Alphabet progress, pictures, and an award

I finished the letter J in my Prairie Schooler Alphabet last night.  Here it is.

I'm using Legacy (so I've been told) 30ct Custard Creme over one with DMC.  Here are A and J together.

I'm really surprised at how much I'm enjoying doing the over one.  Maybe the secret is not to use 40ct or 32ct.  lol!  I've had to change some of the colors on both charts, and wish I'd changed the red on the A chart.  For details go to the Prairie Schooler ABC SAL blog. 

In other news, it was Thanksgiving weekend this past weekend.  The boy child had a sweet 16 party to go to.  My friend Ralph managed to get a picture of the boy child all spiffed up -- and smiling!

Now how fair is that that he can get the boy child to smile -- or even to pose for a picture for that matter?  You should have seen me the other day trying to get a picture of the boy child before his Area All County concert.  Forget it!

And of course, we had Thanksgiving dinner.  I won't bore you with lots of pictures.  But I just had to brag about my dear father type.  He always does the holiday cooking around here.  (I do the cooking the rest of the year.)  He's been doing the turkey since before we were married.  I still remember how disastrous his first attempt was way back in the dark ages before marriage.  lol!  But now he's an expert -- makes his own stuffing, candied sweet potatoes, homemade gravy, the works!  Here's the lovely turkey -- not a large one since the kids don't go for turkey that much.

Such a good cook, my father type!

And before I forget, a very old friend from way back when (or at least it feels that way!) gave me this award.

Her blog is Pomegranates and Paper.   I still remember going to her house back when she lived in our neighborhood and just drooling over her Stickley furniture, her real wood venetian blinds, and everything else that was just perfectly decorated to a T.  And of course going to the quilt shop together.  Or how about the time when we made a trip to the emergency room for some kidney stones?   I stayed in the waiting room with the two little ones, one of hers and the only one I had back then, the girl child.  The teen (my friend's blog name for her) outshone the poor girl child in the waiting room for cuteness.  I think it was the girl child's first time being outstaged by a younger woman.  (The girl child was a bit more than a toddler and the teen was a bit less than a toddler I think.)   :D  Anyway, check out her blog -- it's wonderful!   Loretta, I never thought you'd go back to the law stuff.  And what happened to the quilting in our lives?

Anyway, the rules for this award are to list 10 random facts about me followed by nominations of 7 bloggers that I hold dear.  Hmmmm, this is going to be tough!   Ok, here goes!

1.  I love the Beatles.  Many of you probably already know that, but it doesn't say it has to be little known facts, does it?  :D   I actually discovered the Beatles in college (we're talking '79 to '83 here), but I do remember jumping up and down on the couch to "She Loves You" as a wee one.  We sang along too:  "Bunxum yeah yeah yeah!" we screamed.  (That's what we thought they were saying.)   Later as a small child I heard various Beatles songs as the 101 strings version played on my mom's favorite radio station, KMAN in Manhattan, Kansas.  I had no clue that songs like Fool on a Hill were by the Beatles till I was in college.

2.  My hands are way too small.  I mean waaaaaayyyyy toooooo smalllllll!!   Just to give you an idea, I have to wear my kids' winter gloves from when they were little.  I think the ones I'm using are a child size medium from LL Bean.  See what I mean by small?  It's a real disadvantage when you are trying to learn to play the piano (I can only barely reach an octave) or the guitar.  I trashed the piano when I was in 4th grade I think.  The guitar was my idea so that lasted longer, but with small hands I just can't do much.

3.  I wanted to learn to play drums as a kid and so did the boy child.  Pretty funny, huh?  The reason why I didn't learn was that my mother said she wouldn't be able to take all the noise.  The reason the boy child didn't learn?  Well that's a long story.  He was already taking guitar lessons at the time that all the elementary school kids got to choose an instrument to learn at school.  He wanted to do drums.  I said -- do you really want to learn two instruments?  Why don't you put down guitar and see if they'll let you do that with the band?  Well, he went off to school and saw the instrument demos -- and discovered that you could play the Jaws music on the double bass.  You know, that DU DUM  DU DUM DU DUM thing.  How cool is that?!  So the boy child signs up for guitar with double bass as his second choice.  And they assign him double bass.  I say to him, well that means you'll be learning two instruments after all.  Do you want me to contact them and ask to switch you to drums since that was what you really wanted?   And I think you know what the boy child said.  No thanks.  And the rest is history.  :D   (This is getting to be long, isn't it?)   Oh, and he picked up the bass guitar later.  After the double bass.  They're the same thing after all.  Sort of.

4.  I've had two stitching lives.  Well, I've mentioned that before.  Basically, I had a stitching life mixed in with my quilting where I'd basically just do the AC Moore or JoAnne type stuff.  I loved Paula Vaughn, and my first real designer was Prairie Schooler.  But I used aida and DMC and life was limited. I did try one Scarlet Letter kit, which was my first time with linen and silks, but never finished it.   Stopped stitching pretty much, just quilted.  Then my neighbor Kathy (no blog) got me back into stitching and I discovered how changed the world was.  Silk fibers, linen galore -- I went ga gah crazy and that was it.  I haven't touched a quilt since.  Sort of.

5.  Which leads to -- I want to get back into quilting.  I guess it will be my second quilting life if I do get back into it.  The same sort of thing has happened.  In the 3 or 4 years since I stopped quilting, things have changed.  Now there are all these new fangled precuts which are marvelous, neat patterns all over the place, and the best part is -- all these hand applique designs!!!!!  Argh!!!  Like this

Or this

These amazing quilt patterns can be found at Threadbear Quilts in Australia.   The first one is the Civil War Bride Quilt.  There's a blog that I think I have the link for in my side bar.  The second quilt is Phebe's Quilt by Di Ford.  I so totally want to do both!  (Thanks to Lizzie for the second picture.  Hope you don't mind, Lizzie!

6.  I have a fear of crowds.  I think it's because once upon a time in junior high, there was this event in the gym.  Afterwards, everyone was crowding out and something happened and everyone was panicking and pushing and shoving and -- well, I was in the midst of it.   And I went down with people falling on top of me and was sure I was about to be trampled.  Luckily, someone pulled me out and I was ok.  But ever since then I haven't been able to tolerate crowds.  I just get panicky.  Ugh!

7.  I hate housework.  Well, I don't mind the laundry that much, but I hate everything else.  My mother was a clean freak and I'm the exact opposite.  Which isn't a good thing.  Oh well.

8.  The father type and I are pack rats.  I guess that sort of goes along with the housework thing.  But it's true.  Luckily we're not extreme pack rats (ie hoarders) like Homer and Langley.

9.  I'm an anglophile.  Yes, I'm one of those who loves to read about the royals -- actually more the historical royals than the modern day ones.  And I love to read British literature and all that.  I'm an anglophile.  What more can I say?

10.  I love to watch tennis.  Which you probably already know if you read this blog.  The internet has changed my tennis watching.  I used to just watch the slam events.  Now with the advent of online streaming, I've been watching all sorts of tournaments.  The latest and last of the year was last week's ATP World Tour Finals (or WTF, which totally cracked me up the first time I saw that).  Boy, was that a great tournament!  Only the top 8 seeded players in the world going at it.  Totally enjoyable.  And it was at the O2 arena in London.  Cool!

Whew!  I did it!  Now the other part will be harder.  In fact, I'm such a chicken that I'm not going to pass the award on.  Sorry Loretta!   :D   But hey, I think this post is long enough as it is!

Have a great week, everyone!  Thanks for stopping by and saying hello.