pot, kettle.

so i've been a little bored at work today - i've got what seems like thousands of rfis to log and it's soooooo tedious. i was checking a couple of friends' blogs and started getting annoyed that they haven't updated them... but see, i haven't either, so i can't talk.

when blogger switched over to "new blogger" and linked to google, i added a different gmail address than the one i use now - which i basically have open all day to talk to friends and get instant gratification when i actually get emails (not often). but in order to log in to blogspot, i have to log in with the old email address and it logs me out of my new one - big pain in the ass, so i don't blog as much as i might because of the hassle factor. so i just surfed a thousand blogspot "help" blogs (not helpful) and finally found one that said i could add another person as a contributor and delete the old one. i haven't gotten around to deleting the old one yet (more logouts and logins and logouts and logins) but this works for now.

i'm having a great day. tonight is the monthly wine night chez monica, which is guaranteed to be a good time. yesterday i was over on the microsoft campus doing punchlists for new offices, and had lunch with my brother and my coworker. i kind of knew already but it hadn't really hit me in person - microsoft is total nerd central. i mean, god bless nerds, but dang. i had never seen that many all at once before. but then again, i've never been to a halo convention or anything either.

hope y'all are fantastic. in exactly one week i will be in the middle of wedding blitz. i'm stoked.
love,
abby

crafty.

So my friend Folpmer's birthday is on Monday, and I didn't have any cards around, so I thought I'd make one. I originally thought I would stitch a little fabric birthday cake on the front of a piece of paper, write a jolly message inside, and be on my merry way. While looking for appropriate birthday cake style fabrics, however, I happened upon a piece with cowgirls on it (the border for my bedroom curtains. So festive) and thought that maybe a cowgirl could wish him a pleasant day. I thought Ginny was the most fetching, and then there were some other cute fabrics that went with her coloring, and then I got carried away - so he gets a birthday quilt-card. I'm thinking about making some of these for etsy - it only took me a little over an hour to complete and it's so freakin' cute!

Enjoy.
Love,
A

never gonna give you up

A very dear friend of mine just sent a really neat website link containing Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" video on loop. It took me a long time to try and figure out his last name, I knew it was Rick somebody. I had to look it up. Thanks, internet!

(update 6.3.08: http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/cht/654534964.html)

Now I've got Snoop on to try and wash the 80s out of my brain. He's got a living room full of fine dime brizzles. Are they "dimes" because they are a ten on a scale of one to ten? I want to know.

KF is coming to town tomorrow, and I couldn't be more excited! She and Monica and I are going to have a super quilty weekend, and it's going to be so much fun!

I have a large bruise on the back of my right calf. It's pretty ugly and I have no idea where it came from (though drunken camping might have had something to do with it...)

I have nothing but vignettes today. enjoy!
Love,
McNabbs

hey hey hey!

i'm hand quilting a pillow! yay. look for it on etsy soon.

i heart flickr

ok you guys, i am obsessed with flickr and its partners.

i signed up for a flickr account last december so i could upload all my holiday pictures for those near and far to see. it was like $25 for an entire year and unlimited space. awesome.

they have all these partners who will produce basically anything you want with your photo(s). everything from your standard prints to mugs, tshirts, postcards, to professionally bound books and even bona fide US mail postage stamps. can you imagine? technology is so glorious.

if you're not a flickr member, and you take lots of digital pictures, and you like stuff with pictures, i think you should just sign up already. do it. go.

pinwheels

i mentioned this quilt back in january but here's a little visual:

i realized i've been doing so much quilting lately i might as well show you all my projects (i know katie loves them!) - and maybe that will help me stay motivated to actually finish all this crap!

love,

mcnabbs

yet another old project

...another one i finally got around to finishing! now this one isn't quite done yet (they're in 4x4 blocks, not all sewn together here) but there are only 30 blocks so i'm very nearly done. this one i started in early 2003. yeah. long time ago. the cool thing is, i like it just as much now as i did then, which does NOT happen very often in projects i've put off (or lost) for a while. this one is a present for friends who got married in march '03. whoops, i'm a little late. they love me anyway though, so no harm done. but yeah, it's pretty great.

Heart Walk!

So I'm participating in the Heart Walk this year (observe neato gadget to your left). If you click the link you can donate and help me out! How awesome would that be?

(answer: so awesome.)
love,
mcnabbs

goodness.

OK, I'm officially insane, as my girlfriends love to tell me.
This week I overextended myself. Yesterday, after getting off the hook for two tiramisus I had promised for friends' birthdays, I decided to relax for a bit after work - which only resulted in pushing back my schedule a couple of hours, and I finally went to bed around 2.30 this morning. good times.
I got Emily's quilt very almost finished - I sandwiched it at my mom's house (hardwood floors, I would kill for you) and took it home to quilt while I did laundry and watched Jesus Camp - absolutely terrifying film. Very good though. For some reason, my camera does not like to represent the actual colors of this quilt so you'll have to deal with this snap, I guess. This is pre-quilting; by the time I got the binding on I couldn't even think of where the camera might have run off to, so I just went to bed. I'll take one more when I finish sewing the binding tonight (in LA at Michela's house!!)

I also thought I'd take a picture of the "designated picnic blanket" I finished last week. I know it seems like I've been sewing a lot lately - and I have - but lots of the stuff I've been working on has been in the works for ages. For instance, I got all the fabric for this one when I was working at the quilt shop in 2001 or so. I got less and less excited about it as the years went on, but somehow I kept plugging away at it and put the last stitch in last Friday at poker night. The back is obnoxious green, which will hide any grass stains, and the plaid front is sure to hide any food spills, plus I was so excited to just get it DONE that I didn't care about the quilting, resulting in many puckers on the back. But nobody cares. I quilted it in straight lines across in several different colors of thread, matching the different colors in the quilt. The bottom threads are all shades of green. It's pretty cool.

That's about it. I'm heading down to LA in about four hours to kick it with Michelie, and Brian, and Mosco, and Scotty (yay!), and drive to San Diego for my cousin's wedding. Good times.

Love,

mcnabbs

more quilt stuff!

So I was in Sun Valley with my parents last weekend, watching HGTV and kind of wishing I was at home working on projects instead. My cousin Emily is getting married in a few weeks and I need to make her a quilt. I was talking with my mom about it and we decided on a beachy sort of blue white and yellow palette. We looked at fabrics online since there was only one quilt shop in the area and it was rather lacking - but didn't find much that we liked.

Back in Seattle, I went to Pacific Fabrics yesterday and couldn't find anything that grabbed me there either, so I headed to the solids section (like you do) and found my favorite sky blue and several pale yellows. I thought a Denyse Schmidt style bars pattern would work nicely, but the blue and yellow only was pretty bland and boring. But, AHA, I found a few jewel tones to mix in for unexpected surprises! It took me all of 20 minutes to cut out the entire thing, and here's how far I got sewing in two hours last night:

That's a navy, a chocolate brown, a pinkish (but still masculine) red, and a grass green. The colors came out a little strange but trust me, it's pretty great. Reminds me of beach balls and those changing tents and sunshine and summer skies all at once. I know it's not what my mom expects but hey, it's awesome. And definitely different from what I started out doing, which I kind of love. The strips are all the same length but I cut them at random angles and widths so it's kind of hard to make sure they end up in a relatively straight line. But I love a challenge! I'll keep you posted on this one.

Love, mcnabbs.