Time flies when you're having fun!

It really does. In the last month we've had both of our sons and our DIL visit home from California and it definitely seemed like time was moving along faster than usual. This is Alex goofing off with his sister at South Haven, MI. He was only here for 4 days, but he left behind some plague from in California, leaving his sister and I still hacking and coughing days later.

Both of the boys wanted to visit Lake Michigan while they were home, and both had to go to Coney Island in Kalamazoo, a family tradition dating back to my childhood when my grandpa used to take our family there. Funny how most of our family traditions have something to do with food!

I was talking to my Alex about how his older brother was getting quilting lessons from me and teased him that he'd have to take some lessons, too, and he actually said he wouldn't mind learning to quilt. Be still my heart!

I found a new quilt store in South Haven, and it is SO great. The lady who owns it has wonderful taste and likes to stock entire lines of fabrics. It's one of those stores hate to leave, there's so much to see and it all looks so great! I left with some Susan Branch fabrics (Martha's Vineyard Watercolor) and some Christmas prints for the Christmas quilt that I've been wanting to make.

I haven't had much time for quilting, but did manage to help a friend make this rag quilt for her mom's birthday present. It's a lap size, so it didn't take too long with two of us working on it. It's made with April Cornell's Sunshine fabrics.

Other than that I've been trying to work on UFOs, and spent a bit of time trying to get my sewing room cleaned up and more organized. I have a long way to go, I really need to get rid of some clutter in there.

I haven't had much time to read anyone else's blogs lately, so I guess right now would be a good time to get caught up!

Bad luck & etc.

Things have been busy around here and not always in a good way. I think we angered the car gods. In the last two weeks my pregnant daughter's Vibe was hit from behind by a pick-up truck (the driver didn't bother to check to see if the light was red because the one he just went through was green & he thought they all turned at the same time!). Daughter & baby are fine, thank God. Then my DH's car had problems & needed to go to the shop. My SIL's alternator went out, then the truck he drives at work broke down two different days and another work truck he was driving was hit by a lady who ran a stop sign. THEN my radiator blew up, it seems that something flew up into the radiator and damaged it. Argggghhhh! My new radiator is on order, so I won't have a car for a week or so. I'm not even complaining much because nobody has been hurt, and because the day before my car broke down I drove to Chicago to take my son to the airport, and it would have been awful (and a lot more expensive) if the car had broken down there.

BTW- the cute little kitty above is Stuart (aka Stuie). We have three new kittens in the house, when they get a little older they'll mostly live outside & keep down the mice, rat & shrew population. They're so little and not growing too quickly, so they'll have to stay in for a while.

It hasn't been all bad, we had our oldest son here for a week visiting. He lives in CA so we don't get to see him a lot. We went all over, including the beach at Grand Haven as seen in the picture. It was great to have him home. He wants to learn to make quilts, but we usually don't have time to get much done. This time we visited a few fabric stores, found a project that interested him and actually got a good start. He liked kaleidoscope quilts, so we got a template & some Jinny Beyer fabric & had some fun. He made several blocks like the one below, each is unique because of the way the fabric is made. I was hoping to find the Paula Nadelstern book about kaleidoscope quilt making, but it looks like it's out of print & hard to find. I really hope my son and daughter-in-law move closer to home someday so we can get farther along on the quilt lessons, it figures that the one child of mine that wants to learn to quilt lives on the other side of the country.

Things are really dry here as in a lot of the country. We finally had some rain today, but it's too late for a lot of the corn around here, all the crops are really stressed. We need a week of rainy days but it doesn't look like we'll be getting much rain any time soon.

I've been working on a rag quilt lately. One of my daughter's friends wanted to make one for her mom's birthday present, so I could hardly refuse her request for help. More quilters in the world= better world, right? I'll take some pics of it when it's finished & hopefully post them in the next blog.