I Have Resurfaced to Tell You a Story

I took the summer off.  And the beginning of fall.  We were just having too much fun.  But more on that later.

Right now there are two things you need to know going into this tale.  1. I drive a 1982 Jeep CJ7.  It makes me feel tough.  2. I drive my CJ rarely enough that we only filled it up 8 times in 2011, which is quite a feat for a vehicle that gets 11 miles to the gallon.

Additionally, Josh and I disagree about the function of this part of the Jeep:

Yes, it is large enough to be used as a temporary shelf.  Yes, it leaves the garage only occasionally, so it seems like a convenient place to leave things.  However, call me crazy, but I don't expect items to be stored on the front of my car.  So I don't often look there before driving away.

Many things have made it all the way down highway 26, through Portland, and to the Red Cross on the front of ol' Wheezy (it's short for Louise): a burlap sack, Josh's steel tipped hiking staff named John, a styrofoam cooler.  But this is the tale of the one thing that didn't make it.

After a day of working in the garden, Josh took off his cozy flannel and corduroy jacket, placed it on the above disputed area, and came inside to rest his weary bones.  Who knows how many days the jacket stayed there before I needed to drive the Jeep instead of taking TriMet.  But I do know that it wasn't until I came out of work one evening and approached Louise from across the parking lot that I saw the jacket on my bumper.  "Phew," I thought, "I didn't lose it!"  And I moved it safely inside the Jeep for the trip back.  But when I got home and returned it to Josh, we discovered the tragedy:  The items inside the pocket of his jacket somehow came out and flew away without the loss of the coat itself.  How does that happen?!

And of course, I didn't lose the cheap cooler or the free burlap sack.  I lost the only thing to make this dangerous journey (other than John, which is priceless) that was worth anything.  And now I have to buy Josh a new pipe.

June Happened

Oh my.  June was a whirlwind.  We started off by marching in the Grand Floral Parade for Portland's Rose Festival.  We were pioneers with the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center.  We looked like this:

Then we hosted Josh's mom and her two sisters in a Portlandia Extravaganza.  We went everywhere and did everything.  Which includes walking through the Naked Bike Ride.  10,000 people shed their clothes and ride through the city to protest oil dependency.  They got between me and VooDoo Donuts.  So I went through them.  With my mother-in-law.  It looked like this:



Just kidding.



I was going to make it a more elaborate story.  We had to cross the Nude Sea to get to the Promised Land which flows with maple and bacon.  Or something along those lines.  But I couldn't quite flesh it out.

We finished Josh's second year of residency and partied with the program's 2012 graduates.  In 362 days, that'll be us!

I took my serger class at Modern Domestic.

We ended the fiscal year at work, and I give myself a B in my fundraising for the year.  Except then we adjusted the goals because (thank the Lord) there was no big earthquake this year like there was in both 2011 and 2010 to boost Red Cross awareness.  Once we made those adjustments, you could say I exceeded my fundraising goal.  If you wanted to.

We celebrated birthdays, welcomed friends back to Oregon, geeked out at trivia nights, and congratulated friends on impending parenthood.  I made a couple little gifts and gave them away.

It was also in June that a new life dream came to Josh and me.  Now our shared goal in life is to become Royal Rosarians.  They are ambassadors of goodwill for the city of Portland, and have a love for pageantry.  We, too, are fond of goodwill and pageantry.  We have taken our first steps to drawing an invitation from the Rosarians by being in the Grand Floral Parade, and also I was on the Portland Society Page last week with the Red Cross.  Pageantry and  goodwill, folks.  This is happening.  We will look like this:

Moving Right Along

As soon as I finished Remy's quilt after months of careful piecing and design, I started a simpler, but still detailed, quilt.  This quilt is probably made of just as many pieces, but they went together so much faster!

I used this technique to piece together 300 3" squares super-quickly.  There's none of that one-piece-at-a-time nonsense this way, and the points come out just perfectly.  Every time.

Look how much was lost to seam allowance in the first row!

I had fun sticking 300 individual squares on my design board and trying to make it look both random and balanced.  Although it took up the whole design board before they were sewn together, the finished product is a little baby quilt only about 3'x4'.  This one is for one of the chief residents at Josh's program that just had a little girl this week!

Little Gifts

Last week I had a farewell party for a work friend and a baby shower for another friend.  I made a couple little gifts for these hello and goodbye occasions.

First is a little appliqued wall hanging for my work friend.  At the Red Cross (like most workplaces, I'm sure) we use a ton of acronyms.  We send DATs on DRs and they need to have CPR and AED training and we ask our MGOs to find gifts to make it all possible.  Right?  There's a lot to absorb when you're a new employee.  So my co-worker started using extra abbreviations to poke fun; she particularly got a kick of calling the restroom the "LGR" (Little Girls' Room) to discreetly say it was time for a break from marathon meetings.  Our team thought it would be nice for her to have something to remind her and so I made this:

I just found a font I liked on the computer to print out, traced the letters on to a two sided fusible paper which I then fused to my fabrics, cut them out, ironed them on to some natural linen, and did a zig zag stitch around the sides.  I made it 8x10 so we could put it into a cute little frame for her to hang in her own LGR!

Secondly, I made this for a friend who is having a little boy in July:

I couldn't not buy this tiny Columbia fleece.  It's the cutest thing I've seen in my entire life.  Baby Greer will be about 6 months old in the winter, which is the size of the jacket, so it seemed too perfect to pass up.  I had the blue part of the hat mostly done when I got the jacket and found some matching green yarn in my stash, which, again, seemed too perfect to pass up.

It's nice to have smaller projects than quilts sometimes for some more instant gratification!

Dainty

Whew!  Though small, my latest labor of love took a while to make, but I'm so very happy with the finished product!

I made this for little Remy Willis.  Josh grew up with a good dude named Brad; Brad and his wife Megan had a baby girl a couple months ago.  With two parents in the military, I bet she is going to be one tough girl, but I just made her a very dainty quilt.  Most of the fabric is from the Swell set by Urban Chiks for Moda, which I picked for the variety of patterns and colors.  Josh was not convinced by my vision at first, but he conceded that it might be the best quilt I've ever made!  I quilted roses in an all-over pattern throughout it, and did I mention I am so very happy with the finished product?

Hey, Go Stick Your Face in There

Here is a series of photos that make me smile.  Whatever these things are called, Josh and I can't resist putting our faces in them:

Lyman Orchards, Middlefield, CT

Tillamook Cheese Factory, Tillamook, OR

Oregon State Fair, Salem, OR

Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm, Woodburn, OR

Fruit Loop, Hood River, OR

Yup.  You're never too old for these things.  Though, the parents of the kids that wait in line for us to finish being the only adults to get our pictures taken might disagree.  But they're clearly  incorrect.

A Holy Undertaking

Our friend Robert paid us a visit at the end of March.  I think March is a pretty good time to visit Oregon because things are blooming and you even have a chance at blue skies.  In fact, I was thinking on March 29th that it really hadn't been that rainy this spring.  There were even some beautiful clear days when we went to the beach and worked in our garden.  The very night I had that thought, I saw on the news that it has been the rainiest March in recorded history in Portland.  I guess I adjusted back to a Northwest mindset pretty quickly!

I've been working with a moderate amount of diligence on a quilt that I will post as soon as it's finished; but in the meantime, I made something that is not a quilt!  Although, it is quilted.  Since he is a Presbyterian minister, I made a stole to give to Robert when he came to town.  This might be the holiest thing I've ever made.

As you may be able to tell from this photo, Robert is quite tall.  This means that 1. His stole is about 4' on each side and 2. He didn't fit all the way in the picture.  The pattern I made with the fabric reminded me of stained glass windows, of which Robert is a big fan.  I was happy with the way it turned out!

I am also happy with the way this picture turned out:

It's not often that I take a nice picture, so I thought I would show it off!  This was snapped at the Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm where we went for a sunrise service on Easter morning.  It was lovely!