Caterpillars and my Peace Quilt

Well, earlier today I saw a wooly caterpillar for the first time in ages. I took his picture (her?) and then scooted "it" off to the side of the garage to find a home for the winter.

Now, on to quilting. I have (35) 7" squares for my peace quilt. I am collecting batiks to use in this quilt:

It is based on the story about the thousand paper cranes. I need (160) 7" squares, so I am about 1/4 of the way there. I plan on starting this quilt on New Year's Eve, since I have the time off from work.

The bottom 2 groups of batiks were sent to me from people on the Quilt Talk list on Yahoo. And they are much appreciated!

Hint #1 finished

I finished the first hint for the knit along!!!! Here it is:I have never kept up before, never finished even the first clue/hint! Now here I go...tomorrow is the next one will be released, so tomorrow after work I can come home and knit all I want.

Quilts at work Part 2

Previously I had shown pictures on my blog of quilts that a co-worker had inherited. Today I bring you this:Teri made this. Teri is obviously very talented, she is also a great and caring nurse practitioner that I have the privilege of working with. This quilt pattern is called Snapshot, and it is going to the Girls on the Run program for them to do with as they wish, and hopefully they are able to use it to raise gobs of money!

Jim is coming home today!

Jim is coming home today. He has been gone just over a week, and the girls and I spent the week trying to stay out of trouble. I think we managed, but this might be a problem:

That would be Shadow this morning, all comfy on Jim's side of the bed. I guess if you are gone that long you forfeit your rights to the bed. We'll see what happens tonight when they battle over who is sleeping where.

A beautiful day today!

It was a gorgeous day today, and I got all the pop cans and bottles returned (Michigan has a 10 cent deposit, so we have to save all our cans and bottles and take them back to the store. The other recycling goes to the recycling center about every 2 weeks or so). I finished a quilt top today, another one for Christmas. 2 down, 2 to go. And I worked on a mini quilt, I absolutely love paper piecing. It's just fun to sew on the line and then rip that paper away!

I met Sasha tonight, she belongs to the neighbor's brother. She's a lover,

How can you not love her? And I had dinner tonight with Bill & Cathy, great neighbors. Cathy and I like to read the same type of books, so we'll be swapping books back and forth this winter when it's nasty out. Bill showed me a Christmas tree his mom made. It's really neat:

I don't have my digital camera at the moment so I had to make do with my camera phone. This "tree" is a collage of old pieces of costume jewelry that belonged to various family members. Bill's dad drilled holes through, and there are lights too. This Christmas I will have to get a better picture. It's a very nice Christmas decoration, because it's all about family. (And dinner was wonderful by the way! :-)

Paper piecing

I lost some of my pictures that I took Saturday at the Moose. I have no idea how or why. Here is what is left. I am still learning how to use my new camera remember. :-)

That would be Shasta's work area. She loves scraps remember, and she makes really great quilts with them too!
And here is my mother-in-law's first quilting experience at the Moose. She pieced a few quilt blocks back in the 70's, but hasn't done any quilting since. She is already talking about a new machine. :-)
And this is my first paper piecing. I am hooked. I already about a book. :-)
I plan on doing some paper piecing this weekend.

My new camera

My new camera doesn't seem to be playing well with my computer, so I shall work on that tonight. I was trying to put up pics from the weekend but every time I tried to download from the camera it would shut down my computer. It's a Kodak Easy Share, so any suggestions would be appreciated!
I will be doing some paper piecing this coming weekend. I learned how to do it last weekend at the quilted moose, and I love it. It's so precise! My in laws were also here, and my MIL is now excited about learning to quilt. I'm such a bad influence!