A Day at the Jackson Hole Hill Climb

Sorry - this is a bit of a long post. But it's been a bit of a long day. A very good one, but long.

Today was a day of watching. We went to Jackson Hole to watch the annual Hill Climb. This is one of the biggest snowmobile races (straight up Snow King Ski Resort's lift line) on the Hill Climb circuit. And, it's a lot of fun to watch. It was a gorgeous day - clear, sunny and about 40 degrees. Perfect!

We only have one pair of binoculars (something we need to fix), so we used a spotting scope too. Everyone took turns so we could all see up close.

We sat right at the base of the resort, just behind the lift line.

And this is what we saw. The racers have to zig and zag their way up the mountain, making it through gates. The hill is very steep, and after awhile the path becomes rutted and mushy from all the traffic. It gets pretty hairy up toward the top.

My husband's cousin's son raced and won two of the divisions, (this was only qualifying day), and has earned himself a full-time ride next year as a Skidoo sponsored rider. It is quite an accomplishment. I think he is 18 years old.

The kids - especially the seven year old - had more fun just playing and being kids than watching the race. The seven year old even made several friends, and finagled his way into using one of their sleds.

Here they are loading up three kids for the ride, including the sled owner...

Uh-oh...

Yep. Saw that coming. They had a great time :)

The two year old is terrified of ... well, a lot of things. He won't try using the potty because it scares him to sit on it. It took all day to convince him to climb up the playground equipment. Then his big sister took him down the slide. See the death grip he's doing with his legs? This picture just cracks me up.

Of course I was wanting to test out my camera and see what kind of scenery shots we could get. Not bad, eh? Of course it's hard to take a bad picture of the Tetons.

I like how the lighting is in this one. We were driving about 60 mph when I took this one out of my window. I'll just say I'm very pleased with this camera, and am going to keep it.

I also wanted to see if I could get a good picture at the Elk Refuge. Not bad, I'd say, considering these elk were a good 100+ yards away.

Sometimes the elk are right up by the road, and sometimes they are far away. I don't know if you can see it in the photo or not, but if you look at the top edge of the picture, you will see hundreds of elk in the brown area in the background. Many of the elk have already left the refuge, but most that were there were laying in the brown areas, where they are well camoflouged. I'm guessing that is more about the fact that it's more comfortable to lay on the dry ground. Who knows. I don't think I have much insight as to how elk think. I can never seem to find them during hunting season, anyway.

Oh, remember the other day I said I could only find one paperclip? I figured a trip to Staples would cure that problem. Well, I wanted to buy a small box of silver paperclips. Easy, right? Not. They didn't even have a single box of the silver ones. The only thing in a small box was gold colored, and from the price, they must have thought they were gold plated - $4.49 for a small box. Are you kidding me? I'm not trying to make a fashion statement. This enormous package of 1000 plastic coated paperclips in hideous, "trendy" colors (which my daughter actually likes) was on sale for $3. I do not need 1000 paperclips. But I also don't need to spend an extra $1.49 to get the smaller amount I actually wanted. It just seems so wasteful to me to have to buy 900 more paperclips than I really need. They did have some silver ones, but those boxes came shrink wrapped together, and you got somewhere between 6-10 boxes at once. Ridiculous. So I was stuck buying the big package. I don't even know what I'm going to do with all of them. My grandchildren will be inheriting paperclips, I guess, and I'm sure by then those trendy colors will be horribly outdated. Think avocado green and harvest gold if you have any doubts. Good grief.

So I pulled out a few - less than a tenth, probably, and put them in a small baby food jar so I can use them for my crafts. Crazy. Should have gone to the dollar store first. They had a small package of 100 for $1... in normal, primary colors.

Speaking of crafts, I did manage to talk my sweet hubby into stopping at the quilt store long enough for me to pick up some darker turquoise fabrics. I'm not sure these will work well either. I took my hexagons with me, and picked out the best I could find, but the quilt store there carries more of the standard, traditional quilting fabrics, rather than the new, fun stuff. This is what I came home with. I wasn't sure about the stripe, but my daughter thinks it will tie in the greener shades I already have, and make me satisfied to keep them in the quilt. We will have to see. I won't know until I get some sample hexagons made out of these fabrics and can do a mock layout. I definitely want to include the bolder turquoises if possible though. They are more what I had in mind.

I took my crocheting with me today thinking I could crochet between riders at the Hill Climb. But they kept it moving fast enough, and I was into taking pictures of the kids having fun, so I didn't even pull it out. I was going to crochet on the way up there, but ended up driving instead, so oh well. I'll save that project for another day ;) And speaking of new days, since it is now 12:02 AM, I better get to bed. (Told-ya it's been a long day). Tomorrow will be busy too, with church services, and our regular pianist gone for Spring Break. My daughter and I will both be playing for the services. Good night!

Ahh, It's Been a Good Day

It's been a great day (most Fridays are) and this one has been especially nice. It started with all the daycare kids wound up - to the extreme. I think the combination of a long week, and the fact that we haven't had a yard to play in for months has brought things to a frenzy. It will be so nice when we can get them outside again. Maybe by next winter I'll be all moved out of the daycare building and we can clear the garage to create an "indoor" play yard. I can move all my outdoor equipment in there and get a few pads for under the slides, and still have room for riding bikes and such. It will still be cold, but at least it will be dry.

Anyway, Fridays are always good because when they're done, I have a weekend to look forward to! After everyone left tonight my husband took me out for a nice steak dinner. Very relaxing. When we came home, the UPS man was right behind us, bringing, of all wonderful things, FABRIC!!

Isn't this cute? With any luck, this will become my new diaper bag. The main body of the bag will be these cute giraffes, and the blue dots will be on the sides, and inside the bag. I bought the black dots too, because I wasn't sure whether I would want the blue on the outside (other than for trim). I really like the blue, though, and will probably let it be on the outside. We shall see ;)

They (Fabric.com) were having a great sale on some of their other fabrics, so I picked up this super-cute black and white fabric with silhouette kiddos on it to use in my sewing room ... assuming it ever gets here. I'm thinking it would be a cute valance. I think I'll paint the room a pretty robin's egg blue and decorate in black and white. This will work well because my two storage cabinet units are white. Hopefully it will get here before we all enter eternity. I'm not placing any bets on it though. Latest word is that they will be here in 10 days, but this guys word is worth about as much as the confederate dollar, which ain't much.

It was also a great day for my daughter, who has recently signed up to sell Premiere Jewelry. They do home shows similar to Pampered Chef, only with jewelry. Her 70 piece jewelry kit arrived today. The poor FedEx man... the box must have weighed almost 50 pounds. I could barely lift it from the entryway. It wasn't all jewelry. They sent catalogs, and a lot of paperwork, along with an awesome portable jewelry case which is probably two feet tall by ... oh, I have no idea. It's big. Just look at the size of the box. The two year old was overjoyed to have something to beat on, and the perfect size box to sit up in. Too cute.

He was really enjoying himself.

And finally, I thought I would show you the progress I've made on the baby blanket. I think it looks like rolling waves. I did most of this Thursday, while the house was quiet during naptime and my own 18 and 7 year old were at the ski hill. It was nice to have a free afternoon just to sew, and not have to focus on homeschool. Even mom needs a break now and then ;)

So it's been a fun day. Now I need to get some rest so I can (hopefully) get some sewing done tomorrow. But who knows. We're kind of up in the air on our weekend plans, and might end up going to the hill climb (snowmobile race) in Jackson tomorrow. It will depend on the weather. The seven year old thinks we ought to ski instead.

Jumping on Two Bandwagons

I love getting stuff like this in the mail :)

I ordered this set of fat quarters from Quilt Taffy (out of Idaho) on Etsy.

Here's a better view of all the fabrics. I've been seeing for awhile people making turquoise and red quilts and knew I wanted to make one too. I'm not sure what I'll do with it, or how big it will be, but I love this color combination. You can kind of see in this picture that several of these fabrics were more toward green than blue. That didn't bother me until I got my hexagons done and noticed how different they are. Too bad. Looks like I need to buy more turquoise fabric ;)

There were a lot of quirky fabrics in this set. Fun. Like these chairs with an occasional bird on them.

There were actually several fabrics with birds on them. Funny thing was that when I cut this fabric and made a hexagon out of it, only the three sets of flowers on the right showed up on the front. On the back I counted 5 birds - ha. Hope it works out so that sometimes birds show and sometimes they don't!

This is my favorite piece of fabric. Love it!

I really like this one too, but it's one of the greener ones, and I haven't decided whether to include those in this quilt or save them for another project.

I like this one too. In fact, I loved the reds. I thought about just doing a red and white quilt because I love all those fabrics. We'll see.

I have also noticed a trend toward everyone making hexagon quilts. I've always admired those because they are 100% hand sewn. When I saw several online tutorials on how easy these are to make using these paper pieces, I ordered a pack and decided to give it a shot.

I ordered the ones which measure 1 inch across each side. They are about 2 inches across the widest part. I've just been cutting 2 1/2 inch squares of fabric with my rotary cutter rather than messing with cutting individual hexagons out with scissors. It's much easier, and doesn't make that much difference in the amount of fabric used.

These are so easy to sew. One blog said to start with the first side folded down and held with a paper clip. That makes it really easy. Only problem was that I could only find one paperclip. Seriously. Who only has one paperclip? That slowed me down some, because I kept losing my paperclip in my lap. Anyway, with a paperclip holding the first side, you then just stitch around, folding down each corner and stitching it in place. I didn't even tie any knots - just took two stitches in each corner instead.

At the end of an hour, give or take, I had 20 hexagons made up (not including cutting time). That's one of each of the fabrics I received. I don't plan to work on this project much right now - too many baby things that need to be finished in the next 97 days. But I wanted to try this technique while it was fresh in my mind. I was surprised by how easy it was, and relaxing, and fast ... relatively speaking.

Here's a rabbit trail: Every day I read one particular blog where the lady does almost all hand quilting - both piecing and quilting, and it's such an inspiration to me ... especially how much she manages to get done every day. Of course we're at different places in life, and she has much more time than I do, but I never read her posts without being really inspired. (That's why I read it every day!) So I figured more hand sewing is in order ;)

On a different note, this is why I hate pre-washing fabrics, and why I rarely do it. I thought though, if I'm going to put all that effort into hand sewing a quilt, I'm not going to have it get messed up because I didn't preshrink the fabric! So, this mess is what I got, and then I spent an hour cutting threads, untangling fabric, and ironing. UGH.

See what a mess of thread I ended up with?

Anyway, once I got my hexagons stitched I wanted to see what they would look like together.

I'm not thrilled with any of these layouts. And when I got them laid out, it was very obvious to me that the greens were much greener than I wanted to include in this quilt. I was going for bold turquoise and bright, true red, with just a bit of white.

You may not be able to tell as much in the photos as I can in person. It doesn't bother me as much in the photos, but it's driving me nuts in person.

This is an arrangement my daughter came up with, and it's pretty good. Better than anything I came up with, but I think it would take a lot more of one color than a the other.

This is another layout that I don't mind as much. We'll just have to see. Now all I want to do is make hexagons, but I really need to get back to working on the baby stuff first. This will be my backup plan for "just in case I get put on bed rest" - which at times sounds lovely... like on Fridays... in the daycare... when everyone is wound up like crazy... and I'm ready for the quiet (relatively) weekend ;) It's not likely though. I've never been on bed rest, and this is baby #5.

~~PINK~~

Pink, pink, pink, pink, pink!!! I've been looking for an excuse to sew all things pink! Congrats S & J!! Guess I better get to work on that pink afghan too!

What if our Grandmothers had Blogs...

(All the treasures you see in these pictures are things that I've inherited from my Grandmothers - mostly Mom's mom in these pictures. I'll explain them toward the end.)

Did you ever stop to wonder what it would be like if our grandmothers and great grandmothers and so on had blogs? What a treasure that would be. I was thinking as I sat crocheting last night that our fore-mothers had a different sense of duty. They didn't sit idle. Their hands were always busy even if they were sitting down. We have become such a lazy society with our televisions and computers and technology in general. Great-grandma didn't have that luxury. It was important to always keep the hands busy. Can you imagine how many projects they would have filled their blogs with?

My own grandparents kept journals of sorts. My mom's mother recorded in a ledger different projects she had done - detailed accounts of how much of each vegetable she had canned each day, and sewing projects complete with a list of expenses. I even saw on one of the pages the accounting of how much fabric she had purchased (along with the cost) for my mother's wedding. If I recall correctly, the material for mom's dress and her bridesmaids and all the trim came to a whopping $35. Sadly that journal has disappeared. When Grandma sold her home and moved into a retirement home, she got rid of a lot of stuff. I guess this must have been one of the things to go.

My grandfather on my dad's side used to record each day's weather on his calendar - temperature, precipitation, and so on. He was a farmer, and I'm sure this habit was very helpful to him. We lived near both sets of grandparents until I was 13. After that, they would write detailed letters, telling what they had been up to. We received detailed accounts of canning, farming, charity work and so on. I wish I would have had the foresight to keep these treasures, but as a young teen, things like that didn't seem so important. More than anything I wish I had more things in their own handwriting. I have some, but not much.

Now, we're "busy" but not necessarily productive. I've been so "busy" lately that I haven't gotten much of anything done. Crazy, isn't it? But that's how it is. I would love to go back to productivity instead.

Sometimes, I think that my blog is just for fun, and just for my own personal amusement. But last night, I thought about what a treasure it would be to have a print version of one of my grandmothers' blogs. And so I am inspired. Today we blog. Tomorrow we will be grandparents and great-grandparents. We leave a treasure... even if it seems insignificant now. So I am inspired to continue. And I will continue the tradition of buying a print version of my blog each year... for posterity :)

This is one of the treasure boxes I received from my Mom's mom. Can you tell what decade she last did embroidery in?

This is a view of the inside of her sewing kit. She did a lot of charity sewing at her church. I imagine this was the little kit she took with her. Lots of old thimbles ;)

I was fortunate enough to inherit both of my grandmothers' sewing machines. This was my mother's mother's machine.

And this was dad's mom's machine. They both work wonderfully well, and I do get them out and play with them once in awhile. My daughter will get one of these when she is ready for it. (I inherited a lot of embroidered works from Dad's mom, but I did a post on that last summer. I hadn't posted about Mom's mom yet, so the rest of the things on this page are from her.)

When the sewing stuff was brought to me, there was an extra special treasure tucked inside. This is my maternal Grandmother's wedding veil. What an honor to be the one to get this. I wish I had room to display it properly, but I'm also afraid of sun damage. Maybe when our bigger house gets set up I'll be able to find a place where we can enjoy this, and not just keep it in a box.

Finally Back to Crafting :)

FINALLY. Ugh. It's been way too long since I did anything creative. I'm making up for it in full speed now.

Last night I got started on crocheting the blue and brown blanket for the new baby. (Just in time too. Did you notice the ticker on the sidebar? We're down to 99 days and counting!)

Anyway, I had this pattern in mind and searched for it forever before finding it online. I know I have it in a pattern book, but I haven't unpacked those from when we moved in 2007, and I wasn't sure which box they were in. I've been meaning to go through all the boxes and record what is in everything so I can find it, but it hasn't happened yet. It's discouraging to try to find a place for everything when there just isn't room for everything to have a place. I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to having the big house get here so we can actually unpack everything for good. (By the way, I talked to our mover on the phone Monday and he said he was going to try to be on the road by Thursday... as in tomorrow. We'll see...) Anyway, I finally found the pattern here.

I haven't crocheted anything for a long time (other than the pink afghan I started which is just double crochet stitches. I wasn't sure I'd be able to figure out the pattern. But it turns out that this one is super easy, and it works up pretty fast. I got this far just last evening, within a couple hours, which also included time to figure out the pattern. I was a little rusty. I think it's going to be a really pretty blanket :) Now I'm feeling like I ought to go back and do something a little more interesting with the pink one. But, one crochet project at a time. Now sewing projects, that's another matter. You're going to see a bunch of those started in the next few days. I got some new fabric in the mail yesterday, and more coming soon. I'll show you those later.

Monday night I sat down to try to figure out what to do with my challenge fabric for the contest at our quilt shop. We only get one fat quarter of the challenge fabric to work with, and that in itself is a challenge, regardless of the fabric. I wanted to make a baby sundress with this summery fabric, but clearly a fat quarter is not enough to make much of a dress with. So, I figured that I could add other fabric to it and extend it a bit.

So I did a little figuring... okay, a LOT of figuring, followed by a lot of second-guessing and re-figuring, and then finally bit the bullet and cut everything into strips. All these colored strips in the picture above are from one single piece of fabric. I only had 1/2 yard of this, so that added to the challenge of figuring out how to get all my pieces cut out and still have enough fabric for everything.

When I got it all cut, I laid it out together ... and hated it. I'm hoping it will be cuter with a little bit of gathering between the strips, but either way, it is what it is, and I'm not spending another penny on this project. I'm hoping to get this sewn together sometime this week. We'll see. As usual the schedule is full, and I'm a little bit obsessed with the blue and brown blanket right now. Not to mention, I really need to work on our taxes sometime soon :(

Remember the other day when I said I was a fabric miser? I wasn't kidding. This is literally all I have left in scraps after cutting everything out for the dress. I don't even have an extra scrap of the challenge fabric. Yeah! I call this success :)

I had to squeeze in a few pictures of the 2 year old, who was as photogenic as always yesterday. Whenever we read a book, he will climb into my lap, lay back, and immediately fold his hands behind his head like this. He lays in bed like that too. It's too cute!

He's also a little obsessed with hats... can you tell? Sometimes the horse even gets to wear one.

He loves his brother's ski helmet. It didn't take him long to take off the goggles, though.