Reconnecting

Someone I mentor has been gently encouraging me to reconnect with this blog, so here is my feeble attempt to do so. 

The farm is going fairly well, we have about 30 head of cattle now and have stabilized at raising about 180 chickens a year and 50 turkeys. 

That may or may not be about to change as our poultry locker is shutting down after this season and we're not sure what we'll do about it. A new locker is opening up near Omaha, but at about twice the price as the current one. Regulations in this state are deeply unfriendly toward small poultry lockers, and federally inspected lockers require that you bring 5,000 birds at once (yeah, that's not happening!). Those are definitely owned by Big Ag.

I do continue to quilt, here is what is currently "under my needle" and in progress. It's a large quilt, which I am attempting to quilt to a level I am comfortable sending it to a show. 

I've also finished a few others since my last post, of course. Here is a scrappy baby quilt...

...that I made from the scraps of our new bed quilt. I hand-quilted the center of this one, so it took forever. I've been working on it since 2008 and finished it in 2018.

I made a charity quilt for Cradling New Life (love the power line fabric!!)

And finished up a hand applique project I call "boil the ocean", inspired by a trip to Hawaii (also started in 2008, I think!). 

I made a couple of denim quilts for gifts and to auction off for Ryan's campaign fundraiser:

And I participated in my first Quiltville Mystery Quilt by Bonnie Hunter (if you're looking for a positive, uplifting daily blog, hers is the BEST!), this is "Good Fortune". Not my usual style, but a lot of fun. The mystery aspect with weekly pieces to complete kept me going.

I completed a whole cloth silk quilt, which is a lot of lessons learned. I designed this pattern for my sister-in-law's wedding quilt, but that one was too busy to see the pattern. I have some red silk I'd like to remake this on, and do it better. 

Last, I've participated in the last two Cherrywood Challenges, themed "Prince" and "Bob Ross". I've made it into both tours of quilts, but not yet won a prize. That's my next goal, we will see what the theme is this year.

Family life is going ok, it doesn't ever seem to slow down. Ryan didn't win his campaign, he's currently contemplating when and how and where he will try again. 

He fairly promptly picked up a "part time" job as the general manager of the Iowa Food Cooperative, which is not quite as all-consuming as a political campaign, but not far off. 

We continue to ballroom dance, mostly at Red Friar's in Ames through the winter as our standing date night.

The kids also keep growing, H went to her first year at Clearwater Camp solo before we joined her at family camp. I swear she wasn't this unhappy at camp, I just timed my only pictures before leaving very poorly.

Z is more able to enjoy the Northwoods every year. 

Ryan's brother also got married this summer in Vermont, to a lovely woman who suits him well. This pic is Ryan's dad, sister, brother, and Ryan. Apparently I didn't get a good pic with the lovely bride!

And the kids started taking on more of the farm chores this summer as well (yay!). 

I think that's all the news that's fit to print for now!

2017 in summary - picture heavy!

Strap in, this is going to be a big post! My life went totally off the rails in March when I got my second promotion in 6 months to a Director job. It's demanding and crazy and I love it. But it means things like blogging took a serious nose dive. So I'll try to put this in some sections and you can skim past anything that doesn't interest you. ;-)

Farm
The farm had a decent year this year, the only major weather event was that it was dry. That means hay prices are really high and Ryan is scrambling to find some that's not ridiculous. 

We also had a major hailstorm in June like nothing we've seen before. It was like someone was firing a machine gun against the side of the house. Between the house and barn it did about $40,000 worth of damage and we're still working on getting that fixed (insurance covered it). It even dented the metal roof of the house, which is supposed to be able to handle "class 4 hail" (whatever that means). Here's a picture of my lilies right after the storm:

But our beef and chicken are still awesome and I can occasionally convince Ryan that we can eat some of it instead of selling it all! ;-)

Quilts

I have still made time for quilting because it's vital to my well-being to do so! 

I made this one for a fundraiser for my son's school, if you look at the quilting it is a "deconstructed pocketwatch". It is about 40" x 50" or so

 Detail:

My modern quilt guild issued a paint chip challenge, which is where you draw three paint chip colors out of a hat and have to design a quilt using those colors (we could add white and black). So here is what I designed, which I really like but Ryan is not a fan. It is a modern take on waves crashing on a rocky beach, like the ones you find in the NW, like in Oregon. It is smaller, about 3 feet square.

There was also a Riley Blake challenge, which is where they sent me some fabrics to make a quilt out of. I liked the fabrics, but this quilt ended up way too busy. It's very small, about 30" square. It needed more places for they eye to "rest". 

I was blessed with a new nephew this year, so I made him an I-spy quilt. This one is about 50 x 60".

This one might have been my favorite quilt this year. I made it to benefit the United Way at work and a co-worker bought it. It's a decent sized wall-hanging, about 45x55". 

This one is a pattern from Gudrun Erla using her strip ruler. I intended it for our bed originally, but Ryan said it was too busy so I finished it differently and gave it to my stepdad. It is queen sized. 

I also made another little baby quilt with boats on it, but it doesn't have a destination. There's a strip of minky fabric down the center that is super soft.

This last quilt was created for my main quilt guild challenge, which was called "Pretty Pink Petals." The quilt had to be 30"x40", have a pieced background, have applique, and have pink flowers. So this is my quilt "Pretty Pink Pedals." Ha!

Another member of my household also finished her first real quilt! She did most of the work, including the rotary cutting (closely supervised), piecing, and all of the quilting! So so proud!

Family

So that brings us to family goings-on. 

Z loves Lego, and here he's playing with them at the science center. 

Ryan and I went to Sunset at the Vineyard at Penoach Winery several times over the summer; it's probably my favorite Friday night activity!

This was also the first year I took Z to family camp with us, which he thoroughly enjoyed.

And of course we saw the eclipse. We drove down to the middle of nowhere Missouri to watch it in the line of totality, and it was 100% worth the 4-hour drive!

And I have two big kids in school, with their obligatory "first day" picture:

H loves being a farm girl more and more each day. She's started collecting eggs with daddy sometimes and here she is being a quintessential farm girl, including night gown and muck boots. 

 Here are the kids at halloween. I had Mario and Wonder Woman. I made Mario's overalls, but the Wonder Woman dress was purchased (I made the bracers). 

Lastly, the biggest impact on family life was that Ryan decided to run for the Iowa House of Representatives in Des Moines. He announced in August and hasn't hit high gear quite yet for campaigning, but has been working on some of the behind-the-scenes framework and attending lots of local meetings and events. 

We hope you have a great new year, I look forward to what 2018 will bring!

New placemats, costumes, and completed hearth

As usual, life got away from me and so did the Fall. We had a very long warm Fall here, which is unusual but was generally welcome. Ryan has been starting the chicken building by pouring a concrete pad, I believe more on that can be found on his blog. He brought me in for some of the two-person work, like leveling out the top of the wet concrete.

 I hadn't ever done that before, it was interesting to do! Just add it to my list of "Skills I never thought I would have."

The 6-month-old calves tend to come investigate every time we're out there, they're very curious what we're doing in the hay lot. There was another one in the following picture as well, but I couldn't capture them all in the same shot. 

In September we went to the Apple Festival at Penoach Winery and tended a booth for the business. It was an OK day, but I'm not sure if we will do it again.

With Thanksgiving over recently, I was proud to get my turkey boiled down for stock already! I took a picture, primarily for posterity.

In sewing/quilting news, I went to upload pictures and discovered I've completed more than I thought I had in the last few months. I sewed myself a new laptop bag for work because the one I had was worn out and the one I could get from my company was just less interesting to me.

I lined it with some pretty pink fabric and edgestitched it in pink as well to add a personal and feminine touch.

I also finished a quilt from the scraps of my lone star Christmas quilt that is serving as a seasonal throw on my couch.

Also in quilting, I replaced the placemats that I made 6 years ago, and this time I made 16 of them!

They're a bit of a modern aesthetic and I also made matching napkins and a table runner.

Lastly, it was Halloween season and for the first year I really did it justice (in my opinion). H wanted to be Tinkerbell, which means she needed wings in addition to her costume. Here is the picture I found online that I used to base the wings on:

I did some work with a couple of wire coat hangers to get the basic shape:

Then I got some white tights and stretched them over the frame:

Then I tightened them up and sewed it in place, and attached some elastic:

The last step was to draw the swirly patterns on the back with silver puff paint that I had on hand.

I also made some shoe covers out of fleece and big white pom-poms. 

I picked fleece because I don't have to hem it and it has a bit of stretch to it. I also made both kids' costumes out of fleece. 

Z wanted to be Mario (the kid loves Mariokart if I haven't already mentioned it) so we bought the hat and the red sweatshirt and I made the overalls out of--you guessed it--more fleece. His mustache is a piece of felt taped on.

Ryan decided to also get into the fun with his blue Carhartts and a hat of his own. 

H has shown an interest in sewing, so she is sewing an Elsa dress from the movie Frozen for one of her dolls (with heavy help). I'm trying to get her to do as much on her own as she can, so here she is cutting out the pattern.

I also finished the hearth project that was mentioned a couple of blog posts back, and it looks awesome. I'm not sure when it will get a wood stove, but it will at some point.

I've been working a lot more than previously and took this mirror selfie on a business trip, so I thought I'd include it on this blog since I usually post about Ryan's work and not my own! ;-)

The kids are doing well in school, Z is enjoying Montessori. His spatial reasoning is especially good. 

I also failed to post first-day-of-school pictures, so here are some:

We all hope you have a happy early winter season, perhaps I'll get another post in before Christmas!