"Deeply committed to infusing quilters with the confidence that stems from developing a growing mastery of one's craft."
Recent Articles
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New Digs
I have begun a new blog at a new location. To visit, just click here! ...read more -
You'll Get Better
Sorry about all of the peace and quiet on my blog lately. I've been trying to get my new Feathers DVD out before show season starts and that's unfortunately a process which takes much longer than I ever expect it to take. Now that it's finally done I can (finally!) get back to real life and maybe even get some quilting done. Wouldn't that be miraculous? Can you imagine the headlines? 'Quilter Actually Finds Time To Quilt! News At 11!'
The shows start in just a few weeks and I am looking forward to seeing my quilty friends again. While the Internet is truly a wonderful thing, and brings people from all over the world together, I find that nothing really beats seeing your friends in person after a long time apart. The hugs are wonderful, the time spent looking at quilts with people who share your passion is fabulous, and the hijinks are glorious. I am looking forward to seeing everyone's latest projects, but even more to seeing everyone's faces. I just wish the show season came more than once a year so it wouldn't be so long between visits.
On one ...
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Retreat! Retreat!
I just love going on quilting retreats. The benefits of retreating are many and varied, but my personal favorite is that when I’m on a retreat, nobody is calling me ‘Mom’ and demanding that I make them a sandwich. My other favorite benefit is that retreats are not held in campgrounds, because I absolutely adore not camping.
There are several quilting groups that I belong to, and each group holds their own getaways. My favorite group has twice-yearly retreats, held at a hotel close enough to not be a major road trip, but just far enough out of town that anyone’s husband who might be considering making a call to say that the meatloaf is burning and won’t you please come home and do something about it would think twice before picking up the phone.
We all show up on Friday, loaded down with sewing machines, pillows, pants that have elastic waistbands, and 18 or 19 half-finished projects, because a person just never knows when they’re going to get bored with their current project and need something new to mess up. And, of course, there’s the all-important food. Quilters must have food, and, since we ...
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Judged by the Content of Our Character
Come Tuesday, we will have a new President, and whether you love him or hate him, you can't deny that the times they are a changin' here in America. (mind you, I am neither Democrat or Republican, I just vote for whoever I think will do the best job for my children, so please don't send me any hate mail asking if I drank too much of the Kool-Aid.) We have repeatedly been called to greater service to our nation and to each other, and people are beginning to respond to that call. Personally, I think it's fabulous that the 'Me' generation is finally starting to take a good look at itself and it's motives, and I find myself agreeing wholeheartedly with a recent comment left on my blog that seeing far too many women waltzing around with 'Princess' emblazoned on their chests is beginning to get a teensy bit old. It's high time we realize that it's not about 'us' with a small u, it's about 'Us' with a big U. For over a decade we spent too much, we borrowed too much, we got too greedy, and we forgot about what ...
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On Building Cathedrals
This was sent to me by my sister Deb, and I think it's fabulous. After almost two weeks of having the kids home from school, and feeling invisible for most of that time, this really helps me put things into perspective. I don't know who wrote it, because she is invisible, but I know she's a genius.
Long Live Cathedral Building!
Kimmy
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Invisible Mother......
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It all began to make sense, the blank stares, the lack of response, the way one of the kids will walk into the room while I'm on the phone and ask me a question. Inside I'm thinking, 'Can't you see I'm on the phone?' Obviously, not. No one can see if I'm on the phone, or cooking, or sweeping the floor, or even standing on my head in the corner, because no one can see me at all.
I'm invisible. The invisible Mom. Some days I am only a pair of hands, nothing more: Can you fix this? Can you tie this? Can you open this? Some days I'm not a pair of hands; I'm not even a human being. I'm a clock to ... -
Christmas Carnage on Burlington Path
Due to popular demand, I am reposting this from last year, so you can laugh at me all over again.
You're welcome!
Kimmy
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It seems like everybody is really stressing out big-time over the holidays
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this year, so I thought it might be a good idea for me to tell you how stupid I
was this morning, so you can have a good laugh to mix things up a bit.
Okay. So. I get this brilliant idea this morning to make luminarias out of
ice to place alongside my sidewalk and driveway, because they look so pretty
glowing in the snow at night. However, every time I try to put out conventional
paper luminarias, they blow over in the wind, and I end up racing down the
street chasing multiple rolling flaming paper bags while my neighbors snicker
and point. Having previously resolved not to make an even bigger fool of
myself than I already am during the Christmas Season of 2007, I decided that I
would be so smart that, this year at least, everyone would be stunned and
amazed by my dazzling smartness rather than my usual idiocy.
Digging through my kitchen to find something cool looking ... -
Stop the Presses! I Actually Made Something Out of Stash Fabric!
Will wonders never cease? Believe it or not, I actually made quilts (three of them!) from stash fabric. It's like a Christmas Miracle! It's the New Me! If I keep this sort of thing up, soon I will have the strength of ten Grinches. (plus two!)
About three years ago, I made a Log Cabin in the barnraising set out of 1930's fabrics for my church's fundraiser.
I didn't know how big I wanted the quilt to be, so I just started cutting one and a half inch wide strips, and forgot to stop cutting. Before I knew it, I had enough strips to make a quilt large enough to keep an entire Amish family snuggly warm throughout a harsh winter. Since we don't exactly have lots of Amish families at our church, what with being a congregation of lutefisk eating Lutherans and all, I decided to just make the quilt a generous queen size and call it good. The leftover strips, all forty eleven thousand of them, were jammed into a giant Zip-Lock bag and shoved into the back of a drawer to continue to age.
Occasionally I'd stumble across the bag ...
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Candy And Quilts. Life Is Good.
It's one of the inarguable facts of the universe; Quilters like candy. So, to show you what a caring and sensitive person I am, I am going to share with you a recipe that combines three of the best things in life. #1. Sweet. #2 Salty. #3 Easy.
Start with these items. You can use any kind of Kisses that you want. I prefer the Candy Cane ones because I think the red and white stipes look festive, but when you consider the fact that these little babies get gobbled up before they've even had a chance to get halfway cooled off, I suppose that it really doesn't matter if they look festive or not.
Cut a sheet of the parchment paper to fit your cookie sheet. (you'll want to use parchment paper to make cleanup easy. easy cleanup is good. if God didn't want us to have easy cleanup, He never would invented parchment paper.) Lay out rows of pretzel rings. Crowd them in nice and tight so you can get the making part over with and begin the eating part as quickly as possible. Unwrap your Kisses and put one Kiss inside of ...
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It Takes A Village
Back in 1990, Mr. Kimmy bought me three little buildings. At the time, I thought it was the dumbest gift I had ever gotten. Being the caring and sensitive person that I am, I didn't want to hurt his feelings, so I told him some variation of "Oh, what a lovely gift!" but inside I was thinking "Oh, brother." What sort of idiot would ever collect these buildings, or worse, actually spend money on them?!? Not me, that's for sure. Nope. I'm way too smart for that. Not me. Never. I mean it, too.
Approximately $5000.00 and eighteen years later, this is what I currently have in what was once my living room.
It's not my fault. Mr. Kimmy made me buy them. All 37 of them. And 75 people. And more trees and shrubbery than I care to count. It's all his fault. That's my story, and I'm sticking with it.
Village Assembly Time begins on Thanksgiving Evening and starts with us moving all of the living room furniture over and smushing it together in a huddled little group. If you come to visit me, and we sit in the living ...
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I Am An Idiot.
I have been really busy lately. Getting my ducks in a row for the next DVD is a lot more time-consuming than I expected it would be, but fortunately, I still have time to be an idiot.Yesterday, I was out running errands. Since it was getting to be lunchtime and I was starving, I decided to grab a box of sushi and a Mountain Dew to eat in the car as I did my running around. The sushi was Smoked Eel Roll, which I love, and it came with a big mound of super hot wasabi and some pickled ginger, which I also love.Driving along, I mindlessly reached over into the box and grabbed bits of sushi to pop into my mouth, while keeping my eyes on the road. The sun was shining, the radio was cranked up, and there was a school bus in front of me with goofy little kids making faces at me in the back window. I made faces right back at them and giggled foolishly, thinking life was just grand.And then it happened.Instead of grabbing sushi, I grabbed THE ENTIRE WAD OF WASABI and stuffed it into my mouth. The entire ......read more -
Pitiful
Pitiful (pit-ih-full) adj. 1. Inspiring or deserving pity.
These are my dogs. They are pitiful.
They are also a menace to the gardening industry. As you can see for yourself, Augie took out the potted geraniums on the way down the steps.
Toby is a conehead because he was neutered last week. He has 5 days left with his cone. He has become quite an expert at getting a good running start and bashing straight into your shin with the hard edge of the cone. This has not made him very popular around here. If you stand in the street outside our house, mostly what you will hear is "Ouch! Toby! Knock it off!" and some other words that maybe I should not type here.
Augie has a hotspot on his cheek which he won't stop scratching, and since I do not relish the thought of blood on the furniture, I had to go dig up his cone. As I type this, he is sitting about 3 feet away, glaring at me. It's not hard to tell what he is thinking. It makes the things we say to Toby seem tame by comparison.
It occurred to me as ...
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Let's Make Quilts. Lots of Them.
Back in June, I posted this on an online machine quilting list I belong to. I have had such tremendous feedback that I thought it would be a good idea to post it here, in order to give a whole new group of quilters the opportunity to participate in a worthwhile cause. I hope that, if you're reading this, you will find the time in your busy schedule to take part in this project. Trust me. It's *SO* worth it.
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Okay, everybody always says "Oh, I love it when you post those long
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story-posts to the list! You should post more!" Well, be careful what
you ask for, because you just might get it. <grin> Here's another
one of my long lectures, only this one isn't funny. Go get some
coffee.
I laid awake for a long time last night, thinking about this, and
since misery loves company, I am going to give you something to lay
awake and think about. :-)
For those of you who don't know her, Alycia Carmin is
deeply involved with Quilts of Valor. She pieces them herself, she
quilts tops that others have pieced, she teaches the kids in her ... -
Wow. I Am Very Smrt.
The good news; Jenna is beginning to recover from her bout with mono.The bad news; Jenna is starting to get just a teensy bit bored, and has taken to dressing somewhat oddly. What is a person supposed to do with a girl as goofy as this one?
Let me preface the following by saying that it wasn’t my fault. I know I said I was going to make a pretty pink and green and white quilt, but as I’m sure you know, sometimes things can get ever so slightly out of hand at the quilt shop. After all, if they hadn’t placed the whole line of Moda ‘Merry and Bright’ and Marcus Brothers ‘Snowflakes Welcome’ right by the front door, I’d have stayed on track and would be in the middle of making myself a nice, girly quilt right now. But, noooo. I saw the holiday fabrics, and that was the end of me. The chartreuse green and red plaid was what grabbed me first, quickly followed by the candy cane-like red and green diagonal stripe. And once I had those two, the rest just sort of fell into place, and I was lost. So ...
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Miracle On Burlington Path
Holy smokes, I can't believe I'm even saying this. I am almost completely caught up. Yes, you heard me right; I am almost completely caught up! It's like a miracle! Not a true miracle, of course, not like the Miracle of the Blessed Appearance of the School Bus, but a miracle nonetheless. You will be so shocked when you hear how caught up I am. Not half as shocked as me, but still.
The past year and a half has been a doozy, to say the least. My cancer came back, the ever-popular Mr. Kimmy needed a quadruple bypass, I got a stent in my heart, my thyroid got a little too much radiation and sprouted problems, and my kids went and turned into extremely busy teenagers while I wasn’t looking. When this much life attacks you all at once, you sort of fall behind a little bit, and I have been feeling totally behind the eight ball since early 2007, with ever increasing mounds of incomplete tasks piling up everywhere I look. This bugs the living daylights out of me, because I am one of those really irritating Martha Stewart types who must have everything ...
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It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year!
It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year! (I'll bet you're going to have that song stuck in your head all day long now, aren't you? LOL!) Yes, that's right, folks, it's BACK TO SCHOOL TIME!!!! I love school. I love the happy, smiling bus driver who cheerfully arrives at the street corner bright and early every morning and takes all of the children away for 8 hours. I love the other Moms who all come out of their houses still dressed in their bathrobes, clutching their coffee cups, doing the happy dance in their driveway. I love the peace and quiet that falls on the neighborhood, and the way you can actually go for a walk and hear birds chirping sweetly instead of hearing 'I Like Big Butts and I Cannot Lie' pouring from the garage down the street where the skateboard kids hang out and spend the afternoon working on their spitting skills. Yes, it's true, I love school. When my kids were little, my neighbor, Keri, and I used to threaten to make signs and form a picket line in front of the school every June, shouting “What do we ...
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