Sturm und Drang in South Kakalaka

So Steve and I were sitting at Five Guys last night enjoying a tasty cheeseburger when all of a sudden Steve says "Oh Crap!" "What, WHAT?" I say...Steve then tells me that he just realized his high year of tenure, the magical thirty years that mark his retirement date from the military will fall a few months short of a full three year tour in Germany. SO this means there is a good chance we will NOT be able to go. All bets are off, but because his assignments come out of the Chiefs group and not the general enlisted assignment system, they play by a different set of rules and he may still be as eligible as we had originally thought before the Five Guys Epiphany. We wont know till Monday, and even then I will not trust the answer what ever it is. The Air Force has a remarkable way to make things work when they want them to. The general rules may not apply here at all, or may be waived "in the best interest of the Air Force" Or they may well say in Air Forcese "Sucks to be You" They are pretty good at that last one...

Well its Monday morning and the answer so far is "no, you cannot move" So now thoughts have turned from beer and bratwurst to buying a big ol island for my kitchen to make it more user friendly and finding a reputable rat terrier breeder...





By the way, anybody recognize the castle? You should! The bridge was washed out and we had to stay the night...

Aloha Oy!

I finally did it. I finally began working on my Aloha Album. Its a bit of a risky move because I did a complete 180 on my choice of background fabric for the quilt. In the picture of the completed quilt that comes with the pattern you can see that they chose a pale honey colored fabric. My choice is pictured above. It's a fabric line called Stonehenge, and I chose the color way called flint.

One of the things I thought was most beautiful in Hawaii were the lava rock structures and walls you find there, or the lava fields on the big Island with ferns and plants just starting to grow. Plants show their tropical colors more vividly against the dark lava and that was what I was hoping to capture. Its not as simple as swapping out backgrounds though, as I am coming to find out. First how do you trace a pattern on dark fabric? With white transfer paper, I have learned. Also one of the keys to a good quilt is controlling contrast in the fabrics to make them do what you want them to do. My overall objective was for a high contrast quilt, that's easier to do on a light background. So I have spent the $100 for my flint fabric, now its my job to turn it into what I had envisioned. I will have to choose brighter and lighter fabrics than I had intended, I sure hope my gamble pays off. Wish me luck!

Chubby Cheeks

Well, after what just happened I had to write about it on my blog...

I was upstairs in the FROG (Family Room Over Garage) doing my exercises when I heard an unusual commotion coming from Mr. Humphries cage. Its unusual because Hamsters are nocturnal and Mr. Humphries barely stirs when she hears me in the room during the day. The noise coming from her cage this morning was remarkable for its volume and length, enough of a fuss to make me quit my exercise routine to go see what was happening.

What I found was Mr. Humphries dangling from between the rungs of a little bird ladder in her cage leading from the bottom to one of the platforms. She was hanging not from her paws, but from her over stuffed cheek pouches! I guess she got a case of the midnight munchies, stepped out for a little nibble and decided to take a load of tidbits and bedding back to her upstairs house she has been sleeping in lately. She must have lost her footing on the ladder, slipped through until she got hung up on her chubby cheeks. Good thing I was in the room when it happened! When I looked over all I saw was a bulging hamster mouth, slightly agape with bedding poking out from between her teeth. I wish I had taken a picture, but it would have been cruel to leave her hanging by her face while I went looking for a camera. So I did the right thing, lowered the ladder and let her free herself. She made her way back to her house, taking the longer but less treacherous route and I went back to my pilates ring. While I am sorry for any trauma the incident brought to dear Mr. Humphries, I can't help but wonder what good things are in store for me on a day like this with a start like that!

Kit's block

When you move around as much as I have you have the chance to meet lots of people, not all of them are keepers. Some are interesting and are good company while you are with them, but when you go, you leave them where you found them and move on to the next place and the people who inhabit it. Once in a while though you do encounter a "keeper" someone who's value far exceeds the trouble of keeping in touch. I have found a few keepers along the way and you know who you are...One of them is my friend Kit from Omaha. She is as smart and as talented a person as you are likely to find. She is pretty and funny and has a dry wit that would be the envy of any Englishman. She is the one who first showed me what good applique work could look like, I still see in my minds eye the half finished applique quilt she showed me once and the startling blue bow that she had so finely worked that accented the floral applique...it was love at first sight. As a going away gift she gave me several fat quarters of fabric to begin my own applique project.



Funny how things come full circle...Now eight years later, I mentioned to Kit that I was looking for a pattern book for an applique masterpiece called The Little Brown Bird. I had decided that the time was nearly at hand for me to begin work on something of that magnitude, but finding the book was proving difficult. She said she thought she had the book on her shelf and since her body is in full blown mutiny she knew she would not ever make the quilt and wanted me to have the book. So she sent it to me and in return I promised to work one of the blocks from the book for her. She chose the rose basket block . I was so glad she did, because it was the one I wanted to do most of all. I was eager to try my hand at one of the blocks to see if I had the right stuff for this level of work. I think I do...what do you all think?

This one is for Junie

Autumn is my favorite time of year. The leaves on the little maple tree in our front yard are just turning red, and there is a nip in the air first thing in the morning that makes me wonder if its time to turn on our heaters. I missed Autumn while I lived in Hawaii, at least the autumn that I had always known, of leaves turning colors, days cold enough to want a jacket, but warm enough that you could manage without one or the smell of wood smoke in the air. But for what Hawaii lacks in those sorts of autumnal delights it makes up for with the constant need to rake up dead leaves. I grew to hate the plumeria tree that grew in our front yard. Our neighborhood was a tidy one, and when I neglected to pick up after my dirty tree the neighbors did it for me, and nothing shamed me more. I resented having to pick up leaves year round. Other than the wonderfully sweet smelling flowers the only thing that Plumeria tree was good for was helping me pretend that Autumn had come to O'ahu. On nights when the wind kicked up I could hear the dead leaves scraping along the concrete of our driveway, and if I lowered the thermostat on the A/C a few more degrees I could almost convince myself that it was cold outside and the autumn leaves were rustling. As my time there grew I did actually learn to perceive the change in seasons. Its subtle, but its there. Still nothing beats a little fall color when you are deprived, so this post is for June, Enjoy the color and if you get a rainy day, make a pot of tea , lower your A/C enough to want a sweater,listen to the dead plumeria leaves rustling around outside and pretend you are snug in a house nestled in some autumn woods.

Gifts from My sister

Imagine my surprise when the doorbell rang the day before my birthday and what I found was this

gourmet Chocolate Birthday Cake, sent to me by my sister and her family! I ask you what could be better than finding a chocolate cake on your doorstep? We put it in the Fridge and waited for my Birthday and had it for desert after my birthday dinner out with our friends the Craines, Steve and Paula pictured above. It was delicious and even with four of us feasting on it we had enough left over to have a second slice the next day. Good thing that finished it off though, or I would have kept on eating it and undoing what little good I have done recently in an effort to fit back into my pants.

I titled this entry "Gifts from my sister " because you can just barely see the turquoise necklace and earrings I am wearing in the picture. They were also a gift from my sister last Christmas. She made them herself which makes them all the more dear to me, not to mention they are the perfect match for my new turquoise shirt!

Thanks to my sister my birthday was everything it should have been, a great dinner, a cold beer, good company and CHOCOLATE CAKE!

The quilt top is finished!

Here it is, the finished family tree/diary quilt that I have been blogging about for the last several months. I think it looks pretty good, what do you all think? Of course it's not finished yet. I sent it to my long arm quilter who will quilt it on her special machine and then I will add the binding a rod pocket on the back so I can hang it on a wall. The bottom right block is actually an envelope pocket and inside I will put a key to the meaning of the quilt blocks. I have it already printed on a piece of fabric that I will fold up and keep inside so that years from now somebody will have the fun of deciphering it.