This is my April 2004 journal quilt. My notes: How can I make 3-dimensional fabric shapes that I can sculpt and manipulate? What if I couched beading wire around the edges of an applique piece? The iris I planted 2 years ago are going to bloom this spring. 

Nikki's friend

I'm not sure these apple cinnamon flavored ones work as well as the wretched-tasting originals, but either way, Fisherman's Friend are the best for soothing the nasty raw itchy scratchy throat I've got going on today. All that screaming and yelling I did at the football game a week ago not only didn't help my Huskies in their quest to beat the icky cross-state rival Cougars, it also softened up my throat for a lovely virus. I spent Thursday and Friday sitting on my butt at my in-law's house and yesterday and today doing the same thing here at home. I've got a pretty weak croak for a voice...I couldn't even raise my voice to yell at the tv when the Seahawks really needed to tackle that darn Eli Manning today. No mom, I don't need to go to the doctor. Yet. I do need to figure out how to get Dave to go to the pub to get me a calzone when he gets back from the movies. Hmm, getting Dave to go out in the cold to get food seems to be a developing theme in this blog...

My 2004 Journal Quilts came back from Houston yesterday. It's been over a year since I've seen them, so I was a bit surprised at how familiar they look. This is January and here's what I wrote about it: I'd like to translate a picture of the park across the street from my house - amazing natural composition. I hate winter, but this year I'm noticing a lot going on visually - it's just so much more subtle than all the busy colors going on the rest of the year. I photoshopped the houses out of the picture and printed on fabric, then thread painted and beaded the printed picture. 

I looked at my blog this morning and decided I'd better post something quilty before someone decides I'm running a black cat blog here. This little confection is 6" by 8" and is a practice piece for the bead collage/embroidery thing I want to do on my blue pitcher quilt. In this "in progress" photo, I've couched down a cord I made with two colors of fun fur yarn, done some padded embroidery in the center and started adding some larger beads. The plan is to fill in the whole swoopy shape with beads. I've been working on this on my lunch hour and discovered that the answer to the dreaded "what are you going to do with it?" question is simple: I'm going to mount it on black foamcore and frame it. Thanks Sonji!! 

Just coolin'

Pistol and I having our evening snuggle. I set it down for the picture, but last night we were reading Urgent 2nd Class by Nick Bantock.

I discovered a new store yesterday that will surely be bad for the budget. Haberdashery is a needlework shop with walls and walls of ultra-yummy hand dyed embroidery threads in silks and cottons and wools. I noticed it on the way to Sew EZ Too (across the street), where I was headed to pick up some rayon embroidery thread and some perle cotton. I love a good convergence of excellent stores. Plus, there's a guitar shop down the street so it's easy to convince Dave to stop! And since I was buying presents for me on my lunch hour, I also picked up the brand-new-just-released-yesterday Wilco album for Dave. Many wife points.

Karen Hoepting

I'm taking a page from Jen at DreamScraps and posting work by another artist that I really like. Canadian painter Karen Hoepting does these great whimsical abstract animal paintings. OK, I obviously like the subject matter here, but I also really like her use of color and patterned detail.

Not much quilting going on here at the moment (ok, not any) but I do have a clean house. The studio/computer room is still a disaster, but hey, I cleaned the microwave and the bedroom closet. That was enough scariness for one weekend.

What the heck happened to my garden?!?!

Evil horrible yuckiness. That's what we have here in the fine city of Cheney this morning. Icky icky snow. We hateses it. Time to hibernate...um...I mean...stay inside and quilt all winter. See how I'm trying to look on the bright side? Now if I could only convince Dave that he's the one who should go out in this disgustingness to get Starbucks...

The big payoff

Finally, last night, months of frustrated Lost-watching paid off. Yes, Sayid took off his shirt. I've given up trying to figure out what the heck is happening on that island. I read an article in Rolling Stone a couple of months ago that made me think the writers don't have a freaking clue what's happening either. I probably would have quit watching, but Dave is hooked and he makes me watch it with him. I finally relaxed and decided to just enjoy the characters and the creepiness. You never know what will happen next. Sayid might take off his shirt!

At least we got apple pie...

The Rey family loyalty to our UW Huskies was put to the test this weekend. Or maybe it was all just an experiment to prove that we really are crazy. It felt an awful lot like a challenge on The Amazing Race:

You have to watch a football game. It's cold and there's a steady wind blowing in from the lake. You're seats are under cover, but it doesn't matter, because the wind is blowing the rain sideways and you're still going to get soaked. Your team is going to lose. Again. The family that can stay for the whole game and shut up the obnoxious fan from the opposing team sitting behind them wins...a homemade spaghetti dinner with apple pie for dessert! Plus warm beds and a dryer to dry out their wet clothing. Thank God for Aunt Sue!

But wait, there's more. If you don't get up and going early enough on your journey home, the interstate freeway across the mountains will close due to rock slide danger. You'll have to go back to the city and head north to the slower, higher, two-lane highway with millions of stoplights Stevens Pass to get over the Cascades. What you thought was going to be a 4 hour trip will take you almost 7 hours. Your prize? Well, the cat's happy to see you, although he's kinda pissed that you're so late.

It's a good thing we really like each other. We even had fun in a "we're completely insane" kinda way. The best part is, we're planning to go over again in 2 weeks!

Here's the "bag of stuff" quilt I made for my friend Melissa (see her blog link in my sidebar). Three of us exchanged gallon-size ziplock bags filled with fabrics and other goodies and we had to use the stuff in the bag to make a small quilt. I sort of stumbled upon the "book" layout with the vertical strips on the left and the horizontal stuff on the right. I was thinking about adding more stuff to the left of the black strip, but I got this much sewn together and it just screamed at me to stop here. I really like this layout and it's showing up in some other things I'm working on. Oh yeah, and it really hangs straight, despite the picture - my design wall is full and I had to pin it up over something else for the picture!