South Africa

I've been thinking about my sister, Sho'Mac, a lot lately.

She's in South Africa for a semester, studying abroad. This picture of a giraffe was taken almost two years ago when she and I took a trip with our friend, Tara, to the same place at which she is now studying. My Dad left on Saturday for SA for work, but he is also going to hop down to PE to visit the Short One. They are going to visit Scotia park (the home of the aforementioned and pictured giraffes), and actually stay overnight. I am quite jealous of them, but excited that Kate will get to share her experiences with my Dad, who usually only sees the inside of conference rooms and airports...

Woo! It seems as though I have a font choice! I thought Lucida was the cursive-like font... but this doesn't look like cursive to me... ? Moving on...

I am slightly disappointed in my technology skills... My "homework" for the IAT Communications sub-committee was to make a blog and a myspace page, and to try to find the other team members. I managed to make a blog... and I managed to make a myspace page, and I was even able to find one of my other team members on myspace but I can't figure out how to make her my friend. I'm supposed to be of the myspace/facebook generation, but I can't figure it out! A bit sad, really.

In other news (and since I've decided to kinda-sorta make this a quilting blog), I have almost finished the nine-patch quilt blocks for my current quilting project!

Last Fall, a few of my co-workers and I sort of stumbled into quilting. I had been half-heartedly working on one for quite a while at that point, but I didn't like the way it was turning out. My co-worker, Kate, started making baby blankets for a couple of her friends and really re-ignited my interest in sewing. We drew in the interest of another co-worker and trekked up to a really cute quilt shop in White Bear Lake. My co-worker, Kristin, had decided to replicate a quilt made by her great-great-grandmother in the 1920s or 1930s. She keeps this quilt in her cube at work, and it is practically in shreds from all the washing and use and love it has endured. Because of its current state of disrepair, we were able to pull back the top a little bit to see that the quilt was hand-sewn, and Kristin decided that she wanted to hand-sew her quilt as well (the decision was furthered by the fact that she has no sewing machine). At the fabric store, Kristin picked out a wonderful mix of 1930s reproduction fabrics designed by Darlene Zimmerman(Robert Kaufman) and Moda (I can't remember the line). And... at that point, I could hardly resist the urge to attempt one myself! Now, several months later, I have 58 nine-patch blocks together, and am eagerly awaiting the completion of the final five. (As a slightly embarrassing aside, Kristin has now completely pieced her quilt, which contains 40 blocks - 5x8, each measuring 7.5 inches, with 2.5 inch sashing between each block - and is in the process of tying and binding the quilt. I have yet to sew any of the blocks together (I want to be able to set them out first to play around with different layouts), nor do I have any of the sashing cut. But I am so excited that it doesn't even matter that I'm months away from finishing!

My First Post!

Hello! Welcome to my first post! I haven't yet decided on a direction for my blog, and so this first post is really a formatting test.