the goose loves tuesday's ten (#3)

Welcome to the third edition of Tuesday's Ten. Check out last week's episode too. 

1. Today's post is actually a bit late, mostly because I was up late last night finishing up these two beauties for my coworker's granddaughter. My coworker is flying out tomorrow to visit the almost-1-year-old, so I had to finish them up!

The giraffe shapes came from a shopping bag that my coworker had - we made a copy of the bag and then I cut out the shapes, traced them onto the fabric, then cut them out and sewed them down! A little time consuming, but I love them.

2. Last weekend we spent three days in Hood River, Oregon (full update coming soon). It was supposed to be an outdoorsy vacation, but it was more like a beer vacation. We went to three breweries and had over a dozen beers between the four of us. This was probably very close to Billy's dream vacay.

3. Although we're several years away from having little McWood babies running around, these Baby Beagle Shoes (by Stride Rite) really tempt me to get going sooner... or maybe I should just buy them now and save them for future little Willy...

4. Speaking of Beagles, I recently made Bentley a sparkly red bowtie. Believe me - it has a good purpose, and you'll find out soon - but for now, he looks like a Vegas Showdog with it on.

5. Dinner on Sunday looked like this. Philly Cheesesteaks. And it was tasty.

6. Along with the two giraffe onesies, I sewed three others for my coworker - two are below (and I still need to finish the last). The white one has lacy-ness around the collar, and the pink one has 3D flowers. Kids' clothes are high tech these days.

7. I spent Monday night screaming at the TV while watching the final episode of The Bachelor. Don't get me wrong - I have never believed in that "true-love-on-TV" stuff. However, I do believe in relieving stress by watching ridiculous girls "fall in love" with a guy who's got an awful haircut (scroll down to the article for a great hair shot, and head to Twitter to follow the haircut (yes, it has its own twitter account) ). Monday's episode was even more fun because we played "Bengo" - Bingo, with a word play on Bachelor Ben's name. Awesome? Yes, except that I didn't win. All I needed in the end was for somebody to say "once in a lifetime" but it never happened.

8. Today (March 13) is exactly 3 months until my 25th Birthday (I'd suggest you start shopping now - email me for my wishlist if you get stuck), which means I have only three months to complete my 25 for 25 list. And there are a decent number of gaps over there still...

Also, I want to go on a camping trip to celebrate the big two-five, and I want it to look exactly like this:

9. On Thursday, before escaping to the Columbia Gorge (Hood River), we stopped by Powells Bookstore, where I spent $20 on three new books. (I'm working on #14!). I've started The 19th Wife so far, which parallels the escape of Brigham Young's 19th Wife in the late 1800s and the murder of a polygamist by his 19th wife in the early 2000s. Bring on the drama and the fascinating polygamists.

10. On Sunday morning, Billy and I are running the 8K (5 mile) race in the Portland Shamrock Run. The furthest I've run since high school when I was skinny my cross country days is 4 miles. And that was tricky. So this will be fun - right? Wish me luck.

Also, for all you avid fans need to know the INSTANT I've posted another blog full of rambles, check out the new RSS feed I've added on the right. You can also put in your email address to be notified of new posts. Don't miss a single goof!

And one last P.S.: This is one of the few beagle-photo-free posts in a long time. Hooray for you dog-haters, my deepest apologies for you Bentley-lovers.

the goose loves the elm creek quilt books

Slowly but surely, I'm working on all those goals on my 25 for 25 list. I'm down to about 4.5 months, but have lots of things still to do!

One goal that I didn't start tackling until 2012 was reading 25 books. Yeah, I really gotta catch up there. I got a great head start when I travelled to Santa Monica, CA for a business trip, though - plenty of airport/plane/hotel time to get through a few books. I started with The Aloha Quilt, by Jennifer Chiaverini.

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I'm not going to go into great detail here, but maybe enough to get you to read it. Jennifer Chiaverini has a whole series about "Elm Creek Quilts," a group of ladies that formed a quilt camp together. The books take you through the various challenges and joys of their lives, and always describe the quilts that the ladies are working on that tie in with the story. Sounds cheesy, yeah. But they're awesome feel-good stories that keep you engaged and wanting more.

I read several books from the series when I was in high school, but the quilting terms never meant much to me. Now that I'm best friends with my sewing machine, I can appreciate the concepts and challenges of each quilt they work on.

In this story, a lady travels to Maui to start a quilt camp, and learns how to quilt in the Hawaiian style. I didn't even know they had a style! Below is a real-life version of the quilt that the lady worked on in the book. In the Hawaiian style, the quilters make their own patterns by folding cloth several times, drawing patterns, cutting it out, and then opening it up. It's like hardcore snowflake making.

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 So go read the book. Or not. But at least I'm checking off my list, one book at a time.