Two of my favorite people

Thanks to my wonderful friends, Lu and Tom, I now have live in help!  Woohoo!

Meet Roo

Of course, all he does is vacuum but with these two hairballs, that is a BIG help!

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And, in other news, I finished this modern quilt - well all except the binding, which will be knife edge and therefore invisible on the front (in case you didn't know what a knife edge binding was, which I'm sure you do. and if not, you do now.)

It took me two days to quilt this freaking thing because the stitch lines are like 3/4 inch apart and I used almost an entire BIG spool of thread sewing them. I will not be enjoying the utter tedium of this type of quilting in the foreseeable future, that's for sure. Anyhoo, I do love these fabrics - something new and different for yours truly.

Here is the back. I had to piece a strip because I didn't have quite enough. And if anybody out there has this fabric, I need about a half yard more and I'll happily buy it from you. Shoot me an email.

Happy Birthday to Seth!!

My beautiful grand-nephew turns Fabulous FIVE today!

Love you, Sethers!!

Actually, it's going to be 82 degrees here in the fabulous Florida Keys today but here is what's happening to the north. Wow! (And they say there's no such thing as climate change!)

You may be asking yourself why my mom looks especially fabulous and that is because she was my date to the Bougainevillea Ball last night.

 We attended the silent auction, sipped champagne, danced to music by Pangea, ate filet mignon and lobster tail, drank wine and, because of the noise level, screamed at each other all night. This was made possible by my beautiful friend, Janine.

Did I mention that we were seated at the most exclusive table in the room of 530 guests? Well we were and it was divine, darling. Just like old times -- only better. After some trepidation yesterday, I'm feeling pretty happy today knowing that I've put yet another reminder of my husband behind me, replacing it with a sweet new memory: a date with my Mom.  

Yes! I OWN the ball!

First off, I just want to let you know that the reason I haven't been posting is not because I've been depressed. It's because I've been SO BUSY. Not five minutes to upload my pictures or write a few lines. This morning I am skipping my walk so I can share a few pictures. Think about how they do a recap before each Glee episode super fast and that is what this is. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, it doesn't matter. So, this first shot is remarkable because it is a picture of FOG. And, we don't have fog in Key Largo. Ever. This is a shot from my front porch.

And, one of the reasons I've been so busy is because my gorgeous niece, Anna and my fabulous brother-in-law, Tom have been visiting.

And, my parents are here!! So happy to have them back in Florida. Here is my goofy dad in my hat (shout out, Gail, love my handmade hat!) during our cold spell here.

So, we all trooped over to Island Dolphin Care to watch Anna swim with the dolphins. It was absolutely wonderful. I cried practically the whole time. Which is ridiculous but I couldn't help it. And I had my sunglasses on so nobody knew.

ready to go

meeting Lotus

And the other reason I've been so busy is because I threw a party for my fabulous friends from water aerobics on the coldest day of the year! 32 of us crowded around patio heaters and had hot soup and hot cider and tons of fun.

Ok, so the day after the party, I drove Anna and Tom up to the Ft. Lauderdale airport  and said good-bye and then I drove to Bayside in Miami where I met up with Katrina, Sue and Joyce for lunch and

our view at lunch

a Duck Tour courtesy of Katrina! Here we are in our duck hats with our quackers. We managed to annoy the other passengers quite nicely. 

The tour went across the MacArthur Causeway, around South Beach and finally plunged into Biscayne Bay. We circled Star Island and viewed the houses of the stars and the rich and powerful and various filming locations and I would give you the details but instead, you should go to Miami and take the tour. (In other words, I can' remember them all.)

This multi-millionaire - can't remember who he is -
imported his palm trees from South Africa
because he wanted them to be uniform.
They looked fake!

Views from the water. And btw, I am not going to bore you with the nightmare traffic going home story. Suffice to say I would rather stick my knitting needles in my eyes than go back to Miami any time soon.

And finally, here is a picture I took on Sunday at Snapper's, aka Our Lady of Perpetual Mimosas.  Looking up from my seat at the bar. They finally took down my husband's license plate and put mine is in it's rightful place. Yeah!  Thank you, Janine!

And, that's what you missed on Glee!  er, I mean in Lizzie's little life.  

So as I was saying, I left the show early and drove up to Jensen Beach to see my sister-friend, Sarah and my three grand-nephews and niece. So HAPPY to see them! And, they have a fabulous new house. Well, it will be. Fabulous, that is. I'm envious of the work and decorating they have ahead of them.

Almost didn't go when I looked out the hotel window in the a.m.

I'm voting for perriwinkle blue

 Genevieve has her new room all planned out. It will be pink, dontcha know.

Ben's ready to go

 Also met their new neighbor but he wasn't talking. Dubbed "Feathers" by Genevieve

And, I can't resist. Have to show you just a few more of the fabulous quilts I saw at the World Quilt Show. The first one was inspired by The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

 Look at the quilting detail in the fingers. Amazing!

 This was cute. I could relate a little bit.

 The only modern quilt I'm putting here. I am interested in quilting some modern.

And inspired by Seth's and Ben's new haircuts,  I took Miss Sophie off to Michele for her annual haircut. How ADORABLE is she?! Little Leo the Lion

So, I drove through a freaking hurricane to get up to West Palm - checked into my hotel after a fabulous time at the show and watched the local news and they said if the rain had been snow, we would have had seven feet! I believe it. It was crazy awful. But like the post office's motto: Neither snow nor rain nor heat . . . well you know the rest. I was not to be deterred!

So, how crazy is this? I took 114 pictures the first day. Whoa! I promise not to put them all here but seriously, you would love to see each and every one - I know that you would.

see the egret?

 Amazing that this is just fabrics and sewing, isn't it? Women are so creative.

This next quilt won Best of the world. It was titled Venetian Menagerie and it was jaw dropping amazing. Fabric and sewing, people! Well, and skill and imagination.

 I thought this next one was done with organza but nope. Every bit of "shading" is another piece of fabric. Wow

The South Africa quilts were disturbing and beautiful. They were not just fabric and sewing. They had yarn and paint and paper and plastic and you name it. Innovative. I think this was called Religious Conversation or something like that.

 Lots of 3-D this year. A whole section of delphiniums interpreted by a guild but I liked this one best.

 This guild used a common "pathway" and each created her quilt to incorporate it. Love this idea!

 This next quilt of Mozart won first place but my picture came out blurry. sorry

This won 3rd place. The scrabble tiles on the side of her face spell out affirmation and the background fabric has a variety of new age related words and sayings.

This next quilt won Best of Country, I think for Japan. Whatever, it was well deserved. That's a lot of points, baby!

This quilt won 2nd place. It was trapunto and about a gazillion hours of quilting.

Great show as always. Loved it. Spent too much money.  Next time I'll tell you why I cut the show short on the second day.  buh bye for now