Because..Just Because.

After weeks of enjoying reading random blogs, I decided to join the fun and add one of my own. Here is some of the randomness happening in our neck of the woods.

What I found when I walked into my boys room this week. Yep, that's a Lego figure stuck in the wall.   Because.    Just because.

Apparently, the hole the Lego figure was stuck in wasn't the only one. Upon further inspection of the house numerous holes were found. Good thing we have door stoppers. Otherwise, what would go through the door when its flung open and banged into by rambunctious boys. Totally at a lost as to how to fix this...these...

Finally, have you seen my friend Dave? He's on the Canadian bobsled team (the one without all the hair and beards). He, well his wife, lent me his bobsled jacket to wear when I was pregnant with the second kid. Bobsledder's jackets are great. They're large, long and warm. Perfect for prego ladies in winter, or I suppose bobsledders.

Dave's team came in ninth in the Olympics (last Olympics they won the bronze). Which is fantastic! If he was faster than the time it takes you to blink they could have been medal contenders. The other Canadian bobsled that was favoured to do well actually flipped over, so Dave and his buddies did well to stay upright and do as well as they did. Congrats on your Olympics, Dave!

Linking up late:

Wedding Quilt Done Amid Maniacal Laughter and Lewis Carroll

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!" 
I am chortling in my joy.
I have slain the Jabberwock!

OK well... just this quilt.

The whole story is here.
It's finished and it is headed to my sister (soon I hope?).  

And another one bites the dust on my FAL list (insert loud maniacal laughter.. no really, I am doing it so you should really insert it here.......um, I think I just woke up a kid... So, if you have kids sleeping, don't insert maniacal laughter out loud)(sorry it's late- I do weird things when it's late)
Anyhow..

I finished it with a scrappy binding, using what I had left over from the quilt and a couple other pieces I had laying around. I might actually be getting better at bindings? Maybe?

I did get a lot of free motion quilting practice with this quilt.  The quilting on this thing- to keep with the poem- did gyre and gimble in the wabe, and all mimsy were the borogoves (or stiching as it may be). 

There is a LOT of mimsy quilting that gyres and gimbles on this quilt (sorry once I get started with Lewis Carroll its hard to stop. When my sons (or husband) tell me I have got some superhero/sci-fi/starwars fact wrong, I throw random poetry at them. Because they can recite whole Darth Vader monologues, but they have no idea who Edgar Allen Poe is...)

Not another quilt, just the back.

Taking pictures of this quilt was a beast. The light was either too strong or not enough, the quilt was too big to hang properly, the wind started to blow, blah blah blah.... So apologies from the Canadian.

And so the quilting is crap, but oh well... that's why I kept calling it my practice quilt. And it was my first time FMQing... and I don't unpick things (lazy). So permission to FMQ without redoing anything or worrying about it too much was nice. 

Everyone should do that sometime.... and recite Lewis Carroll (just saying.... but not maniacal laughter because that wakes up kids and is weird).

Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts and TGIFF.

Something May Get Finished

Been working on a few things here this week. It's amazing that I get to work on anything at all. Really. It is.

First, I finished the Death Star block for the back of the Star Wars quilt I'm making (well I've just a couple of pieces to add to the outer edge). The top to the quilt is finished so it actually might get done this week (well....ok maybe not... but let's dream).

Also working on the binding for my Wedding Reception quilt (aka Practice quilt). This truely has a chance of actually being completed before the week is out. The boys have been making some of their best messes yet this week too, so we'll see how much binding I get done. Fun times all round!

Linking up:

What I'm Loving (or Not)

Despite the enduring cold, we finally got to the library this week.  Not loving the cold by the way, but maybe then I shouldn't live where for eight months of the year the air makes my face hurt.

Anyway, I've pretty much borrowed every book the library has on quilting, usually many at a time. I'm somewhat of a bibliophile (I'll let you look that one up), and the library has saved me from spending hundreds of dollars on books. Although, we won't go into how many overdue fines we pay, but suffice it to say that somewhere we have probably built a library. During our most recent trip I picked up theses two books.

 
 I've never really looked into the art quilt scene and these were fun books to look through.

Some of the quilts in these books are amazing. They are nothing that you would ever want to use on your bed (or maybe you would). And although many do not appeal to my aesthetic, I can see the intrinsic artistry and craftsmanship that has gone into these pieces.

 One of the artists I really dig (sorry, can I say dig? A little bit of me really likes that word) is  Jo-Ann Golenia.

I'd totally put one of her works on my wall.

 The books aren't overly big and I wish they were larger and showed more close up detail of the works. I'm always interested in how things are made (I watch those how-things-are-made shows on TV all the time).

 
Also, as a random item, I'm also loving this Add-A-Quarter ruler. I can't even imagine paper piecing without it. I felt like it was a little expensive. I mean, really how much should a plastic ruler cost? But the convenience of this ruler has made up for its cost.

And that's what I'm loving (for this week at least).

Tauntauns and Sunnysides

On our way home from picking up the eldest kid yesterday I saw a kid step off the bus in shorts. It's -35 degrees Celsius with a wind chill.

Welcome to Canada, where the teenagers are either brain dead or too lazy to change after basketball practice. Or we are all really used to it being cold. All Canadians nod in sage agreement at the Echo Base Officer who says: Your Tauntaun will freeze before you reach the first marker! (sorry I live with Star Wars constantly, sometimes it just comes out). 

And you know the part where Han and Luke crawl into the Tauntaun to keep warm? Well supposedly my great-grandfather used the same technique. Not with a Tauntaun, but with his horse one night when he got lost in a blizzard looking for a lost cow. The cow ended up safe back at the farm. My great-grandfather Orzie (yep, that was his name), also claims that in the morning he awoke to coyotes (he says wolves) gnawing on the carcass that he was hiding out in (which is somewhat believable). Then, according to him, he grabbed their tails and they pulled him back to the farm, with him guiding them using their tails (not so believable). But its a good story to tell the kiddies.

Anyway, despite or because of the cold, I pulled out these lovelies today. Made out of Sunnyside by Moda, which is a nice name and thought on a day like today (or um.. I guess any other day of the eight months of winter we have here). They have been sitting waiting for me to do something with them. I figured it was time. I pulled them out and then they sat in a new spot. Of course.

But I resolve to do something with them this next week. Last fall I picked up a couple of charm packs and for want of something better to do I sewed them up into disappearing nine patch blocks. Then my sister said she really liked the material so it has become a quilt for my sister of course. So far I've go three options (several people who think they are funny have already asked me if there's a difference. Ha. Ha.  Yes there is.)

Sorry for the dark pics- its winter and we live with no light.

So far my other sister and I are leaning to the one layout on the right. Although the middle layout is larger. Look closely and give me your vote if you want!

 Linking up with Freshly Pieced