A Blogger Failure

Guess that, even with my New Year's resolution, I am not a very consistent blogger. It's not that things don't happen to talk about, but it seems I'm so busy doing things there's no time for blogging.

I did have a wonderful time in May. My sister came for five days to visit and for four of those days our friends, Jan Hickman and her sister Chere, joined us. We had met up at an Art and Soul mixed media retreat last year in Kansas City and we all just got along together so well. This year we decided that we would save the expensive (and mostly not great) classes and hotel bills and have our own retreat. We each were responsible for a dinner and teaching classes to each other. We learned gel printing, fabric dying, working with grunge board, covering things with printed tissue paper, marbling paper and glass etching with a sand blaster. We had so much fun…the highlight of my year!

I am still quilting like crazy, keeping way busier than I ever thought I would. Still just crazy about my computerized addition to my quilting machine and now I have something else that is just great. I got a "Quilter's Eye" for my machine. It is a tiny camera that mounts under the quilt next to the bobbin case and has a monitor on top where you can see the stitching under your quilt. No more laying on the floor with a flashlight and looking up to see how the tension is on the back of the quilt. I love it. Here is a picture of it. I told several people I thought my quilting machine was starting to look like the Starship Enterprise. It is all in keeping with my personal opinion that you can never have too many electronic gadgets in your life.

Speaking of electronic gadgets, my good friend Diane got me an iPod dock for my birthday. When my sister was here she was shocked that we actually had to resort to CDs for music and she couldn't believe I didn't have a dock for my iPod or iPhone. Not sure why I didn't have one. I have had an iPod for years and bought the first one that came out…replacing it over the years as I felt necessary. Now I can quilt away to an eclectic collection of music.