I think this is the somewhat final design for the Newt Quilt piece – of course, when I went to look for fabrics, things changed a bit.

The background fabrics are actually pretty close to what is pictured. The table and Twinkies and the yellow in the tapestry are far too yellow-orange, and I had to look for fabrics that were more plain yellow. (The assignment for this month is a Triadic color scheme, and I chose the primary colors of yellow, blue and red.)

Brief digression:

Ken had to go to work BOTH DAYS this weekend, so there wasn’t very much interesting cooking, just more eating of leftovers. Since he was gone on Saturday, I was feeling guilty that our mail lady had to get out of her vehicle, and walk up a little tiny path and then LEAN over the snow bank to put our mail in the box, so I decided to shovel the giant snowbank out of the way. Our jr. in high school neighbor from across the street came out and helped me after I had been working at it a while, and he made the last part go considerably faster. I will have to make him cookies. She should be able to drive up to it now. She will have to back up to get back out, but she can drive up to the mail box. Of course, on Sunday, my arms and wrists and right shoulder had a few things to say about that.

ANYWAY, as a reward for me getting that done, I went off the the quilt store (Harriet’s Treadle Arts) and got myself a hot chocolate at Starbucks on the way. I found two fabrics that I thought would be ideal for the bottom of the table and the tapestry. (I took along my drawing, but not the color wheel, big mistake.) That was almost too easy! It was too easy. When I got home, I discovered that the yellow in the checkerboard pattern for the tapestry was VERY yellow gold, and that my drawing had a lot of yellow gold in it. So, back to the drawing board.

Got some housecleaning done, some work on some “postage stamp” quilt blocks that I am doing to use up scraps, some sorting of fabric scraps into colors, and some work on my niece A’s pieced quilt. Ken didn’t get home until after midnight, and I didn’t sleep well until he got home.

He was up again Sunday morning and headed into work at 9:00. I headed out to another quilt store at about 10:00, and found some more yellow-yellows and and olive (olive is actually a tone of yellow) for the table top and twinkies, and a couple of red/yellow prints for the tapestry. The rest of the day was spent figuring that out and doing some more housecleaning. Ken got home and watched golf and did laundry, I made fajitas for dinner (meh). Got most of the fabrics I am going to use for The Newt fused and ready to go.

Of course I needed the color wheel to do some checking (I have two of them) and I couldn’t find either one. Hopefully one is in the car. I already found something this weekend that was “lost” – already can’t remember what that was, but it was in the sewing room and it was under a pile……

Important new hint: to clean your iron after you have fusible webbing/spray starch on it – iron on a dryer sheet. Wow! Yes, while the iron is still hot. I am managing to keep the iron clean this way. Ken doesn’t like surprises when he goes to iron his shirts. Also, the teflon pressing sheet for use w/fusible webbing was a very good purchase.

MaryAnne wanted to play fetch all weekend, I got out two new balls for her since she has destroyed most of her older ones, and she lost both of them already. Leo was carrying his stuffed kitten around in the middle of the night and crying because he was lonely. High maintenance weekend for cats.

So how about some gratuitous cat pictures?

Leo is mad because MaryAnne is copying him.

Being all cute for once. We used this one in our Christmas letter in 2010.

If MaryAnne isn’t getting enough attention, she rolls around on the floor like this and washes her stomach. Then she gets attention because we tell her she isn’t being ladylike.