Wednesday already?

Wow, I can’t believe how quickly this week is going. Similar to other people, there’s been some internet problems at our house, so I’m posting at work without pictures (sorry).

Last weekend we enjoyed the balmy November weather. Walking around in a t-shirt and no coat was really wrong but it felt so good! We finished up our yard work including The Great Bonsai Experiment of 2006. There is a mulberry tree at our door which was a little out of control. It was big and blocked our path so everyone (except me – I’m 5 feet tall) had to walk on the grass to get around it. On Sunday, we chopped it off about 8 inches above the graft. The hope is that the branches will sprout from there and we will have a lovely short under control mulberry tree. If not, the hubby didn’t like it anyway so we’ll get something new. I’ll keep you posted.

Other than that, all my projects are carrying on. I’ve been English paper piecing and making hearts to swap. I may even start quilting this quilt – I have accumulated all the threads I needed. The goal was to have it done for some Christmas parties, but that’s 2 and a half weeks away. I’ve been hesitating when it came to quilting this, but my nerve is slowly building (very slowly). Maybe tonight…

Hearts and hexagons

Wowza! Two weeks just flew by. I know I let my blog slip when I’m busy, but I think this takes the cake. Although life has been getting in the way, I have been doing some crafting.

I swapped the two hearts I showed in the last post for these two amazing hearts. This one is from Lori in Connecticut,

and this heart is from Margreet in the Netherlands.

I really enjoyed both of these swaps and I can’t wait to finish some more hearts to swap (soon, very soon).

I also found out that I’ll be teaching a workshop for my local quilt guild. It’s going to be an English paper piecing class so I’ve been busy making samples. Since the class is going to be only 3 hours the project will be to make a coaster or a gift pouch (which will hopefully be finished in 3 hours). The inspiration came from two books: The Impatient Patchworker by Jayne Emerson, which has the coaster pattern I modified, and Kokoro No Te by Kumiko Sudo. Her book has all sorts of great gift bags you can make. I’ve adapted the coaster pattern so that you make a pouch, which could hold gift cards etc. (I’ve always hated just putting gift cards into a regular card).

I’ve been really intrigued by monochromatic projects and so I’ve been playing with this in my samples. Here’s a finished pouch.


And here are two more unfinished samples.

One I’ll make into a coaster and the other will be a different variation on the pouch (I’m still experimenting). I’m glad I started this early. There’s still a bunch of stuff I want to do for the class including writing instructions and finding books that have examples of English paper piecing – thank goodness the workshop is in February.

Go figure

I have a nice quiet Sunday morning to make an entry and the internet was down. Oh well, it was one less thing to deal with this weekend. I was quite impressed with myself. I was really impressed with myself. It was 10:00 in the morning and looking around there wasn’t much to do. What did I do with myself you might ask? I started my next block of the month and I put the finishing touches on my hearts, which are now ready for swapping.



The main reason why I was finishing all of my chores early was because I went to a benefit concert in the afternoon. There is a 250+ year old oak tree which has been slated to be cut down to expand a road in Oakville. Since the name of my fair town means “town of oaks”, the residents are trying to save the tree. The city has made a compromise where if $343 000 is raised, the road will be diverted around the tree. The performers at the concert were two locals, ohbijou from Toronto and Sarah Harmer (she’s quite famous in Canada). I hadn’t heard anything by ohbijou before but I really liked them. I like Sarah’s music but hearing her live was amazing. It was a really intimate concert with about 500 people there. The sound may have been a little funky partially because we were in a gym, and the sound guys were probably volunteers. To save a tree, it was a great concert and a really relaxing weekend.