I think my husband believes I am difficult to please. Actually it is very easy, and usually fairly simple. Color! Followed closely by books and cloth. And art supplies. And hugs. Move the hugs to number 1.

Since my quilting income has actually been sorta decent in a starting-out kinda way, I told Paul I wanted some Fiesta Ware for Mother’s Day, and that I would kick in over half the cost for buying six place settings from this place.

Then, the major “for mother’s day” splurge was to buy a Chartreuse mug and salad plate. That glorious color is now “retired” and moving into the price stratosphere. Before it goes any higher, I wanted some! See the small plate, below, between the Peacock and Sunshine Yellow.

Hubby, of course, wanted to know why we needed new dishes. The real reason is that I CRAVE COLOR, I need color, and I’m so tired of wood wood wood (which I love, but come on, you need some variety in life!). I started by adding two new kitchen towels (to replace the tatty disgraceful things we had), one red, one bright lime about 18 months ago. Last winter, I bought a “flame” small le Creuset kettle to go on the black woodstove between the kitchen and dining room. However, I also told him it is because we have eaten every single meal on white dishes since we married 24+ years ago, and have used the same set for the past 16 years. Time for a change!

The kids had no such trouble. I showed them the website color chart, said what colors do you like, and (thankfully there was a lot of overlap among the three of us) picked six so that each of us has at least two we love. Asked hubby to do the same. He came and looked, blankly, at the computer. “I don’t care.” HUNH? How can anyone not care about color? When pressed, he shrugged. So I ordered the colors the boys and I like! Joshua likes the Periwinkle and Sea Mist (the softer ones) and Peacock, Eli liked the Tangerine and Shamrock, and I liked the Peacock, Sunshine yellow and Tangerine. WooohooO! And, of course, the decadent Chartreuse!

So celebrate the color with me. And we can thank Roxanne, co Pres. of my local guild chapter, for some of the impetus…. I have wanted these dishes for eons, but last year Roxanne made a quilt inspired by her Fiestaware, and I finally succumbed to the temptation. THANK YOU! Now…. shall I make a Fiesta quilt? Maybe for the sofa….with fleece on the back. Here’s the “stash” of color (and the usual counter clutter….sigh….)
HOORAY FOR COLOR!

And tomorrow, I promise I’ll post the next to last (for a while) picture of the Chapter Banner, one that shows it all pinned up on the Design wall. On Saturday we have our chapter guild meeting, so will “unveil” it there, and then post to the blog over the weekend I hope. Toodles!

We now return from our detour to the regularly scheduled blogging about the Chapter Banner…

I needed to add some elements to the design to fill in blank spaces. I also needed to add a block for the outside, so made a command decision and just did a block of fiddlehead fern.

In the center panel of the quilt, I added a moose in the lower left corner (there was a moose on the loose in Warren, which is that general direction, just last week!):

Camden Public Library (and LOVE the way it turned out):

Curtis Island Light (at the entrance to Camden Harbor…this was always planned, as was the library):

And hopefully no one will be too appalled that Thumper has given the quilt her complete blessing:

And here are the flying geese up near the top, flying from the sky in the center panel across the inner border up into the top area:

Some hills that include an area meant to represent the Beech Hill preserve with its blueberry barrens:

Tents for the Rockland Lobster Festival:

And the Herrick camp cottage on Pitcher Pond, where we have our August meetings, eat and share quilts…it is gloriously beautiful there, and are fortunate the Herricks are so generous in sharing with us. It is Maine camp living at its finest (outhouse has a magazine slot, and the pump for the water is indoors at the kitchen sink….you pump the water straight into the sink, and they have a generator for the fridge, so we get ice cream sundaes!). Summer Heaven is a good name for it!

The only thing left to create is the chickadee (top right of the top border), finish the quilting, sew on the tiny “reveal” of the same fabric as the inner border inside the binding, machine sew the binding (thank HEAVENS someone else is doing the hand finishing… I need to get back to my book), do up and print the label on cloth and get it ready for the final helpers, and ditto for the hanging sleeve. I can get this done by our meeting in a week! Deadlines sure help me focus!!!!! Best of all, I am elated by how it is turning out….

What a crazy week…has been 6 days since we met at Kate’s house, and I’m only getting to write about it now! We had a wonderful visit, though Nina (Hannah’s new daughter) had had a fever that night. So for the morning and lunch it was Kate, Kathy and me. After lunch, we went over the hill and through the woods to Brunswick, to Hannah’s temporary digs (900 square feet for two adults, four girls and a dog!) while they build their house (which is delayed starting due to sodden earth!).

We compared our projects for Lark Books…. hmmm…. backing up a second. To our utter astonishment and delight, one of the editors at Lark Books contacted each of us early in the year after having seen our work in the Winter 2006 issue of Quilting Arts Magazine to invite us (!!!!) to submit proposals for projects to be included in a book to be called Quilting with Beads (pub. date of May 2008 or so). Hannah, of course, in the midst of selling a house, moving and adopting in China (with three girls already at home) had to pass on the chance, but the rest of us submitted from one (Kathy) to four proposals…. Deborah has 3 for 3 in the book, Kate and I have two each, and Kathy has one. I(t never occurred to me they’d take more than one each…so we’re all working FAST! Due date for submissions is May 21 including patterning, in progress shots, etc.

Well, it appears I forgot to take pictures of Kathy’s and Kate’s. SHEESH, what is wrong with me? Well… Kathy has shared a sneak peek on her blog and you’ll have to trust me on how awesome Kate’s will be. I am so totally inspired by Kate’s use of unconventional items as beads (like porcupine quills, horn pipe, broken crockery…. am I enticing you?). We spent part of the morning scuffing up the horn pipe beads since they were a bit too bright and shiny, and soaking them in the coffee dregs to age them appropriately. Perfect!

The picture above is of the lunch debris… I forgot (Deborah…we need you to be here and remind us to take pictures of the BEFORE!) to take pics of the food, but here you see Kate’s awesome batik (which I shared in an earlier post about our meeting at Kathy’s house) doing tablecloth duty.

And I was totally taken by this seaglass fishie in Kate’s bathroom:

Here is a tease of my project…I’m not sure how much of the finished one I can share, so this is just a portion of it! OMG…I am such a DOLT… it appears I ALSO forgot to take pictures of the finished project in the yellow/lime colorway! So, you get to see a snippet of the lime/turquoise one….. sheesh. I think I need a vacation?

Then we trooped over to Hannah’s temporary abode. If she looks tired, it is because she is, having been up all night with a feverish Nina who is almost one! Here is Hannah, Ella and her new baby sister Nina (who was doing much better when we were there):

And here is Nina exploring her mom’s glorious bead and sequins haul from shopping in China:

Ooooh pretty!

Best of all, we had cake for Kate’s birthday (which I totally missed…sigh!), BUT Kathy remembered and made these treats…aren’t they beautiful?

Lisa Flowers Ross tagged me, so here goes:

1. When I was born in DC, at the time residents weren’t allowed to vote in Presidential elections since DC isn’t a state. Fortunately, the powers that be fixed that particular stupidity by the time I reached legal voting age.

2. I had lived on four continents by the time I turned six: Born in DC, so North America. (By the way, Daddy was in the Foreign Service but retired at age 60, the year after I was born, then went to work for an oil company, which is what got us around the world for the next 5 years). Moved to Madrid, Spain (Europe), when I was about 1 1/2 or so. Moved to Bangkok, Thailand, when I was 2 (I still remember my third birthday there!) (Asia). Moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, when I was 4 (South America). Moved back to the US when I was 6, about a month after Kennedy was assassinated.

3. My sons were both born in Washington, but 3000 miles apart (DC and state). And four years apart.

4. Life without pets is not worth living. Well, it is, but life is immeasurably better with four footed furry things. My dad never let me have a cat, so as soon as I got out of college, guess what! Cassy joined my life (didn’t have a car so snuck her onto the DC Metro subway to get home from the shelter!) in 1979 and I have had cats and then dogs too ever since.

5. I drink tea. BLACK tea with milk. Not flavored “peach-black tea” or “pick-a-scent-infused”, but real, strong, Irish and British style tea. Not teabag tea. PROPER tea, made with loose leaves in a pot (and first you must “hot the pot”).

6. I am a book-o-holic. The worst thing about retirement is the inability to buy books at a whim. Since I’m earning some income now from my quilting (teaching and sales), things have definitely improved.

7. Ooops. I forgot seven….here it is. Ummmm…. I wish i’d had the guts to stand up to my parents and follow my interests into the humanities and arts in my 20s, instead of discovering life with art in my mid 40s (quilting came sooner, at age 30-ish, which is a form of art, the traditional quilting is in my book anyway), but Art! learning about and doing, color, design, line… I got a good SLR in my early 20s and took lots of good photos, and still use photography as a springboard. So I will encourage the young, and the old, and the in between, because it is never too late to follow passion!

Now….who will I tag? Lisa already tagged Deborah… Hmmmm…….can I make that “tag” a twofer? Sure, why not…I make up my own rules LOL!

1. Deborah Boschert
2. Kathy Daniels
3. Hannah Beattie
4. Lisa Walton
5. Caity in Towoomba
6. Rayna Gilman
7. YOU! If you want to be tagged, just add a comment and consider yourself tagged!

Joshua (oldest son) asked me to open Photo Booth, on my MacBook Pro, which is a camera built-in to the laptop that takes pictures of you sitting at your computer. I had the puppy on my lap, so we started clicking… I LOVE this photo!

I am wondering if I can tidy myself up (a rare event), and then get both Widgeon (puppy) and Thumper (slightly skittish cat) on my lap at the same time and take a photo good enough to go on the back of my book… I love this photo, and that’s rare…usually I DETEST photos of myself….