Quilt Challenge

The first Thursday night of every month the Redwood Empire Quilters Guild meets in my home town, Eureka, CA. Eureka is a coastal town in 'way Northern California nearly to the Oregon border. There are only three roads into the city....Highway 101 to the north and the south and Highway 299 through the mountains over to Interstate 5. It's a 3 hour winding mountainous drive through the mountains East to Redding, CA. To the North or South it's roughly 5-6 hours to any standard sized city. So you might say we are isolated. Often we are referred to as being behind the Redwood Curtain. We have magnificent Redwood Forests and a rough and chilly Pacific Ocean to our West.

This isolation makes for creative and talented people. Many artists live here, and among them are the quilters. Tonight at Quilt Guild our members displayed their "Challenge Quilts." A challenge was laid down last year to make a quilt (wall hanging size) that included an animal, the color orange and polka dots. Interesting set of rules, wasn't it. I spent most of the Fall visiting my daughter in MN so I didn't participate, but here are just a small sampling of the quilts.

Miss Hippo 2011. Her bathing suit (love the frilly skirt) was 3-D and her nails were all shiny and pink.This possum mama had made little quilts for her babies....there are no names on the quilts for voting but I think this one was made by a dear woman who rescues possums.
This Corgi quilt was so life-like and I thought the way she incorporated the leash was clever.
I have a fondness for elephants and liked this quilt quite a lot. We couldn't vote on it as it was made by the Challenge Co-chair.
So much going on in this circus quilt...very creative...again we couldn't vote on this one as it was made by the other Co-chair.
This quilt used many three dimensional embellishments...the koala was fuzzy and the lambs were woolie too. It was sort of "one world" in that there were elements from Egypt, Australia, Switzerland and the tropics. I liked it.

One thing I should note is that these quilts all hung straight in "real life," but pinned to sheets they appeared to have wobbly borders. Not so in real life. Wish I could give credit to the creators and/or tell you who won, but alas, I had to leave before the winners were announced. A great job by all who entered!

Don't forget to comment. You've got until Sunday at 9 pm (pacific time) and I'll randomly pick a winner for a jar of my homemade Jalapeno Jelly. It is fantastic over cream cheese with wheat thins!

Wednesday Nights

What do you do Wednesday nights? I teach a "Sit & Sew" class at Redwood Sewing Center (formerly Scottie Dog Quilts). It all started about 17 years ago when I began teaching quilting in my home on Monday nights. After a couple of years a small craft store asked me to move to their location. For roughly 48 weeks each year I taught Monday night and Tuesday morning quilting..9 of those years at my own store. This past September we decided to switch Monday nights to Wednesday. So now I teach the Sit & Sew class on Tuesday mornings and Wednesday nights. Geri teaches the Thursday morning classes.

What do I do at a Sit & Sew Class? I give lots of opinions....on color, fabric, patterns and borders. I cut fabric for customers. I teach how to get those seams a true one quarter of an inch. I show how to use a rotary cutter, how to put on binding, how to figure out how much fabric one needs for a border or a backing. I help thread a pesky machine. And sometimes I get to work on a project of my own while doing all of the above.

But the BEST OF ALL is all the Show and Tell I get to see. Tonight Sue J. T. showed off her BQ3 quilt (pattern by Debbie Bowles) made with "boy" fabrics.

Then she showed off another nearly completed quilt in which she has combined printed fabric panels, pieced blocks and a realistic road I've seen her make in previous quilts. Sue makes a lot of little boy quilts.Paula finished putting the borders on her Keyhole quilt for an ailing relative. It's a bright and cheery quilt bound to brighten-up any room.

So this is what I do on Wednesday nights. How about you? Tell me what you do on Wednesday nights by commenting on the blog by 9 pm Sunday, January 9. In honor of my 300th posting yesterday I'll send to a randomly picked commenter a jar of my homemade Jalapeno Jelly. It's REALLY good!

300!

Yes, that's right, post 300 today! I didn't realize it until I started to write this. There should be a give-away and I promise I'll figure out one tomorrow as it's too late to do tonight.

It's a new year...Twenty Eleven (at least that's how I'm going to start saying it) is here...and I didn't even send out all my Christmas cards. Here's one for YOU!

The pictures were taken this summer at Yellowstone National Park. This is a traditional photo opp for my family...This picture includes Mr. Scottie Dog and I, daughters Liz (with hubby Steve & granddaughter Sydney) and Beka (with hubby Jason & grands Jakob, Mercedes and Shiloh), my brother Pat (and wife Debbie) and brother Denny (and wife Carey).

Tomorrow is my birthday. Not a milestone birthday, but pretty close! I celebrated last Thursday night with a bunch of wonderful women. Four of us were celebrating birthdays and we all went to Bay One Teppanyaki. So much fun! For once in my life I sat at the rowdy table!

Twelve of us sitting around the grill. Oh, my...my birthday was certainly celebrated. Tomorrow's actually the day and I'm staying home and sewing to my heart's content on MY projects. The family is going to have a little party for me on Friday night. Can't wait.

New Year's was quiet around our house. We took inventory at the store and I was in bed early. Mr. Sun was out today and it was beautiful. I think no rain all week is predicted. I could go for that! Happy New Year's to all of you.

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve is nearly over here at the Scott House. It's been a day of fun and laughter, of remembering and gratefulness.

This morning I got a phone call, "Gamma...when are you going to pick me up?" "On my way Sydney!" Picked up this delightful 5 year old and off we went to the grocery store. I've been there every day this week; you would have thought I had enough. But still needed a few things. As we passed the olives I asked Sydney if she thought we needed some for Christmas Eve dinner. "Nope." she said. I then asked if she thought we needed them to put on our fingers and she quickly said we definitely needed them.

We picked up Mama's gift and came back home. Liz called to add another family to our Christmas Eve Crab Feast...of course there is always room for the Caldwell family at our table! Larissa & Lewis and their 3 munchkins are considered part of our family. Mr. Scottie Dog cooked and picked crab for everyone, I made salad and Liz made a shrimp & Parmesan pasta. Add some sourdough bread, crab Louie sauce and we have a feast!

Sydney helped me decorate, set the table and make some cookies for dessert. She and Mr. Scottie Dog got his vintage Lionel trains running around the Christmas Tree. These vintage trains are from the very early 1920's and were given to his dad for Christmas. There are crates and crates of track, buildings & cars. The only place I've ever seen them before is at the California State Railroad Museum. He's got quite a collection.

After dinner Sydney got to open a gift under the tree...there were only 3. One for our cats and one for her cats (we bought kitty treats at the store today) and one I had placed there. "Merry Christmas Curious George." So we made Sydney a bed beside the tree, read the book, said her prayers and she went to sleep with the twinkling tree lights and visions of Christmas Morning dancing in her head.

Liz and Steve headed home...they'll be back at the crack of o'dawn thirty and we'll open our gifts and have brunch. I hope that all of you have a wonderful Christmas. The most important thought I can leave you with is that the Baby Jesus grew up to give his life that you might come to know God the Father. Bless you all.

Christmas Crab

In our neck of the woods....er, Coastal Redwood Forest, that is.... Dungeness Crab is a December delicacy. The fishing fleet braves winter seas, rain and wind to bring us Dungeness Crab. You'll find them in every grocery store, the local fish markets and every restaurant will be serving their December Crab specials. Crab manicotti, crab cakes, crab salad, crab melt sandwiches and more.
I came home from work on Saturday weary and hungry. Mr. Scottie Dog had been out to Woodley Island Marina (in the bay just a stone's throw from downtown Eureka) and purchased Mr. Crab (pictured below) from a crab fisherman.

Mr. Dog brought home this fine creature....notice he's making a sideways run for it off the tray. I guess he knew there was a big pot of hot water heating on the patio. Bill likes his crab fresh. That means buying it off the boat, dripping wet and then rushing home and putting him into the boiling pot within an hour or so. Dungeness crab is quite sweet and they are meaty too. This big guy yielded enough crab meat to feed the two of us....quite full!
Look at him...he's wearing his beautiful deep orange "suntan" all ready to be cracked, cleaned and eaten. Bill put his share on a salad and I just seasoned mine with a tiny bit of seasoned salt and a generous grind of the pepper mill. Yum!
Liz and I went to a bridal shower tonight for our friend Jammie and Mr. Scottie Dog invited Sydney to dinner. She brought prawns and another crab. When we got home she exclaimed, "I like crab better than shrimp and even better than mac 'n cheese!" High praise indeed from a 5 year old.
It's been stormy and rainy around here and the weather report is for more of the same. If weather permits we'll have Crab on Christmas Eve.

Catching Up

It seems I need to catch up a bit on my blog....

At Quilt Market Moda had a fabulous party for everyone. Dinner, dancing, good conversation at Minute Maid Park...home of the Astro's. As it started we posed with our good friend Marie who owns Runs With Scissors Quilt Shop in Citrus Heights, CA.
Here's a close-up of us...I LOVE working with my daughter, Liz!

Back again to MN I flew after Quilt Market for another 2 1/2 week visit. We celebrated Beka's birthday at BD's Mongolian Barbecue. They made her a birthday hat!

Here's Jakob...what a handsome 4 1/2 year old!

Of course we took a trip to McDonald's while I was there. Mercedes is a toofer kind of girl!
Miss Shiloh is always checking out her surroundings.
It was a magical time while I was there....first snow! Now I know that MN has had more than it's share of snow so far this year but I so enjoyed those first 9 inches! Snowmen, sledding, snow angels and more. A beautiful winter wonderland for me.
We also paid a trip to Famous Dave's Barbecue after church one Sunday...Sadies wanted to pose by the bear.The Sunday after Thanksgiving The historical Eureka Inn invited the community to the first Christmas Tree since 2004. Hundreds and hundreds of people came and placed an ornament on it's branches.See the Scottie Dog we brought!Here's a picture of Mr. Scottie Dog and Sydney. We stood in the crush of happy celebrants for awhile and then made our way home.

More tomorrow