Where to start...

So off we went to Hershey on Saturday-it was the first time that we have been to Hershey and not had to sit in traffic. Although like every other trip to Hershey we could not find where we needed to be and ended up looping. Hershey has a very nice park and the largest public pool I have ever seen.

So into the quilt show we go-first thing first-the vendor market!! WOW! I am from upstate NY and the quilt shows I have been to are in churches or schools with maybe a dozen or so vendors. So needless to say this was amazing and bless Scott's heart he waited as I entered each booth and listened to my excitement as I exited. It was neat to see all the gadgets, the fabric trends and patterns. We went through everything once and ended at the Viking booth.....13/14 year old machine-very basic, no frills, served a purpose.

There it was the Sapphire 870Q....the last one, the demo model, marked down by $400-what was a girl to do???? I just HAD to buy it-the best part you want to know....all my feet and bobbins are interchangeable-Eureka!! Ok not the best part-the best part was that the seller kept the machine while we went through the quilts and I wandered back through the booths to pick up some MH paper piecing patterns.

I love the MH paper piecing patterns and have seen a couple of them and have done the pansy one. I picked up 4 of them-ha ha Mom!!! I only told Mom I picked up 2 ;).

Ok so then we went through the quilts. Wonderful works of art. Showcased quilts in a non-quilt way-they were not ones you put on beds and snuggled under. They were made to be hung and centerpieces. Amazing. The Quilting Pirate has a site showing a majority of quilts because although I took my camera the batteries DIED!!! UGH!! Darn rechargeable batteries!! I loved the bright pelicans it was so neat to me. I also stood at the pelicans in disbelief at the whole cloth quilt done in-are you ready?? That Cheddar Orange color! Yup no kidding. Can you just picture the clerk at the quilt shop when the customer asked to purchase 8 yards of Cheddar Orange-LOL!!! It was beautiful in workmanship alone. As we were wandering we came upon a wall hanging of a view-as I looked at I realized I recognized the view. Someone had done a "picture" quilt of the International Bridge . I know that bridge-how cool.

Ok so on to the machine-I love it and so much different than what I had. I have only sewn seams with it so far but am liking the auto sew, the auto foot and the auto cutter feature. The auto foot has taken some getting used to-I keep looking for the lever. There are so many stitches-I haven't had a chance to play with-work days are long. I will next week though.

I think there is about 4 more inches of space so I can't wait to finish the MBS2 and try to quilt a fair sized wall hanging that I is in the UFO pile. The size of the wall hanging would normally have me struggling in my old machine so I look forward to seeing the difference.

Enough for now-happy sewing!!

Mommmmmm

That is the response I got when I called to talk to my kid last night. OK granted I had already called him in the AM and interrupted a computer game and now I was interrupting him playing with the dog....I swear I could FEEL the eye roll through the phone!! So my monkey has been with Poppa since Wednesday-3 nights and I am missing him and want to be part of his adventures with Poppa. I am so proud that when I do talk to him he is not missing me and is so comfy with who and where he is that he doesn't miss me-sounds good huh? ;) OH well.

I have gotten some sewing done this week and am liking how my Miniature Booty Swap 2 is coming along. I chose a very geometrical design this time that requires fussy cutting and attention to where the colors are falling. Very outside of my comfort zone but I am enjoying the amount of thought I need to put into this-versus my normal strip piecing comfort zone. The pictures are the colors I am trying to put into the quilt. They are all from my stash!! I started with the red, the butterflies and the black. I need 6 and a main fabric-so where do I go in my stash for shiny fabrics with bits of gold....the HOLIDAY Bucket!!! That is where the cream and darker brown came from while the green and gold/yellow came from my Miranda Bag (love love my Miranda bag). I think this may be one of my first entirely stash projects-ever! Go Me!

We are off to Hershey today and if there is a sewing machine vendor with a Sapphire I think it is coming home with me-I have been hemming and hawing about this for MONTHS and I keep coming back to this machine. We will see-the dilemma is that 14 years ago I spent $400 on my Viking 310. My machine owes me nothing it has been great but I really want some more stitch options but am suffering from sticker shock-they are not $400 any more!!

MiniatureQuilter@blogspot got a new machine (Brothers Quilt Club 1000) and showed us the stipple stitch that her machine does-I love it and I want that!! I have to manually do my stipples which is fine but to just go on auto pilot would be awesome! Plus I want a bigger opening-I have a hard time machine quilting the throw size and cannot even think about a twin much less a queen. I would like to comfortably be able to maneuver the lap quilt size. I think Scott is tired of hearing about how a want a new machine-just buy it already is the look I am getting. So we will see....that money could buy a couple of new Coach purses-I like the new fall designs (oops just revealed a weakness-Coach and Donney). Ugh!!

All right enough rambling for now-gotta go shopping! I am taking the camera and hope to be able to share pics-

Childless

Anyone notice the time of night? Insomnia has struck-working 2nd shift today probably has not helped. Either way-tomorrow my monkey leaves for 10 days to visit his Poppa Buddy Buddy and Grammy-he is beyond excited. Mom however is torn between never been apart this long and never spent that much time with hubby alone before. Hubby and I met when Zach was 18 months old so we have never had more than 2 nights without Zach-this could be a challenge-LOL!!

Ok-so we decided that we would do something that we would not normally want to have an 8 year old tag along with us-we thought about Philly or Gettysburg but then I was looking through a new Quilt Magazine and saw this: http://www.quiltodyssey.com/ How cool Chocolate and Quilts!! We are THERE! Bless my hubby's heart he is truly willing to tag along to this with me on Saturday. Not sure what it will cost me for payback but I think Best Buy will be involved.

The house is coming together slowly but surely. We finally got the AC back on Monday afternoon-this past weekend was HORRIBLE. At one point it was 88 in the house. We have a window unit in our bedroom and the 3 of us pretty much hung out in there. There is still a hole in the ceiling-it is sealed with plastic and a promise to come back early in the week. The initial dust and grime has been cleaned but I think we will be dusting daily for weeks. I opened a drawer to an end table and it was full of crud from the collapse.

I should be working on my MB2 but I have all next week! I got my pattern scaled down to fit within the guidelines and was determined to use Stash Fabric-I think I will be successful-that could change after visiting the merchant mall on Saturday ;) Although I could just look for a "Me" project.

Packages!!

Some good news from yesterday, besides not being homeless, was that I got my ALQS quilt in the mail-all the way from Australia!! How amazing! Australia is on my families "Must See" list. Lynda Betts made this amazingly beautiful quilt for me! How lucky was I? It is a pineapple design in this great floral and polka-dot fabric-so retro!! The added bonus to this lovely piece is that it is HAND QUILTED and is of Moda fabrics (love love love Moda's). I cannot express how lovely this is, how much I love it and how badly I needed something good this week.

I took the picture outside and then put the quilt back in the box until we are done cleaning up the mess.

Thank you Lynda!!

My second box was my Connecting Threads order. I did open that inside in my bedroom, cleaned on Tuesday. I am okay impressed with what I bought. Things seem a big more rust/orangy than I thought they would be but I still like. I can't wait to get this cleaning done and be able to pull out my sewing. Thankfully the sewing room was an area the cloud of dust did not reach-helps that I usually keep the door closed.

Ok so to sum it up: I have been so lucky in my swaps-I have two absolutely beautiful quilts to hang in my room and I am so excited to get going on my Miniature Booty Swap 2 quilt.

Oh the DRAMA!!

Here is my life since Sunday AM....

Zach was playing Wii and noticed a water spot on the ceiling. We assumed it was the drip pan for the AC had overflowed and the gutter was blocked. So outside we went to unplug the gutter. The gutter was not plugged, in fact there was nothing coming out of the AC unit drain pipe at ALL!! So we call the landlord at 11AM and watched the water spot turn to a drip and then a crack. They showed up at 6PM and said yup it is broken. They called the company who put the AC in and someone came over to fix it. Apparently when they put the unit in March of '07 they did not run a strait pipe to the gutter they put a u-shaped trap in but didn't tell any one. The trap had water in it which froze over the winter cracking the pipe.

So since about May when we started using the AC again it has been draining into the insulation in the attic! Monday morning at 7:28AM the ceiling in the living room collapsed. Not even the worst part.

The insulation is original to the house circa 1950's and is called vermiculite and contains asbestos. Yup-at 11AM on Monday my house because a potential asbestos abatement area complete with plastic surrounding the 4x6 foot hole. We had to send a sample to NJ at $400 so we could find out the type and the level. This was important to know because at a certain level OSHA says it is a HAZMAT area and men in suits need to come in and then the debris needs a special license and permit in order to be disposed. Monday evening the landlord informed us that her insurance would not cover abatement so they would not be able to afford to fix it. What!! So as of Monday if the test revealed a certain level-we would be homeless.

Tuesday night at 9:30 PM we found out the levels and type of asbestos-so we went to bed planning in house hunting this weekend and figuring out how we go about getting our furniture cleaned-yeah we didn't sleep much or well.

THE GOOD NEWS!! As of 10AM today the levels are below the OSHA levels and it is not fibrous-it can just be fixed and cleaned like normal!!! I am not homeless!!!

I do however have a MESS-the furniture is brown suede and covered in grey insulation dust. The 3 of us worked as a team and got the coffee table, couch, chair and end table cleaned in about 2 hours this evening. We set Zach up outside wiping down knick knacks with Swifter wipes and damp towels while we did the heavier dirtier work of washing walls, vacuuming furniture and mopping.

Oh yeah-the AC unit is not working until the hole is fixed and we are in a high humidity slump. Lovely huh-oh well.

Eating a wave

Someday he will be embarrassed but right now he thinks it is neat-so here is one of my favorite pics from last week.

Whew-home!!

So we finished a 8 hour trip in 11.5 hours on Sunday because I-95 is a parking lot between Richmond, VA and DC. The hubby and I literally pulled out magazines to read while stopped in traffic. The child was enjoying the movie player.

Vacation was wonderful. I loved being so close to the beach and seeing all the family at once. It certainly relieves the stress of trying to get to everyone's house annually and if you get to one and not the other then you offend someone....you know the deal. The picture is of "Poppa Buddy Buddy" and Zach parasailing!!

I decided that this year we were going to have everyone come to us-we rented a house on the beach and invited eveyone to join us. I loved it-I got to be Aunt Shelly and spoil everyone rotten!

I was able to find 2 quilt shops in the area. One I had seen online that I was excited about closed! The other 2 were cute. I found some neat patterns and some nice blue and yellows. I am determined to find the "perfect" pattern and do myself something in blue and yellow to hand along side my Miniature Booty Swap. I like the color combo on the walls of my bedroom.

I took the escaping bugs quilt to sew the binding but didn't do even one stitch-much to the dismay of the child who wants to use the quilt. I promised to have it done this weekend.

I signed up for the Miniature Booty Swap II and am excited to start digging through the stash for those fabrics. I know I have plenty because of all the flag wall hangings I did a few years ago when the siblings were sent to Iraq the first time.

While I was gone I got a Connecting Threads catalog in the mail-I have never seen this one before and really loved it-89 dollars worth! Not much in quilt talk but after a week's vacation plenty enough. I won't share what I got because I want to scale down one of the patterns to fit the MBSII size guidelines. So you will just have to wait and see ;)

On Vacation

Sorry for the lack of post's lately but last week was spent preparing for vacation and this week we are on vacation.

We have rented a beach house in Nags Head and all of my family is or will be here-the first time in 4 years. To us that is a big deal with 2 serving overseas every other year and 1 out to sea keeping our shores safe. BUT as the parents of an only child-it is quite hectic and we are seeking some quiet, don't have to share time in our room as I type this-poor bugger.

Yesterday my hubby, dad and I took 3 boys to the Jockey Ridge state park to climb the sand dunes. HOLY COW they were amazing. I am not in the best shape ever, not that I ever was so I can't even say-since....My hubby had his knee replaced in January and my dad is 63-we were trying to keep up with 2 8 year olds and a 4 year old. They had a blast running down the dune and sliding on their bums. I then had a plan to wear everyone out so that there would be no trouble sleeping so off we went to the beach-same crew. I was crazy but I was determined to wear them OUT! It was great fun and I have now had to promise to take the same crew again today. 4PM we have a date.

So there is no quilting going on, but a plan to find a fabric shop or 4 ;).

The kids love their pillows.