I am on my way to teach in Steamboat Springs. It's going to be a treat to be in the mountains! I hope to post some nice pictures – both quilt-y and outdoors-y.

I left with the house mostly finished. The floor is all the way down. The baseboard trim still needs to be painted and there are some other small things. When I get home it should all be over. That's good because 2 days after I get back we head to Hawaii! I'm sure I'll be posting. I'm lucky to be able to leave the business part of pieceocake.com in Lorna's hands.

Earlier this week I received a box of the most wonderful linen/cotton blend solids! They are from the Essex Collection by Robert Kaufman Fabrics. I didn't even know that these fabrics existed until I saw them at market! Here's the stack, right out of the box:

They are intense and clear and pretty in the stack. That said, they are prettier when the stack is more thoughtfully arranged…

When I gather fabric for a quilt, I make stacks: foreground and background. Inside those stacks I arrange by color and value. Often I let one color blend into another. I find it so much easier to color a quilt from an organized stack. There is never just one way to arrange the fabrics and, as I work on a quilt, the colors move around. 

This fabric is heavier than regular cotton but not so much that you couldn't combine the two weights. That's what I plan to do. After washing and drying, the hand of the fabric is nice. They have that subtle, linen wrinkle that I really like.

Orville and Juan have been here putting down the new flooring this week. Yay!

I failed to take the best photo… Orvile spent most of yesterday chiseling out the end of the boards that go into the office/spare bedroom. The boards from the hallway had to be toenailed into that room. Once floored, I can't even tell what's new and what's old. (FYI – the blue tape holds the boards tightly together as the glue sets.)

In a related bit of remodel news, there was some leftover Caesarstone from our bathroom. I asked our fabricator cut it to fit this table:

Love the top, didn't love the wood below. All of a sudden it was too much 'wood' in one place and I wasn't the only one who thought so. Steve agreed. I painted the table base the same blue as is in the back of the cabinets in the breakfast room, nearby…

The photo is a bit dark but when I took it with the flash, the blue went electric. In person it's subtler than it is here.

If you have stone or stone-like countertops installed, be sure to ask about the leftover materials. If there is a big enough piece left over you might have a good place for it. You may have to pay for the cuts (I did) but that's a lot cheaper than buying this sort of thing by itself.

I have a folder on my computer called 'things'. In it I put the photos of 'things' that I want to remember. 'Things' is subdivided into several categories, however some images defy categorization. For example, where should this go?

I took this photo in June, out front of Best Buy. It must have been when I bought the keyboard that ended my relationship with Best Buy. Anyway,… this van is absolutely covered with stickers. Even the side windows were covered. It's an interesting idea, especially if you have a bad paint job and don't want to repaint the car. 

In my part of the country you don't see this often but, when you do, there can be a religious theme. Not so much with this van. The stickers are all over the map, theme-wise – although they are definitely not religious. And there were objects glued to the hood – hood ornaments! It's been a while since I've seen any hood ornaments, much less ones like these:

I would really like to put big dots on my boring white car but I haven't because then I would be very spot-able, no pun intended. I'm not sure I drive well-enough to drive in an easily identified car :-). I wonder if the driver of this van finds that to be a problem? Wouldn't it be funny if the driver was a sweet little old lady!

Then there's this: Elanor and I spotted this cigar box on the wall in the viewing tower at Tanglewood…

If it was hanging on the wall in a museum, it could have been installation art. Instead, it was masquerading as a thermostat cover! 

I wonder how long it's been there? A long time I'd bet. I can almost picture the guy who put it there – because you know it was a guy. A woman might have thought to put the cigar box up, but I don't think a woman would have left the light switch half-covered. Do you?

Now that I've posted these, I could put the photos in the trash but I sort of hate to do that. I suppose I'm going to have to make a new folder for 'unusual things'.

My friend, Jacquie, shared some fabric from her stash with me. This piece of white (which is nearly gone) has become my favorite white, ever:

I think it is a pima cotton – it has a fine, tight weave – but what makes it special is the stitching. It appears to be a chain stitch, done by machine, with a fine enough thread so that it isn't bulky. The stitching didn't shrink and make the fabric pucker when I washed and dried it. It has a lovely personality when pieced together with other fabrics.

This is the sort of fabric that you rarely see in a quilt shop and, if you did, it would be expensive. I look for this sort of thing and when I find it, I buy it – although I never buy enough.

I was thinking about this fabric when I went through the mail last week. The CB2 (Crate & Barrel 2) catalog came and this duvet set was on display:

It looks like the 'stitching' on the duvet cover and pillows is done with ribbon, or strips of fabric cut on the bias. I don't know that I'll ever get around to making my own fabric that looks like either of these pieces, but it's definitely do-able.

We took Elanor and Jack to a nearby resort, Tanglewood, at Lake Texoma Thursday. It was an interesting experience. I unplugged (mostly) and so did Steve (mostly). We didn't do much with the kids that we couldn't have done at home, except that we gave them our undivided attention. That is kind of rare. 

Judy, Lorna's mom, is the kind of grandmother we all think we will be. The one that stops and plays, a lot. I have found that I am not that kind of grandmother. I wasn't that kind of mother, either. I always thought that the boys should learn to entertain themselves without a lot of my input. It seems to have worked for them – at least they tell me I was a good mom. Of course, I'm the only one they had :-).

In thinking back on my childhood, I tended to play physical games: cowboys and indians with the neighborhood boys, tree climbing, exploring places none of us would let our kids go now. Boy, those were the days… I'm not sure they were better, just different. I had very little use for dolls, cards, or board games then, or now.  Some of us are just like that.

I'm good in shorter bursts so a 24-hour vacation works. Tanglewood has 3 pools: the baby pool that we never got in, a middle pool that is 2'-5', and then a much deeper pool. Both of these pools are bigger than ours at home and that was fun. 

We spent time in the room – Jack's first hotel stay! He wanted to watch cartoons and we let him. I had gotten them each new art supplies and Elanor especially enjoyed hers. We ate in the restaurant – twice! Very exciting!

We played foosball. I am not that good at foosball which is good. Elanor is 10 and understood the game but had not played much. Jack, 5, had never played and it showed, for about 10 minutes. Then he got the hang of it and really enjoyed it. That boy is competitive!

I tried out my new Lumix camera. This little camera takes a very nice picture.

We all had a good time and might do it again next year!

I have a big, heavy, hard-to-move piece of furniture in my studio. When Miguel and Juan took out the floor after the flood, we put it on some flat things with rollers to make it easier to shift around. We left it on those things so that it would be easier to move around when the the new floor goes down. 

The 'things' made the piece of furniture taller and I realized that I liked it taller! Steve said he could add casters to my big piece of furniture. I found 175 lb locking casters – surely it's not heavier than that.

Steve put a 2×4, laid flat, from front foot to back on the bottom of the legs on each side. He screwed the 2×4's on with long screws, and then screwed the casters to that.

I may get around to painting the 2x4s, or not. For now I am just very happy that I can move this big thing on my own. I still have to fill it with stuff that is in boxes in the other room but I'll do that after they lay the new floor. That should happen on Monday. Maybe by the middle of next week we'll be back to where we were before the flood.