Friday, August 13, 2010

Seth's blogging

Well, this week we've been having a little difficulty getting Seth's posts up. He very much wanted to do a video blog post instead of just a photo blog post, and so he worked really hard on making and editing a video, but it's a little long. And I don't think it's going to work uploading to the blog itself. I may have to upload it to youtube first, and then link to it.

I've very proud of how much time he spent on editing it. He basically learned the program himself with very little help from me, as I've been very tired the last couple of days and just not myself. I don't think I'm sick, probably just over-tired and need some extra naps. I'm feeling a little better this afternoon, but still not really normal. I'll try to fix the video problem this weekend so everyone can see his wonderful efforts.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Finishing UFOs

Lately I've been trying to finish up some of my quilting projects that are waiting patiently for me. I alteast want to get them to the "top" stage so that I can give them to my local quilt guild and give them as a charity quilt for someone who could use a quilt.
These first couple of photos are of some blocks that my friend Kasey gave me. She loves to clean out her sewing room by shipping ufos and wips to me :) I love equally much receiving them! Boxes from her make me feel like a kid in a toy store.


These were in a baggie of the same style of blocks, all with different fabrics. I've made these two small baby quilt tops, and the rest I'll set aside. I have a vague idea of making the remaining 3 blocks into a bag or something similar.

This next quilt top was a set of 11 blocks, plus the 12th block was nearly complete. Of these 12, 3 of them had a different, darker, tan as the "background" so I removed those from the set and used just these 9 to make a charity top for perhaps an older child or a lap quilt for an adult. I have vague plans for the remaining blocks to be put into either a table runner, a tote bag set, or both! :)

Can you tell which block was the one that I had to finish before putting on the sashing and cornerstones?

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

A Terrific Spice Rack !

Over the weekend, I re-found a guy that I adore! Well, actually, I adore his work and his ingenuity. Let me start at the beginning ....

A few years ago, we were at the Science Center of Iowa and I saw a display of inventions. I believe the focus was on patents originating in Iowa or something like that. In this display was a marvelous spice rack that was versatile and fit the containers that you would buy at the store. There was no transferring of the spices to the pre-set pre-sized containers to fit into the rack. I could buy a normal spice from the grocery store and snap it in place in this rotating rack. I wrote down all the information they had on this inventor, and I ended up ordering this beautiful spice rack.

I loved this rack. It was very nearly perfect. I still use it. However, the one draw back was that it would not hold the little Tone's spice containers. So, my little ones had to stay in the drawer, laying on their side so that I could see the labels.

This past weekend, there was a display set up at the Craft Show on the Indianola Square. They had a rotating spice rack that was even better then the one I had, and it was specifically designed to be able to accomodate those little spice containers that were hiding out in my drawer. I started talking to this gentleman and he was the exact same man that I had purchased my first spice rack from! His name is Alan Thompson from Kelley, Iowa, and he sells these spice racks. His company is called "SpiceRax of Iowa". click here to visit his website.

Here is the spice rack that I purchased this weekend, already filled to the brim. I really should have purchased the one size bigger then this, with an extra row on top.

The only thing that I may suggest to improve this is to make the top wooden piece a bit taller so that I can pick it up from this. My fingers are just a tad too big to comfortably lift it when it's filled to the top like this. He also talked about a model that's coming out that will be even more versatile, allowing each row of this to spin so that you can fit a taller container right next to a shorter container.
I absolutely love these racks, and haven't been able to find any others that even come close to them.

Monday, August 2, 2010

Video - Art Inspiration



I found this video shared on this blog: Click Here

I really like the video, and it's well worth the nearly 3 minutes. Take the time, have a smile :) And be inspired to TRY!

Balloon Classic

We went to the Balloon Classic in Indianola on Saturday evening. Man, was it populated! :) It took close to an hour to drive the 2-3 miles from our house to the balloon field! A lot of stop and go, more stop then go actually, all because people would go into the right hand lane and try to get in front of the people who were trying to follow the basic rules and stay in one lane.

Below are my favorite pictures from the evening.