Quilt Show

It's spring!  And if you live in the Greater Toronto Area and feel bored this weekend, what better thing to do than to come and join us at our Quilt Show.

I was over there last night to drop off my quilt and it looks like it will be a great show.  Lots of members' quilts and wall hangings, our raffle quilt,  merchant's mall and guild boutique, tea room and bake sale, guild challenge display, viewer's choice awards, door prizes and more.  It's being held at the Pickering Recreation Complex located at 1867 Valley Farm Road in Pickering.

I did not take a photo of my quilt before I put into the show, but tomorrow I will be manning the admissions desk and I will have a chance to look around and take some photos.  I'll post them on Monday.

Now for my indoor garden.

This is my red Amaryllis.  There is a second flower stalk coming up beside this one.

This is a pink one.  I didn't even realize that I had a pink one.  Soooo pretty!

And here are the tulips my DD brought me on my birthday last week.  They are still gorgeous.  I just love yellow tulips!

Hopefully I will be able to show you some outdoor spring flowers soon.  We had rain all day yesterday. Most of the snow and ice is gone.  My robins are back and my crocuses are blooming in front of my house. You can see them on my header.

See you at the Show!  Have a great quilty weekend!  I know I will!

More Quilt Show

Here are a few more photos from the Ganaraska Quilt Guild's show.  The quilts were hung close together so it was difficult to take photos of the large ones.  This one was a Dragonfly quilt.  Lots of dragonflies in the fabrics and also in the quilting.

This one was bright and quite stunning.  I was only able to get a portion of it.

Here is part of an 'Amish' quilt.  I loved the little Amish buggies, all lined up

There were lots of wall hangings.  I love the tumbling blocks quilt.

A cute little duckie quilt.

I loved this log cabin with triangles.  I was only able to photograph a quarter of it.  I can see one of these in my future.

Mimi is doing well.  I have figured out how to feed her through her tube and she seems happy.We have an appointment tomorrow to see what the next step will be for her.  Thank you to everyone who sent good wishes!

Mimi is Home, for a While at Least

Today is day 24 of NaBloPoMo and I am really tired, but I have to give you an update on Mimi's condition, so here is my post.

The vet tried to extract Mimi's teeth yesterday morning.  Yes!  All 32 of them.  She has a condition that makes her mouth red and sore.  It is caused by plaque and can only be cured by removal of all of her teeth.  The operation was supposed to take 4 hours.  I was very worried about her because I thought she would not be able to stay under the anesthetic that long. But the vet assured me everything would be fine.  About 2 hours into the procedure the vet phoned me and said that he was going to take Mimi out of the anesthetic because her blood pressure was unstable.  I wanted to say, "I told you so", but you never want to get a vet mad, especially one who has your kitty's life in his hands, so I said nothing.

So they stopped the extractions after taking only 16 of her teeth out.  They inserted a tube into her neck.  I think it must go down to her esophagus.  I have to feed her through that tube every 4 hours. She is also on pain medication and an antibiotic and she has to wear a collar to keep her from pulling the tube out and scratching her mouth.  They kept her overnight last night and my DD went to pick her up this afternoon.  We have an appointment with the vet on Monday afternoon to see how she is doing.  She is home now and is roaming around the house happy to be back.  I am happy too. She looks better than I expected.  But she will have to go back and have the other 16 teeth pulled another time.

The reason DD had to pick Mimi up was because I was at a quilt show in Orono with Debra from Patchwork Sanity - A Woman\s Piece of Mind.  It was a wonderful show.  Quite small, but friendly and inspiring.  We had our lunch in their tearoom and ran into a couple of other quilters from our guild, which was nice.  We had a fun chat.  So in keeping with my philosophy of a picture in every post, I leave you with one of the quilts from the show.  This was a tiny miniature, but it was beautiful.

Back to Standard Time and Some Quilts

We just set our clocks back an hour.  So what am I doing, sitting at my computer this early in the morning?  I have no idea, but I thought you might like to see a few more quilts from the Twisted Stitchers Quilt Show yesterday.  I am going to be very busy today, so I will post them now.  This way I won't have to worry about posting something for NaBloPoMo later.

This quilt was made by a wonderfully creative woman who served as President of our Rouge Valley Guilt the past two years.

The following are some bright quilts, which I love. and of which there were many.  Those Twisted Stitchers sure love colour.

I found these flowers very inspirational.  I can see a quilt like this in my future.

I have a few more photos, but I think I will save them for another time.  I need to go back to bed and recover the hour of sleep I lost last spring.  

See you tomorrow.

Twisted

I realize I'm a little bit late with my daily blog for NaBloPoMo.  This is day 3.  I least I am still in time.

I spend my afternoon at the Twisted Quilters Quilt Show.  Saw lots of beautiful quilts.  Bought some fabric. Met lots of quilters that I know.  Enjoyed a coffee and some cookies with friends at the refreshment booth.   Had a lot of fun.  I will leave you with one special quilt, at least I thought it was.

My DD picked me up and went with me to the show.  After the show we went over to her place.  There were some pretty snapdragons blooming in her yard.  

A Day in Minden

The Haliburton Quilt Guild held a quilt show in Minden on Friday and Saturday.  Since my mother is in a nursing home in Minden, we decided to go up and make it a dual day, with a visit to Mom and a trip to the quilt show.

My brother did the driving.  He picked me up at 8:00am and we drove to Pickering to pick my DD and DS. Then we headed to highway 12 and started our trip up north.  It took us about 3 1/2 hours to get there because we stopped for a bathroom break. some coffee and a bit of sightseeing.

On our way we drove through Kirkfield.  It's a little town with a restaurant, a few stores and a lift lock, just to the north.  It is part of the Trent Waterway.  Since only my brother had ever seen it, we went up and discovered a very interesting part of our waterway past.  I took a few photos, but it is difficult to really get the feeling of this gigantic hydraulic lift.

This shows the south 'bathtub'.  The boats come from the higher lake and enter the locks (bathtub).  Three large boats went in at the same time.  Then a boat entered the lower bathtub from the west, lower lake.   When everything was in position.  They lowered the south holding tank and raised the north one.  Here you can see one of the boats heading out into the west lake.  The metal structure at the top of the photo is where the lower tank was and is now at the upper lake.  DD and DS are standing by the railing.

The boats started their engines and proceeded on their journeys.  It was good to have seen this lift lock because I had never seen one like it before.

Then we were off to the quilt show.  I didn't take my wheelchair, which was kind of a aggressive, but unthinking thing to do.  I had to walk around the show on my own steam.  I was held in the town's curling centre.  I did not realize it was going to be so big!  There were quilts displayed down the centre and vendors and instructors all around the perimeter of the rink.  I sat down a few times, but I was exhausted.  It was very hot and humid yesterday, even in Minden.  I didn't take as many photos as I would have liked, but I did take one that I thought would make a terrific scrap quilt.

And I took a couple of wall hangings depicting the Haliburton Highlands, a place in Ontario that is dear to my heart because we always went camping there and even had a cottage business at one time.

 I plan to make myself a quilt of this type.  These are inspirations for me.

The final quilt I want to show you was done in Japanese stitches.  I have always loves this type of quilt and would love to do one of my own.

Those Haliburton quilters are very talented.  I bought a few fat quarters of light background fabrics and really enjoyed myself.  My son, daughter and brother enjoyed the show too.  For my brother and son it was the first quilt show they had been to.

We then stopped for a delicious lunch at a restaurant called 'The Grill on the Gull'.  Minden has the Gull River flowing through it.  We could have sat outside on the patio, but it was too hot, so we just stayed inside where it was air conditioned.  From there it was off to see my mother.  She looked a bit sleepy when we got there and she didn't really get any more animated as the afternoon went on.  I think she only said a couple of words, but she did love the hugs and kisses we gave her and she was totally enamored with her grandson!  She couldn't stop smiling or take her eyes off him.

We left the nursing home when they started to serve dinner.  Then a quick trip to the ice cream shop for the largest 'small' ice cream cone I have ever had.  It was so hot, most of it dripped down my hands and arms.  I needed a quick 'shower' before my brother would let me back into his truck for the drive home.

We took it easy, enjoying the sights of Haliburton on our way home.  A gorgeous sky greeted us as we got to Pickering.

It was a great day!  Thank you to my brother for doing all of the driving.  And thank you to my kids for making the trip so enjoyable.  This is a long weekend for us.  It is supposed to rain this afternoon and evening.  Bring it on, I say.  My plants are literally dying for a drink.

A Quilt Show in the Autumn of My Mind!

Autumn is in full swing around here! And as with autumn, my mind also seems to be in its latter stages of development! Some days I am glad that there is no one around to ask me who I am, where I live and what day it is! That is why this little miracle is so important to me!

Now, I know this is just a small step and I know I am not becoming a computer geek, but it is nice to be able to make my computer perform functions that it was meant to perform. What I am trying to say is, "I think I have figured out the 'link thing'!" It was not a revelation. Nor was it carefully researched, studied and implemented. It was more of an infant-learned thing. Kind of like a second childhood, I guess. I was typing on my blog and suddenly a 'link' came up. I had no idea how I had made that happen. Kind of like an baby who waves a rattle in the air and is astonished by the sound it makes! I tried to duplicate the sound, er, I mean, 'link thing', but couldn't remember which keys I had hit. I tried different combinations, and after many, many tries, I finally had a "By gosh! I think I've got it!" moment. Those are the exciting times of my life!

So now that I am able to 'link' stuff, I'd like to tell you all about the upcoming Rouge Valley Quilt Guild's Quilt Show. Just click on the icon and it will take you to the home page. Then click on 'quilt show' and you can read all about it! I am very excited about the Quilt Show. Not because I have any quilt in it, because I don't. I was not able to complete anything last year to enter into the show! But it will be great to see what all the other members have been up to! And I am also excited because I am now able to link to anything on this blog! The show runs this Friday and Saturday (October 24th and 25th) out in Ajax, so if you're in the Greater Toronto Area, why not come along for some lovely eye candy and maybe a cup of tea and a slice of banana bread! There will also be a vendor's marketplace. That's where you'll find me! I can't wait to see what is new on the quilt scene! I haven't been out much lately!

And now I leave you with a gorgeous image of Highland Creek in all its autumn splendor! Kind of like my mind - a little over-exposed perhaps, but colourful just the same!

See you at the Quilt Show!