Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Do you have your green on today? Pinch Pinch

Quilting Projects

So, since I was forced to take time off from knitting to baby the tennis elbow, I have been doing some extra sewing.

1. I finished another of my Siamese Cat applique blocks from my Temple Guardians BOM quilt. I have 4 done now. 5 more to finish although I am about 80% done on #5.

2. I mentioned a couple of entries ago, that my Quilt Guild is doing a Challenge for our March Meeting. It is called the Paint Chip Challenge. What you do is take your initials and find 3 paint chip colors that start with the first letter of your initial. Then use those colors plus a background color if you want to make a quilted project. It can be any size or shape. My colors are: Stoney Fields (Taupe), Alpaca (Cream) and Magma (Black).

The snafu I ran into when piecing (mentioned in previous post) was that I didn't have enough fabrics to finish the ribbon pieced border. I was one repeat short on each side. So instead I added a blank section in the middle of each long side. Since it was kind of plain, I designed an embroidered motif based on the border fabric. Here is a close up of that:


3. Many moons ago ;o) I purchased some Fancy Cat Fabric by Loralie Harris. I had no plans for it, but I love cats and couldn't resist it.

Well while at a LQS in Kalamazoo, I saw that they had embroidery patterns for the cats to be done all in black. I thought it was beautiful and decided I must make a quilt using those embroidered cats. To my dismay and sadness, they were only available for use in Embroidery Machines! I was soo disappointed, however after much thinking, I decided that if I put the fabric on the copy machine and enlarged the cats, I could make my own embroidery patterns. So that is what I did. I think there are 15 different cats. I have the first two done.

I wasn't sure I would like embroidering, but so far it's been pretty relaxing.

Weightloss Challenge a.k.a. Looser Monday

I am down 1 lb this week. Not great, but better than I thought after the munch fest I had this weekend. I tried to munch on good things, like an apple, south beach bar or WW Pumpkin Muffins (recipe to follow) and drink a lot of water/iced tea, but it still felt like I ate too many snackies. I was stuck at work all weekend and you just never know what the workload will be.

Here is the recipe for the Weight Watcher Pumpkin Muffins. They are supposed to be 1 pt each. Not sure how that corresponds to calories as I didn't take the time to figure it out.

1 Spice Cake Mix
1 15 oz can of pumpkin
1/2 cup of water

Mix ingredients. Spoon it into a regular sized muffin pan. Bake for 20-25 minutes. Makes 12 muffins.

A co-worker brought these in and they were super moist and super yummy, so I begged for the recipe, as I LOVE anything that has pumpkin in it. Enjoy.

Monday Weigh-In

Ok, to be honest, I was a very bad girl on Friday night. I went out with a couple of friends to the Fiddlers Hearth to celebrate Kathy's 1 year anniversary of her brain surgery. And while I would recommend that anyone who goes there gets the Irish Car Bomb for dessert because it was sooo delicious, it was soo not on the diet.

That being said, I got on the scales this morning and was amazed to see that I had only gained 1 lb. I ate sensibly the rest of the weekend and also did some extra exercises to try to burn it off the car bomb, so apparently they worked a bit.

No Pain, No Gain

Or so they say. In this instance, it should be no pain, no loss. Of course that doesn't rhyme, but who cares right?

Anyway the point to this train of thought is that I worked out last night. I am amazed at how puny I felt when lifting weights. Of course I haven't exercised in over a year. In last nights class, the instructor had us doing a lot of arm/shoulder exercises, squats, and crunches. With the arm exercises, I started out with 5 lbs, dropped to 3, dropped to 2 and finally had to go to no weights. But I felt really good afterwords. Although, my muscles were kind of quivering like jello and it felt kind of weird.

I am sore this morning and just a bit tired. But it felt good to exercise again. The hardest part is sitting down and then getting back up again.

The Exercise Place Got Lost!

I drove out to the west side of town last night (slightly scary) to try out a new workout place that a friend told me about. It's called The Fit Club. Well anyway I couldn't find it. Of course I printed out the class schedule from their website, but didn't have it with me. I drove back and forth on S.R. 2 from Krogers out past the bypass and couldn't find it. So when I came to work this I checked out their website again. It's located on the west side of the bypass, but I turned back too soon. If I had driven another 1/2 mile, I would have seen it on the right side of the road. The next boot camp class is on Wednesday, so I'll head back out there before knit and try it out.

To be truthful, I really needed the workout last night too. I had a bad weekend. I went to the Quilting Day Camp at Barb's. I was doing OK staying away from the snacks (I brought some of my own) UNTIL.... Until I stumbled across the Rice Krispie Treats. Oonly they weren't made with rice krispies they were made with Fruity Pebbles cereal. OMG they were so good and so bad for me I know. So I majorly crashed and burned that day. But I did much better on Saturday. I brought a salad with me and ate it when I got there around. So I wasn't hungry for snacks. I got back on track food wise yesterday.

I am planning on changing my weigh in days to Monday instead of Thursday. It's hard to remember to do it in the middle of the week. So I won't be weighing in again until 3/9. Bonus is I get a couple extra days to make of for those RC Treats.

Speaking of the Quilting Day Camp, I finished a small wallhanging while there. I had one of those Moda 5" Charm square Packs that has been vegatating at my house for a couple of years. I never could figure out what I wanted to do with it. My friend Patsy found a pattern from Marcus Brothers. It used the Aunt Gracie Charm pack, but I like the layout so I used that one. My charm pack had lots of bright colors in it, like pink, purple, yellow, orange, blue and LIME. I haven't taken a picture of it yet, but I will.

My Quilt Guild is doing a Challenge for our March Meeting. It is called the Paint Chip Challenge. What you do is take your initials and find 3 paint chip colors that start with the first letter of your initial. Then use those colors plus a background color if you want to make a quilted project. It can be any size or shape. It's supposed to be completely done and quilted by the March meeting which is on 3/12. I almost had mine done on Saturday, but ran into a snafu. I didn't have enough fabric to finish the pieced border that I had planned. I was using up some Michael Miller Zephyr scraps I got from my friend Patsy. Another quilter Helen and I played around with it and think we have a plausible solution. Not sure how it will look. If I had not waited until the last minute, I could have ordered more fabric from Hancocks of Paducah, but since I'm a great procrastinator, I just have to deal with it. I think someone said Stitch in Time has a lot of Fairy Frost fabric, so I might go see if I can get a bit more of that to add to what I have. I am hoping to get it finished on Saturday and work on the binding on Sunday at work.

On the knitting front, I got the neck ribbing finished on my Tomato Sweater. I have to finish the arms, but I'm taking a week off to rest the elbow. Stupid Tennis Elbow! I don't even know how to play tennis. :oP I not sure yet if I want to make long sleeves or 3/4 sleeves. I'm waffeling, but it will probably be 3/4's.