SMILE you're on candid camera!

 

I'm getting very good at taking pictures. One would hope so with the number of photos that I take every day! My goal is to get rid of the glare, dog feet, and dog hair! I'm doing great at getting rid of the glare! The dog feet and hair? That's a constant battle. 

Here's my GIANT reflector that I use to cut the glare. 

Giant reflector

I bought it years ago when I was taking a photography class. It has five different materials that you can swap out. The other side is shiny silver, which I don't think will help to reduce glare! Why would quilts have glare? They don't, but the screen of a sewing machine has a LOT of glare on it!

I'm also getting better at shooting short videos to enhance my presentations. These are ones that I don't have to be in! Those are the best ones. 

And I'm doing all this with my phone. I do have a nice DSLR camera, but it's bulky, it's more complicated to get the photos into the computer, and well - the phone works like a charm. I do need to buy one more piece of equipment - a boom arm for my tripod. I want to retake a few quilt pictures when I get that.  

Let's just say that it's a challenge to stand on a stool and take a picture that is absolutely square to a quilt on the floor! I'm good, but I'm not that good! The boom arm will make a huge difference. WAIT A MINUTE -- there is a big stand with an arm for that reflector. I wonder if I can attach my camera to the end of that boom arm? OK - I've got to try that later today. 

And I know that anyone listening to me as I take the pictures must think I've lost my mind. All I have to do is open the camera and say SMILE, and the phone automatically takes the pictures!  I love it!!!

I wonder what exciting things are available in the new phone (well, the new camera in the new phone- the Samsung S20). The other day, I saw that the phone was advertised, but they never even mentioned the phone - all they talked about was the camera. How bizarre is that? 

I checked - my existing contract runs out in August. Well, the way time is flying, that will soon be upon us! 

Yesterday we had a TON of snow, which meant a ton of snow to shovel in the driveway. But I've got a good routine/system worked out, and I'm good with that. I don't mind shoveling - it's a great exercise if you are smart about it: NO HUGE shovels or scoops. I use a scraper and a shovel. It works great. I see my neighbor dumped snow in the street again. I absolutely wish the plow would put it in her driveway - right at the end so they can't leave without shoveling. Oh well. I did get a wee bit of snow at the end of my driveway, but not bad. 

There are days when there's a ton of activity in the house. The doorbell is ringing, or there are porch pickups and dropoffs. There was nothing on the schedule yesterday. Yet, when I went out for my walk in the afternoon, there was a package on the doorstep. AH - a quilt that was sent to me that needs to be quilted. 

Then at 5 PM, the doorbell rang. I wasn't expecting anyone, but GUESS what was on the doorstep???

A box of fabric

There was my order from Missouri Star Quilt Co. This is the first time I ordered from them, so this is totally out of my norm. But the fabrics in the box could NOT be found anywhere else. Trust me - I looked everywhere. I could find one or two, but not all eleven that I needed. The shipping was reasonable, and it came pretty quick. I don't have time to get started on the quilt now, but hopefully in March. So yes -- that box contains fabric for a special request quilt, and it's going to be awesome!

Oh my -- can you believe that there is an empty set of drawers in the stash room. Yep - there are three little drawers in this shelf unit, and there's not much in any of them. OK - I use the bottom drawer to hide my chocolate stash! But when I opened the top drawer, I got a laugh. Do you see what that is?

A rogue twist tie

That would be a twist tie!!! I think it came off a bag of candy from the bulk store. Oh yes - I'm a closet snack eater! I don't eat that much junk food, but I like to have something on hand should I need it. Right now - there is NOTHING in the snack drawer. OK -- a few packs of mints for when I'm really desperate!

I've got to get working on that stack of projects that I had prepped at the end of January. Yikes - the time is flying by, and I don't seem to be getting anything done. It's UFO weekend, and well - I've got a LOT of work to do!

I did finish my barn block this morning. It's gorgeous and a LOT of work. What's even worse is that the block is 9 ½", but the grid for the block is 8 by 8, and we all know that 8 is not divisible by 9, so that added to the complexity, but it's the right size!! Thanks to EQ8, it was a snap to resize this block down to 9" from the original 18". 

My barn block for this month

Here are my five barn blocks to date. I'm delighted with them. There will be 12 when we're finished. That won't be quite enough for my quilt since I made my blocks smaller. But I have Plan B and Plan C tucked away in my head, and I'll get it worked out as we progress through the remaining blocks. In case you're wondering why I call them barn blocks, it's because the blocks can be found on the Barn Quilt Trail in Simcoe County. The blocks are chosen by Thimbles and Things in Orillia. The class is closed now, just in case you wanted to get in on it. But if you're familiar with EQ8, it's a snap to make these up, and some of them are already in EQ8. 

All five of my barn blocks

OH, M and I are in a race! This is her LAST box of paperwork to go through. Shoot - I think she's going to beat me! And now that she's got everything organized, it's going to be a snap (hopefully) to keep everything in order!! Great job, M!!!!!!  

M's last box of junk paper to sort

I went for a walk yesterday even though there was a ton of snow, so I should have gotten double points for that. Some of the sidewalks were in great shape, and others? Well, the plow must have had some major difficulties going through all the snow. It was a challenge in some spots. 

The "plowed" sidewalk

I did two great presentations yesterday. I should measure how many KMs I put on when I'm prepping one. They are prepped for the most part, but now I'm adding in a few more photos, title pages, etc. But if I need a photo of something, I have to find it either upstairs, in the crazy pile of stuff in the living room, or Studio B. So I put on a lot of steps to make that happen!! 

The HUGE pile of quilts in the living room

A smaller pile near the front door

Another pile on the railing to the basement

There are more on the railings upstairs, on one of the beds, and on the floor in a bedroom. I've got to get this under control, but not today!

Two more presentations today and a guild presentation on scrap quilts. Wow! -- there's always something exciting going on. Thank goodness, I don't have to shovel today!!

On that note, I'm out of here! Loads to do, and it's time to get started!

Have a super day!!!

Ciao!!

New art work

I'm back home. I had a fabulous time with the quilters in Port Hope. What a quaint little town. I'm not ready to move............yet! I'll share that work with you in a future post. I'm now way behind in posting pictures!

The other day, I had to get myself off to the optometrist for a check-up. It had been two years and I was thinking my prescription had changed. Not changed much, but enough. Turns out that my distance has improved a wee bit, but not enough to change the lens and my close up is still good, but I tried readers and that made a difference. Not enough to bother changes lens. But I'm going to buy a pair of readers as I don't have any issues with reading, but sometimes when I'm appliqueing, I find that I can't see as well as I would like. Part of that could be the lighting, but part of it is my eyes.

Now I can't remember if he said 1.5 or 1.0. I need to check the prescription again. Well, I went to the drug store to find some and they only had 2 pair at the magnification that I need. Both were ugly! Apparently, the strength I need is not popular. Now I'm on the hunt for low magnification readers. But I want funky ones!

While I was at the drug store, I sat down at the blood pressure machine. Oh boy - I knew it was going to be off when it was working VERY slowly. My blood pressure ranges on the very low end of normal. But I think this is a bit too low. But I felt totally fine the entire day!

My blood pressure

I just checked Google. Looks like this is acceptable blood pressure, but I do need to watch it. Too low is not good if not enough oxygen is getting to the organs. I know for a fact that dehydration is the major cause of my problems with low blood pressure. I don't drink enough! I must remember to drink more - every day!!!

We purchased some artwork for our powder room years ago. Matter of fact, it was purchased for our previous house, but it came with us. Years ago, I found some new fun artwork for the powder room. I even had it framed. It's been sitting downstairs for years. Still wrapped in the brown paper. I know - don't ask me why I procrastinate on everything. I think I was hoping that someday we would get that powder room painted. Never happened.

The old artwork is gone. That was several weeks ago when I bundled up a lot of pictures and prints that we had around the house that we were no longer using. All have been donated and now I have my new artwork hanging in the powder room. Nope - it's still not painted, but I can live with that for the moment.

Quilts blowing in the wind

Another piece of artwork

And a third piece

All of them are by the same artist. Andrew Meredith. I met him in Moose Jaw when The Quilt Patch was hosting their outdoor quilt show. He was selling his prints in a booth in the park amidst all the quilts. The bottom piece depicts some of the quilts hanging in the park. Sadly, The Quilt Patch has closed - it was a fabulous store to visit.

Now I get to enjoy those lovely prints every day. I'm sure there are other things around this house that are languishing in some corner. They need to be brought out and enjoyed or given away!!!

When we were at the Windsor Quilt Show (OH - I said that I was finished with mentioning that show but lots of stuff happened at that show), anyway - we saw a sign for a quilter's estate sale. That's the first time that I've heard it mentioned like that, but technically that's what it is.

There's another Quilter's Estate sale coming up in Brighton and it starts TODAY!!!!!  Here's the link on the Facebook page. The family has done an enormous amount of work prepping for this sale. You need to go back through all the posts to see the pictures. I think the very first one has all the pre-cuts in it. TONS of pre-cuts.

This should be a wake-up call for a lot of us. While it's great to go out and buy, we must buy responsibly. That lady had MANY jelly rolls. Like I said - you need to scroll to the very first picture in that discussion on the Facebook page to see all the jelly rolls she had. She had way more than many stores have!

I've been madly quilting on my domestic sewing machine and having a blast! I've now got a few small projects that need finishing. While I have an urgent task to complete this morning and another quilt that's due in the US by the end of next week, I hope to do some puttering in the studio over the next couple of days. And I have a customer quilt that needs to be finished before I put the magazine quilt on the frame.

Don't forget to check out QUILTsocial today. One more day of fun and games with machine quilting and today it's all about working with invisible thread.

Have a super day!!!!

Ciao!