I feel so doubly honored this morning.  Sandi A at A Legacy of Stitches sent me an e-mail this morning informing me that I am one of her five picks for a Kreativ Blogger award!  Thank you, Sandi!  As Sandi mentioned on her blog this morning, our paths have crossed several times before, so she is one of the few bloggers I “know” that I have met in person.   She is a delightfully creative lady, and she is as generous a person as you will find anywhere!  And be sure and check out her blog.  It’s fun to read about small-town living in the picturesque town of Henderson, MN, as Sandi has a way with words and includes lots of great photos.

And as if that isn’t enough, Sandi also named me as her Blog Pick of the Week!  Oh, my gosh, I’m waiting for Bert Parks to step out of the closet with my tiara!

Thanks again, Sandi, for the honors.  They mean even more, coming from such a special lady!

Sue

Actually, my whole life is a work in progress, but here are some quilty things that are getting my attention lately.  Judy Laquidara’s latest Quilt for an Hour (QFAH) is a star quilt with an interestingly shaded background called Shine on Bayou Cane.  It will really make the stars *pop*.  The idea is that you get her instructions for each day, it should only take about an hour (unless you’re slow like me), and then you post your progress, hopefully each day so you stay caught up!  So for Monday and Tuesday of this week, here are my 120 half-square triangle-blocks, composed of my two background fabrics.  I also included in the photo 32 fat eighths in Civil War reproduction prints that I had squirreled away for a rainy day (and it IS raining today).  If need be, I will break into my fat quarter collection of Civil War fabrics.  And my colors photographed pretty accurately, for a change.

Another fun project is Judy Laquidara’s Star BOM.  We are up to Block #5!  Here is block 5, along with a photo of blocks 1-5.  These will finish at 12″ each, so they are good-sized blocks.  The Star BOM is another example of Judy taking familiar blocks and shaking things up by making the background, the borders, and the settings more interesting.  She also seems to favor nearly solid fabrics.  I’ve always been drawn to prints with maybe a couple of nearly solids, so this has been a new direction for me, and I’m enjoying it!

Here are a couple of table runners that are awaiting binding.  The one on the left is an Anka’s Treasures pinwheel pattern included in the pattern Little Charmers III, designed to use charm packs.  (Eileen, I think you were looking for the name of that pattern?)  And the one on the right is from a Terry Atkinson book, Lessons from Mama.  (Although I’ve never met Terry, I know she’s a local pattern designer.  Her patterns are always easy to follow.)  For a fall theme, I used an Indian corn fabric for the center of the stripe, which you can see better if you click on the photo for an enlarged view (you might even be able to click twice to enlarge it twice).

While I had a neutral backing fabric on the longarm, I floated the two table runners plus this sweet Mary Engelbreit panel.  (Mary also needs a hanging sleeve and binding.)  Panels are such a great “cheat”.  I have a place by the front door for panels of this size, and I would like to be able to change them out at least once a month, so I have a few to go.  It’s fun to look for them for different seasons/holidays/moods.

So that’s it for now! 

Sue

Okay, we really aren’t that cold in Minnesota (yet), but the nights have definitely turned chilly.  Last night I put an extra quilt on the bed.  Normally I love the coolness of the sheets as I slide into bed, but last night it was just too darned cold!  Ahh, the joys of being a quilter.  Another layer on the bed was no problem. 

This is one of my favorite photos out my kitchen window (where the hummingbird was, a few posts back).  We see all sorts of birds in this crab tree, but not this snowy/icy day late in December 2006.  Which leads me to the real subject of this post.  We don’t stay in Minnesota for the entire winter.  It’s a wonderfully diverse state, with fun, caring people, great art and cultural events.  It just gets too cold.  And now that we don’t have “regular day jobs”, we can do something about it.  We will eventually pack a bag and spend a little time in Texas.

We didn’t ever plan that Texas would be our winter getaway, but our first retired winter we spent some time in Port Aransas on Mustang Island (close to Corpus Christi).  Even though DH and I have been City Folks our entire adult lives, we both started out on farms, nowhere even close to a city.  Small-town farm kids.  And Port Aransas has a homey, small-town feel to it — at least in the winter when there are mostly Northerners in all those condos.  (Spring break is another story.)  I have a sewing machine I leave down there, along with all the other necessary sewing items, but what I really love to do in Texas is bird watch.  Me, a bird watcher?  I was surprised too!  It turns out that the coast of Texas, and particularly the barrier islands, is a major migratory path for all kinds of birds.  Some of my favorite pictures:  (okay, all my pictures are my “favorites”; if they weren’t, they would be deleted by now)

Forster’s Terns.  Aren’t they funny?  But they make such a cute couple. 

I love this guy.  He’s a Cinnamon Teal.  And there’s no question about how he got his name, although he also looks like the rich red-brown of cocoa powder, the expensive kind.

This pair of Northern Shovelers was doing some kind of a dance (probably of the mating variety).  Very graceful looking, don’t you think? 

And of all my favorite pictures, this is one of my favorite-est!  A pair of Black-Bellied Whistling Ducks.  I love their pink legs.  I must have taken 50 pictures of this pair, and they posed and posed for me.  Some day I will do a photo album of just the whistling ducks.

There is a frost advisory out tonight for part of northern Minnesota.  Our forecast low for tonight is 37 degrees, with a high of 59 predicted for tomorrow.  We are definitely in October, and this shift in weather has made me start looking forward to our migration south, just like our feathered friends.  We Midwesterners will be traveling south, mostly in pairs, and we’ll try to not leave a mess along the way like these birds do!

–Sue

(By the way, they don’t call us Snowbirds in Texas; we’re Winter Texans.)