Favorites

This week the kits for my favorite quilt from Spring quilt market arrived in the store. Moda, the fabric manufacturing company, has a new designer. The designer has a store, French General, where she sells vintage french fabric and jewelry kits and notions. She goes to France each summer, and shops at flea markets to collect more vintage merchandise for her store. This fabric line was patterned after old French linens. Her next collection has faded blues. I liked both the fabric and the story behind it. You can see her store at www.frenchgeneral.com.

I had to be firm with myself to not carry one off with me when I left the quilt shop. I am almost done with Mike's quilt, but I have several others in various stages of completion. My housekeeping is also in various stages, so today I have to work as well as play.

Farming is on hold until it warms up again. We got very little snow, which has melted, but the corn and the fields have to be a little dryer before the farmer can finish his corn harvest. Many in the midwest are up to the axles in mud, so we are thankful for just a short delay.

"Hello kitty" is now Gracie. I feel a little guilty that we did not put a "found cat ad " on the radio, since she is so clearly a tame cat. We will see. She was "helping" the farmer dig a trench for the electrical wiring to run from the power pole to the new wood shop. He did not think she was much help. But she is beautiful, which is, in itself, a useful function, don't you think?

I find myself a little nervous over punctuation and spelling, given my educated readers, but I keep writing. You all do the same!

Adopted

This is what morning looks like in North Dakota. It will be a sunny day and hopefully the corn will be dry enough to combine. We have moved the trucks across the highway to the east. When that is done, harvest is finished. There are still small things to do, putting machinery away for winter, and fixing a slow leak in the tractor tire.

Remember our Sunday visitor? It has become a familiar face, showing up twice a day with a loud meow asking for food, and sitting by the door as if it has always been here. It is very affectionate, with lots of rubbing and purring and licking my hand. I could do without that last part. I wash my hands when I come in. It is getting to the point where the cat should really have a name other than "Hey, kitty". I will have to think about it.

I am close to finished with Mike's quilt, thanks to a slow clinic day yesterday. It is made of batik fabric on the front, but I am tempted to put something softer on the back. We will see. Time to be getting ready for work...quilt shop day. Hooray!

Sunday visitor

Look who showed up at our house today. He/she is very friendly with a loud meow. Lance said we should put out some food, and the dish was empty in no time. It came up to me when I went out to take a picture of the farm. It is very affectionate and tame, so I'm sure it belongs to someone in the neighborhood.

I love the late afternoon shadows as the sun gets low in the west. This is the view out the dining room window, where I was sewing on Mike's quilt. I got the blocks done and put together in rows. It will look nice when it is done. Have a good week!

My Pillow

Ta-da! It is finished. It gets to live at the quilt shop for a while and look cute atop the embroidery display. It is nice to have a smaller project because it gets done faster. It does look lonesome for a quilt to set it on. I need a house full of bedrooms and cold people!

Today is the beginning of the four day weekend for teacher's convention. We have wanted to go out to Missoula to visit for the last two years. It should be a good time, but this year the crop season is slow and there is still corn in the field trying to dry. The weather has been cool and damp and we never did get that indian summer period we hoped for. The dilemma is will it be dry enough to combine over the next four days? If so, we should stay here. If it is too wet, we will be sad we didn't go. We lost Thursday because of meetings and work. We can't have Monday because of CTBS testing at school. It is looking dismal.

I did take the days off at work, but I will put myself back on the schedule. It is so busy with flu.

season. We are out of test kits, the pharmacy has low supplies of Tamiflu. I saw two families from Dickinson and one from Baker yesterday. So far, all our patients have recovered, but families are afraid. Some schools have 30-40 kids out sick. I did recommend one daycare close since the sick baby lived in the household and they couldn't separate the baby with its own caretaker from the rest of the kids.

I remember being sick with "Hong Kong" flu as a child. Perhaps that is why I'm not getting sick after daily exposures now. I did get my swine flu vaccine Tuesday, two weeks after the first case. Most of our patients tested positive for H1N1 when the state was doing testing. Now I just assume a patient with influenza A is the H1N1 sub-type. I can empathize and give cough medicine and anti-nausea medicine, but I can't cure it. The body's immune system does the work, and will remember this virus for next time.

Wash your hands, don't hang out with people who are sick, and trust God to watch over you. I will try to be more cheerful next time.

Much Love, Marmee

Little Wood Shop on the Prairie

This is our winter project. The farmer tells people that he is building a shop to do woodworking. I tell people he is building me a quilt studio. Of course, it will be a wood shop. I have already taken over the bedroom and the dining room and occasionally the living room as well. Long winters require creative outlets. I offered the long arm quilting option to him, but he turned me down.

This flu season started early and has been busy. Mike is better, and the high school no longer has 30 out for illness. I am not sick yet...I wash my hands frequently. Night clinic is busy, and runs over the two hours scheduled, making it frustrating for those who hoped to go home at 8pm. It goes until all the patients are seen. It is interesting how different people view the purpose of night clinic. It was meant to take care of urgent illness so the ER wasn't so busy later. It has become a convenience clinic so people wait until after work to be seen. One doctor said, "The dentist doesn't see me at night. I have to make an appointment." Everyone is tired.

The weekend is here! Love, Marmee

Color explosion

I am SO excited. Look what came at the quilt shop this week! One of the things I loved at Quilt Market was the embroidery floss from Japan. It is top of the line, the way our fabrics are. The needlecraft websites are buzzing about Cosmo floss. To me, it is the ideal item to ship...it is small, lightweight, unbreakable, and one is never enough. It will be easy to find in the store since each color has it's own number. Of course, I had to try it out. I bought a pillow pattern, a charm pack and the colors of thread that matched. I am happily stitching away as we watch the Twins try to hold it together in the third game of the playoffs. Go Twins.

It is officially flu season here. I will be busy since most of the high school kids are getting sick. Mike just has a cold and a sore throat, but is not coughing. It sounds like there is a shortage of test kits for swine flu. We can send in a swab to the State Health Dept. but they only test 30 a week. It is back to clinical judgement.

I think of you all frequently and hope all goes well. Keep me posted! Love, Marmee

Busy Friday

Today was supposed to be a quilt shop day. Half the staff is in Medora teaching at one quilt retreat. The other half is in Pierre at a different quilt show. I am here to keep things going. Fortunately, Micaela is home to help. I had to run up to the clinic twice today and ended up with two admissions. Influenza is everywhere. I am hoping I stay healthy. Tomorrow is another quilt day. (I hope)

The best new thing is embroidery floss from a Japanese company. It is so pretty. I haven't had time to pick some out and try it. I know, I have enough projects. But this is one I can do in the living room so I can keep the rest of the family company. I am a sucker for color and beauty. We'll see...

1st Snow

I had barely published the last blog when the rain turned to snow. It has fallen lightly all day. Now, as night is coming, there is a flock of 10-12 pheasants in the gap between the back tree rows. They are checking out the trees, looking for a place to roost. One by one they fly up to snow-covered branches in the pines. We are cozy inside with the fire going. The Vikings play the Packers tonight. Wish you were here!

Sunrise

I have not yet learned how to move things around on the page so this was supposed to be part B. (you can scroll down to find the sunrise, or just wonder why the title doesn't match the picture) After some indecision and false starts, this is the block I chose for Michel's quilt. It had to be masculine, not juvenile, and fairly easy so I could get it done in time for winter. The name of the block is bearpaw. I picked batiks because he asked for green and other colors and this collection fit. I think it is called Fall Interludes if you want to see the whole thing at www.dakotacabinquilts.com.
This is my attempt to take a picture of the colors in the sunrise. I was awed by how many there are and how gaudy a sunrise can be. Today it is raining so morning will look cold and gray. At least it will not look white and fluffy...yet. I am not ready for winter.

I am taking care of a baby born with a cleft palate. I found a website www.cleftline.org that has a great deal of information and a video on how to feed a baby with a cleft. We are all learning together. It is one of the wonderful ways the internet provides access to the world without leaving home.

Bountiful Garden

My latest favorite fabric collection is one we saw at quilt market. It recreates old french fabric patterns, with linen and hemp colors in addition to red. These are "flying geese" blocks, a very traditional pattern. I will keep you updated as the project progresses. I have finished (almost) cutting the 84 kits in the new McKenna Ryan "Back to the Farm" series. I cut twelve kits of the overall art quilt, then for each individual block, I cut twelve more kits. It has been about a three week process since we do daily orders first. Each kit has fifteen to twenty different fabrics, in different sizes. It is like a color-by-number project using fabric for paint. I wonder how someone becomes an art quilt designer? If you want to see her other designs (for which we also have kits), look her up on google.

Tonight should be the first hard frost. The farmer brought in all the garden produce so it wouldn't spoil. My camera angle is not big enough to capture it all. There are 46 watermelon. This variety is small and has a yellow center. I is crisp and sweet. The two B's enjoy taking the extra to friends and neighbors.

We are at home watching Twins baseball. There is a home football game, but it is cold and rainy and windy. I have my bunny quilt and the fireplace is going. Tucker is sitting at my knee. It is nice to be home.