Shanah Tovah to you and your family!

Or Shana Tova, which ever way you want to spell it.  For non-Jews, a good year to you and yours, also.

Busy, busy.  Gotta make the tejes kolacs, the chicken for tonight, neato meatloaf on a bed of potatoes for tomorrow after synagogue.   Pay bills.  ick, boring.  Stuff.

Sister and niece coming this afternoon.  Elder DD joining us tomorrow.

Totally off topic, but then I've never stayed on topic:  here's what Miss P gave her mom for her birthday.  A spa visit!  Now, you may ask yourselves, how does a 9 year old manage that?  She gave her mom a spa visit at home.  Bubble bath, cucumbers on eyes, foot massage and back massage.  How sweet is that?  What a kid!

Gotta run.  Gotta bake.  Thank goodness, a colleague of the Hubs gave him a challah, so I don't need to bake that.

scrapperjen - She really is a wonderful child.  Very caring, very kind.  And her eyes always dance with mischief and fun.  All the grands are wonderful, each in his/her own way.  She received the latest set of doll clothes and especially loved the ones that I'm most fond of.  Whadda kid!

Scrabblequeen - She is that.  More energy that the other 4 put together, and the brain is constantly going.  

Where I like to live.

Right here in what passes for suburban NJ.  Suburban, my foot.  We are still on top of each other, but less so than some neighboring towns.  I'm a city girl, like being somewhere where I can easily get to a train to take me into New York.  I like having neighbors. I like going for a walk and being able to say hi to someone.  I like having shops, banks, drug stores near me.  I like that I could actually take the train to Madison and walk a few blocks to my doctor's office.  I like living somewhere where there are colleges.  We have 3 within 2 miles. I like all that being in the new York metro area offers me.

I'm sort of urban/suburban, i.e. not cheek to jowl as in Brooklyn or Manhattan.  I like having a nice piece of land which we pretty much ignore, not being gardeners.  Our land acts a a buffer between neighbors, but i can still go outside and see my neighbors.  I would be terrified if I lived in the middle of nowhere. 

I love to take the train.  I can go to NYC on an express and be there in 45 minutes.  Weekend, the locals run, so it takes about 70 minutes.  I sit on the train and knit and daydream.  If I've walked miles in the city, I rest on the ride home.  No traffic problems, no crazy drivers, just pure relaxation.  And then, being a couple of blocks from the rr station, I just walk home.  This is my idea of heaven.  Of course I don't commute; I'm retired, and that commute would get old pretty quickly, but in my working days, I did drive the half hour to work.  Can't say that I liked it, but it worked.  Now I have the luxury of taking a train to wherever.  I like taking the train to my local quilt shop, Aardvark Quilts. It's 2 stations beyond me.  8 minutes, and there I am, in downtown Morris Plains, with a quilt shop, good lunch foods, very very pleasant.

In a pinch, I could take the train to Madison (the next town eastbound) and walk to the Stop and Shop, or to downtown.  That much training I don't do, but the option is there.  The other day, when I went to Aardvark, I chatted with a lady who gave up driving. Got sick and tired of it.  She takes the train or bus everywhere.

So where is this all coming from?  I love to read Judy Laquidara's blog.  She's a delight to read.  Good writing, wonderful quilts (I wanna be her when I grow up), loves to cook, tells great husband stories.  She recently moved to Texas and has hair-raising stories of trying to find a house.  She, unlike me, wants to live out in the middle of nowhere.  The last place she would want is to live is in the metro New York area.  Cool, isn't it?  I could never live out in no-where Texas, and I bet she'd tear her hair out if she had to live in northern New Jersey.  (I specify northern NJ because the shore and the Philly areas are just not the same state.  It's pretty neat to live in a state with low mountains (very low), rivers, parks, cities, the ocean.  But I digress.) 

I guess, when all is said and done, it's wonderful to live in a country where there is so much diversity.  Me with urban areas, Judy with total country, and all that's in between.

And now I'm off to watch The Biggest Loser.  Not that I'm heavy.  I could probably lose 3-4 lbs, but I love watching how these amazing people work so hard and end up so amazingly fit.

Jo - Hi, neighbor!  Thanks for reading my blog.

Ria - South Jersey is like a different state.  Totally different, isn't it.

Oh frabjous day

Calloo callay
I chortle in my joy!

I just finished sewing my first non-mini quilt top!  I"m happily chortling in my joy.  I should be cleaning up this mess of a house, but needed a break, so I finished up the top.

Is it perfect?  What, are you kidding?  I'm glad that it all sort of came together and that I mismatched only about 6 points.  Nope, I'm not redoing those points.  It is what it is.  I've given up perfection.

But it's good enough.  Indeed, it's more than good enough.  Needs a bit of better pressing, that's for sure.  And if you look towards the bottom, some of those long rectangular blocks seemed skewed.  I think that's the pressing.  And you can see this horizontal line just toward the bottom, but that's pressing, I'm pretty sure.  Anyhow, when it's quilted, all the quilting will take care of the wonkiness.  Not that I have any idea on how to quilt it.  This much I know:  I'm hand doing it.  Or else sending it out.

There.  See the wonkiness?  Oh, don't look.  Just enjoy the frabjousness of it all.

Happy dance.  Chortling with joy.  Oh frabjous day, calloo, callay!

And now back to the mess.  If I ever get this house straightened up, I'm so NOT ever going to let it get this bad again.

Chortle, chortle, gleeful chortle.

Thanks to Lewis Carroll for Jabberwocky.  'Twas brillig and I sewed a quilt top.

merrilymarylee - I'm still chortling, although now I'm finding a lot more messiness, or wonkieness

Scrabblequeen - Calloo, Callay!  What should I do next?  Decisions!

CarolynJean - It was a "mimsy" moment.

scrapperjen - Thanks.  I saw a d9p done so that you didn't have to match any points at all.  That is now on my to-do list.

Knitting!

Something that I can actually show you:  a brand-new, hot-off-the needles dolls shawl.  A shawl with great possibilities for a people shawl.  People shawls start with the same numbers and then grow and grow.  So a doll shawl is a wonderful place to play.

A mere .6 oz!  Enough left over for a pair of socks for me!  Or another shawl or a sweater or a hat.  Is this not fun?

Embiggen to see it large.

Happy weekend.  It's only drizzling after yesterday's downpour.  Drizzle is good.

CarolynJean - It's a great way to try out patterns.  You never know if one of these little guys is going to grow up to be an adult shawl.


Scrabblequeen - We'll be glad to send you a bit of rain.  We're all pretty waterlogged at the moment.  There are the most amazing fungi springing up in my grass.

Busy me

I have been sewing up a storm of doll clothing and working on my disappearing 9 patch, too.  And knitting a bunch of projects also. 

First of all, the girls:

Ignore the way they are looking up.  They are rolling their eyes at the constant photography, plus Miss Tish on the left looks 3 sheets to the wind the way she is lollying around.  Plus she's showing a bit too much leg.  She really is a shameless hussy.  I'm not thrilled with how her stand up collar top came out.  I have plenty of fabric, so I might make another top.  Or not.

Here are the 2 well-behaved girls.  Notice that they are upright.  Barefoot, of course.  They don't do shoes.

 

I started a shawl in a matching yarn for the cutie on the left. Did about 1/2 inch so far, but I think it's too open, so I'm switching needles from a 4 to a 3. No pics, because what can you see with a teensy bit of shawl showing? Not much. Different shaping, so it might become a little prototype for an adult shawl.

Also on the knitting needles with no pics because they are boring: 2nd sock for His Royal Hubbo. Men's socks go on forever. Good TV knitting. Working my way on the mitered border of the Modified Cardigan. Took me 4 tries to get the shaping right on the 2nd miter. Just didn't want to sink into my head, I guess. And then, I want to knit me a pair of socks out of this amazing 75/25 SW Falkland merino/nylon I just bought. Great hand. I might actually put in a more compicated pattern than what I've been doing.

And the quilt! Here's a pic of how it's coming along. I rather like it. It's bright and cheery, and not subtle in the least, but I think it would be brilliant to cuddle under such pretty colors in the middle of winter.

 By the way, the shawl behind the girls is my Avira Shawl, pattern available on Ravelry.  I thought the color fit in nicely with the center doll.

And that's the story, Morning Glory.

And the last dress is

This one. Made from a batik I found somewhere and I have enough leftover for something, maybe a top. Or maybe I'll just cut up into squares for a scrappy quilt.

I'm still pulling fabric for the Rose Collection.  I love having stash.  And I was bad because I did buy a wee bit of fabric on sale.  So far I think I have made a teensy dent in the collection.  But it is such fun decided what to make and what fabric to use.

If anyone had told me that I would love sewing, I would have hit them over the head with the machine.  It's a treat to have 2 crafts going on simultaneously.  The crochet is languishing, and I haven't stitched in maybe 10 years, but now I'm looking at floss and the mind is thinking.

Have a good weekend, everyone.

Thanks, ladies.  Yep, it's time to do some warm knitting, especially considering that it was about 59 today, and I was really chilly.  So, I suppose the girls are chilly, too.  

A new dress for a blurry doll.

She was up partying 'till the wee hours of the morning and is a but blurry even at 4:30 in the afternoon.  I keep telling her that she has to get her act together. But does she?  Noooo.  Cavorting around at all hours in some of the toniest bars in Manhattan.  Stayed out so late that she missed her train home.  Good thing her aunt doesn't live too far away.  And that's why she's blurry. Me?  I went to sleep at around midnight, for once had a good night's snooze, and am not in the least blurry.

Scrabblequeen - She finally sobered up. I took away her clothes to mail them to Miss P, and now she's nekkid and embarrassed.


scrapperjen - The dolls are pretty much nekkid again. So now I'll have to start sewing the fall collection for Miss Rose. I'm telling you, there is no rest for the wicked here.