To Market, to market......

Not much of a post today, more of a teaser. I'm off in a few minutes to the airport and on to Houston, TX for International Quilt Market. I'll be connecting with friends, other shop owners I know and admire, all the big name quilt teachers & authors, looking through 3 football fields-worth of booths showing the latest and greatest quilting fabrics, embellishments, books, patterns, buttons, purses, etc, etc. I'll be thinking of YOU when I make my choices. I'll try to blog from there, but not sure if I can.

Bye!

The Poky Little Puppy

I'm sure every Baby Boomer has read at least one Little Golden Book in their life. I loved these little books with their cardboard covers, cute stories and artwork. The Poky Little Puppy was one of the twelve original stories published as Little Golden Books by Simon & Shuster in 1942. They originally sold for 25 cents. It is still a good seller. Since I love books, I made sure I read this one to my girls when they were little and now my grandchildren are enthralled.

And so now Quilting Treasures has produced fabric with our friend, Poky on it. Nostalgia has it's appeal for all of us.

At Scottie Dog Quilts we have several prints for sale.....








Of course there's Poky and friends playing on a grassy field.





We have this wonderful gold print....look familiar? Of course it's the same as the inside covers of every Little Golden Book.











There is even a soft book you can put together for a little one in your life.....title? Of course it's The Poky Little Puppy! I've got to make one of these. The last time I made a soft book instead of using batting between the pages I used fusible interfacing and it worked well....easy to turn pages but not so bulky.

Last, but not least we have this lovely yellow print with lots of the Little Golden Book stars....Saggy Baggy Elephant, Tootle, The Little Red Hen, Sky Kitten and more.
I'm off to sew!

Sunday is Seafood Night

Sunday at the Scottie Dog House is usually seafood. We live on the Northern California Coast, where there is always an abundance of fresh (and I mean REALLY fresh) seafood. Mr. Scottie Dog and I enjoy most fish and shellfish....I suppose there is a lot we've never tried.....octopus, whale blubber, giant conch, etc. But what we HAVE tried we've been pretty happy with. So Sundays we usually buy some fresh fish at WinCo. Last week was Wild Salmon steaks and scallops. We are privileged to have a JenAire grill cook top so most all proteins are grilled at our house. We've done catfish and snapper and cod and sand dabs and more. Today we never made it to the store so we grabbed some small prawns out of the freezer.





Here's my salad plate....red pepper, cucumber slices, pickled cauliflower, chopped romaine and some couscous & shredded Parmesan cheese with South Beach ranch dressing. Oh yes, a couple of Sonoma Jacks' brand garlic & herb cheese wedges. I hadn't thought to photograph it until I was grinding the black pepper on top.

I don't know how interesting this is, but it's a typical Scottie Dog House dinner.....salad with something grilled on top.

It was good! What did you have for dinner?

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas.....

October is here....Sydney said she was cold today and I told her it wasn't Summer any more. "Why not, Gwandma?" So I tried to explain it was Fall. "Who falled down, Gwandma?" Then I tried to tell her that the leaves turn colors and "fall down" from the trees (sounds good, doesn't it?). But the tree in front of us had fully green leaves (they probably won't turn for a couple of months). I smartly changed the subject.

Tonight my son-in-law posted his FaceBook Status as:

Jason Hache is listening to Christmas Music.....I'm sorry, I tried to fight it as long as I could, but "baby it's cold outside."

Now, I like Christmas music as much as most people....actually I like it more than most people and would be glad to be listening to it along side of him but it does bring up the panicked question: How many days until Christmas?

Let's see...today is Oct. 1. 30 days has September, April, June....OK, 31 Days in Oct. plus 30 days in November and then add 25 days for December.....YIKES! it's 85 days till Christmas. I'd better get working on those gifts, decorating and .......well, what about Christmas Cookies.

This morning I woke up to this:

My Christmas Cactus is in full bloom.....on October 1. Jason, I can hear it now......It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.......

Family

Family---you gotta love family!

My Uncle Walt turned 90 last week. Here's a picture of him taken at his party on Sunday. No, really...this IS Uncle Walt. Does he ride Harley's? I doubt it. Does he usually dress like this? No, I don't think so. He always says to me, "How's my niece doing?" I think it's because he can't remember my name! He loves me, but sometimes he has other things on his mind. Uncle Walt was a teacher and counselor at Redlands High School (from which I graduated in 1970) , a teacher at San Bernardino Valley College (graduation: 1972) and ran the Walt Anderson Swim School teaching hundreds of Southern Californian kids to swim. he also coached swimmers and some of them made it to the Olympics. Congratulations Uncle Walt, Happy 90th Birthday!

Friday evening my Dad and his lovely wife, Willa Mae, arrived for a quickie visit. They had spent a week in Central Oregon on holiday. they took a long lunchtime visit with my brother in Eugene and then made a very quick trip to Eureka. Dinner and an early evening full of catching up.

Saturday we packed a ton of fun into the day. We went to Costco and filled up our carts with giant packs of stuff...TP, paper towels, flats of water & soda, huge bag of vegetable chips, steaks, peppers, lettuce....they have it all at Costco and in mega-quantities only. I caught this picture of Sydney and Great Grandma Willie in the parking lot. I thought it was sweet.

We hit the recycling center and then off to Sequoia Park. This is a city park just down the street from our house. The neatest thing about this park is that it is a little forest in the center of town. The road through the park winds around and down into a ravine with a duck pond at the bottom.

When my girls were smaller we often took a bunch of old bread to feed the ducks in the pond. What great memories......and now we occasionally take Sydney to feed those ducks. On Saturday, Liz, Sydney and I took Dad and Willie. We had a bag of bread and found some buns left by earlier feeders. Currently there are about 9 male mallards and 1 female and one goose. The goose didn't come over from the little island in the center of the pond but the mallards were eager eaters. Willie kept throwing to the female....she felt that the "boys" were eating more than their share.

We had a wonderful barbecue for dinner: fillets, grilled mushrooms & red peppers and green salad. I wish I had taken a picture of the awesome Strawberry Shortcake Liz made for dessert. Yum!

After dinner we played cards....it wouldn't be a visit without a game of Shanghai Rummy.

Great-grandpa had a chance to chat with Jakob & Sadies when we Skyped to Minnesota. They were excited as they hadn't seen him since February.

But the visit was over and on Sunday morning Dad and Willie drove off....hope to see you soon....love you both!

Eight Years

Today is September 22 and that means that Scottie Dog Quilts has entered it's 9th year of business.

Eight years....on September 17, 2001 we opened our doors. That's just a week after 9/11. You know, THE 9/11.

I had never worked in retail, didn't know much about owning a store, but I knew the quilting world pretty well having been a full-time quilting instructor for about 10 years. I had taught quilting to children in schools. I had taught in other people's shops and at guilds and had held 3 pretty successful quilting retreats. With the encouragement of my family (especially Mr. Scottie Dog) and not nearly enough capital we opened our doors and were welcomed by the Quilters of Humboldt County.

The first year or so was pretty tough. I was the main one working in the store and when I got home I still had paperwork and computer work to do. More than once I told Mr. Dog that I felt as if I was trying to run through jello. My family helped out as much as possible and then Liz came on board full-time. Ah, ha! A college trained gal with a head for business! Together we make a good team. She helped get us on track and more professional, I knew the quilting world. I taught her how to order fabric, she taught me how to write an Employee Handbook. Together, with daughter Sarah helping out at retreats and Beka working on the website and Mr. Scottie Dog doing the financial paperwork we have grown from a small shop to a world-wide presence in the Quilting World. We have a wonderful staff that helps us out. Without them we couldn't do it at all! Many, many thanks to Judy, Margie, Geri, Katie,Lori, Laura and Stephanie! Life has it's ups and downs and the Scottie Dog Family has lost a couple members and gained some new ones as the grandbabies continue to come

All of you have become our family too! With your support and friendship you have supported us in good times and in painful ones. Liz and I agree that the best part of this business are the wonderful people who have become our customers...no, friends & family!

We've met many of the famous people in the quilting world....but none of them compares to you!

Thanks again for eight wonderful years.