Making cookies with Munchie

My dear niece came over today and helped me make a ton of Christmas cookies for Jim's faculty and staff.

Here's her first batch cooling.  They are called Peanut Butter Blossoms and are a family favorite.

Gingerbread snowflakes came next.  Thanks for the great help today, Munchie!

SNOW!

Look at this!  Our first snowfall in North Carolina.  It wasn't supposed to stick, but it's still coming down and it's definitely sticking.  Christmas cookies are on the schedule this weekend and the snow will put me even more in the holiday mood.

Update at 4:00 PM

Guest bathroom reveal

There's just a little more painting to do around the new tile in the tub, but the vanity area is all finished.

Here's the left side of the vanity.  I still have sanding to do in our bathroom before I paint in there.  Pictures will go up when that's completed.

"Small Saturday": Love the concept

Victoria Vargas who blogs over at Smaller Living has proposes that rather than participating in the hysteria of Black Friday, we think about supporting local businesses and independent artists when buying Christmas presents--something she's calling "Small Saturday."  I love this concept and we certainly have tried our version of it over the years.  I would also encourage you to make as many presents as you can.  I think people really appreciate handcrafted gifts more and more.

Last month, I attended the annual pottery show at our local Farmer's Curb Market in Greensboro.  I found some amazing work by Leanne Pizio at Three Dogs Pottery in Oak Ridge, North Carolina.  Now I have several unique and beautiful gifts for family members AND I've helped support a local artist.

When Dan and Anna were growing up in Indiana, Black Friday became a traditional day for us to take the kids shopping in downtown Crawfordsville so they could buy our gifts.  I took one child, Jim took the other, and after shopping, we met for lunch at Arthur's Café.  After lunch, we switched children and found the other gifts.  The children enjoyed it so much, that we kept doing this even through their college years.  We all got to spend a calm, quiet family day AND support local businesses.

Last year, I made lots of fold-up cloth shopping bags for Christmas gifts.  These were very simple to make, but were truly appreciated by the recipients.  This year's gifts will have to remain secret for now, but I will reveal lots of them in a Christmas Day post.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving and please, leave me a comment about your thoughts and ideas on "Small Saturday."  Thanks to Victoria for inspiring this post today.  The photo above was taken by Jim and is of Anna and Dan in front of our house in Crawfordsville probably around 1983.

Nerd Alert

I'm in the movie theatre waiting for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 to start. Color me excited!

Bathroom painting and HP 7

This will be a short post.  I am painting in the guest bathroom and still working to take that awful wall paper paste off both bathrooms.  Once the painting is done, I will reward myself by seeing "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1."

 Here's hoping you all have a wonderful weekend.  I'm certainly looking forward to Thanksgiving and some serious vacation time.  Quilted Librarian is back to the paint ladder.

Gorgeous gingko

Jim and I took our lovely niece out for lunch today to celebrate her 21st birthday, then we went to a matinee at UNC-G.  Right outside Jim's office is a beautiful little courtyard made spectacular in the fall by this incredible gingko tree.

I love the shape of the leaves and the way they are clustered on the branch.

We have enjoyed another warm and beautiful weekend here in the Piedmont Triad.  I hope yours was wonderful in your part of the world as well.

New Woobie revealed: Happy birthday, Jim

Happy sixtieth birthday to my dear husband.  Here he is modeling his new woobie of which he highly approves. The weather is just chilly enough here to make him happy to have it around him in the evenings. You can check out the posts about the construction by clicking on woobie quilt over on the right under Labels.  This is the second quilt I've made using the "Single Girl" pattern.  You can also click on that to see posts about the first quilt.

Guest posting on a library blog and other librarian news

I hope you will click over to Melissa's Librarian By Day blog where I have the guest post today.  She put a call out for posts on historical fiction for young adults and I wrote one about a Margaret Peterson Haddix novel I really liked.

In other library news, Stephen Abram published the results of his librarians' hobbies survey on his blog,
Stephen's Lighthouse.  Not surprisingly, recreational reading topped the list.  Knitting was tenth, but quilting was really an "also-ran," way down on the list.   I suspect there are more of us out there, just from the people I've heard from and met at conferences and quilt shows.

Why I always vote

I always exercise my right to vote because so many of my sister ancestors, the American suffragists, devoted their lives, ruined their health, and suffered countless disappointments to secure it for me. Pulitzer prize winner,  Connie Schultz of the Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote a column in 2004 after see the HBO presentation of "Iron Jawed Angels" that more than went viral on the Internet. She wrote an update in 2008 that I recommend you read if you are hesitating about making the trip to vote.

Mining a source of inspiration to create a new quilt: Blogger's Quilt Festival Fall 2010

Welcome to the Blogger's Quilt Festival, Fall 2010.  Because I had such good response to my spring post for the Blogger's Quilt Festival, I've decided to follow a similar plan of updating my original post as I construct a new piece during the fall festival. My inspiration again comes from Wonderland's Alice.  This time, rather than the images of John Tenniel, it comes from the words of Lewis Carroll.

The quote appears in the first chapter of Through the Looking Glass and comes from the Red King.  I love the concept of the pencil being uncontrollable, having a will of its own.  I have some vague mental images rolling around in my head involving mark-making on fabric with different size pens combined with lots of black, white, and grey fabrics with graphic designs. Like many quilters, I fight against the urge to "go literal" with an image. I don't want to make a quilt that features the image of a giant pencil ! ( Elizabeth Barton has a great post about this, by the way.  You can check it out here.)  My imaginings center much more on the writings of this pencil Lewis Carroll talks about.  What do "all manner of things that I don't intend"  actually look like? Here's some of the fabric with graphic images.

The fabrics with pencil and pen designs will probably show up on the back or in the binding, but who knows?

Here's a look at the first constructions using some new millennium fabric.

This piece will be improvisationally pieced on an intuitive basis and we will see where it leads over the days of the festival.  Thanks for reading and I hope you will check back as I update this post.

Update: Friday, 29 October 9:40PM

I made a trip to Hobby Lobby today for more marking tools and stencils.

This is the beginning of a white on black letter.

Here it is on the background fabric.  As the components start to appear, I am getting a clearer idea of what the whole might look like.

Update: Saturday, 30 October 12:45PM

This is not a composition, but rather just some of the elements grouped together for a picture.  I'm really pleased with the look of things so far.  Back to Safety Pin Studio!

Update: Saturday, 30 October 4:00PM

I've decided to do all the letters in the alphabet but in different fonts and cases.  Here's my "i" unit that I printed with typewriter font rubber stamps. The back of the fabric is stabilized with freezer paper that I iron on and then pull off once it's stamped.

Here are the units so far.  There's going to be another repeated letter unit for the "e."

Update: Sunday, 31 October 7:45AM

Good Halloween morning to all of you festival visitors.  Here are my next two "repeater" elements.  The wonderful black fabric that the "e's" are on was designed and made by Laura Wasilowski.  I've been hoarding it for years and now I'm thrilled to use it in this quilt.

Now that the composition is coming together, the shapes of the various elements is being dictated by where I need to fill in an open space.  I like this kind of creative problem-solving.  Today shouldn't be as interrupted as Saturday was, and I'm hoping to get close to finishing the front.  More later.  Now, it's back to the studio.

Update: Sunday, 31 October 9:00AM

I'm constantly moving the elements around and now that I see this photo, I can see another move I want to make.  Back I go to Safety Pin Studio.

Update: Sunday, 31 October 1:40PM

Nothing is sewn together yet, but I think this composition will work. There's more Laura Wasilowski fabric in the "y" repeater element.  I'm thinking a grey first border and then some of the white on black fabric with cursive writing all over it for the second border.    I used the black on cream fabric with print letters to fill in the spaces between elements. 

I'm taking a little lunch break and then back to work.

Update: Sunday 31 October 8:30PM

Here's the top sewn together with a grey border.  One border is going to be enough, I think.  

The border fabric is by Debra Lunn and Michael Mrowka for Robert Kaufman. It's an oldie from my stash.  I will use the white on black cursive writing fabric for bias binding.  Quilted Librarian is out for tonight.

Update: Tuesday, 2 November 8:30PM

This is the beginning of the title block.  I'm using my typewriter font rubber stamps on fabric that's been stabilized with freezer paper on the back.

There's nearly enough pencil fabric for the back.  The black on white cursive writing fabric may work around the edges.

Quilted Librarian goes mobile!

I've finally gotten around to uploading some social networking apps for my iPhone so I can go mobile. This won't be my preferred form of posting, because it's too hard to type, but great to have in place. Thank you BlogWriter Lite.  Happy weekend.

Blogger's Quilt Festival, Fall 2010

The ever amazing Amy is doing it again: the best online quilt festival ever for the fourth time.  I'm very excited to participate again.  Come back on the 29th of October for the start of the fun.  You can click back to my old posts using these links:
Festival #1 post
Festival #2 post
Festival #3 post

Thanks, Amy.  You rock.

Jim's New Woobie: Finishing touches

This is the large half hoop when I was just about finished quilting Jim's new woobie yesterday afternoon.  It was a little cool on the porch, so I was happy to have the quilt resting on my legs.

I made the continuous bias binding earlier in the week.  I use my Viking with the walking foot to sew on binding. Here's a link to a tutorial on continuous bias binding.

Here's the front side of the tag...

...and the back. I sew the tags to the back above the binding line of quilting and then turn the binding down and hand sew it to secure the tag. I've made several tags lately.  See this post and this one.

Here's a little detail of the binding and the hand quilting.

Fall color and a look at the remodeling

I'm having a Jane Brocket kind of color and domestic artist day.  Jim bought me these wonderful zinnias at the Farmer's Market and the colors are just intoxicating. We went for vegetables, but he knows how I love flowers.

The vegetables are cut up and ready to go into the pot as I poach a whole chicken.  We will have the breast meat tonight and I will make chicken and noodles for my lunches next week with the broth and the dark meat.

This is a little look at the bathroom remodeling.  They started with the guest bathroom.  This is the new porcelain tile floor.  Was I glad to see the last of that ugly linoleum! I had them use tile rather than wood mop boards.

This is the same view with the new vanity in place as well as the high profile/ecologically friendly toilet. You can see what the wall color will be, too.   The new lights should go in on Monday and then they will tear out our bathroom.  Quilted Librarian out to finish quilting Jim's new woobie.

Pennants on display

Here are the pennants on display.  It was tough to get a good picture without reflections.

A memory of Mae and her mother

Some of Jim's mother's things that she had intended for us arrived this week.  This is a work bag that belonged to Mae's mother, Anna (the namesake of our Anna).  It was always in Mom's bedroom taking pride of place right by the door.  I never got to meet the first Anna, but did speak to her on the telephone shortly before her death.  She knew that Jim and I were engaged and seemed pleased and was very sweet to me.

This is a wonderful old photo of the first Anna and I can definitely see our Anna's resemblance to her.  She was also a needlewoman and that's one of the reasons I will particularly cherish this memento.  Thanks, Mom.

Jim's woobie quilt: quilting update

Jim's new woobie quilt is about halfway quilted.  I'm using the large half hoop on the edges.  We've had gorgeous weather this weekend and I've spent every moment I could hand quilting on the screened porch. I spent some time this afternoon helping to drop the Piedmont Quilters Guild show and both of my quits are safely back home.  I got some nice comments from the judge, but no ribbons.  I'm planning a new quilt for the spring PAQA-South show.  That should be a better venue for my type of work.  I hope you are all enjoying some lovely October weather.

Piedmont Quilters Guild Show 2010

I have entered two quilts in the Piedmont Quilters Guild Show which opens tomorrow and continues through Sunday, October 3.  If you are in the Piedmont Triad area, I hope you will try to attend.  The quilt above is called "Mérida Remix".  You can read about the construction of this quilt at these post.
The quilting and finishing of it can be seen here.

This one is called "Curiouser and curiouser." Read more about it at these posts.

Chatting with SLIS students

When I was in library school at Indiana University's School of Library and Information Science, my favorite courses were taught online by Dr. Annette Lamb and Dr. Larry Johnson.  Not only were they challenging and informative, they were also fun.  Last year at the AASL conference in Charlotte, I had the distinct pleasure of meeting both of them in person for the first time.  Recently, Larry asked me to serve as a virtual visiting professional and dialogue with the students in his Library Media Specialist class via their class blog.  In honor of that, I thought I would feature the One Million Books quilt that hangs in my office at school and a new set of pennants I'm making for the library media center.

"

 Using the same technique that I employed for the letters of the OMB quilt, I cut out letters to spell out, "Read one million books." Black seemed to be the best background color for the pennants themselves.  The pattern was developed last summer when I made a string for Anna and Matty's wedding. For the moment, I think they will hang in the display case outside the library media center.  

While my blog is called The Quilted Librarian, it tends more toward the "quilt" end of the spectrum than the "librarian" end, but, on occasion, I do let my inner librarian/information specialist speak.  In this post, I talked about the unique and useful information provided by tracking one's blog. The importance of titling and tagging a blog were the subjects of this post.  My first experiences with Twitter are discussed in this post.  Banned Books Week rated a post, too. This post involves my responses to a reading meme.  You can look through the labels to the right for other library-related topics.

Technology and social media figure into what I do every day.  When I create a new blog post, it's automatically Tweeted and appears as a wall post on my Facebook page. I keep up with news and what's happening in the various blogospheres with Google Reader.  A digital camera is always in my purse as is my iPhone.  

I love reading about how many school librarians are using cutting-edge technologies with their students and it makes me wish that my own students had more access to technology.  The digital divide is unfortunately very real and it's going to take lots of money to make things more equitable.  I've had two very different job experiences as a library media specialist--the first in a small, rural corporation with lots of technology and a strong budget for materials and the second in a sprawling, urban corporation with very little technology and an almost non-existent materials budget. I'm sure the SLIS students will have lots of good questions.  Hopefully, I will be able to provide some insightful answers.