Lady Fingers

So, when it snows in the Willamette Valley, people lose their minds. There are a lot of reasons why, like the fact that it rarely snows, there usually aren't the resources in place to deal with any sort of snow fall, and people don't know how to drive in any kind of snow. This particular snowfall, it seems like people were so desperate for a day off that we just went for the snow day, even though it was at most 2 or 3 inches of snow. Not that I'm complaining. I'm just glad it only lasted for a day.

My Building looks pretty in the snow.

I took advantage of the lazy of a snow day, and finally finished the quilt for my dad's girlfriend. It was meant to be a Christmas present, so it's only three months late. Better late than never! I've had it basted for a long time, so it was just a matter of quilting it. I decided to use a shape which I'm sure has many names, but to me, looks like Lady Finger cookies.

Yes, I did buy these cookies so I would have a picture for my blog. In my defense, they were on the day old shelf, and also, they were delicious.

It sewed up quicker than I expected. I'm not sure I love it on this particular quilt, but I would definitely do it again. I used orange thread for a little bit of contrast.

I lady fingered the heck out of this quilt.

Once I started actually quilting the thing, Fritz decamped from the bathroom. He hadn't left it for anything other than eating and using the litter box in days, so of course he needed to sit on the quilt I was working on. I had to convince him to get down. Warning, there is music in the video.

In the end, I'm quite pleased with the quilt. It's not the most exciting design I've ever done, but my dad's girlfriend really likes it, and that is the most important part.

My dad's girlfriend is on the left, and is standing on a table to hold the quilt high enough. The  finished size is somewhere between a twin and a full sized quilt.

When I went to take the above picture, I was sheepishly tried to explain that there was a right side up, even though it was all in my mind. My dad surprised and delighted me by saying "Of course there is a right side up! The lady fingers go down". I was so pleased that he understood that there was a right way up, and why I had picked. Like father like daughter I guess!

My dad's girlfriend wanted some action shots.

I'm glad that my dad's girlfriend likes it, and I'm glad that it's done! Now I can move on to other projects that I felt to guilty to work on because I hadn't finished this quilt.

Harry Potter and the Game of Skee Ball at the Avalon

The past few weeks have been interesting for me. I'm really enjoying teaching, but it has been a significant change in the way I spend my time. I've been pretty busy preparing for class, and then teaching class, and driving to and from class. Work work has been busy too. As a result, sewing has sort of fallen by the wayside, but I'm hoping to balance it better soon. I feel like I'm settling into a rhythm. I'd like to sew more than I am now.

This week was pretty awesome. I gave a presentation on color at the February PMQG meeting, and it was fun to prepare for. Saturday was also fun, as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is finally at the second run theaters.  Some friends and I went to see it at the Avalon theater, which also has a bunch of nickle games.

When you walk by, the light make a great click, click, click sound.

 You can tell the Avalon has been around for awhile, because it has a ton of creepy clowns outside. No one would have these types of illustrations now that so many people think clowns are scary.

Surprisingly, these are the least creepy of the clowns.

My friends Leslie, Foxx and I had one game on our mind, which was skee ball. We spend almost all of our nickles on it.

Foxx had the first roll of the night.

 Eventually we got the three skee ball games next to each other, and we did not take turns with anyone, we just played until we ran out of nickles.

We spent a lot of time wondering if we could get a skee ball game in one of our houses.

My friend Leslie, who is normally very cautious and safety conscious, really surprised me by being an aggressive bad ass with the skee ball. She hurled the skee balls with a rage that I had never before witnessed from her. She kind of kicked our asses.

In this photo, Leslie had tossed the ball so hard it bounced out of her lane and into the top of mine. I still don't quite know how it happened.

Skee ball was just a warm up for Harry Potter though. You can tell we are all huge Harry Potter nerds because a) we have huge smiles on our faces at the thought of seeing the movie again, and b) because I had someone in the row behind us take our picture so I could put it on my blog.

I wish the background could have been an image from the movie, but I'm not sure how the rest of the theater would have felt about it.

On Sunday, I finally got some sewing done. I headed over to Cherri's studio and spent some time free motion quilting (not on the long arm though!). I was happy to get a start on this quilt. I've been hemming and hawing about how to quilt it, so I was happy to get it started. I like how this turned out, but, as Cherri correctly predicted, it's going to take a lot of time. 

These rows already used two bobbins. Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I hate winding bobbins for some reason.

As far as Fritz goes, he seems to have settled into living in the bathroom, and I sort of don't mind. He's taken to sitting on the windowsill, which is easy to clean, and I get to see him a lot, which I didn't necessarily do when he was hanging out in the kitchen.

 His habit of putting his paws on my shoulder has developed into full blown riding around on my shoulders.

I think of the two of us, Fritz has the more awesome expression on his face.

I always wanted a cat that would ride around on my shoulders, and now that it's happened, I'm not quite sure how I feel about it. I'm not discouraging it, but I'll really have to keep his nails trimmed. He can have quite a grip. When he gets up there I've been I've been trying to walk around like normal, and he can hang on for quite awhile. We'll see if he keeps it up.

There have been better pictures of me, but probably not better pictures of Fritz.