April 2011 – Thimbleanna

Tidbits

29 Comments / April 26, 2011 April 26, 2011 / Chat

I hope you had a wonderful weekend! We had a nice, quiet Easter dinner with the family, minus the boys and SweetiePie who couldn’t make it home. Boohoo. MyDadLovesMeBestSister outdid herself again as hostess and everything was wonderful. MeMum made a delicious ham and a corn casserole. MDLMBS made scalloped potatoes, carrot puff, broccoli salad, fruit salad and a carrot salad. Yum, Yum.

I made dinner rolls (which I love, but here’s a tip — don’t try to transport them just before they’re set to go into the oven — they’ll fall!) and Ms. Humble’s Lemon Marscapone Cream Cake. The cake was super fun to make — time consuming, but not nearly as intimidating as it sounds and it was pretty tasty. It’s definitely a European style cake though — not a fluffy American style cake. I would make it again, but, TheManoftheHouse is an American style cake guy, so I don’t think he was as excited about it as moi.

As I mentioned in my last post, I’m getting really excited about market. A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon the Sarah Jane Studios blog and she mentioned that she has a new line of fabric that will debut at market. Her illustrations are just gorgeous, so I’m super excited to see the fabric. If it’s anything like her art, I’m thinking it will be The Pips on steroids!!!

And one last thing, you’re familiar with Despair.com, aren’t you? Here in ThimbleannaLand, we’ve loved their funny posters for years (probably 15?) — the procrastination poster is our all-time family favorite. Anyway, here’s a knockoff poster for all of my friends who have recently suffered with the Verizon (or whatever they’re calling themselves now) shenanigans (Warning: If bad words offend you, Look Away!)

Ok boys and girls — off to bed!

XOXO,
Anna

Edited to add: Oops! I should note that the Verizon complaints were from home Verizon users who had their rates raised unexpectedly. We have Verizon Wireless and love them!

Five on Friday

37 Comments / April 22, 2011 April 22, 2011 / Chat

One.

Poor, Poor Blog. She’s been so neglected. It’s been all play and goofing off around here this week, so there hasn’t been much to write about. Last year, my good buddy Jewels told me that her kitchen re-do took all summer. I just laughed and thought no way. Boy, was I out to lunch. It’s going to take me that long just to make the decisions. Our kitchen work started today and now we have a hole in the ceiling. Our range was never vented to the outside, and since we were going to change a few things, we thought we might as well do the venting. If everything goes this well, it’s going to be a great experience. The workmen were awesome. They ran a vent through the kitchen ceiling, floor joists, the linen closet on the second floor, the attic, and the roof. All in just 4 short hours. I’m pretty darn sure, nothing else will happen that quickly!

Two.

During the few evenings that I was home this week, I got a good start on my UFO applique borders. Sadly, I thought all of the pieces were already prepped, but, I was about 70 leaves short.

Three.

Quilt market is almost here and I’m so excited I can’t stand it. I can’t wait to see the Gulls again and show them some of the fantastic things that Utah has to offer! I’m thinking I might cancel the hotel reservations and we’ll camp out in the mountains, coming down just for market. That’ll show us what they’re made of, won’t it? Haha — not really, but wouldn’t that be fun! Besides, what’s a little mountain lion or bear when you’re used to deadly snakes and alligators? Anyway, I leave just two weeks from today so that I can spend a day or two with family before market week — Yipee!

Four.

Our local Borders is closing — Boo. I was in there the other day and managed to pick up Where Women Cook at half price. I’ve always been interested in the Where Women Do Anything magazines, but this is as close as I’ll get to owning one. They’re nice magazines, but at fifteen bucks, they’re just too frippin’ salty for me.

Five.

It’s been raining all week here. Here’s proof — I snuck a picture of these hard-core golfers. You can’t really tell, but it was raining pretty hard.

Ok. Wait. I’m sneaking in Six for Friday since it’s almost Easter. Via Pinterest (I’m officially addicted) I saw pictures of Peep S’mores. A Must Try. I think when we have our family Easter Dinner on Sunday, I’ll pin all those skinny people in MyDadLovesMeBestSister’s family to the floor and force them to have a Peep S’more. Put a little fat on their bones.

Ok, that’s it — I hope you have a wonderful weekend. And since I probably won’t make it back here by Sunday, have a Very Happy Easter — May you find all of your eggs!

XOXO,
Anna

Dirty Little Secrets

50 Comments / April 14, 2011 April 15, 2011 / Books

Like most of you, I suppose, I have a few dirty little secrets. (I’ll bet that got your attention!) Mine are pretty tame, but still, I hang my head in shame.

For starters, I have several dirty little literary secrets. MeMum and BigDaddy gave me a beautiful copy of Jane Eyre when I was a teenager, and even though I read a lot back then, I never managed to get it read. (Hasn’t everyone read Jane Eyre?)

In anticipation of the movie, I finished the book this week, and, of course, I loved it. It was fun to read my childhood version of the book too, as it’s full of pretty little pen and ink illustrations.

The illustration below is probably my favorite. I can’t wait to see the movie now. Have any of you seen it yet? I’m a little distressed — it won’t open here until the day I leave for spring market — I’m crossing my fingers that it will stay around for more than 10 days.

Another dirty little secret is one that I KNOW I share with many of you. Really old UFOs. Now that I’ve finished the crochet bag, I need some sort of handwork and I decided I really should try to work on a UFO. I’ve resurrected one from the early 90’s. (Ouch!) I was farther along than I thought though — two out of four borders are all appliqued — just two more to go and I’ll be finished. Why do we put these projects down when we don’t really have that much left to do on them? I have a plan this time, so I’m going to git ‘er done.

That’s enough for dirty little secrets tonight — I hope your dirty little secrets are more exciting!

To change the subject, I had a super fun encounter today at lunch. I ran to JoAnn’s to see if I could get the new Denyse Schmidt fabrics for Julia. When I asked about them, the clerk pointed to the back of the store and said they were all mixed in along the back wall. Really??? Arghh. There’s no way I can pick them all out — I barely know what they look like! Luckily, there was another clerk in the quilting section and she hadn’t put them out yet — they were all still together and wrapped in shrink wrap. Happy Dance about Perfect Timing.

And if that weren’t enough, as I was picking through them, this cutie with a little boy and girl walked up and asked for the same fabrics. I took one look at her, laughed, and said “Are you Jenny?” Poor Jenny, I think I shocked her, but what a wonderful surprise! Jenny and I have e-mailed and shared comments for a few years but never met. I think maybe we were both a bit too shy (stop laughing!) to suggest a get-together. I knew one day we would meet and always wondered how it would happen. So, Hi Jenny — I LOVED our chance encounter — it was the highlight of my day week! I hope your novocaine has worn off LOL!

I hope you all have a fun weekend. Maybe you’ll have a chance encounter too!

XOXO,
Anna

My Washer is Possessed

37 Comments / April 10, 2011 April 21, 2011 / Quilting

It’s a beautiful weekend here in ThimbleannaLand. I spent a little time working on my Bliss quilt yesterday. I’m pretty happy we didn’t get rid of the ping pong table when the boys grew up and left home. I’d rather have a basement full of noisy boys making a mess of things, but at least the table knows it’s still well-loved.

All was not sweetness and light yesterday though. As you may know, I’m a pre-shrinker. I ran out of pre-shrunk solid red fabric, so I threw another piece into the washer. Lookie what happened! (Warning: Objects in mirror picture are closer redder than they appear.)

Can you see the difference? I washed the fabric all by itself, but it came out of the washer with some blue added and now it’s a little wine-y looking. ??? So, now I’m afraid of my washer. Something’s in there. Maybe I should call Quiltbusters.

And totally unrelated, yesterday I was blog surfing and saw a little embroidered bunny which made me think of a little Fat Bunny I embroidered for MeMum years ago. About thirty minutes later, I came across Wendy’s cute Fat Bunny, which I thought was funny, so I took a picture of MeMum’s well-loved Fat Bunny.

I put him into a simple one-patch quilt (made just like Isabelle’s quilt) nestled among 30’s repro flannels. Big one-patches (these are about six-inches) are really fun to make — especially with a little embroidery thrown into the mix.

Now I’m off to pick up sticks in the yard — it’s going to be ridiculously warm here today. I hope you’re having a good weekend!

XOXO,
Anna

I Played Hooky

46 Comments / April 6, 2011 April 6, 2011 / Crocheting

Finally, there’s been a little project finishing here in ThimbleannaLand. I managed to sneak in some crochet time last weekend and finished the fun rainbow stripe bag from Attic 24.

While was working on the stripes for the body of the bag, I really didn’t like the way the colors were stacking up. Even up to the top of the bag I was a little worried. But, the scalloped edge seemed to pull it all together and now I love it.

The pattern is very easy to follow and it was pretty darn fun to work on. It’s a perfect pattern for tv watching, as it doesn’t require much concentration. It’s fun to have a bag now to carry my balls of yarn — while I was working on the bag, the yarn was just in a big ol’ plastic bag.

So, blowing kisses and a big fat Thank You to my Brilliant Invisible Friend who selected all the yarns and sent them to me in a swap.

In other news, we had a bit of excitement around here the other night. TheManoftheHouse happened to glance out the window and he scared me when he said “Holy Cow! There’s a turkey in the backyard!”. I jumped up, grabbed my camera and rushed outside to take pictures of not 1, but 4 turkeys. After 3 or 4 shots, I realized I didn’t have a memory card in my camera. Doh! I rushed inside, grabbed a card and ran back outside. By which time, the turkeys were two houses away — so … sorry for the blurry shot.

In all the years and houses we’ve lived in here, we’ve never had the fun of seeing wild turkeys. They aren’t cute like deer or furry animals, but it was still exciting!

Oh! And have you seen the “new Pips”? Aneela has shown a sneak peak of her new fabric line and it’s adorable. And here’s a little Pip Tip (ha!) — I don’t want to cause a stampede or anything, but if you see Pips and you think you want them, you should probably get them. It used to be that you could find quilt fabrics for years after their debut, but now, they don’t seem to last very long and that drives me crazy. I don’t think the hype was intentional in this case though (or I should say, more intentional than normal) — I just think someone seriously underestimated how well-loved the Pips were going to be!

XOXO,
Anna

Month: April 2011