The barn wood saga continues....

I have discovered i LIKE pulling nails from old barn wood. ..... HA!!  .... who'da thunk it?    

I now have 30 boards in the back of my truck....ready to make  a trip to the duck on Sunday. this old wood is really thick and heavy so that is all i can carry at once. i put a stick under my mud flap and watched it so i could judge just how far down the truck had sunk. 30 is my limit.  i still have to get up the looooong hill going into st. louis and my truck does NOT like hills. i seem to have no power going up hills......i might be in 3rd gear....struggling to retain 45 mph.....but once we reach the top.....woohoo....we do downhill really well. LOL

And i have pulled nails from about 25 more boards that are ready for the next trip. i am reorganizing the trailer that the boards are sitting on. stacking the boards with no nails all nice and pretty on one end. it's the only way to insure i get all the nails from all the boards. i have become an expert nail puller and figured out the tricks of getting out the bent nails and the broken nails.

And i've been making myself work on my #8 UFO challenge for this month. it's a 4 patch posie top that is about 42 blocks and they were not all assembled yet. i think i might have the square in a square part finished up tonight....then have to put 2 borders around each block before assembling them all into a top. it's a lot of black fabric with pink, white and red flowers and ferns and butterflies and birds. and i threw a bit of beige in there, too. it will get done....i'll just be bitching about it all the way. i don't know how to stop myself from making UFO's.....how do you do that? i like the excitement of the start but if another idea pops into my head.....boom.....i'm off on another tangent. i need control. i need a keeper. i need......something.

OK...i'm off to the studio to work on a fun little girl quilt. hope to finish it up tomorrow before i leave town. and still have to mow the grass at the studio, too.

Stay cool

Rugs and barn wood

I finally finished crocheting my tshirt rug. it is a heavy thing but very colorful. it will live at the Duck when it is ready for prettying up. now i can say i made a rug from tshirts. it was easy enough to do but made a big mess when cutting the tshirts into strips. and was very warm when it was on my lap while crocheting.

A lady that is in my quilt group volunteered to weave me a rug from tshirts. i thought that was a fascinating idea so i gave her some cut up tshirts and told her to go for it. she asked if i would like some extra bling in the rug, too. so i happily said yes to that idea also. last monday she brought my rug to class.

It is surprisingly soft and light in weight. i really like it.

It has all these pieces of yarn sticking up that make it 'me'. LOL  not sure how i will use it....i think it is too lightweight and delicate for a floor rug. it may become a coffee table rug or sofa table rug. not sure yet. i tied off all the fringe last night and trimmed it off evenly. i wonder how it will survive a round in the washer and dryer.

We brought home a trailer load of barn wood yesterday. my goodness, oak wood from years ago is very heavy.....and much thicker than today's wood.  we had a time getting that trailerload home over the hills of Missouri. i don't know what that trailer weighed but it was a chore for hubby's truck to pull it.

There looks like there are about a 100 boards on here. average about 6-7 foot long. and different widths. they still have the nails in them....so i am on nail pulling duty in the evenings.

My plan is to use this on my living room walls at the Duck. some of the ends will need to be trimmed. since they are shorter than i wanted, i think i will do a zigzag sort of pattern on the walls...cutting the edges at 45 degrees. i'll probably draw out a few designs and see which i like.

I pulled nails last night from about a dozen boards. some of the nails just fell out and could be pulled by hand...some pulled pretty easily...and, of course, there are always some that you have to fight for.  i got this many pulled from the boards i did last night.

SO, my days will be at the studio trying to catch up on quilting and my evenings pulling nails and getting grass mowed. in high 90 degree heat. i've been taking afternoon naps. .... there is nothing worth doing in afternoon heat except napping.....the dog agrees with me. LOL

Do you have an idea of how to install my wood on the walls?  let me know.

Here it is ---- June already!

Dang....where has the year gone.  i actually just planted a dozen tomato plants in the garden yesterday. they are still tiny so we shall see what happens. i also have 2 cushaw squash plants out there that i really, really want to grow and give me some squash so i can freeze it for pies. we are just about out from last year.

I did work on some Dear Jane blocks last night and looks like i made my prediction of 25 blocks done in May. although one of them is a border triangle...but i'm counting it anyway. it was a doozie.

This is my first border triangle...it is on the top...1st from the left. i had to frog about 4 rows and have a do-over. i didn't have enough on the edges for the seam. but i finally got it together. and it looks like an easy one compared to some others. it was paper pieced.

D8   Stable magic and glue stick and machine buttonhole stitch. i never seem to get them straight. but when you look at the picture of Jane's....hers are a bit crooked, too....so i don't feel bad.

K7   Stable magic and glue stick and machine buttonhole stitch.

J1   Stable magic and glue stick and machine buttonhole stitch.

C1   this one i just pieced as i went. cut the middle square as measured and then added the layers. not too bad. only had to redo the second layer once. LOL

I2   this one was also fairly simple. paper pieced the inside and added the triangles to the sides and trimmed down to 5".

I am going back out to the Duck tomorrow, so will take my DJ box with me and see what i can accomplish in the evenings.

Customer quilts are piling up....i really need to get busy there. and the UFO Challenge quilt this month from Judy Laquidara is not all pieced....so there is another June project. the Mono Color challenge this month from Judy is Indigo....blah!....not my favorite. but i have a piece of backing that color (somewhat) that i am going to draw on and make a wholecloth quilt. it won't be too large....about 55" square. but the challenge will get done (hopefully).

I went out to pick up barn wood from my friend the other day and discovered that the boards were still attached....partial walls. so i am looking for some labor to disassemble them for me....my friend judy thinks she has some leads on that project for me. so, hopefully soon i will have a trailer of barn wood to take to the duck for my living room wall. we are trading quilting for the wood so i will be quilting for her for a few years i think. LOL   that's ok.....judy is one of my favorite people.

Today was payday so i went to town to do some grocery shopping. my goodness...prices have gone up. and we have to get gas for the mowers and tractors and such. after paying electric and phone bills.....we are just waiting for the next payday now. we are fortunate that we can pay our bills and buy food and gas since so many cannot. and we have a home to live in. pray for Joplin folks.

Till next week.....stay out of trouble.
Later

One thing leads to another

For some reason....it is hard for us here on the farm to just do one thing. to do one thing usually involves doing 2 or 3 other things first.

I want to put old barn wood on the walls in the duck because i think it will be way cool and very artistic. so, i am looking for barn wood. success....my friend Judy has barn wood and is willing to share with me. so i tell my dh that i have found wood and as soon as i measure how much i need we can go and pick it up.

So, he says well, we will need the large trailer since they are probably 8 to 10 feet long (they are). ok...no problem says I.

Well, just a small problem...we will need new tires on the trailer to carry that large a load. ok...go get new tires...no problem says I.

Well, just a small problem....we need to empty the trailer first....it is full of cut tree logs that have to be split. lots and lots of logs. Dang....problem....

So, for the last 2 mornings we have spent about 3 hours each morning splitting logs and stacking them in the woodshed.  sure glad dh bought me that wood splitter for my birthday last year. LOL  finally the trailer is empty. now dh is driving the trailer over to the place where he buys the tires. hopefully they can get them on first thing monday and THEN we will be ready to go and pick up wood.......as soon as i measure to see how much i need.

Oh, yeah, and before we take the trailer load of wood to the Duck.....he has to put new brake lights on the trailer, too. geeze.....is there ANYTHING ELSE we need to do to go get some wood?

I plan on going to the duck on thursday...so i shall measure my walls and make space in the garage for a trailer load of barn wood.