Earthquake quilt

Yeah, so evidently I moved to an area where there are earthquakes.  This I did not know.

This was brought to my attention by Dan, The Handyman, who encouraged me not to hang any shelving or paintings over a bed "in case of earthquakes."  Just a precaution, he assured me.

I was inspired to put together this stonkingly gorgeous quilt that I have been nutting away.  I don't usually buy kits, but this one was so intriguing, and it was on sale, and the company is in the UK (my old stomping grounds!), and because I could only guess at how beautiful the fabric was, I took the plunge.  The photos in this post are not so great.  This first one is with a flash, which is something that I almost never ever do - but I wanted to try and capture the beautiful complexity of this fabric from Oakshott.  The rest are blurry because I was trying to capture the effect of the colors without a flash.  Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

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The fabric is indescribably beautiful.  For the fabric cognoscenti, it's very similar to Kaffe Fassett's Shot Cottons, only more beautiful.  It has a slightly heavier hand, and the large squares have a black weft, with the woof yarn being the color.  In the lighter color center squares the weft is white and the woof is the color.  The small center squares are Colourshott from Oakshott and the dark "outer" ones are from the Lipari line.  The first photo is at night, the next during the day.  It's like a stained glass window - or a Crayola drawing.

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One of the unexpected advantages of white curtains in my living room is that they make a great place to audition quilt layouts!  I can hardly wait to finish it and hang it over my bed.

Okay, enough fabric geekery.  What raises your blood pressure?

 

 

 

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Chillin' like a villain...

Patsy aka Miss P aka Pizzles aka Black Lavender.  On the kitchen counter, guarding the toaster oven and the espresso machine.  Isn't it interesting that when some black cats get in full sunlight that they really aren't black, but sort of a chocolate-y brown?[[posterous-content:pid___0]]

Pizzles even has some tiger striping.  Her usual skill is in hiding around the house and sleeping the day away. She comes out at night and rolls around on her back, looks fetching, and hopes I'll turn on the fireplace so she can get all toasty. I think she is becoming more bold.

[[posterous-content:pid___2]]Max's mad skills in KC was that he was an amazing hunter. One morning I came out on the deck and found a breakfast buffet laid out by Max. A mouse, a chipmunk, and a squirrel in ascending size order, all in a row.  Not a good day for mammals with four legs and a tail.  After his epic car ride across the country and being cooped up in apartment for 4 months he seems to have lost his mojo and rarely ventures out. He has become stout and lazy as a result.  His main chasing now involves torturing the other two cats. When I'm home this results in timeout - I chuck him out the front door.  My new name for Max is "El Gordito."

[[posterous-content:pid___1]]Pookie aka Pookums is the Grande Dame of the cats - she is the eldest (15 years old) and unfortunately the most chased and timid of all the kitties.  Here she is, workin' her business on my bed.  She's the most loving of the crew, in fact too loving. Pookie wants to be in, on, and around whatever I'm doing, ALL THE TIME.  I'm absolutely certain that the comedian Paul Kroll had her in mind when he said "Isn't it amazing that cats are only one foot tall and their ass is always in your face?"  Pookums is also a barfer.  Sometimes I feel like I spend my days following her around with paper towels, cleaning up the catfood she can't keep down.

Anyway.

I woke up this morning and promptly rolled over into a patch of cat barf. It was like there was a wild cat party in my bed and everyone passed out and we woke up to the really bad consequences of our actions the night before.

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PNW images...

Down near the Port of Tacoma.....such contrasts - gnarly rusted stuff and beautiful mountains and ocean.  Gig Harbor and boats. Big jets landing at Joint Base Ft. Lewis McChord, lovely old buildings in Old Town Tacoma, wavy lap siding on old houses.

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Waxing crescent moon over my Dollhouse

Clear skies, sunny all day yesterday and today, 50 degrees.  Sorry, guys.

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Cake or death?

From my favorite Executive Transsexual, Eddie Izzard.

Lina and I traveled to Seattle in 2008 to visit IslandWood, an astonishing Masters program that utilizes hands on training with kids, teaching them about sustainability, our relationship to the world and much much more:

From their website:  "...IslandWood's educators combine scientific inquiry, technology and the arts to help Puget Sound-area students discover natural connections with the outdoors.'  It's a very cool graduate program in conjunction with the University of Washington.  Check it out. http://islandwood.org/

Anyway, this was our first trip to the Pacific Northwest.  Land of my dreams; who knew??   Lina and I had a wonderful time and I was smitten with the Northwest. We rented a car for a few days and in addition to driving down to see the Museum of Glass in Tacoma (fell in love; guess why I moved here?!) we also drove around the Seattle area searching for a cupcake shop that Lina had seen earlier whilst wheeling around town with her friend Luminous Leigh aka Madam aka Bidsy.

Bidsy and Madam, laying on my bed in Kansas City this summer, grooving on each other, sharing deep thoughts...

Lina, without GPS or EVEN A MAP or EVEN THE NAME OF THE STORE was like a homing pigeon.  In the rain, in the night, she guided us to cupcake and coffee heaven, the magical Cupcake Royale.  http://www.cupcakeroyale.com/index.html.  You have to understand Lina's profound love of buttercream icing, especially when it's on a cake.  She literally LUSTS for awesome cake, usually late at night when any sensible cake store is closed.  I love her passion for cake and Cupcake Royale has obviously figured out that she is not alone in this passion:

So here's the roundabout punchline to this post.  This is for you, Miss Lina:

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The sex kitten of cupcakes.  Lavender frosting on white cake.  Real lavender in the frosting.  And just so you don't suspect me of faking the photo of a cupcake on my front railing, here's the blurb from the website:

Same cupcake, only gussied up for V-Day.  Stop licking the screen, Lina.  I can see you.  ;)

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Advertising before you can watch advertising?

Heinous.  

But this one is worth it.  Trust me.  And those of you that know me know that I'm not even a sports fan.

 

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Can you say DOUBLE RAINBOW!?

At the end of my street??  Holy cow.

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And check out this goofy vase.  I bought it at the Met in NYC a long time ago - it's so ugly it's beautiful.  Notice the asparagus motif at the top? This is a pretty handy vase for something like tulips THAT CONTINUE TO GROW even after they are picked.  One trick I learned while living in London to slow down the growth is when you bring them home from the store and after you cut off the ends, make a pinhole in the stem all the way through, right underneath the flower.  I have absolutely no idea why this works, but it does.  OBVIOUSLY I forgot to do it this time.

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Oh, and Movits.

There's never enough Movits.

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A trip in the Way Back Machine. Well, October 2010, anyway.

These are from my sister Anne's visit.  First stop, Pike Place Market.  And coffee, of course!

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A brief cruise by Beecher's Cheese.  Amazing mac and cheese.  Beyond description.

http://www.beechershandmadecheese.com/story_tour.php

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Next stop, Experience Music Project Science Fiction Museum : http://www.empsfm.org/  Well, the outside, anyway.

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The next day back in Tacoma, we drove around the Five Mile Drive in Point Defiance Park, the tippy topmost point of Tacoma.  Where I live now is just off the map to the south!  Anne and I were amazed to see this kit of raccoons.  Jokes were made about being surprised to see live raccoons instead of roadkill (me.)     Looking at this map makes me realize that I have achieved one of my dreams (well, almost) of living on an island.  This is about as close as I'd want to get to living on an island - I still have all the convenience of living on the "mainland" but can kind of pretend that I'm on an island, with water and mountains in view from my Dollhouse.  Also a shot of a beautiful Japanese maple.

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Our last night out to dinner at the Rosewood Cafe.  http://www.rosewoodcafe.com/about.html Yum.

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James Taylor still has it.

For some reason this song, sung by James, just slays me with sweetness.  Takes me back to my last year in high school. 

This was recorded at the 2009 North Sea Jazz Festival in the Netherlands.  This was the same year that Lina's ex-boyfriend / now good friend Alex Mallett played at NSJF with the band Riot Box from Montreal.

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