up on the roof

Roof tear-off began this morning. 0700. We will invite the neighbors over for a forgiveness pizza when it is complete.

nine patch

Working on this nine patch, using the method on the Moda site.
http://www.modabakeshop.com/search?q=patchtastic
I thought this was a lot of busy work for making the patches, but works well with the type of scraps I am plowing through. Also, with varying bits of time to work, it is a method that lends itself to easy pick up and stopping. I stay organized, an unlikely state for me in my usual disarray.
I am using 4 1/2 inch squares to start, ending with 3 inch finished nine patches.

Today was Eve's last first day of high school. A senior. She is recently back from visiting a bunch of really expensive schools out East.

another block party

The theme this year was a mix of speak-easy/untouchables in honor of the Johnny Depp movie about John Dillinger being filmed in our neighborhood. I still haven't seen the film, so I don't know if we actually made the final cut. Things start off by having candy thrown by a "Block Head" which used to be a kid with a box on his head, but has evolved in recent years to reflect the theme. We've had Elvis, a Pirate, Clowns, Olympians. This year it was this nefarious bunch of mopes.
Our block party has been held since 1955, one of the longest running in the city.

Our service project was the local food bank and my quilt brought in $321 plus about 2 dozen jars of peanut butter and jam.
I displayed quilts again off the porch.

Iraqi Bundles of Love

http://ibol.wordpress.com/
Here is my box for the Iraqi Bundles of Love. It is filled with some of my stuff plus much thread from the stash of a friend's mother.
How come everyone else's bundle on the website looks so pretty and mine looks like it just fell out of bed?

home again

This quilt, made in 2001, has hung in Andy's office for several years. He put up the one I gave him for his birthday and this one has come home.
It is fun to look at it again. I dyed all the fabrics for the top. My small quilt group gathered several times to dye fabric, and I was always pregnant or breastfeeding and couldn't participate. Finally, the stars aligned and I joined the fun.
We did direct wet application and I loved the resulting fabrics.
I chose a simple block to feature the fabrics and it was machine quilted by my friend Cissie Arvidson.

princess and the pea

We are getting ready for the roofer to do a tear-off and dorm out our attic. This means my fabric has been bagged up and we are throwing out lots of stuff that wandered its way up there. I have laid out finished quilts on a bed, Princess and the Pea style. I need to cover them with plastic before the dust flies.
I also see that many of the quilts are not quite finished--binding missing, a corner loose for a label, sleeves flapping from not being sewn down.


I love this quilt--I tested the pattern for Debbie Bookman--it needs sleeve and label. I think I gave it to Seth a few years ago for Christmas. Maybe his memory is as bad as mine and I can finish it and give it again this year.
See how unhappy he was the first day of grade 6.

public service announcement

Let me tell you about one of the hardest parts of being a hospice nurse.
If you are dying without advanced directives, and are no longer able to make your own decisions, all responsibility goes to your next of kin.
I have had to get signatures from 21 year old kids and 80 year old parents.
You do not want to put your children or parents through this.
Should they have input into decision making? Absolutely.
But to ask them to put their signature on a piece of paper breaks their hearts.
Find a sibling, friend, cousin, the mailman to do this and draw up advanced directives.
Today.

wayback machine

Since not much quilting is getting done around here I decided to show some from back in the day. My less than cooperative handlers do not like holding them straight.

This is one of my favorites--a Jacobs Ladder made with blocks swapped on QuiltNet, 1995.

Farmers Daughter, 1995, from a Country Threads book.

Road to Oklahoma, can't find a date on it, but from around the same time.

Sampler, also no date on it, but I well remember making it in 1997 during my pregnancy with Seth. I was very sick and did not get much sewing done, but this was offered as a mystery on the web and I could handle making the block or two every other week.

happy birthday, Beth

We celebrate my sister Beth's birthday. In this photograph you see what a lovely baby she was. Janna and I are wearing reversible houndstooth/grey wool flannel vests and skirts our mother made for us.
I think one reason I remember our clothes so well is I got to wear them through two sizes as mom made matching ones for the three of us. Beth got pretty tired of them after wearing them through three sizes!
Beth is a busy mother and wife, college instructor, and doctoral student in how to teach physics to 1st graders! I spent a day with her last week, watching her review her students' work.

Eve's travels

Eve is studying in China and this is the only photograph she has sent.
My parents and sister are just back from England.
In viewing their photographs, and this of Eve, I am pleased to report the Dykstra family is not, as one comedian said of Americans abroad, "dressed like they are ready to mow the lawn".

orzo salad

Andy's favorite

Dressing:
1/4 cup mustard (use honey or brown or dijon)
1/2 cup olive oil
1/3 cup vinegar (use combination of balsamic and seasoned rice)
1 tablespoon soy sauce

Stir in:
1 small onion minced
1 big or two regular cans of black beans, rinsed and drained
1 regular can of chick peas, rinsed and drained
1 cup of frozen corn (use white super sweet if available)
1 regular can of small black olives, drained

While the above marinates, prepare:
1 napa cabbage chopped
1 pound orzo
Cook orzo, drain, do not rinse, toss hot with chopped cabbage to wilt it.

Pour marinated mixture over orzo and cabbage and toss.
Slice up 8-10 sundried tomatoes drained of oil and scatter on top.
Use lots of fresh ground black pepper.
Is best at room temperature.

This is the basic recipe. At times I add:
Roasted asparagus
Roasted peppers
Artichokes
Chopped fresh tomatoes

bound, labeled and sleeved

Not sure if anyone but a quilter would use sleeved as a past tense verb.
These quilts have been all but the three above for some time now.
The first is an improvisational piece. I loved making it, each section grew as the scraps around me took it in a new direction.
The second, much more rigid, is beautiful. It will be Andy's birthday present and will hang in his office, bringing home a quilt I have not seen for quite some time.
One of the frustrating realities of being a nurse is dealing with shifts being canceled or being on call. I am never able to totally relax in these situations as even if cancelled, they may call me in anyway, and being on call is setting aside time without knowing what will happen. Both of these are really difficult financially, too, as there is no pay for either.
Yesterday I was ready to take report when they sent me home, but said they might call me back. Binding was the perfect activity as it is busy work, productive, and not tasking. It is always good to have some of that type of work available.
Just this hour I got a call canceling me for this evening, but to stay close to the phone in case admissions come in.
I am not faulting my place of work--great staff, great mission, but this is the industry way of dealing with fluctuating patient census levels. There has got to be a better way.
Later: they called me back in, then sent me home after 5 hours.

The back of the second quilt (adapted from the Moda site) uses up the last of my Senegal chicken fabric. Love that stuff.

not plaids (well, there are a few)

Yes, I can use non plaid fabric. I have a nice collection of Japanese fabrics. We were in Tokyo in 1989 and I still have some I bought then at a department store. Paul was 15 months old, a beautiful blonde child who got me access to places regular tourists might not have gotten--a bride was choosing her wedding kimono and she let me sit and watch her being dressed.

I love the old Momen House prints of the late 1980s/early 90s. I would search quilt shops for the narrower boards that would hold these wonderful fabrics. I picked up a few Mrs. March/Lecien at the quilt expo here this March and decided to use all of these, plus a few American, French, and Italian taupe type fabrics and lots of shirt parts in Bonnie Hunter's Chunky Churndashes.

It is a great, simple pattern, reminds me of the Shinto lanterns or gates. I used a beige/blue vermicelli and a great tomato red/beige reproduction print that had been on my shelves for quite a while for the hour glass blocks.
And, I had the delight of meeting Bonnie in person at a meeting she lectured in Lake Bluff.

cape cod

We are just back from a week on Cape Cod, where Andy vacationed many summers in his childhood.
Andy and Eve flew because of work/school time constraints. The boys and I drove out...

In a note to my sisters I wrote upon arrival:
I started out from Chicago Friday at 0700. We stopped twice for breaks, stopped by some friends on Lake Chautauqua for a hour and a half, stopped at 10pm to sleep some place in the Fingerlakes District, were back on the road by 0730, stopped for two breaks and a grocery buying venture, and got to Cape Cod at 730 pm to find...Michigan.
Yes, 36 hours of travel to get to a place that looks just like Michigan.
The only differences I've found are there is salt in the water and there are tides.

Those two things better make the extra 34 hours worth it.

Andy is like a little boy (in a good way) so the rest of us are going to make the best of this.

But, from now on, Benton Harbor here we come.
Lynn

My mood improved over the week. There were dark skies and rain most of the time, but Andy was able to take them sailing one day.

Seth loved the tidal flats. Here the tide comes in on their castle.


We went ocean side one afternoon--beautiful day.

And, had a wonderful sunset the last night.

But, I am just back from the return drive and coming by the exits to Michigan at the end of the journey made me even more weary.
Why do I always need a vacation after my vacations?

dishcloths

Dish Cloths--How I make them.
One 3 ounce skein of Lily's Sugar 'n Cream variegated cotton yarn will yield 2 dish cloths. You can make these any size you wish, my mom likes me to make them bigger for her, but with this size I know I will get two out of the skein.
Cast on 4 stitches.
Knit 2-3 rows, knitting up the tail of the cast on as I go.
I always slip the first stitch of a row over onto the needle making a smoother edge. I count this as my first knit stitch. There may be knitters language that explains it, but I don't know it.
So, back to the cast on and initial rows.
Knit two, yarn over, knit to the end of the row.
Keep doing this until there are 53 stitches on your needle.
Knit one, knit two together, yarn over, knit two together, knit to the end of the row.
When you are down to 6 stitches, knit one, knit two together, knit two together, knit one.
Now you will have four stitches on the needle.
Knit 2-3 rows, bind off, weave in just one end because you knit in the first end at the beginning.
I am all for efficiency.
I especially like to knit up the leftovers for our use.

home again

I had these three quilts hanging at the arts center. I enjoy getting reacquainted with quilts I haven't seen for a while.
I think all were made in 2001.
This was a mystery on the web. A rare example of a quilt of mine not made with many fabrics. I do like it.

A little quilt, part of a guild challenge so the fabrics were selected by someone else--I added a few. I named it Toba for the place in Japan we saw many seahorses. Quilted with close parallel curved lines with variegated rayon thread.


I took a workshop with Margaret Miller. Quilted in random intersecting squiggle lines with variegated rayon thread. And, it has a great Senegal fabric of chickens for the back.

a major influence

Jennifer LaCivita started the Portage Park Center for the Arts here in our neighborhood of Chicago in 1999. It was a pilot program of introducing neighborhood based arts support and the city bought an old church for the center to use. The center was wonderful to have in the neighborhood. I was home with 3 small children and quilting, teaching a few friends once a week at my house.
I went to Jennifer in 2000 and asked if she would be interested in a fiber arts addition to her programming. She welcomed me in and I started with two students. We developed a once a week evening class and monthly Saturday workshop. The classes were very popular and I am proud of the work I did there.
It was also a great place for my family--the kids all took arts classes there, and I was right in the neighborhood when I taught.
The arts center is closing now (building is in need of major repairs that the city is not going to make, leading to unsafe conditions) and funding for arts is no longer a priority in the city budget. PPCA was a treasure for the neighborhood for a decade, and it's ripples will continue.
My teaching there gave me work experience that helped me going back into nursing, and on to teaching nursing.
Thank you, Jennifer.