Successes

 I may have been a little unsociable this week, but I finished so many projects!  I finished the third quilt in the collection of quilts made from my friend's mother's gardening shirts.  This is for her 10 year old son:

Josh approved it's manliness at each step along the way.  I am especially pleased with the cozy, furry backing.

I finished this quilt for Josh's 11 year old cousin.  It's even kind of (unintentionally) OU colors. 

I finished this quilt for one of Josh's chief residents who has a brand new baby girl:

Every time I closed my eyes for the past couple nights, I saw clusters of circles because of this quilting:

And I even made a hat and a larger-than-anticpated-but-still-loved felt dahlia to put on it.  I've been wearing it all day even though it's almost June. 

Now I have one more week to finish the little leaves quilt I started ages ago so we can ship it to Oklahoma via Josh's dad next weekend.  Here's to renewed motivation!

Confessions

My friend Laurie at The Corner Slice is a wonderful writer and often uses the theme of confessions to write honest, witty, and heartwarming posts.  So I thought today I would follow her model and offer some confessions of my own:

It's not a secret, but I have neglected the blog.  I think my self-discipline comes in spurts, in blogging and in other parts of life.  I'm a bit sad that my last post was kind of cranky and was on the top of my blog for so long, so I am pleased to solve that today.

I have four quilt tops piled up that are not quilts yet.  I never do that!  I used to be quite responsible, making one or two quilts at a time and finishing them completely before starting another project.  No longer!  I basted all four last weekend, and I have to finish them in the next month so we can deliver them to Oklahoma upon our next visit.  The previously mentioned spurty self-discipline will need to kick into high gear!

I feel indignation toward people who set their bags on the empty seat next to them on a crowded bus.  It's silly of me, they probably would move their bag if someone asked to sit down.

I love spring in Oregon.  I don't think I will ever understand people who tire of the rain.  Spring rain is so pleasant!  And I had forgotten how long spring is here - things bloom for more than two weeks!  We've had at least a solid month of blooming trees, azaleas, rhododendrons, and bulbs and they feed my heart every day.  That said, I also am grateful for spring sunshine.

Every time I see Laurie's blog posts titled "confessions," I get the Glee mashup of the song stuck in my head.  This apparently also applies when I title a post the same way.  I will be tapping my foot to it the rest of the day!

An Unexpected Stop

Josh picked me up from the train station after work, and as we were on our way to do some errands, we passed a little girl about nine walking down the side of the road.  In the rain.  Without a coat.  Crying.

Of course Josh stopped the truck, and I got out to ask her if she was lost or needed help.  It took a minute to get her to tell me what was wrong, and as it turns out she was running from her dad who was not far behind in the car.  He would stop, get out, talk to her, and she would run off.  He would jump back in the car, catch up, get out, talk to her, and she would run off.  I don't know how long this had been going on.  And it was all because she didn't want to go to a church club.  This poor little girl was so upset because there is another girl there who is mean to her and to her friends.  She was telling me how this mean girl hurts her feelings when her dad came up again and told her she didn't have to go.  "Please get in the car, and we'll go home."  Aside from her hysterics, things seemed to be on the up and up.  And it was kind of awkward, and not my place, to try to handle the situation with her actual parent there, so I said goodbye and got back in my truck.  As we were pulling away, I saw her running up the street again.  *Sigh*  Since her dad was there and handling the situation (well, kind of) and it wasn't anything that needed outside intervention, we didn't follow.

So, this kind of broke my heart on a few levels.  First, it's going to be a while before I get that sad, sad image of the forlorn, wet child out of my head.  Second, she was just so beside herself that she wouldn't even calm down when her dad suggested they go home.  The poor thing was pretty traumatized over something.  Third, the mean kids were at the church!  There's nothing worse than mean church girls.  Church.  Where you're supposed to feel safe and loved and accepted.

I wish there was more that I could do for her.

Put a Bird on It!

I laughed most during that Portlandia sketch because I'm totally in a bird-loving-phase right now.  Ever since I saw that episode, I've been noticing birds all over the place in Stumptown.  My friend Nike and I have sent several texts back and forth sharing joy in the fact that Portland puts birds on everything! 
All this is leading to the fact that I started (and finished) this quilt top today:

(Please pardon the terrible picture, my camera and I aren't on good terms right now)

and didn't notice until I was about halfway done that I definitely was putting a bird on it!

I love it!  And that blue fabric that is the border for this quilt?  I have so much of it that it's made its third quilt-appearance today, and last year I made myself a dress and belt entirely from it as well.

I finished something!

No, that something is not either of the quilts I've blogged lately.  Mom and Dad went to China and that means I don't have access to the giant conference tables at Tektronix which are the best surfaces for pinning big quilts.  I did, however, start and finish our niece's 4th birthday present on Friday.  She likes to cook with her mom, so I made her this apron:

I hope its bright colors appeal to her fashionable taste.  This kid is 4 going on 15; she has very definite fashion opinions and a new crush on Orlando Bloom.  "Do you think he looks better with blonde hair in Lord of the Rings or brown hair in Pirates of the Caribbean?" she asked Josh a couple weeks ago.  Seriously.  Just turned four.  She's awesome.

Another Europe Post

I know it's a little ridiculous.  It's been almost a year since our trip and I've posted only 2 or 3 of our European adventures.  But I've been thinking about how great Hallstatt was lately, and thought, "I should blog about that!"

Hallstatt, Austria was the second stop on our trip, and just might be my favorite place we went.  This place is Alpine perfection:

We stayed in a house where we had our own kitchen.  So Hallstatt became the home of our first international grocery shopping experience.  We bought some things we recognized and some things that we thought looked good even though we weren't quite sure what they were.  We ended up with some pretty tasty stew!  We also ate at some lakeside restaurants (because the whole town is lakeside) and had some fresh Hallstatter-See fish.  We hiked up to the world's oldest salt mine and then all through the woods.  We saw an authentic May Day celebration complete with liederhosen and accordions.  We explored an abandoned hotel in the next town over.  And we drank a lot of coffee on our balcony while admiring the once-in-a-lifetime view.  The lady we rented our rooms from said that the town doctor was getting ready to retire, and we really wished that Josh could speak German so he could take over!  Here are some pictures to help explain why:

The view from the salt mine above the town

 Some from our hike

The town's main street.  I love how everything is terraced up the hillside.

 Our future homestead in a clearing outside of town

 The waterfall by our future homestead.  Yes, this is about as close to perfection as you can get in this life.

I convinced Josh that this empty hotel was unlocked because they wanted us to explore it 

Our view

Wow.  This makes me want to go back.

My Mom's a Winner

My mom entered this website contest before Christmas and the stuff she won finally got here last week.  Check out the bounty:

She won 6 2 yard fabric cuts, a bajillion fat quarters, a jelly roll (which for my non-fabricy readers is a bunch of coordinated fabrics cut into strips and rolled together), lots of thread, some crazy huge batting scissors, gift cards to various websites, a new ruler, a book with a bunch of bag patterns in it, and (for some reason) a nail file!

I've been working on arranging these squares to my liking:

I think it's almost there.  I gave Josh artistic control over this one since it's for his cousin, and the quilts I make aren't always the most masculine.  Per his request, I'm going to move around a couple of the dark brown edge strips to make a more sensible pattern.