BWCA

Last weekend, Andy and I went to the boundary waters. we left Mankato around 6:30 pm for the cities. We needed to load up the canoe and swap everything into his dad's van which is what we were driving up in. We went to bed at ten and woke up at 2 to start driving up. To of his friends came with, but they drove up separately. We started out from Homer Lake and canoed up to Vern Lake where we planned on staying. The first day was nice, but a little windy which made it feel a lot colder. We were supposed to have three portages to go through, but the water level was high enough that we were able to bypass them and have a little fun going through some "rapids." We were even able to go back up one against the current on the way home. We did a little fishing after setting up camp but didn't catch anything. On our way back to camp after fishing, one of Andy's friend tipped his canoe and got totally drenched. We had to build him a fire to warm up. Fortunately he had a full change of clothes. It rained quite a bit over night and in the morning Andy's friends' tent was pretty wet inside. Our was too, but not that bad. One of the guys wanted to leave since it was still raining and he didn't think the tent would dry up. We packed up all our gear and canoed back to the first lake. They took off from there to head back to the cities, but Andy and I decided to sleep in the van and stay until Monday as planned. It got nice enough that we could have dried our tent out, but it rained a ton more later, so it probably wouldn't have stayed dry. We both had rain suits, so we stayed out on the lake all day despite the rain.

My shoes weren't waterproof so my feet got soaked. Since I didn't have many changes of socks, I had to warp my feet in plastic bags so they'd stay warm and dry in my shoes. It wasn't the most classy looking thing every, but it got the job done.

The third day was perfect. It probably got up to 75 and the sun wash shining. We canoed all over the lakes in the area and did a ton of fishing. There wasn't a lot biting and for all our fishing we only came away with three northerns, a bass, and a walleye.

We loaded everything up on Sunday night and headed out basically as soon as we woke up on Monday.

Despite the rain, the trip was a lot of fun. I think I would have been more upset with it if we had to sleep in a damp tent, but as it was, things worked out just fine. I can't wait to go back again in September.

For the name that tune, I'm just going to call Daniel the winner since he was the only one to comment on the post and I know he knows that song. For the chumps who don't know, it's "Blackbird" by the Beatles.

I'll do another name that tune on the next post. This one is long enough for now.

Charming and Binding

Several months ago, I won a charm pack as a door prize from quilt club. After it sat in my closet forever, I decided I should do something with it. I found a free pattern on the internet here and thought it seemed like something neat to make. The pattern suggested a specific charm pack, but the one I had worked fine. It 's neat to see color variation on quilts anyway. I was a little nervous because this quilt required appliqueing which is something I've never done, but I think it turned out ok. The instructions were for what I call "cheater" applique anyway. You use interfacing on the fabric to keep it from fraying and then stitch directly on top of it to adhere it to the quilt. I think it still looks neat and definitely worked for this quilt anyway. I might try it again since it was fun and pretty easy. Some of the pictures I attached are small, but you can click on them to see a full sized image.

I think the most exciting thing about this quilt for me was that I finally learned how to bind properly and am not scared of it anymore. It turns out that it was as simple as watching a youtube video to learn a better technique. I am very pleased with how it turned out. My corners look very nice. Nice enough to include a photo. And I really don't mind binding. A lot of people seem to hate it, but it might be the part of my quilting that I'm most confident in now.

There are still several things that i need to work on with my sewing. I didn't get the fabric tight enough, so when I did the top quilting, I got some puckering which is very annoying. I have a theory on how to keep that from happening now. I'll let you know if it works the next time I try. I also still suck at top quilting so there or some areas that look crappy. Then there is the matter of needing to learn to properly square off my quilt and improve my corners meeting. But I guess practice makes perfect. Maybe more youtube videos would help too.

I also made Meg a little bag for her birthday. It's the same pattern as the one I showed awhile back, but I changed it slightly. I got two half-yard pieces of fabric and sewed them together before following the pattern so that I could make the bag with a different colored lining. I think it turned out ok, and Meg seemed to like it, so I'm happy.

Lastly, back by popular demand (i'm joking. no one seems to care either way) is name that tune. Richard got the last one. Crazy Train, by Black Sabbath. I learned a new song last weekend, so I recorded a bit of it. I think it should be pretty easy. The hint is that it's another classic rock band and I covered a song by one of the members of the band awhile back. Good luck.

Quilt Show

This past weekend was the DVQ quilt show. My very first show was a lot of fun. I worked at the registration booth handing out the ballots for people to vote on their favorite quilts. I got to know two people form the guild who I hadn't ever met before. It was really neat because going to the show helped me realize how many people I've met going to quilt club. I even got to talk with a a lady who is friends with one of my friends and who goes to the same quilt group as my aunt which was really fun.

I had a lot of fun joking around with the different ladies in the group. They had hourly door prizes and I talked with the ladies who were doing the drawing. I told them to make sure they drew my name and that I would lick the piece of paper with my name on it. That way they could just feel for the wet one and know it was mine. I didn't actually do this, but my name was drawn. I won a a kit worth $76 dollars! I was not quite as impressive as I thought because the center part is actually just a pattern printed onto the fabric instead of piecing, but it's still neat. I put the top together. I think I will see if anyone would be willing to do the top quilting so it can be donated to community quilts. The quilting pattern was actually printed onto the fabric too. I'm not sure if this is done for the long arm person to follow if if it's intended for hand quilting...can any quilters answer this for me? Sewing this project, I learn A) what a mitered corner is and B) how to do them. The corners on the outside boarder of the fabric meat at 45 degree angles which allows the gold boarders to form the rectangle around the middle of the quilt. If I didn't do mitered corners, the gold lines would extend to the edges of the quilt because they angles would be 90 degree.

I also made Andy a new blanket. He has a bird blanket that has existed since he was a little boy. His mom made the first one. He eventually wore through the fabrics, so she had to make him another. She used part of the first one as stuffing for the second. Now he's worn through the second one. It was leaving bits of stuffing all around the bedroom which became enough motivation for me to make the third version of the blanket. The first photo is the second blanket. The first version was destroyed long before I met Andy. The second photo is the blanket I made. I top quilted straight lines on his old blanket and used the whole thing for the batting on the new blanket. So I basically just made a new coat for his blanket. He came with me to the fabric store to pick out the fabric. I think it looks pretty neat. He's a typicall guy and isn't very sentimental about things, so it was nice to be able to embrace one of the few things he's really emotionally attached to.

There were no guesses for name that tune, and I don't have any more videos. I'll wait one more post before I give away the answer.

SOOOOO Neat.

You’ll never guess what I made. That’s right, a muumuu!! Ok, no. A purse. Imagine that. Annette is doing jewelry shoes and agreed to try to sell my purses at her shows. She is going to have a table set up at Ceylon days this weekend. The last three purses I showed photos of (including the ones in this post) will be for sale at the show. I don’t know if anyone will be interested enough to pay for them, but it will be neat to see. My friend Catherine was asking about how big the purses were so I put a dollar bill in the picture for a size reference. This purse is a little different since it has the pockets on the front, but the inside is the same as the others I've made. I think it's one of my favorite color combination, but you have to be a careful person if you want to keep the white/cream clean.

I was in Fairmont for Annette’s 50^th birthday party last weekend. 50 is the new 30 in case you haven’t heard. It was a fun time. I ate several cookies and cheeseburgers. It was an all day grill out, and we hung out in the garage playing a bean bag toss game. I called it “toss across” and then got made fun of, but no one else came up with a neat name, so screw them. I decided to make Annette a bag for her b-day. She doesn’t know yet, so I hope she doesn’t read this first and ruin the surprise. It’s the same as the brown reusable bag I showed a few posts ago. For hers I put a piece of plastic stuff in the bottom to make it more sturdy. If my purses sell at all I might make more of the reusable bag things to try to sell too since they’d be something I could sell for a lot cheaper.

This weekend is the quilt show. I have never been to one, so I’m excited. I signed up to sit at the registration table for awhile to help out and then I’ll browse the show. I decided to skip on submitting anything for the show since it would be hard to make the drop off time and I kept forgetting to submit the form I was supposed to fill out and now it's basically too late. I guess I’m also nervous for people to see my stuff next to stuff made by people who knew what they were doing….

Someone finally guessed what the last name that tune was. Jack got it right with "Imagine" by John Lennon. This video is the last song I have recorded. If anyone says they want more, I'll keep doing it (if I can find more bits to learn), but otherwise I'm calling it quits. I think this one is easy so I"m not going to give any hints except for that it's another classic rock song. Good luck.

The PIT!

A few years ago my sister and her boyfriend moved in to a new house. Recently my sister learned that the house has a mysterious abyss in the basement. The place is really old and has an unfinished basement. In the corner of the basement is a mildly terrifying looking "door" which is actually just a wood slab covering a stairway. I found it odd that there was a second set of stairs in the basement that led "up" but "up" was really to nowhere.


When you go up the steps, there is a few feet of space and then the bottom of part of the house with a bunch of support beams. But the weird part is that the floor is broken up by a giant pit. It is about three feet wide and as long as the room (maybe 12-15 feet). It is maybe four or five feet deep and filled with a bunch of random stuff like pieces of mystery garbage and old tires. It is the perfect place to trap a small child for torturing and killing.

When Meg took me down there to show me, my first question was whether or not she was going to kill me. I tried to take some pictures to capture the terror factor. They look less scary then it was in person. My mom thinks that the pit might be an old coal storage area from back in the day when it was burned for heat. I'm still not entirely convinced that it isn't a torture chamber for children.

As far s name that tune. No one bothered to venture a guess as to the previous post, so I'm not going to tell you what it was or give you a new song. Jerks. I also only have one more video, so I want to wait a bit longer before I post it.

So Neat. Part three?

I finished my purse a little while ago, so I decided to post a couple pictures. I pulled out all the bells and whistles for this one. I have an inside zippered pocket, two small pockets on the sides on the inside, and a pocket on the front of the outside under the flap....Maybe the photo can make that one make sense. I don't know if the true color comes out in the photo, but the outside is a deep, olive green color. The inside color I think shows pretty well. I also added some velcro to this purse. Sometimes the wind would blow the flap up on my old purse and it was annoying. I'm hoping the velcro will eliminate this problem. The purse wasn't quite finished when I took the pictures, so ignore the end I needed to sew shut and the velcro that wasn't sewn on.

Joann Fabric is having a sale this weekend so I'm thinking about going out and getting a few sets of fabric, making some purses, and seeing if I can sell them on Ebay. Anyone want to buy a purse for 15 bucks plus material? You can pick the fabric.

Daniel got the last name that tune correct. It was Don't Let it Bring You Down by Neil Young. This new song was a solo effort from a guy who used to belong in a popular band from the sixties...? It should be another easy one. I biff a lot, so pretend not to notice. I think I only have two more videos left after this, so I'm either going to have to learn more song bits or abandon this game.

So Neat. Part Two.

I got the photos of the two purses I made for my friends. They are messenger style bags based on a vague idea of a pattern that i made about 6 years ago. It's pretty simple, but I like the purses and changing the fabric personalizes them a lot. I am working on my own purse now, but since I don't really carry one unless I don't have coat pockets to keep my stuff in, I haven't had much of a need and thus haven't gotten it finished. I'm thinking I should turn it into a business, but I don't figure anyone wants to pay me enough to worth it.

I've been greatly enjoying the nice weather we've been having, but it's kind of ruining my plans of going snowboarding one more time this seasons. I haven't been out since the lesson I wrote about earlier, and now the snow is probably melted away. Oh well. I guess I'll just have to focus on when I can get motorcycle out of storage.

I'm not adding a name that tune on this post. But I will say that Daniel correctly names the previous tune as "Don't Let it Bring You Down" by Neil Young.