stretch material. It's a lovely ensemble--and no there are no pictures here. I get very cold at night and my flannel pj bottoms and long sleeved tees were waiting in the laundry basket. That's how I came up with this fabulous outfit.

Then there was my hair. Eeek! My bangs were sticking up in four different directions and the rest was just unruly. My husband was in the hallway and I said, "Wow, you've had to look at me like this!" He quipped, "Well I haven't turned to stone yet!" Smart aleck.

As I was coercing my hair back into some semblance of order, I started thinking about the song, "Wives and Lovers." When I was eight or nine, our family lived in Northern California in a rural resort area. My Mom had several Andy Williams albums, one of which "Canadian Sunset." The song Wives and Lovers was on it. I cannot tell you how many, many times I listened to, sang with and danced to that song.

Me, at eight years old


Here I am, brushing my hair and I start giggling as I remember the lyrics. Saying they are slightly outdated would be ridiculously dishonest. I've found the song on YouTube just so you could hear Andy Williams dreamy voice and have some giggles yourself about the lyrics!


By the way...I'm dressed now!

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Time for a Check-In

I just read in Judy's blog that we're half-way through January. Not that I didn't know the date...it's my only sister's birthday. But thinking of it as half-way was a bit scary!

1958: Left: Jan, 5 yrs old, Right: Me, 3 years old


 So in the interest of where do I stand in the race to finish all my Get It Done items, here is an update:

1. Spiderweb top finished and sandwiched: I'm still working on finishing the top---arrrghhh! I looked at the border that Bonnie Hunter has on Quiltville, which is where I got in trouble. I liked her piano key middle border so much that I just had to do it on mine! As I shared before, I've made all the keys and currently am sewing them together.

2. Bricks & Stepping Stones top finished and sandwiched: Nada



3. Finish Square in a Square:  Nada, but I have thought about it!



4. Start DWR: uhmmm, errrrr, moving right along to the next thing.


In my defense, I finally got to quilt a couple of hours last night. Before that I hadn't quilted since Saturday. I need to speed up...a lot! I won't be able to quilt tonight, but for a great reason. I'm taking  The good news is I'm taking Bright Sprite, my oldest daughter, and my grandson, Firstest, to see the Harlem Globetrotters! Lovely fun!

This weekend is a three-day weekend so that gives me a glorious amount of time to quilt!

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Stash Report

I've been joining Judy L at Patchwork Times in her Stash Count for 2013. Actually I'm also doing "Get Her Done" and this weekend I participated in her first "Quiltathon" of 2013. Judy sure is a fun lady and her blog is a treat to read.

Without further ado, here is my 2013 Stash Count Week 2.
Used this week: 1.5 yards
Used YTD:  2.75 yards
Added this week: big fat 0
Added YTD: big fat 0

I'm not using a whole lot of fabric, but I'm in that stage where I'm finishing up some quilts. Just wait until I get to the backing!!! YeeHah!

Soooo, where did that hefty 1. 5 yards go?

Looky here:


This is my Spiderweb quilt that is on my Get It Done for January. What you see above is the completed, sewn together, waiting for borders Spiderweb blocks! Hurray for me!

I spent my Quiltathon, which was only Friday evening and all day Saturday making the "piano keys" border. I don't know what their real name is...but it is an adapted form of piano keys. It will be the middle border on the quilt.

First you cut 2 . 5 x 4 . 5 blocks from scraps; I had about half already in my stash. On to the neutral blocks, in cream white, for Step 2. I only had a few in my stash since they had to be cream and also no print of other colors. It took FOREVER to cut those out.

In the meantime I whined to my hubby about how much faster it would be if I had an Accu-Quilt Go. I spent a few hours cutting and sub-cutting. In all honesty I cut way too much. Arggghhh. But 130 sounded like soooo many! With the Accu-Quilt dream, I thought it would take only 30 minutes! But you know how that probably turns out. The Accu-Quilt is #5 on my list of quilty things to buy from my pin money.

Onto step #3...sew cream squares to rectangles. I especially love that pink and turquoise plaid! Yummy!


Times ticking and it's step #4. Sewing them in pairs...


chaining style!


I want you to know I'm being very brave here, or is that foolish, showing you that I still have my Christmas tree up on January 12th? I am going to take it down this week! Of course, I said that last week (I'm an inveterate truth-teller--meaning I don't know when to stop babbling!) then school started and it was so busy and I didn't sleep well, and oh, you know...

From here on it's sewing pairs to pairs, etc. etc. etc. and they're all pinned now. I did that during the SF 49ers game! They won!

This week: getting that border finished and sewing on all three. It'd be nice to accomplish more, but it's nice to stay in reality once in a while.
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