Category: love

Happiest of new years

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 31/12/2011

I wanted to wish my loyal friends and readers a safe, happy and most importantly healthy new year. This cake will be demolished after supper (roasted lemon chicken, roasted Brussels sprouts and cauliflower, boiled mini potatoes). With cake it’s the taste that counts, right?

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I embarrassed myself twice last night. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t so quick to blush. Both happened at the movie theatre where my boss and I were to see the new Mission Impossible movie. If you were considering it, it’s pretty good. Of course all I can think about is Tom’s one giant tooth and his Xenu inspired $10million bunker he had built at his home in Telluride. Ok, so the embarrassment: the theatre was sold out and we got second row seats at the side of the theatre. No one sat in front of us until the very last minute when a couple mid twenties dudes came along and one said “I wonder why no one has sat here, what is wrong with these seats?” and I cleverly said “oh, we peed on them.” Then laughed like a maniac while dudes just stared at me and politely chuckled. Which spurred me into saying “JUST KIDDING!”.

Luckily the previews started quickly after that but I think I must have been still feeling stupid because I almost did pee on my seat I was laughing so hard at The Dictator. I re watched that preview when I got home and it wasn’t as funny the second time.

You can’t take me anywhere.

Scrapping

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 18/11/2011

I’ve started yet another quilting project: the Farmer’s Wife Sampler Quilt. It’s a pretty amazing book full of stories and 111 different 6 inch quilt blocks. Yes, 111. I’m not as ambitious as you may think and at the moment my goal is to make 80 of them which I plan to put together in a similar fashion to this beautiful quilt. Karyn, of The Workroom fame, proposed that we all do a quilt along starting in January but seeing as I am such a keener I’ve already finished 10 blocks, 8 you can see below.

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One I might re do. My issue with this book is that there are separate PDF files for each little square and I have very little interest in printing them one by one. None of them have measurements on them either so for now I am winging everything. Winging like mad and avoiding HST math. Then I have to figure out what colour sashing and who will be recipient. Oh, decisions, decisions. This and I have to finish 3 quilts for Ashley. And my vintage sheet quilt. And the tshirt quilt for Shannon. That can’t be it, surely?

In other news: still no heat here. Seeing as it was snowing in Toronto last night, it is pretty freaking cold inside. My feet were like ice and I had to give up sewing for the day. Boo.

I’m craving roti. Or a giant burrito. Hot, spicy, goopy comfort food.

Crosses

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 18/10/2011

Back from our romantic getaway for two, I’ve got the itch to get to work on projects that have been set aside. I find flickr to be a great source for inspiration and that is where I found this tutorial on a simple quilt pattern. My squares are bigger than the instructions but it seems to have come out evenly.

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I don’t know if it really is the right arrangement for this project. Eh, I will leave it on the floor for a couple days and think over…it seems a bit busy.

Back lit

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 30/08/2011

I finally put together the top for my yellow log cabin quilt. Yes, I’m loving it. I’ll need to order fabric for the back and then I’ll need to decide if I will quilt it myself or not. It is pretty big, 2m square, so I’ll most likely go with long arm.

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I like how it looks like stained glass.

I’m also back into knitting after taking a long break. Summer never feels that yarn-y to me but when an acquaintance moved to Costa Rica to have a baby and gave me all her yarn and needles, I was inspired.

Life is certainly changing for us around here. Much quieter without Ari who is living out her dream of being full time with her mom. Lucky little lady has goats, ducks and a swimming pool full of frogs, what more could a kid ask for? ATVs? Got them too. It’s weird not having her and I have done some fun cleaning to fill my time. And we get to eat salad for supper so that is different too. The tv is on more but cable has been cancelled so that won’t last.

A riddle

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 28/07/2011

How many skull rings does it take to sink a hand?

Three. The answer is three. And are you crazy? I don’t wear all three on the same hand OR at the same time. That would be ridiculous.

The gold one is a Disney Couture ring, from the Pirates of the Caribbean collection. The giant black one is carved from tiger’s eye and has a diamond for an eyeball. We’re all familiar with the first one.

I’m tellin’ ya…

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 27/07/2011

I seriously love this ring.

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Quilteration

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 26/07/2011

I have actually had it back in my hot little hands for a while now but haven’t had the inclination to drag it outside in the blazing heat to take pictures. Today was a beautiful day, ideal weather if you ask me, and here we are.

As you can imagine, I am thrilled beyond belief with this quilt. It’s so awesome, every square of fabric, every strip, the back, the binding and the actual quilting? It’s SO good. Really, I was worried, I’ve seen long-armed quilts that I wasn’t ga ga over before but this is absolutely perfect.

The quilting pattern I picked was called clouds, I think, and works really well with the overall design. It’s open and flows nicely. It’s more obvious on the back:

Cool, huh? I might be forced to send my yellow quilt to Jennifer too.

I’m cranking up the AC tonight so I have an excuse to sleep under it. Thanks a million times over to Jen who did the quilting, she’s wonderful!

Dog days of summer

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 02/07/2011

Not that summer has really arrived in Toronto, not yet it seems. Not that I’m complaining, ha ha, no indeed, the milder weather suits me and my non-air conditioned home just fine, thanks. This is my neighbor’s dog, FiFi. She is tiny and silly and likes nothing better than a cuddle in the hammock. Although I think he is lacking the required male anatomy, her ideal mate would certainly be Puppers.

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Not a great pic of me, but it was the only one where her eyes were open. Out of 8. She was wide awake.

I’m hoping to get some decent sleep tonight. On top of my usual stresses in life, I lost my skull ring on Monday afternoon. I noticed it missing when we got home from High Park, ugh, and we drove back to do some searching and turned up nada. Tears, many tears were shed. Teeth gnashed. More tears. I turned our rather messy home upside down looking in all the obvious spots, then the less obvious spots and then the ridiculous spots. Nada. Looked everywhere another dozen times. I made posters for the park (honestly, I had no idea where I lost it) and a craigslist ad and told my neighbors and posted on Facebook and twitter.

Agony. My heart was in serious amounts of pain. And then my dad had his hip replacement surgery that did not go as well as planned and when I talked to my mom to find out how he was doing, I burst into tears in the grocery store.

No sleep+stupid amount of stress=crying in public. Vodka helped. Vodka is very helpful in small amounts. Ditto mind numbing video games.

Fast forward to today, 5 days from the day I lost it and guess what? Ari found it on the floor of the truck, in the back seat! I don’t often hug and kiss her, but today was certainly exceptional and I did plant a few on her rosy cheek. As a reward I gave her the pink knitted squid that she has been begging for since I made it. And Shannon got her a new game for her ds.

And my dad is recovering nicely, he is out of bed and enjoying the women’s world cup soccer.

Sleep? Come back please. You are missed!

Yellow, yellow, hello

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 24/06/2011

All 25 blocks are done. Thankfully, I got all my ordered fabric before the ever delightful Canada Post went on strike. Here they are laid out on a queen size bed:

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Picture quality not so great, I’m aware. I do what I can with the tools I have.

Super happy with the way this is shaping up, especially about the size. This won’t look weird on a king bed, I think. And because my green quilt has come out of the long arm quilters so beautifully, I will do the same for this baby. Hopefully I can find one in this city, much easier that way.

Finally!

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 18/06/2011

Funny, when you keep a secret for SO long and then the pressure comes down and everything seems to happen so quickly after grinding along for so long.

I made my sister a quilt. I told a lot of people, friends and co-quilters (and I think I posted progress on twitter, which it turns out she subscribes to, eeek!) but couldn’t blog about it until now. And because she visited last week I had a lot of work to do. The grunt work.  Making the back, putting the sandwich together, doing all the quilting and finally the binding. And I got some printer fabric so I made a nice label that had to be sewn on too.

Needless to say, she loved it, thank goodness. I was pretty sure, when Jana gave me a collection of fat quarters, that I’d be using them for a sister project. And I’d wanted to do a full quilt of half-square-triangles (not daunting at all!) so I got coordinating solids (Kona) from the workroom and a couple extra fat quarters as matchy as possible and got to work. The back is thrifted gingham and a pieces from the front. I quilted the front with glow in the dark thread!

It’s not huge, only about 56″ square, but big enough to snuggle under. The best part of quilting is saying goodbye to the project!