Lemon Tree Tales

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween to all the good ghouls out there tonight! These two little cuties are hand needle felted by one of the talented ladies in my doll club, Gals & Dolls. I won them at last year's Annual Silent Auction that we have every November. Such sweet pumpkins. Makes me wonder if that's what The Great Pumpkin would look like.

We were watching It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown on tv last night when we felt a little earthquake. Nothing too big, I think it was 5.6 or so centered about 9 miles from where we are in the south Bay area. Nothing fell down except one of my little mannikins on the top shelf. It escaped harm, just had a little adventure. Here's to everyone escaping harm tonight and enjoying their little adventures. Happy haunting!

Troll doll class

Would you like to learn how to make one of these little trolls? It's called Mini-Whisper designed by Ute Vasina. She'll be here at the Gals & Dolls doll club in January 2008 to teach us how to make it. This little cutie has opposable thumbs, a two part leg and a gorgeous needle-sculpted face. The focus of the class is to learn about how to create great action poses that gives more umph! to your creations. If you're going to be in the San Jose, CA area for the weekend of January 19th and 20th then we have a few places left. The cost is $75 payable to Gals & Dolls, plus a $15 kit fee payable to the teacher, Ute Vasina at the time of the class. If you're interested then email me and I'll tell you more about it. Hurry there's just a few spaces available. Look at all the fun her previous students have had making these trolls.

The pumpkin truck

There's a great little independent market in Sunnyvale that sells fresh produce and interesting goodies such as Irish Oatmeal. (Yes, it is a bit different than the regular Quaker Oats ... it's much better too!) I love how they have this cute display of pumpkins. Maybe I should buy some this weekend.

The goodie jar

This is what I did with my free time while Steve was racing around the track. I wasn't sure if I'd have the right conditions to do anything super productive so I brought an organizing project instead. I found this huge glass jar at Target for around $5. It was so cool that I couldn't pass it up. I wasn't sure what I would store in it until I remembered this post from Heather Bailey ages ago. Right now these are just the craft floss that I have. I'm working on the DMC embroidery floss while watching tv with the hubby. There's plenty of room for lots of color. It'll have a nice home on my cutting table when I'm done. How can you ever go wrong with a little splash of the rainbow on your table?

Start your engines!!

Well it was a huge race weekend for our house ... quite literally as it turned out. Normally we go over to our good friends' house on Sundays so that the guys can watch some Nascar races and then later we have a nice steak dinner. But this weekend racing was something else because on Friday late afternoon I got a call from Steve. "Hon, pack our bags and stuff, we're going to Reno for the weekend." Now, before you get the wrong idea, our destination was really 30 miles past Reno in Fernley. What's in Fernley you might ask. Well it's the proud home of the Reno-Fernley Raceway. Steve had an absolute blast racing around in his car. He gets better at it all the time. I was super cold (Saturday morning it was around 48F but with a major wind so it felt colder than that) and spent a lot of time in the trailer to escape the winds. I did borrow a helmet at one point so that one of the coaches could race me around the track. WOW! It was fun but a little scary feeling all at the same time. We'll see what happens at the next track day event.

When we got home Sunday night (we weren't back in time for our Sunday dinner and we were sad) but we watched the TiVo'd F1 qualifying and then race. Yet another wow! I can not believe what a change of events took place. All season long it's been talk of the "super great" rookie, Lewis Hamilton in the McLaren, and how he was going to be the first rookie to win the World Championship. Then his teammate Fernando Alonso, the 2 time winning Champion, was looking like he would have a real shot. And trailing behind was Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen. As the entire season progressed I kept thinking that the media is giving an awful lot of attention on the rookie. Yes, he's pretty good, but he's also in a super fast car. Would he be driving as well if he were in one of the Spyker cars? So what did we see in Brazil? Another rookie mistake from Hamilton. It was his championship to lose. And lose it he did by racing his teammate which caused him to drop quite a few spots. Then his car had problems that dropped him many spots down. Meanwhile the Ferraris were dominating the race. Felipe Massa put on a good show by being the race leader until he "managed" to not beat Raikkonen's pit exit. That was to be expected and they did it in such a way that it looked good. Well done!

I did manage to get a little crafting done during the weekend and I'll show you what I did later. Suffice it to say that the focus was on racing and it was a very successful race weekend indeed.

Pacific International Quilt Festival 2007

Last Thursday I went to Pacific International Quilt Festival (PIQF) at the Santa Clara Convention Center. Boy, was it a blast! I got there just a few minutes before it opened at 10am. There were hordes of white haired ladies chomping at the bit to enter the doors to textile overload. As they danced around, the door handlers started the countdown - 10, 9, 8 ... 3, 2, 1! Cheers, then a stampede as they passed the doors. Too funny. But I'm not kidding when I said that there were lots of people there. It was extremely crowded but oh so worth it. I took a gazillion pictures, but in my excitement to snap a pic before someone walked in the shot, most were blurred. Egads, the horror. Oh well, here's some of the better pictures of my favorite quilts.

Chart 7 - Reflections by Marianne Falkuss

Unbridled Passion by Denise Havlan

Metamorphosis by Wendy Brown

Costa Rica - Pura Vide by Janice Johnson ... Look closely, the large elements are t-shirts from her vacation to Costa Rica.

Girl with Teacup by Bodil Gardner

Figures at Rest by Bodil Gardner - Gotta love the folk art quality of these quilts. Don't they make you feel cheerful?

Touching Threads Green by Renate Flohr

Genesis - A New Beginning by Janice Ellerston

Stars for Arden by Ronda K. Beyer

I noticed a trend in some of the quilts at the show. Look closely at the last two quilts and you'll see it for yourself. More people are using the heat-set Swarovski crystals as elements in their quilts. They're hard to photograph, oh, but they give such a sparkle to them. I think they make a nice touch to art quilts.

Well those were some of my favorites. As you can tell, the massive amounts of bright colors are what usually grabs my attention. Not to say that there weren't plenty of quilts that were more subtle. And I even took some pics of those too. But broad strokes of color always attract my attention first. Next time I'll have to stop and really take the proper amount of time when photographing these beauties.

We're back and rested

Steve and I had a great time in Kansas even though we really didn't get much rest while there. I've also realized that my husband can definitely dance but that I need to get some lessons one of these days. Last Saturday the DJ called us out to the dance floor for a special anniversary dance. I still enjoyed it. There's something special about dancing with ones husband - made me feel very warm and happy. Ah, and Saturday morning's service at shul was outstanding. Our niece did an excellent job of chanting her Torah portion - the first 19 verses of the first chapter of Genesis. And I was happy that I was able to recite the blessings before/after her reading with some semblance of knowledge. Luckily I had found a website that had mpegs of the blessings in Hebrew so that I could practice. Steve and I were called up after his parents went. I was a bit nervous but we did just fine. Although I just don't think that I'll ever be able to pronounce that guttural 'ch'  with any proficiency. Maybe one of these years. After all we have a couple years to practice before it's our nephew's turn.  :-)

Celebration!

This weekend is a time of celebration for my husband and our family. We're in Kansas City to celebrate our niece's becoming a Bat Mitzvah. I can't believe that she's already 13! Time certainly has flown by. And in addition to Saturday being her big day, Steve & I are celebrating our 5th anniversary. Last night we flew in and met all the out of towners for dinner. What a great group of family and friends. Steve & I were really surprised when the restaurant staff came out with a cake for us ... complete with 5 candles. Today we met at my BIL's house for deli platters. Now we're resting before going to shul tonight to be followed with BBQ. Hey it wouldn't be a complete simcha without lots of feasting. Hope everyone else has a great weekend too.

Quilting in the Garden more quilts

These last few quilts from Alden Nursery's Quilting in the Garden were more traditional but with such great color choices. The first two are by Alex Anderson and I'm not sure who did the third.

And my all time favorite quilts were these two. The first one, Fields of Provence by Jean Wells, has the greatest color combos ... so beautiful! And the second, Summer Celebration by Jean Wells, is great because I love dragonflies. Plus it used such a pleasing combination of fabrics.

All in all it was a great experience even though it was wet and muddy that day. And I was hoping to meet Pam of PamKittyMorning but no one was set up at her booth on Saturday. Perhaps another time.

We have a winner!

Wow, such a great list of names for this little fairy: Very Berry, Berrypatch, Merryberry, Leela, Dewberry, Dates, Licorice, Coco, Cocoberry, Poppy, Strawberrina, Gumdrop Fairy-Berry, Strawberry Salsa, Popsicle, Frageria, Earthberry, and Strawberry Dew Fairy. All such gorgeous names, but ultimately I went with one of my husband's suggestions.

Please meet Valerienne Rose. She was so happy to have all of you participate.

My husband did the honors and drew the lucky winner, Katie Greenwood of My Sandbox. So if you'll send me your address I'll send you either the juggling print or this new one.

I can't let everyone else go empty handed, so if you'll send me your address I'll mail each of you an ATC.