The Mail Has Been Very Very Good to Me

Last week, my mailbox goodness reached epic proportions.  It started with this:

 As they say, "You had me at hello."  Who doesn't like chocolate?  But wait!  Even better -- I know, what could be better than chocolate? -- there was a whole bunch of stuff inside.  Stuff that doesn't mess with my diet.

Handmade tags, note cards, ATCs, envelopes, a little round box filled with beads, and some pens and buttons!  Who is responsible for this bounty?  My friend Jan, who blogs here, and her friends who have a group blog here.  They are mixed media artists who do lots of intricate, fun stuff.  I highly recommend checking them out.  I won this in a giveaway on http://foxontherunarts.blogspot.com/ .  So cool.

And wait!  There's more!  I swap blocks with my Sparkly Chicken friends (not all of them have blogs, but those who do are listed on the side under "Sparkly Chickens Blogs").  Anne Marie, who blogs here, sent me this colorful moose.


Just look at the wonderful embroidery (French knots are my favorite embroidery stitch).

And she included these goodies.  Cards with more stuff on them and some very sparkly yarn.



But wait!  That's not all!



In advance of my birthday, the mail got this package to me in record time!  It wasn't supposed to arrive until next month, but it's here!


Beth blogs here about her adventures in Africa.  She sent me these little bottles and the charms -- an elephant for Africa and a shoe because, well, I'm kind of a shoe lover.  The tall bottle is a vanilla sugar grinder from South Africa -- it's full of big crystals of sugar and chunks of real vanilla pods.  It's delicious ground onto ricotta cheese and over coffee.  This weekend, I'm going to try it on French toast, fruit and maybe some pancakes or waffles.There was some floral fabric.




And these wonderful batiks from Africa.  I love these giraffes -- maybe I should make a bag out of this?













 I love this one -- I can see this fussy cut up into a kaleidoscopic design.  I've included a pic of the selvage.

And these chickens are the best!  They're quite large and I love they way they're walking all over the fabric!

Thank you all for making this such a fun week for me!

Monday Aftermath

This is my design wall today.  The frog quilt is still up there because I haven't gotten around to sewing together the backing pieces.

I don't know why, but it seems much harder to piece the backing than it does to piece any kind of block.

I didn't participate in Design Wall Monday last week because my wall was the same as the week before and I didn't think we needed more shots of the frog-quilt-in-progress.  But this week, a couple of blocks have joined the frog quilt top.  They are from my First Thursday Piecers Group (from now on referred to as "2011 BOM Group").

We are using this book. Because of another engagement, I skipped the meeting when it was decided.  It seems to be a pretty good book -- some of the blocks are easy and some more challenging.  Because the people in this group run the gamut from beginners to advanced, I think it's a good choice.   I like that this book contains a number of different layouts and instructions.

So I couldn't wait until next year (or until I finished this year's) and started a couple of blocks.  I'm still playing around with the background on the bottom two.

To see other design walls, click here to go to Judy's blog.

Monday Musings

 I finished the threadwork on the pelican.  While I gather up the nerve to paint the sea, I have been working on a couple of blocks.

These are the "carpenter's wheel" blocks from Jen over at Cre8tive Quilter.  If you click here, she has links to her instructions and some paper-piecing patterns.  Because these finish at six inches, I used the fabrics that I have stashed for my Sylvia's Bridal Sampler quilt project and I will probably include these blocks there.

I haven't finished the one on the left-- it's amazing how much they "shrink up" after you sew all the pieces together.

This is my design wall for today -- to check out others, click here to go to Judy's blog. That other thing on the left is the zigzag border for the blue/green quilt.  I think I like it better with this block in the middle.  I won't commit until I reach the point of sewing them all together.