Spring Fever

Our Easter was so much fun. My boys found many candy filled eggs left by the Easter Bunny.

Since then, I have been under the weather though - complete with fever and cough that is certainly not helping me rest.

When I get run down, my creative work goes south first, so quilting and other fun endeavors have been more or less on hold around here.

I have been catching up on blog reading though, and found:

• How to make Peeps into S'mores - that's my kind of left-over!
  
  
• Spoiler Alert: Next year's Star Wars themed Lego Advent Calendar contents revealed - wow cool.
  
  
• Yoko Saito has finally published a book in English (and French too!) called Past and Present My Quilting Life. I see a copy of this coming my way eventually...
  
  
• And last but not least, you know I have spent too much time reading random blogs when I start to wonder if a toilet that opens its own lid for you and heats your feet as well would not be a fun addition to our home. Wait a sec, this toilet is worth more than my car!
  
  Gosh, I hope this cold leaves me soon!
  

Happy Easter! Basket Quilts anyone?

If you are celebrating Easter this weekend, I wish you the happiest Easter ever.

For this holiday, we decided the dessert featured will be a cream cheese pound cake, topped with strawberries and home made whipped cream. Yummy!

On the healthy side, we are also trying to recreate a salad recipe that we love - it's from a big chain restaurant - California Pizza Kitchen - (do these exist outside of the U.S.? I am not sure I have ever seen one). The salad is their Cobb salad, and we are going to try to make the ranch dressing from scratch too.

A while back, I picked up bunch of antique quilt blocks, one of which you see above, that are all the same, and have these chocolate brown and aqua green baskets on them. They are all on point, and are so very adorable.

I hope to find just the right sashing fabric for these blocks eventually so I can finish up a very spring-ish looking quilt.

Class cancelled this month...but have a cake pop!

Looks like not enough folks to hold applique class this month at "Verb", but looking forward to resuming in May.

When we were at a birthday party last week, my friend made these cake pops for everybody. She got the instructions on Bakerella. I thought, wow, these are pretty darn adorable. I think they will show up at our next birthday party.

Japanese Taupe Applique and modern quilting

Tomorrow is our April class where we applique modern house blocks over at A Verb for Keeping Warm in Oakland.

This house is a beautiful one, and another in the BOM series that our class is working on. If you have the time and live locally, come and join us...this block will be a piece of cake.

I spent this week in Austin, Texas. If you haven't had the chance to visit there, I would highly recommend it. I could really see myself living there. It is quite hip.

One of my Texan girlfriends turned me on to these beaded wrap bracelets that are popular there. I broke down and bought one, and after realizing how expensive they are online I guess I should have bought 2 when I had the chance. Oh well...Chan Luu makes a bunch of them that are beautiful but on the pricey side.

Another beautiful link for you is over on "oh, hello friend" - check out this post on twinkle lights. So pretty. Not only would I love to do a photo study like this to take amazing pictures of them, but I would also like to think about how to get some of them up in my back yard!

It's raining, it's hailing....

It was so strange to experience a brief hail storm today. I love it when the weather surprises me. Especially when I have an umbrella in my trunk.

There is a cowl in the Last Minute Knitted Gifts book that I would like to make someday.

I picked up some Jade Sapphire lace weight yarn in colorway "You Say Tomato". It's bright alright. Same color as my teapot! I wound it up on my little yarn swift that I have, but someday I plan to get a yarn swift like this one from Bluster Bay Umbrella Swifts.

I will need a good studio to keep it in first though. It looks huge. I will eventually make something with it ah, but for now I just love the way it feels.

Liberty of London fabrics fall into that category for me. So soft, almost too good to cut up and quilt with them! Hope your week ends up well.

Oh, and if you have ever been to a cool yarn store or quilt store in Austin Texas, let me know. I might end up visiting there.

Out like a lamb

My son came home from school and was amazed that I knew the 2nd half of the phrase describing how March weather comes "In like a lion" and goes "Out like a lamb".

It's true though, now it finally feels like spring to me. Time to take the camera outside!

As you may know, I love photography and am always trying to improve my own photos. I spent the weekend taking a photo workshop with this photographer named Eddie Soloway.

It gave me some fresh ideas on making photos, and perhaps it will get me out with my camera a bit more. Eddie is very inspirational and quite known as an excellent teacher.

When I was in San Francisco about a week ago, I ran into another photographer named Jeff Chih.

He had a really interesting photography equipment set up and was creating a stop motion video. We walked in front of his lens at some point so perhaps my family is in one of his 'movie' images. He was very happy to chat about his work and a super friendly person.

Anyhow, if you have a spare 2.5 minutes to watch something beautiful, check him out on youtube as Vista Point Studios or see the 'video' he created when I ran into him by clicking here. Pretty cool.