No Excuses

I really have no excuse as to why I haven't been blogging.  I could say that things have been tremendously busy (which is partly true), but it has felt like blogging was more of a chore for a while than something I enjoyed doing.  Sometimes I think that as things get crazy at work, it makes me want to post more as I do it at lunch and its a good break from thinking about work.

In that vein....here's what's been happening the past few months.

1.  I've been working on Bonnie Hunter's latest mystery quilt, En Provence.  I completed the first clue right on schedule...and promptly got behind.  The second clue used the Tri-rec's tools, which work well, but I'm not a big fan of making the blocks.  If I'm really careful, then things work out well, but its hard to be really careful when you have something like 150 of these suckers to make.


My test piece came our perfect!


So it was on to mass-producing them as much as I could.  The other pieces on the ruler on the table are from a second quilt that I was making in between En Provence such that I didn't go COMPLETELY mad from making the same blocks over and over and over and over.



Ooohhh... the first stack of 20 all complete!


Then it was on to the next clue which used purples (yay) and were four patches again.  Much simpler to make and you don't have to be as careful, which is nice when making this many of them.


I did have a "cutting frenzy" Sunday one weekend and cut out everything for the remaining clues that I had gotten behind on.  All of them are prepped and ready to be sewn, which makes things a bit easier sometimes when you only have 10 minutes here or there to sew.


2.  Heat Wave -- this is a pattern by Judy Laquidara.  I love the pattern and purchased the fabric a LONG time ago.  I've got the center section done as well as the strip borders added to the quilt.  I do have one more pieced border to add.  I think in the end, this one will be a fun quilt.


Here are the start of the blocks for the pieced border.  The pattern is a snail's trail block (or monkey wrench).  The blocks will look great when they are done, but they are a bit tedious to sew.  Start with four patches, add a triangle, press, add 2nd triangle, press, add 3rd triangle, press, add 4th triangle, press...then do it all over again for the next round of four triangles.  All in all, I think there are 4 rounds of triangles on this one.



3. Since its winter and I like spending time by the fireplace I've been working on my cross-stitch a lot as well.  The first picture is from the tail end of December (note the box with the wrapping paper remnants in it).


This next one was at the end of January and I had a full additional page completed on this row as well as finished up the first page on the row.  The end picture will be awesome, but its definitely a labor of love.  There are a total of 42 pages on this one, and I'm on page 9.  I have quite a ways to go!



4. FINISHES!!!  I actually finished two quilts...finally!  A co-worker had a new baby last summer and I decided that I was going to make a quilt for the new baby.  I didn't know him very well when his first son was born, but I didn't want the older child to feel left out, so I opted to make two quilts.  Both quilts use the exact same fabrics, but use completely different patterns.  I wanted the quilts to be different (since no two children are the same) but I also wanted to tie the two brothers together, so I opted to do that with the fabrics.


Both quilts turned out well.  I like the string-pieced one a bit more though.



So that's the run down of the big things that have been happening.  I have a mini-vacation coming up next weekend where I am flying down to Orlando, Florida with one sister such that we can both visit our other sister for the weekend.  It'll be a fun girls' weekend.  :)

One of the things we plan on doing is kayaking with manatees.  I did it last year when I went to visit my sister in Florida, and we used a 2-person kayak.  However, I found a place this year that has 3-person kayaks.  The best part... that particular location is called the Three Sisters!  It was destined for us to do it. LOL

I hope everyone is staying safe and warm this winter!

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Busy Summer

Somehow this summer has gone flying by!  I don't know how it got to be September already!

I've been working on multiple projects... both inside and outside... that have been consuming a lot of time.  My running has also picked up during the summer and I'm running 45 minutes two days a week with a longer (~1.5 hr) run on the weekends.  I've gotten more fit, which I'm happy about.  I haven't quite broken the 30 minute barrier on a 5k, but I chalk up the last one to running when it was 77 degrees and 95% humidity.  Yuck!

Here's a few of the various projects that are on-going....

1. This is a quilt called Heat Wave by Judy Laquidara.  Its been stalled a bit due to working on other projects, but its in good shape.  I have to make a large pieced border yet in a snail's tail pattern, but I've made those blocks before and know how to get them to come out right.



2. The reason #1 is stalled.... a friend at work had a second child earlier this summer, so I've been working on a pair of quilts (one for child #1 and one for the new child).  Sadly, I'm WAY behind on this and I'm still not done with either quilt.  The baby was born in June, but the way I see it (or rationalize it) is that they won't need the blankets until it gets cold anyway.  :)




#3. In late May/early June, we went on a vacation to Myrtle Beach.  It was absolutely gorgeous and we had perfect weather.  The first photo is from the first morning there.  We had a tropical storm that was heading out from the prior day (hence the clouds), but the rest of the week was perfect.




#4.  I've gotten my groove back with needlepoint.  This is where it was earlier in the summer and the second photo is from the past few days.  I'm finally on to page 4... of 20+ pages.  A ways to go yet....




#5.  With the great weather we've had this summer, there's been a lot of work being done outside.  First and foremost is the stone wall that my husband has been building.  He picks out the rocks... I help him cement them all into place.  This is only one half of the wall.  There will be an arbor on the left of the picture before the second half of the wall starts up again.




All in all, its been a good summer.  It went by quickly, but hopefully we will still have several weeks of good weather before the true cold starts to set in.

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Water...The Next Gold

You never realize how important something really is until you don't have access to it.  I think most people take it for granted that they have clean drinking water at their disposal anytime you need or want it.  Growing up, I had public water all the time and never really thought twice about not having water, or I should say clean water.  My parents' summer home had questionable water when I was very little, but we always brought drinking water over from the main house and used the tap water there only for washing and showering.  The water there eventually got upgraded to water from the county (versus the small village) and its been clean ever since.

Over the past few weeks of dealing with our water issues, I've become more aware of how precious water can be.  I also look at what is happening in Flint, Michigan, and it makes me grateful that I do have my own water supply that I can control (to some extent).  I don't have to wait for some town to figure out that the water is bad and to eventually fix it.  I can do the testing myself and fix it.

Which is where this post is going....

We got news just over a week ago that our water was not suitable for drinking.  The water appeared clean, but I think that's where people sometimes get tripped up.  After the well drilling company next door messed up our well, we drank the water for two days before I said I wasn't comfortable doing it and we switched over to drinking bottled water until we could get test results back.  We knew ahead of time that our well had sulfur, iron and a bit of methane.  Our original water "system" had a chlorination system (sulfur, iron and chlorine bond and can be filtered out in something like a Brita filter) to take care of the sulfur and iron.

With the changes caused by the hydrofracking, we have a significant increase in the amount of methane in our water.  The hydrofracking also introduced coliform (bacteria) into the water.  Thankfully, the chlorination system is killing the bacteria; however, with the huge amount of methane we have now, there are two major problems.  First, we have a tremendous amount of water hammering now (i.e. gas buildup that causes pipes to rattle).  Long-term water hammering actually damages pipes and appliances and can cause major water issues as the pipes can break from the change in pressure.

The second issue...due to the insane amount of methane (and the fact that we chlorinate the water for sulfur and iron), we now have a chemical in our water called chloromethane (chlorine and methane bonding).  Chloromethane is toxic for humans.  It causes nervous system problems and if ingested by someone who is pregnant, will cause severe birth defects in the fetus.  I'm very glad that I made the cautious decision not to drink the water until the tests came back, as this is BAD STUFF!

We had three companies come to the house last week to quote water systems to fix our new issues.  We ended up picking one of them and they are installing a system this week.  Thankfully it is all fixable.....for a price.  Due to the cost of it, we also sent a letter to the well drilling company explaining everything (including all of our water test results) and that we expect them to cover our expenses for the new water treatment system since it is a direct result of their poor decision to hydrofrack.  We are not sure whether we will get anywhere with them, but we have to try.

So at this point, its at least another 4 weeks of using bottled water until we can get a new set of water tests back.  While the new system is designed to take care of these problems, we want to make sure that it does before we start drinking the water again.  It will be nice to be able to drink water straight from the tap again.

On the crafty side though (and because I want to include a picture), I've started a new cross-stitch pattern.  I've temporarily given up on the last one and put it aside as it was just REALLY slow going.  This one will be faster to sew (a bit smaller) and I'm more excited about this one.  Here is the next project:




I'm really liking the reds, golds and oranges in this one, which is a nice change after doing just blues and greens.

Hope everyone is doing OK after the storm that came up the coast this past weekend.  We didn't get a single snowflake, but I know other areas got hit really hard.


Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations