Fire Ants

One more reason to dislike Texas: Fire Ants. No, really…ants! That bite! Maybe because I grew up in a land (Colorado) that due to its low air moisture, altitude and cool nighttime temperatures doesn’t have a lot of bugs. Even though I grew up without lightening bugs, I look back on those bugless days with a certain fondness, especially now that I live in Bug Zone, USA. I am apparently mildly allergic to ant bites and think that any place that has ants that bite and can cause a foot to swell and hives to form over my eyelids is not the place for me. Looks like a move to Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia are out too, you know, strictly based on my ant criteria.

With a swollen foot and an entire day stretching ahead of me while Tim was at Oyster Bake on Saturday I got back on the proverbial horse. I cut fabric for the first time since I cut my finger using the rotary cutter. It was 93 degrees outside, my foot was too swollen and itchy to put into a shoe, what else was there to do? It did make me a little nervous, but I did it. There are quilts to make people.

My trip to DC was great, my hostess was divine and good times were had by all. Photos have been up for sometime and tell most of the story (though there are very few from the wild bowling night). It was so good to see old friends, family, and meet some new people. The sights were spectacular and the weather wonderful. Between the million memorials, pitchers of beer, 3,000 calorie breakfasts, sunny skies, purring cats, and endless laughter, not a bad moment was to be had. Thanks Regina!

Conference Center

What with the cedar allergies (I know, I know but I’ll stop talking about them when they stop driving me crazy), there is plenty to complain about south Texas during the winter. But we have been lucky to live in a city that hosts conferences, and have friends and family be able to visit us because of this. My parents left yesterday after attending ALA here in town. My mom and I did a whole lot of fabric shopping, eating out, knitting and yarn shopping. Basically a lot of girly time with mom, which I don’t get a lot of, so it is super nice when it happens.

This week is busy with Knit Night at the library tonight, and then a quilt class tomorrow night which will give me some good quality sewing time to work on my 2005 Block of the Month quilt for AJ. What with the company, I haven’t had a lot of time to work on that. Oh, and my mom also got me a Fabricalc, because yes, I am a dork.

Enough Already

With the cedar! I think that for next year, I am going to save up all my vacations and take them back to back in January so I can be out of range of the devilish cedar reach. Unfortunately, January is not the best time to visit most of the places I want to go, either here in the states or abroad. Maybe next year I will just buy a bubble…

On the other hand, I do enjoy living in a convention city because it means visitors! Ashley just left (well she is still in the city but staying at a hotel now), and my parents are on their way Friday. While Ashley was here, we went out to dinner (often hilariously, well hilarious for us), and um, watched movies. We saw Brokeback Mountain which was wonderful, and A Very Long Engagement, which had a few too many blowed up bits, but very good as well.

Since then I’ve been reading…finished up the Clash book which I loved and now all I want to do is listen to their music. Next I am trying to decide if I should read a book that I don’t really want to read for a book club. I would like to join the bookclub and can’t decide to suck it up and read it, or wait until next month’s selection. There are so many books I want to read, so I don’t know if I want to waste my time reading a book that I don’t think I will like. Because, yes, I am a snotty girl reader.

After company, I will be on to finishing the top for my 2005 Block of the Month quilt for AJ. I am having a little bit of a quilting delimma, but sure to work it self out. I can’t wait to finish it and send it off to my favorite brother. I hope it gets done before Christmas of next year! I am also excited and ready to go on my 2006 Block of the Month quilt, only to be disappointed at being sent the wrong fabric that I had ordered online. Hopefully the replacement will be here before the next class in Feb!

Roly Poly

Living in south Texas means three things, it is hothothot in the summer, people eat tacos and Big Red for breakfast, and it is the land of the bugs. There are huge thumb sized white grubs in our garden, spiders, HUGE stink bugs (because of which I didn’t go out into the garden for a MONTH as they took over near the okra), ladybugs, waterbugs (or more accurately roaches though they don’t like to call them that here and are my least favorite), mosquitoes, millipedes, crickets, dirt bugs, june bugs, july bugs, flies, wasps, hornets, more spiders, outside bugs, inside bugs, and the loveable roly polys.

When we bought this house, we were new to the whole real estate thing, and we didn’t know exactly what questions to ask. And overall, we love our house and feel lucky to be homeowners. However, one thing that should have been made known to us upon purchase is that this house is built upon the ancient burial ground for all known roly polys in the universe. I am convinced that roly polys come from near and far to our house to live their last days and then die. That is the only thing that can explain it. We sweep out piles of roly polys out of the garage constantly. And I just got done vacuuming them out of the window sills. They flock to the back porch, the front porch, the side yard, the garage (they love the garage), around the tree in the back and at night? Our front of the house is COVERED with them, not yet dead. But maybe crawling up the garage door and brick to make some last dusk will, some last dance with fate, or to perform the ancient roly poly death rite before they crawl back into the garage to die.

So the next time you see a roly poly, wish it luck on its trip to a warm garage somewhere deep in the heart of Texas because I’m sure it will end up here, where I will end up sweeping it out of the garage after it has curled up, blanched in a pile with its brothers and sisters.

CR Best Buy

Summer 2005: The summer everything broke. The end of the year better hurry up and get here so I can quit replacing things. First it was the sprinkler stuff in May, the mower in June, then the dryer in July, and then my car died in August. I think we were spared September, probably only because we were out of the country for 1/2 the month. This week? The dishwasher. It was dying a noisy death since we moved in 4 years ago, but finally croaked. Our replacement can’t get here fast enough (though it might be early next week…break out the paper plates!).

I have been sneaking in a little knitting, but really must get to doing some quilting this weekend. I have to sew many little squares together for my cowboy quilt. I have been in a little quilting lull lately, so I’ve got to get back on it soon. I am also debating going to the Houston International Quilt Festival next weekend, though I am not sure I can talk Tim into going…so it might be a solo trip.

Also speaking of soon, I must get pumpkins this weekend! I love to carve pumpkins, always have. Hmmm…I can’t seem to find my usual website with templates…off to google.

Cold Front

It finally happened! As I write this at almost 5 pm on Friday, October 7th, it is 55 DEGREES!! I am loving it. So loving it. I can feel cool weather and it is GLORIOUS. I even have on a big sweater and socks. Socks for the first time in FOREVER! It may get back up to the 90s sometime next week, but for now I will stop complaining how hot it is here.

I recently posted some old photos, some forgotten ones from the Modern Quilt Along taken during the actual quilting process. And a few from the San Antonio Quilt Show that I went to a few weeks back. I probably went at a bad time, late on the first day. The vendors were tired and there weren’t very many other attendees there, so many vendors and guild members were busy talking amongst themselves. But some of the quilts were pretty cool, some sort of odd and I was surprised to see some with some pencil or marker lines still on them (with ribbons even!) You can see all the ribbon winners at the gallery.

Up for this weekend…knitting, sewing little tiny squares together, maybe seeing Serenity, some red wine, framing some pictures, getting out the Grim Reaper and trying my hand at bread. Must try to make the bread.

Alamodome Yo

First of all, I just want to say to anybody who was watching the New Orleans Saint’s first “home” game at the Alamodome in San Antonio…that is just what the offices look like at the Alamodome. After waxing lyrical about how great a reception the Saints organization got in San Antonio, they showed the temporary offices at the Alamodome on national tv. They looked sad…small…shafty…but that is what they look like for real. I have to go to defensive driving at the Alamodome, and the offices area just looks like that with all the cinder blocks. So please don’t think that the Saints got the short end of the stick with the office space (hee…um…yeah, I’m gonna need you to come in on um Saturday) they got what was there, ugly cinder blocks and all.

In all 126 blog posts, I don’t think I’ve ever talked about work. Isn’t that odd. I do try to leave work at work…though I’ve been known to type up a quick blog entry at work, so I guess I bring my home to work sometimes. Anyway, just so you know there are only 10 MORE DAYS UNITL STAFF DEVELOPMENT DAY!!! AAAHHHHHahahahahaaaaahhhhhh. Hahaha. My boss, who is planning the whole event, actually hasn’t freaked out yet inspite of a)co-workers who can’t read emails and then have to ask 50 questions and b)did I mention it is ONLY 10 DAYS..oh? I did? Ok then.

I am starting to actually work on holiday knits and quilts. I can’t believe it is October already. The cowboy fabric did come in and is soooo funny. I just have to link to it…but if you are known by your last name and work for Target, don’t click here! I had to rework an original design because the print is so large, but I think I solved it, and still kept it simple and fun. How couldn’t it be fun?? With that fabric?? Really.

Habits

Everyone has bad habits, but I was just thinking about my bad quilting habits as I am trying to hurry up and sew the binding onto the back of my quilt for the Modern Quilt Along. My edge seemed a little funny in one place, but that surely isn’t due to my bad habit of not squaring up the top of my quilt, is it? I will also admit it here, (raises hand)I sew over pins. I do, really. I find it easier to just leave them in, and it makes it much eaiser to line up my seams. I know you shouldn’t, but it is now a bad habit. And that’s really the thing about habits is that they are hard to break. I keep meaning to make a bias binding, as it is supposed to last longer, blah blah blah. Straight grain bindings are so much easier (or so I at least think as I haven’t tried any other way). I keep meaning to try it…but you know about habits. Same goes for mitered borders, I am in the habit of not doing them. I will also probably pull threads on my quilt top a little more than I should (instead of just clipping them). And lastly, I have been known to have a few glasses of wine…and then quilt. Yep. Really.

And while we are pretty far inland from the gulf coast, we are headed to Costco tonight a)because we love to buy useless things in bulk and b)because we are being good citizens and preparing for Rita. Water and wine are at the top of the list. Oh, and maybe some batteries and other usefull things like that too.

The booklist is up to date even though there hasn’t been much activity on it, I am just slowly getting through the latest Irving book. I would also not recommend going to see The Brothers Grimm, but would recommend renting Kung Fu Hustle. And I am excited that Thien and I have set up a monthly knitting night at work. Now I just need to suck it up and start a new knitting project.

L’ete chaud

When it gets so hot I have to remind myself that there are good things about living in South Texas. Really, there are a few.

1. The housing market
2. Not having to drive in the snow
3. Live Oaks mean green trees all year long
4. Gruene Hall
5. The Riverwalk
6. Bluebonnets
7. Learning important Spanish words like chanclas or estoy listo
8. Crape Myrtles
9. The train that goes around Brackenridge Park

Casting On

Let me first just say (to get it out of the way), that according to my cursory web research communists don’t seem to really celebrate birthdays at all, much less weekend long birthday celebrations. Birthdays don’t have enough to do with ‘sticking it to The Man’ or celebrating the workers, as it is more ‘Yay me’ and the communists aren’t really down with that. With that clarified…Happy Birthday Tim! Tim had a birthday this past weekend, turned thirtyfrickintwo. 32. He celebrated by helping someone move in the morning and laying sod at someone else’s house in the afternoon. Sweet, eh? But we did sort of stretch it out over the weekend, making his favorite calzones and persimmon pudding on Friday, and then a movie on Sat night after all the activity, and grilling a rack of lamb avec squash and grilled okra (I know! With the okra!) on Sunday.

Hopefully tomorrow during a “break” at work, I will be able to finish and bind off my first scarf. I made it with just some regular stitches on 15 bamboo needles, which are HUGE. But they were just right for the fuzzy yarn that I picked out. I think it is a little too wide though for my tastes. I have another ball of the same yarn, so I think I will try again, 1/2 the width. Our last knitting class is on Wednesday, and I hope to learn decreases and increases, though I have a hard time listening to any instruction at this point. Plus, our knitting instructor has the strangest background so I am constantly distracted by the totally incredible bits about her past that she just throws out there. Lets call her BJ. BJ mentions that she was a nuclear engineer for 20 years in the military, much of which was in Germany. Ok. Oh wait, she also owned a language school there and has traveled the world teaching international business communication. Oh wait, she now to owns a fiber studio where she spins her own yarn and makes art quilts and knits. I mean, come on. And then last class she casually mentions that she also grew up AMISH. And a few years ago, she wrote a letter to a guy that she grew up next door to when she was 10 and he replied and a few months later…they got married. This stuff? Doesn’t happen to real people. But you can’t just make up ex-Amish nuclear engineers who happen to spin and knit, teach international business communications and who also owns a house in Laguna Beach, which she nicely clarified for us wasn’t hit by the mud slides recently. Phew. I wonder what we will learn in this week’s class?