Lemon Tree Tales

Happy New Year!

Looking back through my archives I see that 2008 was filled with many doll quilts (some made by me and others received in swaps), a few dolls (once again some made by me as well as those by other doll artists), and LOTS of travel to the race track for Steve's racing. Steve's made a dramatic improvement in his rookie year of club car racing and will start off the new year with a double race in Phoenix. I've also become a pretty good crew member.  :-)

In 2008 I had artwork published in a book and just recently sold my first two items in my etsy shop! I met some nice quilting bloggers in person - Julie, Cheri, her niece Laurel and Micki. Calamity Kim and I must have used tons of cell phone minutes sharing stories. There was doll making with Valerie & Laurie and clay making with Rachel, many doll club meetings, a multitude of lunch dates with Trena, Sunday dinners with family friends and an amazing garden quilt show with Amber as well as some great visits with family.

In amongst that we had some sad news with my grandfather's death in February and the months of adjustment for my grandmother since then. Fortunately she seems to be doing well in her new apartment in an assisted living facility not too many miles away from her house. My dad's been great at dealing with the aftermath and has clocked many thousands of miles driving back and forth from LA to grandma's house.

I'm looking forward to a fresh new start but don't think that I'll make the same old resolutions. I just don't seem to be very good at keeping them. Frustration sets in when I look back at what resolutions I wrote at the new year. I think that instead I should just focus on five main goals and make up weekly to do lists along the way. Somehow that seems much more manageable than what I've set up in previous years. Although I did enjoy last year's slogan to Create in '08. Do you have any suggestions for 2009's slogan?   :-)

So my main goals this next year are:
1) Be published again - in a book or magazine
2) Sell more items in my shop
3) Complete the studio organization (thanks to my mom I'm well on the way!)
4) Make a doll and/or quilt for charity
5) Make my own quilt for one room in my house

I'm working on #3 as we speak ... the last few loads of quilting cottons are in the washer and dryer while a couple of the manikins have a first coat of paint. So are you ready for 2009 to arrive?

Happy New Years!!!

Mom's visit to my studio

I had a great time with my mom these last few days. She was a whirlwind of energy and ideas on how best to organize my art supplies in the studio. One evening we took all my beads and put them in little jars sorted by colors that then fit into these specially made plastic containers. That took much longer than expected but we didn't stop there. We also sorted out and labeled all the drawers under the cutting table, in the sewing table and in the closet. She helped me take down the outdated yellow bulletin board above my desk so that I could hang up one of my lovely swap mini quilts. Ah, so much better looking.

I had mentioned my idea of getting a line of little painted manikins to display above the window on some type of ledge. Before you could say it, lickety split we hightailed it to Ikea for a look around. Wow, was it crowded and busy on Friday. What were all those people doing? Fortunately they had my little manikins in stock. The next day we shopped around until we found the perfect width of wood at Home Depot. Did you know that they'll make one cut for you for free? Zoomed back home to begin the painting. While we were at it we took down my little shelf above the printers and painted it white.

While we waited for the paint to dry we began color sorting my quilting cottons and washed a few loads of them. There's a few more to do but the completed ones look amazing!

In between all of this we enjoyed homemade dinners (one was a very delicious coq au vin dish that Steve cooked ... thanks babe!) and watched a couple movies. I'm sure that we drove Steve batty with all the giggling and girly chit chat but he was a great sport and put up with us. Overall it was a most excellent trip. I forgot to take pictures of mom and me but here's some of the studio organization.

Above the desktop ... quilt by Calamity Kim in the Four Seasons Quilt Swap

Newly painted shelf above the printers ... finally framed my Keep Calm print

New shelf above window with little manikins (will paint them later) ... I'm planning on making a skirt for the cutting table

Organized drawers below cutting table

Paints for the manikins

Organized quilting cottons ... didn't realize that I had so much pink (not really a pink person)

Four of the seven drawers are filled with freshly washed and folded quilting cottons

My spools of ribbon drawer!

All of my beads in these nifty little jars ...

... that fit into four of these specially made plastic boxes.

Thanks Mom!

Happy Hanukkah!

Tonight's the first night of Hanukkah, and since it fell on a Sunday we had our family style dinner at our friends house. The girls asked if we had brought over our menorah and candles for them to light. (We did that a few years ago and I guess that it made a good impression on them. I "cheated" this year and "lit" the electric one instead at home. It looks nice in the window and we were able to leave it there when we went out.)

I brought the girls their presents and luckily they loved the colored pencil rolls. Outstanding! After dinner we watched them play tennis and boxing on their new Wii. Apparently they're pretty hard to find and they managed to get the last one at Fry's. Once the girls went to bed we all took turns trying out the Wii fitness test. Uh, yeah! According to Wii we're all senior citizens. LOL I was only able to hit one home run out of ten pitches. We were yelling, laughing and rooting each other on. I can see why people enjoy it so much. It was an excellent evening filled with lots of fun!

My mom's flying up for a visit this week so I probably won't post again until the very end of December. In the meantime, Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas and Happy Solstice my friends!

Meet Ghillie Guerkin

I'd like to introduce you to Ghillie Guerkin. He's the newest arrival to the Levin household - a gift from my Secret Pal at the Gals and Dolls club. Isn't he the most adorable little creature?! He's made from a pattern by Allison Marano of Faewyck Studios. I've been told that he's a very fun pattern to make. Thank you Secret Pal! I love him!

Here's a closeup of his little face:

Fish and bunny drawstring bags

I almost forgot these two little drawstring bags when wrapping up the girls' presents. The one on the left is a little fish purse and the one on the right is a little bunny purse. I bought them last year from one of the Gals and Dolls members, Leslie. She loves Asian ball-jointed dolls and hand sews lots of different accessories for them. These are just some of the designs that she comes up with. You can find them here at her shop. If she doesn't have any in stock I'm sure that you can convo her to request these cute little designs. Now I think that our presents for the girls are complete with these two and the matching pencil sharpeners I found. I hope that the girls like them too.

Rent a SCCA Spec Racer Ford!

It's getting close to the time of the SCCA racing year - time to climb into the Spec Racer Ford (SRF) race car again. Steve's eager to start it up again. So far he and Dave (our friend who takes care of the car, coaches Steve, and rents out SRF cars to other race enthusiasts) have taken their SRFs to be dyno'd (that's when you determine the exact horsepower that an engine makes). They've also dusted off the racing helmets and did a test day at Laguna Seca to get back into the racing mindset. I do believe that they'll be ready to go.

Here's a pic from last year:

on the (left) is Dave Harriman of HSE Racing - friend, coach and mechanic, and on the (right) is my Steve ... they're tired and dirty from a long weekend of racing but were kind enough to pose with the travel doll from Connecticut.

Guess that means that it's time to gather together supplies for on-the-go crafting!  :-)

Crafty Homemaker is having a giveaway

The Crafty Homemaker is having a giveaway. She's holding a contest on which blog is your favorite and she's nominated me as one of her choices for this week! Isn't that nice of her? All you have to do is to go to this post (by this Friday) and leave her a comment letting her know who's your favorite blog on her list. Now I would be honored if you choose me, but she does have some amazing people listed there. So I'm just tickled that on her list at all.  :-) Two of the items in the giveaway are a handmade picture frame and an angel wing necklace. So go check it out.

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In the meantime I'm going to try to get some good photographs of the most delightful doll that I received from my Secret Pal at doll club. I can't show you the one that I made, but I can share pics of all of the dolls together.

Spring Fling Round Robin 2 quilt has arrived!

Look what arrived in yesterday's mail - it's my quilt from the Spring Fling Round Robin 2 group! Isn't it adorable?! I really like these colors that I like to call sherbet pastels. They remind me of a gelato display.

Here's a closeup with a better shot of the colors:

Kate from the UK made the lovely pinwheel center block.
Lil from Luxemburg made those striped corner borders.
Judith from the Netherlands added the yellow border with those lovely pinwheel blocks.
Finally Jeanne from Oklahoma did all the machine quilting and added that pretty purple binding.
And of course Margaret was the hard-working hostess who made this all possible.
Thank you so much for all taking part in the creation of such a sweet little quiltlet!!!

If you're wishing that you were part of this fun then you may just be interested to know that Margaret has a few places left in the 5th session of the Four Seasons Quilt Swap. It sounds like it'll be a grand time with a monochromatic themed quilt in the season that your swap partner requests. I can't wait to see what our group of creative quilters come up with when the quilts are shown next March.

Play with Clay day

I saw my friend Rachel the other day. She finally had enough glazed clay pieces done to run her kiln for a firing. These are the first two pieces that I've made out of clay. They were very simple flat slabs rolled out and molded on Styrofoam trays (leftovers from bringing meat home from the grocery store). The top one was just a simple landscape type of doodling. The second one was made to learn how to attach two clay components together. Nothing fancy but I do like this pretty green/blue glaze. I think that I'll use them as candle trays in the living room.

Colored Pencil Rolls for two little girls

I put the finishing touches on these colored pencil rolls yesterday. Now they just have to be wrapped and will be all ready to go as our presents to the fabulous Miss L and the precocious Miss J. Thanks go to Kathy of Pink Chalk Studio for an outstanding pattern and to Sandi Henderson of Portabellopixie for her gorgeous Farmer's Market fabric that comes in both pink and green!