Recapping a bit

You can't ever get the full effect of a roaring fire with a regular camera, sadly. If the room is dark and you don't use flash, then you just get a yellowish blob. (Ask me how I know!) But using flash wipes out the ambience.

Oh well, you get the idea. This is the fireplace in our room at Asilomar. The elves come in every day to lay a new fire so all we have to do is strike a match and light the papers under the bag. Presto, heat and light and warmth.

 After a long day of toiling over the sewing machine, a fire and a glass of wine in the room is the perfect unwinder. We took full advantage of it!

Just a few samples of what  was going on in our classroom. Both the Feathered Star and the Feathered Geese quilts are completed tops!

No, they weren't just started in this class, but they are proof that it really is possible to do one of these quilts!

The Feathered Star is the pattern Louise has been working on, except that she's making the queen size version which has an undulating border to make it larger.

 Colleen was sitting at our foursquare of tables so we got to spend lots of time watching the pink and grey one come together. Such a pretty combo! She said she never works in red or pink, so this was a way of using up some of her collection of sad neglected red and pink fabrics. The reds and pinks are all batiks, but the greys are prints. Some Stonehenge, but all soft tone on tones.

The patterns, by the way, are all available at www.quiltworx.com if you're interested!

 This one is called Stepping Stones and was the fourth "corner" of our table set. It's all Kaffe Fassett fabrics--prints mixed with soft tones of shot cottons.

This one is done with strips, so not nearly as complicated to make as it appears at first glance. The white strips are the backboard showing through, by the way, not a part of the quilt.

I love the explosion of exuberant colors on the next quilt. Perfect for using those bright batiks that we love to collect!

I did take pictures of most of the quilts that were on display in our room. They're on my Flickr pages if you'd like to see them!

One of the things they do at Empty Spools is have a tour of the classrooms on Thursday afternoon. It's a great opportunity to see what everyone else has been doing and maybe pick out your next class.

Our room was an explosion of color and pattern. Most of the people had completed enough blocks to be able to put something up for show n' tell at open house.

 And then there was me... still plugging away at my second set of pieces!

This is from the bag that had me making 96 pieces, each with 9 fabtics.

Well, I did get 7 of the fabrics on the pieces. I guess I have some honework, and without Judy there to cheer me on.

 Sew. Sew. Sew.

 On Sunday I had a couple of visitors. My daughter and her family were on their way to Costco but stopped by for a visit since it's pretty close to me.

Also, the big field in the corner of the complex is a perfect place for a couple of active boys to work off some energy playing with their spinners. Such fun to watch them. G sent his flying and ran to catch it, while N8 was much more interested in figuring out how to make it go and how it worked.

At least I have a place where they can run and play!

 While they were over, I was able to give G his new hat. My lonely FO for the month, apparently (I don't think I'll get anything else much done in the next day!)

So that's Hat #2 of the group that I'm making to match their sweaters.

(Apologies for hitting publish instead of save-as-draft. I was in a hurry to leave for a doctor appt. and decided to let it stand till I got home!)


On Monday, a long-time friend, Amy of Have Projects, Will Travel, was in town briefly and wanted to go to The Hnntington. I'm always up for a visit to this beautiful place, so off we went.

Yes, I took more than two pictures--my total for the day was 95! Again, you can see them on Flickr here.

It was a really bright day, so bright that the sunlight tended to wash out all the color in most of my pictures.

Well, that and it's winter, so there isn't a whole lot of color, unless you get into the camellia garden. Which I did, and there are lots of camellia pictures in that set.

Speaking of pictures, and Flickr, because I uploaded all of my Asilomar pictures via the iPad, I wasn't able to put them into sets the way I normally do. I'm going to have to go back and put each picture in individually, and you can imagine what the chances are of that happening when I have quilts to make and knitting to do. They are all on my photostream, though, and if you click on one of the pcitures above, it will take you to the section where they all are and you can move around there to your heart's delight.

One more quilt picture, this from Tuesday night's class. Anne finished the quilting on her latest Magic Tiles quilt. This one features cat fabrics so if you like cats, be sure to click on the picture to make it bigger so you can see all the fabrics!

Anne says I blog her quilts, so she doesn't have to. I really think, as productive as she is, that she should keep a record of everything she's making.

Rain is due here tonight or tomorrow, although it's very bright warm sunshine right now, so I'm a little skeptical about how much we'll get. I will say that the authorities here are not taking any chances up in the burn area, and it's now at a red alert meaning mandatory evacuations are imminent.
Better safe than sorry! I will meanwhile sit here in my snug little house and work on my quilts and my knitting. I have some DVR'd stuff to catch up on, too. Maybe I'll be able to get a few pictures if I accomplish anything!