Disconnected

Today is my first day back at work after being off for 2 weeks. I really enjoyed the time off and I got a lot of things done. One being that I'm reorganizing our bedroom and trying to get it into shape so I can do some painting or something with the walls this spring, or maybe before spring if I can get the room ready in time. We have off-white walls in our bedroom and through most of the house. When we first moved into the house we thought off-white would be a good choice so that we could change curtains, etc., and other color schemes without having to repaint so much. Now, I feel like I want to warm up the room and really want to do something different. My good friend has beautiful wallpaper on her bedroom walls, and my cousin has a wonderful warm color that he achieved in his living room using a sponge technique. I'm pretty sure we've decided on the sponge technique for our bedroom. At least that way, if we get tired of it, we can just paint over it. With wallpaper it may be harder to change it. Plus, my cousin can help me with it.

I haven't really been doing much knitting lately, but I have been doing alot of quilting related things. I guess after doing so much frantic knitting of last minute gifts before Christmas, I just wanted to do something different now that the pressure is off. Last week I went to a quilt shop in town and they had some beautiful Dresden Plate pieces that a woman had sewn by hand and was selling for $2.00 each. I ended up buying 22 of them to make a queen size quilt for our bed. It will take about 20 of them for the bed quilt, and I plan to use the other 2 pieces to make either pillow shams, or just throw type pillows. The pieces had already been basted and turned under ready for applique. Joy, joy, not to have to worry with preparing the pieces for applique. I love to applique, but I hate getting the pieces ready for it. Mostly because I haven't found a technique that I can do with success. These pieces have been a joy to work with. So far, I've appliqued 16 of them and I only have 4 more to go before I can assemble the quilt top. I hope to have the quilt top assembled and ready for quilting sometime over the weekend.


While I was in the quilt shop a second time, I found a pretty quilt kit that had a bird on it. The background fabric and the bird pattern was already cut out and ready to go. This should applique pretty easily using fusible web and embroidery floss to use the folk art applique technique. It's sort of like a blanket stitch in embroidery. I guess I'll do that one after I finish the Dresden Plate, or I may do start on it later.


I had a really good time off. I got lots of rest when I wanted to. I went to bed when I wanted and got up when I wanted to. I ran around to different places like the yarn store, shopping or whatever I wanted to do. I work this week and then I will be off again for Martin Luther King holiday, so I'll get a 3 day weekend next weekend.

Our Internet service at home expired Dec. 31, which I'm really disappointed about and I'm really missing it. Up to now we've had dial-up, which takes forever, so I'm thinking about getting a high speed connection through our cable company. Eddie is not in a hurry since he hardly ever uses the computer, but I'm feeling really disconnected at home without being able to read blogs, and write in my own blog. Hopefully, we will get that resolved soon.