Surprise! A Trip to the Bookstore

A bit of personal first... I'm a super-proud mama!  One of my kids' reactions to reading is to breakdown crying with severe humiliation.  So in September, I pulled him from school and did my best to slowly and positively teach him how to read.  If he cried, then we didn't bother.  Well this past week he announced to me that he read a 55 page book, without me asking, and totally tear-free!  It was an older version of The Little Mermaid (serious - not disney).  He was hopping up and down squealing for me to take him to the bookstore!   Side note: we have five bookcases PACKED with books here at home!  This milestone, however, required serious acknowledgment, so off we went to McNally Robinson's.

I love that place.  It's so much more colorful and homey than the big new Indigo across the street.  Plus they have a way better selection here.  Indigo is pretty mainstream.  Even their needle arts sections was like, "Reader's Digest How to Embroider".  yikes. 

2 story book store, full of color and trees and handmade goodness.

I forgot!  My two quilts are up with a fine selection from the Saskatoon Quilter's Guild.  Go check it!  If you've never been there, it houses a very fine restaurant and a fantastic selection of handmade gifts.  I looked for the latest edition of A Needle Pulling Thread magazine, but it must not be on the shelves yet.

My kids got a kick out of this when they walked in!

I have to really thank my homeschooling/artist/mother/friend Sam for showing me this place and encouraging me to get my quilts up in here.

Up near the kids section. 

On the drive home, my little guy read two chapters of his new paperback novel and promptly phoned the grandparents to make his big announcement.  Me... I cried a few happy tears.  : ) 

happy weekend! 
~Monika

It's a Love / Hate Thing.

What a day.  Here's what happenned.  

I love quilting.  I hate ripping seams.  Often I do both.

I decided that the second yellow fabric that I used in the Courthouse quilt didn't work.  It was too drab.  So, out came my trusty seam ripper.  It was still warm from the last project.  And off came the drab...

If you've ever seam-ripped, you know it's slow and tedious.  It's somewhat sad since you are undoing a lot of work.  And POOF!  I got this great motivation to do a tutorial on replacing pieces in a quilt!  Great idea?  I thought so.  So examined the quilt top and decided that I needed some darker browns in one row of centres.  So away I went...

Slowly but surely.  I snapped photos along the way for my brilliant tutorial that perhaps would get published in my favorite magazine.  : )

Here I go... stitch by stitch - rip.  rip.  rip.  I cut about every fourth stitch.  I'm not doing all the centers, only a select number in one diagonal row of blocks.

And when I'm done, I flip over the quilt only to realize that I CUT OUT THE WRONG ONES!  lol

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

I laughed.

I cried.

Mostly I cried.

I took a deep breath and went & had a big cup of coffee.  Can you believe this!?  lol  And I spent even more of the day just putting fabric back into my quilt top.  I added the new yellows.  I like it.  I took out the brown centers that I meant to in the first place, and replaced those with deeper darker browns.  I added a red border.  FINALLY it's done.  And it's right this time. 

And it was worth it.  I love it.  The binding will probably be a deeper red.  I haven't decided yet.  I lost all ability to make any more design decisions after all that!  lol

Crazy.  

~Monika

making it right.
probably NOT publishing it.  lol