Visiting Jeni and the Parents

Hi there Mary,

I expect you have started back to school already and not even posted once. Bad sister! I am going to post late, but you know what they say about late. It is better than NEVER!

OK enough with the nagging already. It has been six days since I returned so I figured the pictures had aged well in the camera and it was time to release them.

The first picture was from before I went to Mpls. There is this huge racoon, probably a mother about to give birth and it has been showing up and eating the sunflower seeds I put out for the birds. I had to take a picture.

Next are two pictures of my sewing machine 'museum'.

I had been thinking this spring of doing a little reorganizing so I could have a more normal living room. Normal meant only one or two sewing machines in it instead of 5. So what happened is the landing at the top of the stairs has become my museum and I have four of the sewing machines with cabinets lined up there. I also have some of the machines without cabinets tucked under the others. Or, I will once I get someone strong to move them for me. That should make seven machines up at the top of the stairs, two in the living room, two in the library, and one in the spare bedroom and one actually in the quilting room. I also have two at Faye's Henhouse for emergencies I guess.

Isn't that the cutest apron you ever saw?

I picked it up at the same sale as the new Featherweight shown in the photo's below it. E was the only one it really fit so she got to be the model. It will be staying at Mom's as a 'bib'. Mom has two aprons for that now and they work really well if she remembers to put them on.

This is my brand new 1951 Featherweight.

Let's see. I went down to Minneapolis to visit Jeni before she had to leave to go back to Canada. I planned on being there over the weekend so we could go to rummage sales. Jeni has a talent for rummage sales. The very first morning she had me up early (for me) and the first thing she said was "Do you know what a featherweight is?"

Well a loyal sewing machine collector has to answer yes to that question and then of course I wanted to know why. Evidently there was a Featherweight machine mentioned in the newspaper advertisements for estate sales. It started that morning and Jeni said we could go there first. It was up on 74th and York so it wasn't far. We got there just about the time it opened and went in to look. Yup. A Featherweight. Now those of you who don't collect sewing machines might think that one featherweight machine is enough for a person. Wrong. It was just a fine machine. All the parts and accessories were there. A nice case and even a zigzag foot still in the box.

Of course I bought it.

I was leaving with it about 45 minutes after the sale started and another Featherweight Fanatic came in. First words out of her mouth were "Where is the Featherweight?" The sales lady pointed at me. :-)

My friend 'Treadle'Annie says I got a 'deal'.

Next is a picture of Mom and her new haircut.

Jeni and I took Mom and Dad to the Great Clips on France on Sunday for their haircuts. Dad paid.
The last photo is one of the corner junipers that Jeni put in the front yard. There are four of them.

One at each front corner and one on each side of the iron railings. They are just so beautiful with their gold tips. I want some too. They are not supposed to get very high, but they are supposed to spread and creep out to about 3 to 4 feet. I suppose Jon will feel obliged to 'trim' them.

Now if google will let me drag these photo's around I will put them in the body of the post and if it won't they will all stay at the top.

Nope, no movement today. Maybe another day I can edit it and put the photo's where I want them.

Love,

Nancy

Quilting

Hi there Mary,

There have been a couple of quilting milestones lately.

First, my friends and I made a quilt for out favorite waiter and college student Clayton. Clayton is our waiter most Tuesday nights. He is very rude to us when he serves us food and calls us OLD and generally gets in trouble at Paula's Diner every Tuesday night. He will be graduating from Mayville State this coming spring and so we felt it only right that we concoct a quilt for him.

So we interrogated some of his friends and acquaintances and found out alot about him. We then gathered fabric that reflected the stories we had heard and made it all into a quilt. We had money fabric for tips, and coffee fabric for the coffee addict in our group. We had deer fabric and cell phone fabric and baseball fabric for his Dad and food fabric since he is our waiter. We had almost as much fun finding fabric as quilting it. Below Deb is explaining to Clayton why we have deer in the quilt.

We hung it up in the local quilt show a couple weeks ago and someone, it is a small town, told Clayton that we had 'named a quilt after him'. He claims he was in the bar at the time and he told the person 'You are drunk'.

Anyway we made the presentation on Tuesday the 28th of October and he was quite surprised. We all got hugs.

The second quilting related thing is I used my (new to me) Singer Featherweight for the first time at a quilt retreat put on by Faye's Henhouse this last weekend. It was wonderful and I am so proud to have that nice machine for my very own. I will take it to the Park River quilt retreat next weekend too. Hopefully I will finish the black and white quilt top then.

Love,

Nancy