Joy Remembered by Diane Gaudynski features some seriously amazing machine quilting…

Scrambled by John Flynn…

You can tell that John has an engineer's mind… amazing!

Click here for cool products.

I'm off to Houston for 2 days of Quilt Market. I'll tweet and post to tumblr and flickr at least some of the cool stuff I find.  

Lucid Moments III by Libby Lehman…

Fear of Empty Spaces by Pat Holly…

I love this quilt, and the title of this quilt, and the idea behind it – in a way unrelated to Alzheimer's. I find that I keep filling my days to the brim. I've begun to wonder if I will ever have 'unfilled' spaces in my day. And if I did find myself with open 'space', would I know what to do with it?

Luckily I am married to man much like myself in this regard. Neither Steve nor I are very good at just relaxing. 

Remember, you can click here to find products with the images of any of the quilts on them.

I've been waiting for the perfect time to start talking about the AAQI Celebrity Auction. Now is the time! All 12 quilts are shown below (mine is the 2nd from the left on the top row). Click here to buy things (t-shirts, mugs, thermoses, etc.) with any one of these images on it. As with the auction, all profits fund Alzheimer's research.

Those little pictures are… little! I think you'll want to see them a bit larger so I'm going to post two a day for the next few days. Click on the photo to see it even bigger.

This is Radiant Feathered Star by Marsha McCloskey:

And here is How Does My Garden Grow by Mary Sorensen:

I'm so honored to be a member of this very talented group! Mark your calendar…the online auction will be held November 1-10.  

We are celebrating Jack's birthday tonight, a few days early. Steve is cooking dinner, I made the cake. Jack requested a Minas Tirith cake. In case you need a refresher, Minas Tirith is the heavily fortified capital of Gondor from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I asked for pictures…

Really?!!!! I make cakes but nothing like this. Jack is turning five but he's always been interested in extravagent cake making. I have no idea where that came from.

Chris sent me this link to show me cakes that others have made. I am once again surprised at what people think of, and how they do it. Here's an example:

Again – really?!!!! Jack requested my lemon cake with buttercream frosting which is not particularly moldable. Plus, I couldn't devote days to this. However, I kept calm and carried on.

I made one layer each at 9", 8" and 6" round. I made a foil-covered cardboard base with a back wall that is supposed to be the mountain. I got everlything out and ready. That included slicing each cake layer in half horizontally and spreading my home-made lemon curd inside. (That is a key ingredient that makes this cake taste so good.)

With the frosting made, I had to work fast because the frosting was not stiff. I used lots of toothpicks to hold various layers together. I managed to get the cake into the refrigerator without dropping it. The cold hardened the frosting and made it all more stable. I decided that the cake crumbs in the frosting were OK because it looked rougher, more rock-like. That blue bowl has extra frosting in case I need it.

After the frosting hardened I took the cake out of the refrigerator and used gray cake spray paint on it – yet another thing I didn't know existed until a few days ago. I thought I would use the sparkly sugar flakes too but they didn't show up and this cake does not need any more sugar. I made a pointy tower and various add-ons with crumpled foil…

It's official. I am really bad at this! I'm hoping that it's so bad it's good, but it may be too bad to ever be good. The cake itself should taste just fine (even though shiny gray cake looks pretty unappetizing). 

Jack and Chris are going decorate it with Lego guys. I hope Jack will use his imagination and sort of see Minas Tirith. At the very least he'll know I tried and maybe that's the most important thing.

I had four more photos that didn't seem to fit well in any of the previous posts. Here they are…

It was fun to see how they used small pumpkins: strung tightly together into garlands, strung farther apart in streamers. And there was that hanging thing that was a cross between and mobile and a chandelier. It was better looking in person – here you mostly see the corn husks – but still, a nice idea.

Individual little pumpkins were wrapped with a bit of flexible (copper?) wire and hung on the fences… None of these pumpkin ideas would be hard to do at home.

I didn't take many flower pictures but could not pass up this pink hibiscus. The way the bud sits, head held high, was nice.

I found one iron manhole cover that just needed to pose with my new boots! Don't you love this design? It would be nice in a cutaway applique…

That's the end of the Dallas Arboretum pictures. I'm teaching in Granbury, TX, Monday. It's my last 'real' job this year. Then I hope to turn my attention to planning the quilts for my next book. Oh happy, happy day!

I've let magazines pile up but finally had time to flip through my Martha Stewart Living issues in the car on Saturday (Steve was driving). Of course there was Photoshopping involved but Martha looks pretty good! I wonder if it's a shock to see her in person?

I think that's really her in the photo below – not her head photoshopped onto a model. I think it's all Martha is because of the looks on the faces of the two girls closest to her.

The grin looks a bit strained, don't you think? That could be because they'd been at it a while; kids do get tired of smiling. (See, I'm trying to cut Martha some slack!)

Do you think they have a fan blowing on her (above) to make her hair look so casually brushed back? And I wonder if the paint on the brush is wet or dry? If I had that much wet paint on a brush it wouldn't take long for me to have paint on me, the table, etc. – but then I'm not Martha.

It's possible that that's only Martha's head on a model's body, but if so, they matched up the parts well. This ad actually worked on me – I would like to buy 1 or more of those glass domes. I'm leaving for Granbury soon. Maybe I'll drive near a Macy's!