No, it's not Jabba the Hutt's summer palace on Tatooine, it's the Spokane County Public Health Building. It's one block away from the lovely French castle shown above. I stood on the same street corner to take both pictures. 

Not a quilt, but this is the inspiration for my little embellished puppy quilt, pictured in progress below. This is my parent's dog Emily. She's full grown and smaller than my cat (they love to chase each other). It's tough to get a good picture of Emily because she's always moving. She's friendliest, most enthusiastic dog I've ever seen. It's her exuberance that I'm trying to capture in the quilt. 

Greenday made me do it

Ok, I pretty much never rant about politics outside the confines of my family, but AshLee and I have been listening to a lot of Greenday lately and I just have to give props to the fellas for "I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies" from their current hit "Holiday". Yes, that's exactly how I feel about our current government.

But what makes me even more crazy is where our priorities as a society are. It wasn't that long ago that we had a national obsession about a blow job, but now nobody gives a rip that someone in the White House committed treason for political gain?

Oh, and don't give me any of that crap about it being "unpatriotic" to criticize our government. Ever read the Declaration of Independence? I have. It's a big long list of complaints about our government from back in the day when King George III was the boss of us. If it was really unpatriotic to complain, then all us "patriotic" Americans would still be loyal British citizens.

It's the history major stuck inside me. Every once in a while she busts out and rants a bit about the general ignorance of history in this country. I'll go chase her down and we can return to our regular quilty bloginess.

OK, that's better. That whole "not having accomplished much" yesterday was getting on my nerves, bringing back the itchy, restless, there-are-500-things-I-want-to-make-and-I-don't-know-where-to-start feeling. The solution for this yuckiness, as always, was to pick something and work on it. This red collage was getting a bit pushy, trying to get my attention, so I stopped for an hour and put it together. Those red bugle beads are yummy...I must go back to see if I can get them in more colors.

Sheesh, this blog needs some pictures! I puttered around quite a bit yesterday and didn't produce anything worth looking at, so here's a picture of my little embellished puppy in progress. It still needs more embroidery, but I think I'll do some beading next. 

Prank call?

I had the house to myself last night, but I was too tired to do much about it beyond watching a Sopranos episode, eating some s'mores and going to bed early. Dave and AshLee were both out with friends. My first thought when the ringing phone ripped me awake at 10:30 was that one of them was calling because something was wrong. I hate that.

So I ran downstairs to answer the phone and nobody was there. All I could hear was some VERY haunting music in the background. WHY THE HELL IS SOMEONE PRANK CALLING ME ON THE ONE NIGHT ALL SUMMER THAT I'M HOME ALONE!?!

Feeling quite a bit creeped out, I grabbed my cell phone and called Dave to demand that he drive home RIGHT NOW.

He answered right away and in the background I heard THE SAME HAUNTING SONG FROM THE PRANK CALL! "Umm, did you just call me?" "Oops, I must have bumped the speed dial button for home and accidently called you...Listen!" He was in Sandpoint at a Ryan Adams concert. He held up the phone so I could hear Ryan singing Oh My Sweet Carolina, a song I happen to love, a song that is slow and spare and umm, yeah, haunting. "Yeah, that sounds great now, but when the phone wakes you up at 10:30 and you're home alone and there's nothing on the other end except that song in the background IT'S CREEPY AS HELL!!"

He laughed and apologized and I went back to bed. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to listen to that song again.

Excellent mail day and some learning projects

Now that I've recovered from the Bird Incident, I'll return to my regularly scheduled blog program. I'm actually a bit behind schedule here, I've been suffering from a bad case of teenagers-hogging-the-computer.

It was actually a couple of days ago that I had my excellent mail day. It's not often that you get a fabulous piece of art AND the key to the city in the mail on the same day!

First, the art: I bought Bundle Study XVII from the superfantastic Sonji Hunt. This is my first fiber art purchase and I couldn't be happier! I LOVE this piece and really, gorgeous as it is in the picture, the picture doesn't do it justice. I didn't realize that Sonji paints all her own fabric, but wow, beyond all the cool embellishment, the fabric itself is wonderfully detailed with metallics and other little bits that just don't show up in a picture. Oh yeah, and she sent an extra piece of her painted fabric! Thanks Sonji!

OK, the key. Dave and I live in the small college town where my grandfather was a doctor for 40ish years. Both my grandparents were very involved in the community and did a lot of volunteer work, both here in Cheney and in the surrounding region. A year or two before my grandma died, they had a thing to celebrate her contributions and the mayor presented her with the key to the city. In sorting through my grandparent's things, my family decided that my husband Dave, formerly the editor of the Cheney newspaper and currently university spokesman at EWU would be the most appropriate caretaker of the key. So the other day we opened the mailbox to a whole pile of cool packages!

And now, for something completely different, I have joined the Simple Still Life project, but I'm having trouble getting the icon thingie to appear on my sidebar. I'm also working on another project with Deb Roby, working through Color and Design for Embroidery by Richard Box. This is a great book, just loaded with good information and exercises on color and design principles. And like so many great books, I've been procrastinating about working through it. So, we're starting this week with the section on texture, starting on page 44. Hopefully we'll get through a section per week and post pictures of our completed exercises.

And now it's time to go be a case manager for a while.

Ugh, Bad Kitty!

Ohmigosh, my little Pistol cat just caught a hummingbird. First things first, the bird is ok. It was shaken up and rested on the porch for a few minutes, but then it zipped off to its hummingbird home.

Ugh! Yucky bad kitty!

Some background here: Pistol is an indoor cat. He goes outside with me in the morning in the summer while I water the plants. He likes to eat the cheatgrass. Never having known anything else, and being terrified of the neighbors, he's fine with this plan. He's happy to trot back into the house after 15 minutes.

OK, yeah, I know, he's a natural predator, it's his instinct to hunt, blah blah blah. Please, no lectures. I understand all that stuff, but I don't have to like it. I like the part where he's my sweet little cuddlebug who comes up and gently taps me on the shoulder when it's time to go outside to water the plants. Ha! Not bloody likely buddy!