It's been awhile since I've posted. I figured I have a good excuse with xmas taking up a lot of time. I went down to Fairmont with Andy on the 24th. We made it in to town as it was raining but before it could freeze the roads. The drive took about fifteen minutes longer than it should have....which is 25% longer than normal. We celebrated xmas with my dad, Annette, and Branch that night. It has been a tradition to go to my grandma's house on xmas , but for the first time in my nearly 23 year existence, we had to reschedule. The weather was terrible and we spent to whole day inside having our family xmas. The only time all day that I went outside was to trek down the street to ask the people who were plowing the apartment parking lot if they would mind doing our driveway quick since my mom's snowblower had broke, been repaired, and broke one more time in trying to get our driveway cleared.

The 26th was spent at my Grandma's house. I had to dig Andy's car out--a plow had trapped him in-- and after thirty minutes of digging and then a bit of pushing, we were ready to go. ...or so we thought. We needed to get gas and got stuck again coming out of the parking lot. A nice lady helped me push and we got unstuck within a couple minutes. The normally thirty minute drive to Gram's house took forty five minutes. Andy finally met most of the extended family and there seemed to be general approval in both directions.

We headed back up to Mankato on Saturday only to leave for Andy's mom's the next morning. We had a nice steak dinner and played cards. Then we headed back down to Mankato. I think we're both looking forward to not travelling for a long time.

All in all it was a pretty ok time and it was good to be able to see all the family again. I brought my camera down with me, but didn't take any pictures....oops.

Iron and Wine?

new guitar stuff with a face even....for part of it.... I explain in the video a little, but for more detail: the first song is "upward over the mountain"; at 1:15 it switches to "faded from the winter"; 1:52 is a sloppy transition into "each coming night"; 2:14 becomes "jezebel" on which i continually made mistakes by muting the high e string :( ; 2:42 starts "cinder and smoke"; and lastly and most sloppily played is "sodom south georgia" at 3:18. The last song was a spur of the moment deal and probably should have been left out since I botched it so much and didn't get to play the good part. I had to cut off the video because I can only upload files under 100 mb. four of the six songs are actually played with a capo, but it had to be left off for the sake of ease and transition.




i've been bored a lot lately so i've been making a lot of stuff to fill my time (as you might have noticed in the last few posts which had pictures of table runners i've made. Well surprise, i made another. This one I made for Trista. I'm not super thrilled with it. I've been having trouble getting things to lay flat, but I don't think Trista minded. In the picture, some blocks look more blue/indigo, but they're actually purple, and the binding is a light blue rather than white like it looks in the picture.

I've obviously got a lot of time on my hands

I made another table runner. This time it was for my kitchen. The crappy one that was in my kitchen is now in my living room and will probably be replaced soon enough with a new one. My kitchen isn't really all that big--a downfall of most apartments-- so there isn't much decoration or color too it. The table runner is the only real source of color in there now. The living room had more color and the table runner from the kitchen matches, but it's so poorly made that I don't know if I can stand it being in there for too long. My new runner is basically the sane as the one i made for my brother's gf, but with slightly different fabrics. I think I like the first one better, but oh well.

I think I've been quilting a lot more because Andy likes to play video games online with one of his friends, so when he does that, I quilt. I've also been having a lot of fun improving my machine quilting skills. I think I need to learn more about what settings the machine should be on for the best results but it would probably also help to have a machine that doesn't suck.

Tunes and Runners

I haven't posted a video in a really long time. This is mostly because I haven't recorded anything in a really long time. I haven't been playing a whole lot lately, nor have I learned anything new. This is a piece that I wrote two years ago. I never wrote down tabs and hadn't played it in a long time, so I'm a little rusty and unsure. I only remembered how to play one part of it twenty minutes before I recorded. I mess up a fair amount, but at least one of the times that I mess up, it's because the camera made weird noises so i though it wasn't recording. (It's the point at about 1:45 when I lean forward and stop for a second). Anywho, I think I titled it "the unseen." Don't expect to be blown out of the water....



I made another table runner for my brother's girlfriend for xmas. I think it turned out really neat and I kind of want to keep it for myself. shh...don't tell. I did the top quilting on my machine. It's only the second time I've done it. I like how it turned out pretty well, but I still need a fair amount of practice. This was officially the last gift I had on my list for xmas, so I guess I'm done unless I decided to do something for someone else.

I want to make another table runner for myself. the one I have in the kitchen was really poorly made and I don't have one for my coffee table. I guess that's on my to do list now.

stupid december

so far december has been vaguely eventful. andy moved in on the 5th, i started training for jackson hewitt, and i've been trying to find ways to fabricate xmas gifts with limits funds. (the picture is at my dad's house after he put up all his xmas lights).

living with andy has been about what i expected: pretty damn neat. it's been a whole week now and as of yet i haven't wanted to kill him. if we can keep this up for 60 more years, we'll be all set.

as far as the training goes, i'm learning how to do taxes in a non-sucky fashion. I'll be working through the tax season at the jackson hewitt office, which is conveniently located near my house, preparing taxes. so if you pay someone to do your taxes anyway, come to jh and let me do them.


i am basically done with my xmas shopping. i've got two things left that i plan on making, but all the purchasing is done. i think i was able to be pretty thrifty--basically everything was on sale, from ebay, or home-made.

for quilt club this month, we had a gift exchange. we were supposed to make a candle mat or penny quilt (basically just a small quilt from what i've gathered) and wrap it up. then all the gifts were set on a table and you picked one from the pile. after you opened it, you got in line to hold it up for people to see and say who it was from. the lady that got mine didn't seem like she was too thrilled with it :( but i was pretty pleased with it. the back is just the solid maroon color and the top quilting was just a straight stitch in the seams. the one i got was pretty neat. it was from julie freyburg (?). a lot of people made their mats xmas oriented, but i thought i'd make one more usable for the whole year. the one i got lives on my coffee table and serves as one of the two pieces of xmas spirit that adorns my apartment. the other things is a colored picture of a reindeer on my fridge.

my shift button has only seemed to get more broken, so i'm not worrying about capitalizing things....

leo k

be prepared. my shift key isn't working properly-- Last Saturday i got to see Leo Kottke play in minneapolis. Andy and his mom have a tradition of going to see him. I was invited to go along this year and was really happy to hear him. He played a lot of different things. i really enjoyed this song: click me!. It's not his originally and i liked how he played it that night better, but he had 26 years more experience from when this clip was recorded. i think it's awesome because he's clearly having a blast playing, and it was obvious during hte concert that he was doing something he absolutely loves to do. I also really like this piece: click me too! He didn't play it that night, and i don't know if it's an original piece but i really enjoy the sound. the band that opened for leo was called devotchka. they did the soundtrack for little miss sunshine. there were only actually two members of the band there to perform. they had a few songs that i enjoyed and some that basically sucked. it was kind of cool because one of the guys played the accordion, violin, and this 1.5' x 1' harpsichord deal. it was pretty silly to watch him play it because he would sit on the floor since it wasn't on a table.

Overall, it was pretty awesome time. I hope I get to take part of the tradition again in the future.