one life well lived is a wonderous thing...

You may have noticed that I vanished for a couple weeks. My grandpa took ill and was hospitalized. He passed away last Monday.

Grandpa suffered from emphysema fro the last 25 years and while we're sad to lose him and will miss him every day we're also glad to know that he's in a place where he no longer had to struggle for each breath.

Younger days....


In the garden with me....
reading a story to my little stinker....

I'd love to tell you all about Grandpa and everything he did-for his family, his friends, and his community but I'm still a little raw right now and I think I'd end up typing through a lot of tears so I'm going to be a little clique and just say this-he lived a good life and there's an empty place in a lot of people's hearts and lives now that he's gone.



On a quilty note-to my blogwarming winners-I promise I haven't forgotten you. In the hustle and bustle of the last few weeks I haven't had a chance to mail your packages but they are going to go in the mail tomorrow! I'm sorry about the delay and I hope you haven't been to disappointed not to find the goodies in your mailbox yet.

Grandpa

Not to much quilting done the last few days-my grandpa's been ill so lots of travel time to see him. I've been working on quilting my buzzsaw table topper-it's nice and portable. I'm really liking the spiral on the black-it gives the quilt lots of motion and the variegated orange thread really pops.


Grandpa's had emphysema for a long time and he's at the point now where he really isn't able to do anything as even the slightest activity leaves him out of breath and exhausted. When Grandma called Wednesday morning they weren't sure he was going to make it but they were able to get him stabilized by the time we got there. None of us want to see him go (aren't Grandpa's supposed to live forever?) but of course it's terrible to see him suffer and lose his quality of life.

Here's a pic-handsome isn't he? No wonder Grandma fell for him. Of course this picture's just a few years old.



I started researching our family history a few years ago and last year sat down and interviewed him about his life. I got to hear so many neat stories that I'd never heard him tell before. I'm so glad now we've got that history written down.

We're going to go down this weekend to help Grandma out and spend some more time with Grandpa so you probably won't see another post from me until Monday.

And then there were four....

I had such good intentions to post last night. I was going to do a little piecing during the Dallas/San Jose game and then post once the game was over. That of course was before it went to 4 overtimes. The game finally wrapped up around 1:30am with a win by Dallas. After that I went straight to bed and crashed-hence no post. Very exciting-this is the farthest Dallas has gotten in quite awhile so I'm thrilled. Fingers crossed they can keep the streak going!

The upside of 4 overtimes is that I was super productive and got way more done on my ALQS quilt than I'd expected. I've got 15 1/4 blocks done and quite a few more in progress. I need 48 quarter blocks to make the quilt so I'm cooking right along.

Anyone got the pattern figured out already?


These little sprouts are zinnias-or will be zinnias providing I don't kill them...


Dd and Grandma planted them and we're planning on taking them down to Grammy's house for Mother's day to plant in her garden. Of course we'd no sooner placed them in the windowsill after we planted them than the cat tipped them over and played in the dirt so some of our carefully cracked eggs look a little worse for the wear.

chop chop

Here's my crazy quilt acquisitions for the day-some lovely gold butterfly charms and some shimmery gold thread for embellishing.

I was so tempted by this lovely little burgundy handbag but I was a good girl and restrained myself. My first love is fabric but handbags are a close runner up. I keep thinking I'm going to try out some of those great bag patterns and even bought one that looked really appealing but I haven't made a single one yet.

After we got home from shopping we had a little tea party and had our olive bread, cupcakes, and some tea. DD declared it the best tea party ever and actually ate 2 slices of olive bread! Last time she spent the night at grandma's she ate salmon, and yesterday I made shredded beef tacos and she ate those too-maybe this is a sign that she's almost over that awful picky stage where all she wants is chicken and macaroni! Ooooh-fingers crossed!

My other bit of progress to report-my fabric for my little swap quilt is all cut out and ready to start sewing.
I've never paper pieced anything this small-it may be an adventure. Maybe tomorrow I can actually get a block or two together and show you where I'm going with this.

the craziness continues

Are you tired of seeing crazy quilt blocks? I hope not because I'm not done yet. Here's yesterday's damage...




I need to pick up some more gold embellishment pieces-nearly everyone in the cream and white group asked for gold embellishments and I'm running short.

No worries though-my friend Kathleen, DD, and I are going shopping today. She works a half day so she's going to come over after work and we're going to have some olive bread and then do a bit of shopping.

Did you click on the link for the olive bread recipe? Even if you don't like olives click on it and check out the rest of the recipes on Ree's site. She is the bestestestest cook and I love her recipes-she's never let me down. Her spicy shrimp-divine. Her Marlboro man sandwich-stick to your ribs perfection. Her apple dumplings-the reason ice cream was invented. Her pico de gallo and guacamole-makes chips beg to be eaten. Seriously-that good. Not to mention she's lol funny and takes great pics (much better than mine!)