Diantha!

Today is my daughter Diantha's birthday. She is 14, and suddenly tall, gorgeous, sophisticated, and entirely nonchalant. She has eclectic taste in clothing and quilting fabrics and good taste in books. She takes responsibility, helps out, pitches in, and goes overboard. She reads her Bible and does her school without being nagged, and she is witty AND funny. In short, a great kid, on her way to being a super adult.

But... when she was a baby, she cried and hollered if anyone would just even LOOK at her from across the room. I thought she would never stop fussing, never stop clinging, I would never be able to put her down, she would never wean. She was a beautiful baby, with a beautifully shaped head... and all her life it hasn't mattered what weird thing we have done to her hair, it has always looked great. But was she a whiner!!! Desiree, my oldest daughter, said that it was God's way of reminding us that Nobody's Perfect... cause if she didn't whine, she would be perfect. LoL!

Not like we didn't love her through it. And I guess she is a life-lesson in perseverance... Because by now, we are sure glad to have her.

Here is another pic from babyhood... wearing very special glasses. One of her waiting in the doorway of the bathroom at Frozen Head State Park, to go out and be in Desiree's wedding. And one from a haircut of a foot, on Mother's Day a few years ago.

Today we made cupcakes for her to take to share with the girls in her small group at church youth group. We used a from-scratch recipe that I usually use for dark chocolate cake, but left out the secret dark chocolate ingredients, added in a little milk, and made white cupcakes. Diantha did it with a little instuction from mom.

Besides that, all I got accomplished today was to make some awesome Corned Beef soup and a huge loaf of homemade wheat herb bread. Oh, and I knitted a few rows on my new project, paid about you don't even want to know how much money in bills, spent $47 on Etsy, which is probably my allowance for a month, and shopped for groceries with 4 of the kids and dear hubby in tow. Not to mention I have been in almost constant pain for week now with these stones. Geez no wonder I am exhausted.

I have another pic above here to show you. Yesterday someone who shall remain nameless took a pic of mom at the firing range. Here I am with the Lorcin .380 squeezing off a few. I was also doing one-handed practice, and it turns out I am a better shot with one hand than with two. Go figure. My arms aren't really that big... it is the perspective of the picture. LoL. But you can see the purple shades in my hair, so that's fun.


One last little tidbit. A night-time snack, if you will. Last night we made Orange Nutmeg Sugar Cookies (I like Lemon Nutmeg but didn't have any lemon oil and I did have orange, LoL) with green sprinkles on them for St. Patrick's Day. We made a probably about 6 dozen at least. This morning these are all that were left. Yes, folks, I really am feeding an army of locusts.

I've Become The Horrible Quilter

Well, I did it. It's official. I have become The Horrible Quilter.

I was in this challenge swap, where each participant had to submit 2 colors they loved and one color they hated... choose a season that is their favorite, and a style of quilt they DISliked most (art, traditional, applique, etc). Then each person in the swap was assigned another (secret) person and notified of their choices above. We were to make a mini quilt (max. 24'"x 24" square) in ONE of their two favorite color choices and with a theme of their favorite season, and within a type of quilt category that wasn't what they didn't like. In other words, if the person I was assigned to loved green and winter and hated applique quilts, I could make a mini quilt in shades of green with a winter theme in any type of quilt besides applique. We had to mail the quilt off to this secret person NOT BEFORE Feb. 22 and not later than March 30.

So I got right busy and made a wonderful quilt in traditional blocks in a Fall theme in the base color Orange (or variations thereof, like brown being the darkest orange and pale yellow-orange being the lightest). I posted pics of the components on my blog before. I made a Tree of Life center, with setting corners of light oranges on top and earthy oranges at the bottom (like sunrise and dirt, LoL) in strip-pieces, and a bunch of Flying Geese to go up the left side and down the right. I finished all these components by about the first of February.

Since it was too early to mail, I put the quilt top away. And lost it.

Des tells me last week that it had to be mailed by Saturday. PANIC. I cleaned house, cleaned out stash drawers, pawed through piles of fabric and boxes of yarn and fiber (just in case). Never found it. So yesterday when everyone was here for Diantha's birthday party, Des helped me cut out squares for a Split 9 Patch. You make 9-patches and cut them in 1/4ths and reassemble them. I put the quilt together last night and quilted it this morning, with variegated thread. From the back, you can actually see the quilting pattern... which is Leaf shapes in the large dark areas, little football shapes in the small dark areas, and kind of wiggly pinwheels where 4 light strips meet. Not so bad!

From the front, it looks like a drunk put this together and quilted it with a treadle machine in the back of a dark alley. Gotta be the worst quilt I have ever made. I mailed it anyway. When I got in the computer to get the lady's address, I noticed that the mail date isn't til March 30. By then I could have found the original quilt top, or made something better. But I mailed it anyway. Now I am The Horrible Quilter. Wish I hadn't been required to sign my name.

On a little happier note, I got a main Treasury last night, actually obscenely early this morning, called Absinthe Makes the Heart Grow... fonder.Or is it more forgetful? which is doing pretty well in the FP race. To your left you will see a screen shot. Since I took this screen shot, I moved a couple alternates in, just for fun.

Mid-morning today, from my other shop, I got a Treasury West in honor of Diantha. It will expire on Wed., which is her 14th birthday. She loves orange and purple and avant-garde type items, and her name means "Flower of God," which is what I named this treasury. Here on the right is a screen-shot of it.

I didn't do a quilt block-a-day today, since sandwiching and quilting badly and binding and washing an entire quilt, even if it was only 24" x 24", was all I could take.

I did start a knitting project today, which I thought was going to be a set of fingerless mitts. As I cast it on, it decided to be something entirely different. I mean WAY off the different scale. Then when I got 4 rows knitted, I decided that it should be made differently than how I was going about it. Since I am not working with a pattern, and since I am already giving in a little to the insouciance of the yarn not wanting to be what I wanted it to be, I can be a Domiknitrix and make this yarn behave. (by the way, that's a great, if offbeat, knitting book. Click on it and you can get it at half.com for 3 bucks!)

Right after I rip out these 4 rows. Here is a sneak peek. And that is all you get (LoL).