Catchy Name Needed

As you go back in time with these, I talk more and more about my mom, and "my mom's stuff" comes up a lot. If you don't know the history, she had died early in 2007, and I spent most of that year, off and on, cleaning out her townhouse. So that's why that looms so large here - "mom's stuff" has its own tag, isn't that sad?

Literary Friday five

Feb 1, 2008

1. Do you subscribe to quilt magazines (get them in your mail box monthly)? Definitely - they're much cheaper that way!

2. What is your favorite and why? It used to be QNM but they went downhill for a while. (And I haven't read one lately so I don't know if they've recovered.) I like Quilting Arts a lot for the artsy end of things. I'm not sure which one on the traditional side is my favorite these days - I like several of them.

3. Do you save all your magazines? No, I used to but they took up too much space. Nowadays I scan the stuff I'm interested in keeping.

4. Would you be interested in a magazine swap? I never thought about it, but maybe! How much does it cost to mail a magazine?

5. How many magazines to you purchase during a month (not including subscriptions)? Lately I've been buying a couple a month.

Oh, I haven't thought to pass this along: if you have a Sam's Club in your area, they have had quilting magazines mixed in with the rest of their magazines lately, and they're discounted quite a bit. So if you're too cheap to buy many at full price, like me, that's a way to get more of them without subscribing. And also, Amazon's 4-for-3 deal (basically, buy 3, get one free) is on single issues of magazines as well as paperbacks, and they also have quilt and craft magazines in their selection.

Embellished Friday five

(this one was already here on my LJ, which was what got me looking for the rest of them in the first place, so I won't copy-and-paste. The link should work.)

Chilly Friday five

Jan 18, 2008

1. What colors do you think of when I say "winter"? blue and white and silver, and combinations thereof (the icon notwithstanding)

2. What is your favorite winter bird? Um, I would say cardinals but we don't actually get them around here that I've seen. I live in a weird place. Sometimes in the winter I see white pelicans!

3. Have you ever done a "winter" specific quilt/project? No, but one of these days I want to. Something with a snowflake theme - although I really have no idea what!

4. Do you get snow where you live? Not usually. There was a legendary snowfall here on Christmas Eve 2004, but I was in Austin at the time and it didn't snow there!

5. Do you sew/quilt more during this time of year? Well, I've been sewing the last few days and I hadn't been before that, so I guess this year the answer is yes. Typically, I don't think so, though.

Friday five, miscellaneous edition

Jan 11, 2008

1. What quilty web site will you hit today? I'm trying not to buy stuff unless I really need it, so I guess the one I'm most likely to hit is my own: Quilts Galore

2. Have you done the FabShop Hop recently? I start it but I never seem to finish - however, as it happens, I was just griping about it yesterday - that's over here too (at the bottom of that entry). (I should, however, add that the not-finishing is a recent development and I have finished several times before and won things a couple of times!)

3. Do you have current project on your design wall (can you show us a picture)? This picture was taken maybe a year ago, at my mom's house - however, those same 9 blocks are up on the new design wall, with some space between them because my intention is to start cutting sashing. (The sashing is going to be cranberry-colored.)



4. Have you signed up for any swaps for 2008? No, I have sworn not to do any more swaps until I do something with the swap blocks I already have! (Like the ones above.)

5. Are your December decorations still up? Part of them, yes, but I'm working on that. I had two (small) trees up - one is down and one is still up but I've started taking the decorations off. By my standards that's doing pretty well!

Slightly-belated Friday five

Dec 8, 2007

1. Do you decorate you home with quilts? Theoretically, yes. Actually, so far, no. We haven't put anything on the walls since we moved. We intend to eventually, though. I had one quilt on the wall in the old apartment, and I also brought several home that my mother had on her walls, especially this one:


I'm thinking it goes over the dining table. I have some blue & white plates that might look good with it, too.

2. Do you make wall quilts for holidays decorations? I haven't so far, in 10 years of quilting. I have some more Christmas quilts in the planning stages, but up to now I've made exactly one Christmas quilt, and it was a lap quilt.

3. Eggnog or Hot Cocoa I don't like eggnog, so I guess cocoa wins by default. I'd rather have wassail, though!

4. Do you own any green/red notions? Except for pincushions, I don't think so.

5. Picture time - share an image of how you celebrate December (it can be anything)
How about nutcrackers?

(These were also my mom's, but are now on my china cabinet.)

Holiday Friday five

Nov 30, 2007

1. Do you have a holiday stash? Yes, a rather large one.

2. Do you use quilty related holiday items (cards, gifts, etc.)? Sometimes, if I think they're particularly cute. I don't use quilt stuff just for the sake of using it, though. (That said, my aunt is probably going to get something Jim Shore for Christmas!)

3. Do you have a wish list that you share with family and friends? Not usually on paper, but I do let my husband know what I have in mind.

4. Are you done with your holiday sewing/quilting? All I have is one thing to do (a binding), and no, I haven't done it yet.

5. Red/Green/Gold or Blue/White/Silver? I guess I'd go with blue/white/silver, but I like both.

Even though it's been 80 degrees here in the afternoons, part of me seems to think it's fall - at least, I went and took the bright colored batik quilt (which is my mom's handiwork) - and the purple-dotted sheets I bought to go with it - off of the bed last night, and put on the one I consider my winter quilt and slightly more subdued sheets instead. Although then it occurred to me that I also have Mom's big Christmas quilt, so I guess I will have to switch to it soon. Or just add it on top, if it ever actually gets cold. I had better use it, one way or the other, because I went through a little mini-drama to get to keep it. I had told a certain extended family-member that she could have some quilts, and she tried to take that one with her and I said "Oh no, I was intending to keep that one," and removed it bodily from her pile. I felt sort of bad but I was perfectly entitled to do it, and I would be kicking myself now if I hadn't.

We got the easy part of the unpacking done pretty fast - the dishes and books and things like that that had obvious places to put them. Now we're down to the hard part. I think I probably need a filing cabinet for all the papers - between estate stuff and our own finances, there's a lot of stuff I'm going to want to keep for the near future, at least. And I need to get back to all that scanning and shredding I was doing before the move. We still really have papers out the wazoo. The sewing room is a mess, too, because on top of all the sewing stuff I have all of those quilts - some of mine, some of Mom's, and some that came from my grandmother's house that I don't even know who made them! (Although I'm pretty sure it wasn't my grandmother.) And clothes. Jesus, I have a lot of clothes. I hung stuff up in the half of the closet that doesn't have quilt stuff in it, and filled up all the storage things I bought for clothes (several of them) and I still have clothes overflowing. And I already threw away/donated a whole bunch of stuff! Who knew I had so many clothes?


Oh, so that was the Catacombs of Kathandrax I was babbling about at the bottom of my entry last night - not that anybody but Col cares, and he probably knew what I meant, anyway. I shouldn't post when I am sleepy, I either go off on some incoherent rant or just plain babble incoherently! Anyway, it's a GWEN dungeon with three levels and it was pretty difficult. We had six people from my guild and two monk heroes - and later five real people, because one player was in Europe and I guess he didn't realize it was going to take so long! It took... well, I'm not sure because I don't know what time we started. Two and a half hours, maybe. (They almost went off without me in the beginning. Apparently nobody was paying attention when I said "brb"!)

It is supposed to actually get cold(ish) sometime tonight. Rob said it wasn't here yet when he went for his walk an hour or so ago.

So. I went and signed up for NaBloPoMo, even though I did rather badly at it last year. Of course last year was not in any way a normal year, and November was particularly bad, because that was when it became painfully obvious that my mother was actually dying. Under the circumstances, I'm not terribly inclined to beat myself up about whether I posted enough that month. And we will just see how this goes. I'll be surprised if I actually post every day, but stranger things have happened!

We are mostly occupied this week with unpacking, getting the new computer set up, and getting the last stuff out of the old apartment. We have until Sunday to be out, technically, but one of the assistant managers called me earlier to ask if we were done or not. I don't know if she had forgotten she gave us until the 4th or what, but I told her they were welcome to come in and start working on whatever they needed to work on, but that we were still working on getting the last few things out. That mainly means this:



We have been trying in a half-hearted way to sell it but have had no takers. I don't guess it's really in line with current furniture trends or anything, but it's in pretty good shape for its age, if you have room for such a thing. (We don't, really, which is why we're trying to get rid of it.) I think my parents bought it the year I was born - i.e., 1960 - and it was in my bedroom for my entire childhood. My mother had it in her apartment after the divorce and it eventually made its way back to me. Part of me hates to get rid of it, but the fact is, it's a clutter magnet, as well as being incredibly bulky. So I called the Salvation Army and they're going to come get it on Monday. (We called the apartment management back - with a bit of trepidation - to see if they'd have a problem with us technically missing the Sunday deadline to be completely out, but apparently not. They didn't say anything about it, anyway.)


In other news, I really, really need to find Microsoft Money, and get the data from the last backup and get caught up on my finances. We have a big cushion to work with right now, of course, or we would have really been screwed. For years we lived paycheck to paycheck and I had to constantly know what our bank balance was to keep from overdrawing the account. Now that it's not so crucial I have gotten very bad about getting behind on keeping up with it. (So far my copy of MS Money has not turned up, though, and we have relatively few completely unopened boxes now. I am going to have to do some sleuthing tonight, I guess!)

Added: it took me about 5 minutes to find my copy of Money. The next sticking point: I don't know my own passwords. I have a list but it's at work!

I've been meaning to post this for two days.

Before:


After:


The "after" picture was taken on Tuesday, but I can't say it's really improved substantially since then. We haven't had time to work on it a whole lot.

Rather uninformative pictures of the new apartment here. ('Cause there's really not that much to look at right now. Didn't stop me from taking and posting them, though!)

I told Col I was going to just quit saying I was tired, for the duration. Just take it has a given for the next couple of days. Actually I seem to have had an adrenaline rush tonight, anyway, and I am less tired than I would have thought, really.

It's 3:30, and I haven't packed a thing since I got off work at noon, but I have been to Wal-Mart, and signed papers, and been to the new apartment, and have just now had a late lunch. I am exhausted. I may have to play GuildWars for a bit to recover, although I'm not sure I even have the energy for that. (Boy, I am tired.)

I called this morning to see if we would be able to get into the apartment today, and the assistant manager who answered the phone sounded really blank, and I panicked. I thought, "Oh god, they forgot. We're not going to be able to get in until next week. We're gonna have to reschedule the movers..." But no, it was just that she wasn't sure whether the apartment was 100% ready to turn over to us. There was some minor thing with the carpet and the painters, apparently, but everything looks fine to me. The carpet is brand-new, which is nice. And it turns out that even though the kitchen looks identical to our old one at first glance, it's actually slightly bigger and has more cabinets and one more silverware drawer, which is nice. And it has an icemaker, which the old one didn't. (Not that I can't live without an icemaker, of course, but still.)

I bought a bunch of crap at Wal-mart, all of which has escaped me now. I went to look at lamps, in the first place, because we have one that we bought there last spring that I liked, but they didn't have the right shade to match the one we already have. I bought a couple of new ice trays which we now don't need.  I bought a couple of fall-themed guest towels, just for the heck of it, and some fluorescent light bulbs, and a trivet, and some hooks. Useful things. I haven't been going to Wal-Mart at all lately - we have been buying groceries at Kroger's, and I had made a couple of expeditions to Target in the last week for other moving supplies - and our Wal-Mart has been in the throes of a badly-needed remodeling, and I had trouble finding things. But it does look better, I have to admit, now that the remodeling is largely done.

I am fighting the urge to go take more things over to the new place, and think about how we're going to arrange things. Oh, since we're on the first floor, the balcony has a wooden fence around it, essentially, and it's huge. It was getting some sun, which means maybe my plants will stay alive after all, if I can just remember to water them. And the fence means we can be messy out there without getting called out by the neatness police. (Actually, I'm not sure that's a good thing. I need somebody to keep me in line, after all.)