This year my local quilt chapter, the Coastal Quilters (part of the state guild, the Pine Tree Quilt Guild) decided to change our annual challenge (now in its third year) from 10×10 inches to 12 inches wide by 9 inches tall.  The reason?  So that after the challenge participants can, if they wish, donate their quilt to Ami Simm’s Alzheimer fundraiser.  The donations are auctioned and the proceeds go to benefit Alzheimer’s research.

In past years we were challenged to interpret a photo (Here–scroll about halfway down to see the ropes and buoys quilts and here for my buoys quiltlet) or use a little bit of EVERYthing in a grab bag (Here and here).  This year, we each received a fat quarter of a black and white print:

Obviously, this is AFTER I got to it with the fabric paint and scissors….ahem.

Once the challenge debuts at Maine Quilts (in Augusta, Maine, last weekend in July), I’ll share the others’ pieces, but for now you can see how I painted the fabric (above) and  used it.  My quilt consists of white fabric (painted blues), the challenge fabric (painted blues, green, and blond-brown hair colors), beads and sequins (mermaid’s tail) and yarn (couched to the top to “frame” the piece).  Actually, this piece shows her swimming UP; when our guild president held up the quilts, she held the mermaid with her swimming down (second photo) and I think I actually prefer that way!  What do you think?

And swimming down:

And a close-up of the tail:

It was fun to do.  Although Mama doesn’t have Alzheimer’s (that we know of ), she does have deepening dementia.  She can’t remember how to work the remote for the TV, and sometimes when she can figure out the phone she’ll call and say “Sarah, this is your sister.”  I think I shall donate my mermaid to Ami’s fundraiser…I’ll let you know more when I get it sent off and donated.

You know summer is here (at least in spirit, and some years in the weather….other years not….) when Memorial Day weekend arrives.  Hubby’s birthday is late May, and we start the season with a Sea Dogs game.  The Portland Sea Dogs are the minor league team associated with the Boston Red Sox (Go Red Sox Nation!).  Now I’m not really much of a baseball fan, but I do love going to the Sea Dogs games.  This is baseball the way it OUGHT to be…. where you can actually see the players’ faces without binoculars (or taking out a second mortgage to buy tickets).  Our usual seats are $7 each (ayuh…about as much as the movies!), and this time we had a treat and got “box” seats, a whopping $9 each…second row on the first base line, directly behind home plate.   The team obliged by hitting MANY (eight!) runs, including a homer (the arrow points to the lighthouse that pops up and honks when a Sea Dogs player hits a home run) that brought in three runs:

I don’t know that I’ll ever do a baseball quilt, but I always take “reference” photos anyway… I may just use these for practicing drawing the human figure:

It was warmer than predicted, so we had a lovely low 70s, sunny Sunday afternoon.  Here is the happy couple (the row in front of us had four generations in one family including a delightful-cookie-smeared toddler, who arrived and departed at various points in the game…this was late, when they’d all called it a day):

And of course, I am always on the lookout for interesting patterns, repetition and whatnot:

Hubby’s b-day is about this time of year, too, so I made the pilgrimage to Market Basket to order his favorite:  a cheesecake!  I’ve made them, but they are a ton or work and cost almost as much to make (and my results are not as predictable as ordering), so here is the birthday boy’s treat:

Well there is LOTS of news–with the best saved for last (yes, I’m evil…<GRIN>):

• I’ve been to Arizona to teach, blogging to come
• the family joined me and we visited Flagstaff (which is an awesome and friendly town!) and various points including Monument Valley, the Grand Canyon, Meteor Crater, the Wupatki ruins and Sunset Crater…and oh yeah, Sedona…more on that later, too
• the laptop DIED—deceased, defunct, digitally toes-up—36 hours BEFORE I was supposed to give my slide lecture to the Arizona Quilt Guild.  We went to plan B, it worked, and everyone was gracious and understanding.  That morning I ordered the new laptop
• I visited my beloved sister in law in LA for the first time in 27+ years, we went to the Getty and had a grand time, blogging on that to come too
• I was home 3 days then went to Hingham, Mass., to teach at the Herring Run Guild, yes..blogging to come…and 90 minutes after I left for there my new laptop FINALLY arrived two weeks after I ordered it

and at long last….DRUM ROLL and unabashedly SNOOPY DANCING with wild ABANDON:

• ThreadWork Unraveled has–in a mere six months–gone into a SECOND PRINTING!   I just can’t believe it… most books go into print once, are sold, and that’s it.  Thanks to phenomenal word of mouth starting with so many of you dear readers out there in cyberspace and good reviews hither and yon, the book has already gone into re-print!

So I invite you to join me in silly dancing, chocolate, a nice chilled glass of white zinfandel or your favorite sip-able (sp?), and CELEBRATE!

I’ll be back once I catch up on 2 1/2 weeks of work, student inquiries, teaching applications, quilt show applications, assorted mountains of paperwork etc. with lots of blogposts with lots of photos!

Cheers, Sarah the Elated (and really happy to be sleeping in my own bed with family close by!)

It has been a busy week, plus I was down and out with a miserable cold (that still lingers…not bad, just annoying in that it is keeping me from going full tilt).  The loveliest part of the week was the morning of our 27th anniversary.  I came down to make breakfast and get the tea kettle boiling, and found this:

Our anniversary dinner?  Spaghetti and meat sauce–carb loading, easy and fast–getting Eli and the rest of us packed and ready to head out the next day for more wrestling.

Then Saturday was State Wrestling tournament for Eli.   Fortunately, it was only an 80 minute drive away…some years it is held in the western part of the state (alternates year to year) and is 2-3 hours away…ugh!  Anyway, it was a challenging meet.  Eli may be in the most competitive weight class in the state—the top four kids (he was seeded 6th in the state) are all of a caliber that they could place in the top four in all-New-England tournaments.  In his first match, Eli went up against the kid who was seeded first, ended up being state champion in the weight class, and the State Tournament’s Outstanding Wrestler…that is for ALL weight classes, all middle school ages, voted by the coaches of the teams.  Here is Eli (in the red singler) doing his best to fight off the pin–none of us parents could figure out he could arch like that for so long and fight off such a strong opponent:

But he succumbed.  The 8th grade girl who beat him in his second match was good, and here they are grappling it out:

Our team didn’t fare so well, but they made it to states and tried their best.  So now, off to learn more in the coming year, come back next year (alas, all but the girl in Eli’s weight class will be back for another year in middle school!), and try again.  Good job to one and all.
Saturday morning, tho, was one of those mornings where EVERYTHING went wrong.  Discovered that Joshua’s amp had fallen over in the back of my car and cracked the inside back of the tailgate–my brand new beautiful car.  SOB.  It was really cold (high of 31) and the dog needed to stay in the garage as he would otherwise pee and poop in the house during the l ong day, so I took the plug-in radiator to the garage.  When I picked it up, the lip that I grabbed turned out to be a pull out handle, so the whole thing slipped and damaged the base/wheel.  Then the electric kettle I use about five times a day decided to die.  Then the older one was being a typical uncooperative teen and arguing, etc.  I had a meltdown before 8 a.m.  NOT a fun way to start the day.  Fortunately, despite the wrestling team losses, the rest of the day wasn’t awful.  So Sunday I read another Stephanie Plum mystery and hoped my cold would go away.  Soon.  More anon! This week can’t be worse, so it WILL be better.  And I WILL get prepped for teaching in Arizona in two (SHRIEK) weeks….

It has been a long time since I posted about our sons… somehow the vastness and sometimes-creepiness of the internet (and the fear of what may be lurking at the dark ends of cyberspace) have led me to be significantly more cautious about what I say and post.  But let’s face it…. kids and hubbies and family are what make life worth living.  They are also what constitutes “life happening” meaning that quilts don’t happen!  I wouldn’t give up either.  And, in these photos, the kids are basically unidentifiable, so here goes!

This season, our younger son’s second in wrestling, is proving to be a good one.  The first year on a wrestling team is often a learning year as the wrestlers figure out holds, what to do, what NOT to do, and learn to try to win (as opposed to wrestling “not to lose”).  This year, E. clearly is in the “going out to win” mode.

Last year, E. got pinned (and therefore lost) when a kid got him in what is called a double-chicken wing.  He achieved a goal this past meet:  he did it to another kid–see photo above!  So far this year, E. has had six matches with opponents (when the other team doesn’t have someone in the same weight class, he gets a technical win, but real ones are better).   He has pinned the opposing kid (which leads to more points for the team than winning by points alone) six out of six times.  In this past meet, he had four matches, won all four by pins, and won three of the four in the first period. E. ROCKS! Here’s how one of his matches went on a recent Saturday:

Shake hands first:

E. makes a move (he’s the one   on the top, with red stripes down the side and the headgear/ear protectors  falling off):

E. grapples, gets the kid in a near-pin, but not quite, so reconsiders and goes for a double-chicken wing (and don’t your shoulders hurt just looking at the poor kid on the bottom?)

…this is the classic…the losing kid is the one in the upside down, how-can-he-really-be-in-that-twisted-position:

To get a pin, BOTH of the opponent’s shoulder blades must be on the mat for one full second.  That means the ref ends up flat on the mat peering in unusual places and positions to make sure there is full contact for the full second.

PINNED!  Ref slams hand on mat, match is over, E WINS!  E ROCKS!  It is good *not* to be the one twisted up like a pretzel!