Boston Common &c.

Look at the pretty quilt I bought at an antique store in Otsego yesterday! I KNOW, I don't BUY quilts, but this one just spoke to me & I had to get it (plus it was a good deal, that always helps). It's well made, hand quilted and I love the colors. I was hoping to go outside and get nicer picture, but when I got home the sky darkened right up and we had a downpour. That lasted about 10 minutes and now the sun is shining again, weird!
Everybody seems to be showing pics of their pincusions, so here are mine. The magnet one gets the most use, but my favorite is the green one with the wooden bottom. It's from the woodworking store at the Bag Factory in Goshen, Indiana. The other one is a wool one that I made.

Here are three ATCs that I made from the bag of goodies sent to me from the Quilting Arts Blog. I have another project in mind to make from what I have left, hopefully I'll be able to get that done soon. The fabrics are so nice, I hate to waste any.
I also got this cute little chest of drawers at the same antique shop as the quilt. It's only a few inches tall & will be real cute when I get it repainted, I'll put a pic on when it's done.

Quilt Auction

Today my DH & I took a day trip to Indiana to the Mennonite Quilt Auction in Goshen. It was kind of a disappointment, usually there are many more quilts, and the rainy day didn't help either. We didn't know why the auction was smaller, but we met up with someone who explained that the younger Mennonites aren't taking up the cause, and the older people who put the auction together are dying out. Not sure if that's the case or just talk, but if that's true, it's sad. The proceeds from the auction and other events that go on there (antique auction, sales of food & etc.) go to help a lot of people around the world. We were delayed in getting down there, so we missed a lot of the quilts that were sold early in the day. The one that we saw get the best price was this Mariner's Compass, it went for $3,000. It was just beautiful, finely hand quilted.
This Log Cabin was one my husband really liked, the colors were nothing I'd have chosen, but I really liked it, too. I think it sold for $1,200, a bit out of my price range. I'm still working on a pattern that I saw there LAST year, so I don't think I'll be making this one. I hope someone else posts pics from the auction so I can see what we missed, there were a lot of afgans, small quilts and comforters, we didn't see too many of the large, heavily quilted quilts that are the stars of the show there. Last year I fell in love with an Ocean Wave quilt, done Amish style (probably was Amish or Mennonite made) with bright colors for the waves and a black background. Someday I'll get mine done.

Woodchucks & Pluots

This little guy has been living in our woodpile in the back yard, and coming out occasionally to eat an apple or two. I hope we're not going to have any problems with him (or her?) when we start the fire up this weekend. I'm surprise that it's escaped the notice of our dog, she will not tolerate any critters in her yard. Are you wondering about the Pluot? It's a cross between an apricot and a plum, and it's GOOD. I think they screwed up, should have called it an Apri-lum, sounds more Dr. Seuss-ish and interesting.I'm picturing God looking down with his hands on his hips saying "Aren't you people EVER satisfied?" Ha.

This batch of goodies is from the Quilting Arts blog challenge. I don't usually work with paper, so this really is a challenge for me.

This is a picture from last week, Jason and I went to Marshall, MI, a nice little town east of here. I like the shops there, it's a little different than you'd expect. There are a lot of nice homes, they value their history there, and take care of their historical homes. AND on this trip I found that they have a really nice quilt shop. I took J's wife there last year & she liked it, so we thought we'd let Jas see what he thought (a little push to get him to move closer to home!). That would be nice, but one problem is that it's not so easy to find decent jobs around here. Michigan is just not bouncing back like some other states, it seems like every day you read about more people losing their jobs. I would SO love to have one of these Tiffany lamps! They're all so beautiful it would be hard to choose just one.

A fun week!

I had such a great week with my son, Jason, who was visiting from Seattle. This picture is from the Allegan County Fair, I just love that sign. The fair is pretty disappointing, I just like to go see the booths with crafts, art, and photographs. I think it was probably pretty great back in the late 1800s, I can imagine the families filling the streets walking to the fairgrounds, greeting friends along the way. I imagine there was a lot of controversy over which lady won the highest honors for her pie and which farmer had the biggest pumpkin. I know they took these things very seriously, they used to have big write-ups about it in the old newspapers.
I really got Jas hooked on The Lost, I put on the first episode and then he wanted to see both season 1 & 2 before he went home! Luckily neither of us can sleep until practically the break of dawn, we got through most of it, and he caught the last couple of hours in the car on the ride to the airport in Chicago. Told ya he was toast!
Anyway.....wonder if you can guess where else we went? Yup, Shipshewana, Indiana. I wasn't even going to suggest it because I didn't think he'd be interested, but HE wanted to go, so I was forced into it- heh.heh. Can you believe that some of the stores are already decorating for Christmas? Man, I don't want to even think about that yet, though I guess it would be a good idea to buy some presents instead of waiting until mid-December like usual.

For those of you who haven't been there yet, here is a little incentive.
Through these doors are all the candies that you loved when you were a kid. The prices have changed a bit though! They didn't even need the candy to get me in there, they got me with those beautiful doors.
You can take a ride in an Amish buggy for about $5 a person. It's not a very big town, so I'm not sure where they take you. We've always meant to do that and for some reason never get around to it. Somehow we always get to the fabric shop and the bakery, though. Hmmmm.......

South Haven

Our son, Jason, is here for a visit, so we made a trip over to South Haven, MI. We love to eat at Clementine's and take a walk on the pier. There are a lot of nice little shops there, and one huge antique mall that I really like to hang around in as long as possible. The beach was pretty bare, it's definitely feeling like fall now, and there were very few people there. There was just a slight chill in the air, but we were noticing that a lot of people had on jackets or sweatshirts already. I love fall, but because of all the problems with the house we didn't get to enjoy the summer much at all, it just flew by while we were busy with other things.
I have absolutely no pics of any of those cute shops for you, the guys just weren't into that so I gave them a break and will go back to browse another day. I didn't think you'd care to see a pic of the Wal-Mart where we stopped so I could buy the 2nd season of LOST. Jas had never watched Lost, the poor dear, so I got him hooked on that real quick. I think he's seen the first three DVDs already and he just got here last night. He's toast!

Let's try this-

Ha- got the photo on here after all. This is the second part of today's entry, blogger was giving me trouble. This is the quilt top I'm working on, I really liked using these colors when I started (real different from what I usually use), but I'm not sure if it will work in our room now.

I also got another postcard done for
FFAC, I'm having fun with these. I found the cute little fishy beads in the new bead store in Shipshewana and I love the beads that look like rocks, I actually found those at Wal-mart (ours has a great bead selection).Sorry I can't get a better pic to show the beads more clearly, I need to borrow my daughter's camera for things like this.

Would you believe we're still not completely done unpacking boxes from when we had the fire? I need an obsessive compulsive best-friend, I swear. I have looked in all the boxes, though. The cleaning company took a couple of boxes of books from my craft room to ozone (to get rid of the smoke smell) and only brought back one box. Naturally these were some of my favorite books; books by Earlene Fowler, Janet Evanovich & Jennifer Chiaverini to mention a few. They say they don't have them, that they were returned, so I told them to feel free to come over and point them out to me. It's so frustrating. They also 'lost' an afgan my grandmother made, the only thing I had of hers that she made. It makes me sick to think that it's gone, but they say they returned it. I'm hoping it turns up with someone else's stuff, and that they have the decency to return it to me if it does. The cleaning company's attitude is awful, they said that they always take pictures of everything that leaves a house but didn't "this time". I hope to at least get reimbursed for the books, though I have no way of knowing what they all were.
BTW- that ozoning is awful for some items, they took some dolls and stuffed animals of mine and they came back with orangy stains on them, and they feel weird, unnatural somehow. I'm not even sure what ozoning is, it didn't seem to damage the books at all. I had read that it's not a good idea to do that to quilts, they offered to take mine and ozone them, but I chose to just have the older ones hand vacuumed by a cleaning company in Kalamazoo (Paris Cleaners). So glad for that, they were extremely nice, very professional, and did a great job on our clothes, curtains & etc.

Lovin' the holiday weekend...

....mostly because it means my DH is home for an extra day. He's mostly traveling around the country fixing machines, but I get to have him here an extra day before he runs off again.
Today we went to the arts & crafts fair in South Haven, MI. It was just a beautiful day. I didn't see a lot of new things, or much that really knocked me out, but it was still great to get out and see a lot of other people's creations. I bought one thing, a really beautiful santa, isn't it great? It was painted on an old table top by Peggy Gaines. She lives in a small town near us and paints on everything from small boxes to entire walls of buildings.

My DD & her hubby, and his nephews went with us. The boys are the closest thing I have to grandkids now, and it's great having them around the house. The only thing that's a bummer about having them here is when they go, we worry about their life at home, things don't seem to be right there. Practically every time they come over they ask us to adopt them (they're 4 and 6), and they're serious. They act strangely at times and say things that cause concern, but not anything so far that would give any proof of abuse. I wish there was something we could do, but for now we just have them over when we can, give them a place where they can be secure and happy for a while and hope that helps.

On the happy side, my son Jason is coming home on Friday! He lives on the other side of the country and hasn't been home for a long time. Can't wait to spend some time with him. Ooooh, that sandwich is looking good to me right now, too.

I've been working on a project I've had sitting around for a while, I really need to get some of these old things finished or just get rid of them, so I can feel good about moving on to new things. This was supposed to be for our new bedroom, but we didn't go with the colors we were going to originally, so I'm thinking I need something much 'lighter' now. I'll decide after I get the top done.
Blogger has decided I can't upload any more pics, so I guess I'll show you another day! (this is finished on the post above since blogger was giving me problems)