Trick or Treat

Smell my feet.
Give me something good to eat!


I present daughter Kate on her first Halloween in 1978. No offense meant to her present self, but Kate was the baby from Hell so it was only natural that I dressed her thusly for her first Halloween.

She looks so innocent, but don't be fooled!

Fast forward a few years to 1983 and my girl was obsessed with the movie Annie, so Annie it was. Isn't she adorable? She absolutely loved this costume, especially the wig and literally wore it out playing dress-up for a long, long time.

One of my fondest Halloween memories is my Mom taking old sheets and making us witch costumes (how accurate was that?) and then dyeing them black in the washing machine. Too bad no pictures exist of us.

Bad mom (me) has not done the scanning of my son's album yet, but maybe for next year......

We are planning a quiet night watching horror movies and giving candy to the few Trick-or-Treaters that will come by. Enjoy your day and night, because I know I will!

HaPpY hALLoWeeN ! ! !

Bangor to Peabody

We are back in the 'burbs of Boston, having driven down from Bangor via the coastline until we got near Portland, Maine. We stopped and had our main meal, a Lobster Roll, and it was out-of-this-world.

For the uninitiated, a Lobster Roll is a bunch of steamed lobster meat tossed in mayonnaise and set inside a grilled bun that resembles a hot dog bun without the crust on top and bottom. It is absolutely delicious.

Tomorrow at the BCOD* we pick up the girls and on to the B & B in Salem.

There is a quilt shop in Salem. Imagine that!

Baa Haba

We spent yesterday in Bar Harbor (Baa Haba to the locals), a lovely little tourist town that was darn near ready to close down for the season. We ate a tiny lunch of shrimp cocktail and a Caesar salad and then went to dinner for lobster.

MMMMMMMMM. I'd never had fresh Maine lobster before and it was indescribably delicious. There are no words adequate to describe it.

The trees are also indescribably beautiful. Northern California trees are pretty, but they don't really put on a show anything close to this.

We head down to Peabody, Mass today so we can pick the girls up tomorrow morning at Logan. We felt lucky to get a room within spitting distance of Boston.

Maine cuisine redeemed.

Go Sox!!!!

Boston to Bangor

Which looks like no big deal on a map, but it is just a bit farther than one would think. After landing in Boston at 7:30, we finally made it to the hotel in Bangor at 2:30. We were tired, but decided to try to stay on Maine time as opposed to California time, so we went for a drive in the rain looking for a place to have a late lunch/early dinner.

Along the way, we passed this statue as Bangor claims to be the home of Paul Bunyan, though so does Bemidji, Minnesota, but I'll leave that for them to sort out.

Bangor is the undisputed home of horror fiction author Stephen King, who is so brave that he allows his home and office addresses to be published on the internet.

After finding nothing besides the usual chains and a couple of others, we were tired so we opted to eat at the truckstop, Dysarts, next to our hotel (which the desk clerk assured me was "fabulous"). It wasn't. In fact, it was the worst meal we can ever remember having together. I got a haddock filet in crumbs and grease and an underbaked potato. Hubby got the worst fish and chips on the planet bar none. Since our schedules were way off and all we'd eaten all day was an egg mcmuffin we decided to go all out for dessert have coconut cream pie. Also horrible.

I realize that we live in a place that is in the top 25th percentile for food in the world and we are spoiled, spoiled, spoiled. (Here's where we grabbed a bite last night before we drove to SF to catch the plane.) But really people, Maine is renowned for her seafood and all we got was Gortons, a rare baked potato, TARTAR SAUCE FROM KRAFT IN PRESEALED PACKAGES, and a bit of raw broccoli. Plus, the service was terrible, from the minute we asked if they had beer or wine (Oh those hedonistic Californians......LOLOL........... Tomorrow, Bar Harbor, where we've heard there is good seafood and good sightseeing.

Salem, Baby

We are heading out tonight for Boston.

Back in a week, with pictures.

I leave you with a gratuitous grandchild picture of my darling Alex in the shirt I bought him at Old Navy during our last visit. Benjamin didn't want one, so he didn't get one.


I think Alex looks like he already got the candy and all he really gets is crummy baby food and formula.

A Finished Quilt

And another nearly done!

I finally finished the baby quilt for Kate's friend Gia's baby girl who was born in August. Living in the Central Valley of California, trust me, this baby has no need of a quilt until October or November, but still, I felt bad being late for Kate's sake.

This quilt was made at the Linda Ballard retreat I attended in June at Trinidad, California. What a great setting and a fun time! The green fabric is not the one I brought to use, but the one I did bring (the paisley in the alternate blocks) just didn't offer enough contrast, so I was lucky that our on-site vendor had something that would work out. I machine quilted a darling motif in the snowball blocks from a set of Kerryn Emmerson patterns I'd bought at PIQF some years back. I traced the design on Golden Paper and then sewed over it without thread on the machine to create holes in all 5 copies. After pinning them to the quilt, I was able to quilt it up with no problem. I made up a design using the pieces of the pieced blocks as a guide and then bought a border stencil I thought would look nice and coincidentally, it was the same motif as the plain blocks, just in continuous linear form. Talk about lucky!

I'm also about to finish the quilt I started in January for my grandson Alex (who is 6 1/2 months old!) and will hand deliver it to him on November 3rd when I go down to visit.

Best news is that I discovered my PIQF pictures intact on the camera! For some odd reason, they were not showing when I tried to scroll through them on the camera, but did show up when I downloaded some newer ones I'd taken. Go figure.

'Tweener Time

PIQF is over and was great fun with my pals Kathy and Becky. We had a wonderful time together as always and we managed to leave a few happy vendors in our wake.

Becky and I took an awesome class from Sue Nickels on drawing freehand feathers and we were both surprised by how much our feathers improved in just three hours of class-time. On the downside, I managed to delete every single picture I took at the show on my new camera. No excuses since this one is exactly like my old one....D'oh.

We are leaving a week from today for a week on the East Coast. After two days in Bangor, Maine, we will drive back to Boston to pick Sarah and Kristin up at Logan Airport for five days in Salem, Massachusetts. (Right before Halloween!!!) I can't wait!

Also, having finished my "Banned Books Week" selection, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (also a cross-read for the Book Awards Reading Challenge), I've decided to tackle a sister challenge, The Pulitzer Project.

To follow are the Pulitzer Prize winning books I've already read:
2006 - March (Geraldine Brooks)
2005 - Gilead (Marilynme Robinson)
2003 - Middlesex (Jeffrey Eugenides)
2002 - Empire Falls (Richard Russo)
1992 - A Thousand Acres (Jane Smiley)
1989 - Breathing Lessons (Anne Tyler)
1986 - Lonesome Dove (Larry McMurtry)
1983 - The Color Purple (Alice Walker)
1953 - Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway)
1940 - The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
1937 - Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
1932 - The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)

Well, that 12 of the 81, leaving 69 to go. Thankfully, there is no time limit on this one.

Time to go hit the books. I need to finish Cold Mountain so I can get going on Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.

Four Seasons Swap Received

My Four Seasons Swap Quilt arrived the other day, but my camera has been misbehaving. My swap partner was Sherry from Books, Hooks, Sticks, etc.

Isn't this little darling amazing? Sherry hand-dyed some of the fabrics, too and she hand quilted it! Pinwheels are some of my favorite blocks, too and Sherry has captured all of the magnificent colors that are starting to appear in beautiful Sonoma County.

This quilt is so lovely I'm going to have trouble taking it down when Winter hits.

Thanks Sherry for a beautiful addition to my home!!

YOU Make Me Smile.....

Too sweet.

Su from Pieces of Time tagged me for this and it made me smile.

M: mellow
S: smartass
J: joyous
A: ambidextrous
N: nurturing

Perhaps more than anyone wants or needs to know!

I'll tag Tonya (Lazy Gal), Finn (Pieces From My Scrapbag), and Nancy(Blogging, Near Philadelphia, since these ladies are my daily reads and I look forward to whatever they have to say.

It was a great and quilty day at my house. I finished quilting the Linda Ballard mystery for Kate's friend Gia's new baby girl AND my Four Seasons Quilt Swap piece arrived. It is drop dead gorgeous and I'll be posting a picture tomorrow.

Banned Books Week!

September 29 - October 6, 2007.

To celebrate and participate, I'm going out tomorrow to pick up a banned book.

From the library.

Today is my son's 27th birthday and it reminds me of a banned book story from his days in junior high school. Daniel did not have great reading skills, a minor disability passed on from his father. He avoided reading whenever possible, but during his Jr. High days, he discovered Stephen King and was reading Misery for English class. One day he called me into his room and excitedly read me a a paragraph about the protagonist's pain (broken bones) being compared to broken pier pilings that only show when the sea is at low tide. He marveled over and over about the metaphor--"getting it" was a new experience for him. I was elated.

When his next book report was due, the teacher refused to let him read another Stephen King book, so I asked her about it at Back-to-School Night. She responded that she wanted him to read other things than horror. Period. I just wanted him to read whatever until he got hooked on reading! She'd have none of it and Daniel quickly soured on reading books for pleasure. How very sad.

So, in honor of my son's birthday and to thumb my nose at the powers that be, I present the list of books I've read from the American Library Association's Top 100 Banned Books 1900-2000 list. (comments mine):

6. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (Pat the Bunny, Lenny)
7. The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling
8. Forever by Judy Blume

13. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (At age 14 no less!)
18. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
25. In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak (Oh those naked cartoon boys! And penises! My sister bought this for my daughter--her fault entirely!)
26. The Stupids (Series) by Harry Allard (Sister turned us on to this--her fault.)
37. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (Sister again!)
47. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes (They even made a movie of this one!)
51. A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein (Shame on me, I read it to my kids)
52.Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (Didn't want us to know what was coming up!)
53. Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice) (More fun than Disney!)
59. Ordinary People by Judith Guest (What???)
67. The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende (An absolutely beautiful book)
70. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
83.The Dead Zone by Stephen King
88. Where's Waldo? by Martin Hanford (WTF?)
91. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

“[I]t's not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.” — Judy Blume

Four Seasons Swap in the mail

Hooray! I finished my project for the Four Seasons Quilt Swap and it is going out in today's mail.

I ended up purchasing a kit from Starr Fabrics at the Marin show over Labor Day weekend. The pattern was free with the charm pack and I didn't have to supply anything but the batting.

I did improvise a bit on the leaves and made them using a trick I learned from my pal Joanie. I fused two layers of fabric together with fusible web and then cut the leaves out. They are quilted onto the top and thus are somewhat free-floating.

The quilt sits in the mailbox as I write, waiting to make its way to ________????? The deadline is Sept. 30th, so I actually beat it by a few days.

Next up: Quilting on the baby quilt I pieced at the Linda Balllard retreat in June which will be easy now that the Bernina is back from her servicing visit. Then quilt the Pumpkin Divas wallhanging for Sarah.

The Book Awards Reading Challenge

Join this challenge?

Heck yeah! And thanks to Nancy, NP.

Since I'm a die-hard reader anyway, I might as well shoot for some quality, right? I have an Excel spreadsheet of books I've read and books I want to read and I thought this would be a great way to whittle that list down a bit.

My plan is to start with books I own. Since I got a late start--and--I did read Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (Pulitzer, 2003) in July--I'll count that as book one. Last night, I started Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier (National Book Award, 1997) and in the queue are the following:

• Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem (Gold Dagger Award, 2000 and National Book Critic's Circle, 1999)
  
• Lisey's Story by Stephen King (Bram Stoker Award, 2006)
• War Trash by Ha Jin (PEN/Faulkner Award, 2005)
• Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell by Susanna Clarke (Hugo Award, 2005 & World Fantasy Award 2005)
• One Thousand Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Author, Nobel Prize, 1982)
  
• A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson (Royal Society Prize, Science, 2004)
• The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton by Jane Smiley ( Spur Award, 1999)

WOW! That takes up 9 of the 12 books without even leaving the comfort of home and I haven't really dug into the bottom shelves of the bookcase! The Sonoma County Library and Barnes and Noble are gonna miss me!!!

My boys came to visit....

....and we even let Mommy come too.

We had a great time visiting and Benjamin even had the dogs under control which is something his Nana has yet to accomplish.

We did fun things like watering plants, feeding the dogs, feeding the fish, making and eating guacamole, frosting a cake and going out to breakfast with Aunties Sarah and Kristin.




Alex is growing like a weed and is a chatty little thing, too. By the time he comes back at Christmas, I'll bet he's crawling.

Benjamin's vocabulary astounds me and he is one little parrot. We have to be very, very careful what we say around him these days.

It was so great of Kate to make the drive up and bring these wonderful boys up to see Nana and Pop.

Life is good.

A Day in the Life....

of a Winemaker's Wife......

Our first grapes came in from the broker today, Pinot Noirs from the Carneros region of Sonoma/Napa. Hubby picked them up while I was at quilt guild and we set to crushing and de-stemming them as soon as he got home.

Unfortunately, (or perhaps fortunately) this does not involve stomping them in a big tub with one's feet as in the old days. We have a hand operated machina made in Italy--clever souls, the Italians--that does both for us and was worth every dime we spent on it. Crushing would be no problem, but let me tell you, de-stemming would be the pits and I'm thankful not to have to do it.

The sugar level of the grapes had become so strong due to the warm, warm weather we've had in the last couple of weeks that we had to add acid to keep this from becoming a dessert wine and / or stunting the yeastie beasties' ability to start the fermentation. Here you see my job--the winery chemist mixing tartaric acid solution and then the yeast mixture.

From today until probably early November our downstairs powder room will become a winery and in a few days the house will smell like the sweet fermentation of grapes. We feature nothing but the best in facilities, especially our custom sign, made by me.

We may be harvesting our own Cabernet Franc this weekend if the weather keeps up and we are also buying some Merlots and Cabernet Sauvignons, so this promises to be a busy, busy season.

In the words of my late, beloved father:

Pour down the water in the sink,
Everyboday have a drink!

Blog Slacker

August was such a busy month with houseguests all the time and September shows little sign of slowing up, but add wine-making to the mix. The first of the grapes we are buying, Pinot Noirs, will be harvested tomorrow for a Thursday morning pickup. Let the fun begin! We are tentatively scheduling our own harvest for the following week when Kate, Benjamin, Alex and friend Dawn will be here. We are so excited that Benjamin will be a part of our wine-making and especially with our grapes!

I am finally sewing again and completed this Sew-A-Row, just in time to hand it off the Phyllis on Thursday at guild. I was at kind of a loss, having signed up when it was just a bonnet and flowers. The pieced row kind of put me off, but I loved the applique heart and flowers on green. I decided (with some help from Nicole at The Material Girl during our UFO Mini-Group to piece something for balancing the other pieced row. Somewhere, either in a neighbor's garden or in a blogger's garden picture, I saw some Black Eyed Susans and fell in love with the idea of using them in this semi-fall themed quilt.

I recently found Angie Padilla's website and her son has developed a search engine that specializes in quilt block patterns, so I found the Black Eyed Susans at Moon Over Mountain and I was off to the races.

I've never done curved piecing by machine, so this was a learning experience for me. I bought a Curve-master foot at PIQF several years ago and tried to use it with no pinning, but that was a bust. I ended up pinning both ends and the center and it worked out fine. I did have to take in a few seams here and there so the block would lay flat and it ended up finishing at 9.5 inches, but that really wasn't an issue for me as I was going to add the lattice anyway. All in all, I'm pretty danged happy at the way it turned out.

I went to the quilt show in Marin with Sandy Mc. on Friday and it was a pretty quick show, but more quilts than last year. I decided to cheat on the Four Seasons Quilt Swap and bought a darling set of hand-dyes and pattern to make the quilt. It will be lovely and given that I just couldn't get inspired, it will have to be OK.