War of the Chipmunks

Let me start off by saying that I like chipmunks. Of all God's little furry rodent creatures, they are the cutest. Having said that disclaimer, for all their cuteness, I don't want them living under my house. They're messy. They pull down the heating duct insulation to make beds. They sit on my water heater and poop. A lot. They tear up anything I try to store in the crawlspace.

So they had to go. Unfortunately, all my crawlspace vents look like this:

They're not the super high-techy ones with the bi-metal springs and self-closing louvers. They're 40 years old and I have to close them myself by pulling on the handle in the center; and, more importantly, all the screen wire has rusted and fallen out. So when these are open in the summer, it's a little chipmunk doorway. And, in the case of the vent where the cable TV and DSL wires enter, it's a doorway all year long because the cables obstruct the closure of the flap inside the vent. Even when the flap can close, it doesn't lock in place or anything so they have been able to push it open.

This is the year when I decided that the chipmunks have to spend their winter vacation somewhere else. They're highly adaptable little creatures who have made good use of the proximity of humans and their houses, but for untold eons they have gotten along just fine without access to the underside of a brick rancher. This year they're going to have to resurrect some of that native chipmunk-smarts and make a burrow or something. I know that they'll be fine. And I'll still have duct insulation.

After a trip to the Ace Hardware, I took my roll of hardware cloth (not cloth at all, but a heavy screen with 1/4" openings - but so apropos for a quilter!) and a roll of wire, and started attaching new screens on the outside of the vents. Especially the one that won't close all the way.

So listen little critters, the Calico Quilter Super-8 motel is closed for business!

The REAL wish book!

Has anyone else received the Hancock's of Paducah paper catalog? Be still my heart! 168 pages of fabrics in all their full-color goodness, from Kaffe Fassett to Moda and most everything in between. Forget Sears; this is the REAL wish book!

The perils of collecting; or, the porcelain traffic jam

I have written about being a sucker for Coimbra pottery. If I'm out on the loose and have a minute to spare, I will duck into T. J. Maxx or Homegoods or Tuesday Morning and see if they've received any pieces. They only get a few and they go really fast. So far, I've usually bought smallish pieces, due to serious storage issues. I started out with a few pieces displayed in the marble-topped round end table. Then they crept into my glass-front secretary desk in the foyer, the hutch on my desk in the den, even on the shelves my husband bought for storing CDs. One tray even resides on my dresser holding perfume bottles.

A few days ago I found a nice divided tray. The hunt was on for a display spot. I tried rearranging the stuff in the secretary desk; no good, the tray was too large. Then to the dining room, the den, the living room. Nothing worked. This was by far the largest piece I had bought and it defied every cabinet with its size. Then I decided that the Coimbra would play nicely with my pre-war Japanese tea set.

CAREFULLY, I removed the pieces from the case. They are about as thick as a sheet of paper and it terrifies me to touch them. Then out comes the blue and white tray which stood behind them. A quick rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul trip around the house exchanging plate stands to locate one large enough, and the tray settled into the shelf, surrounded by the blue and gold tea set. Perfect!

Now, where I am going to put the blue and white tray?

Books and book storage

Paula has been rearranging and modifying her bookshelves, and it got me thinking about book storage. Once I had a wall of bookshelves in my den when I lived in Knoxville, Tn. My father-in-law built them for us after we moved, and it seemed like we could never fill that many shelves. Of course, we did. When we moved, there was nowhere for the books to go, so they spent two years in boxes in the basement of our new house.

Before we moved again, we thinned out the boxes and sold a huge number of unwanted books at the local used book store. After the next move (into an apartment while we hunted for a house), most of the remaining books were stored in my mother's garage, where they sat for seventeen years. Needless to say, I no longer remembered what books we had, or even missed them much. When I was home last June, we sorted through them and gave most to the library. The only books left in storage there are two boxes of those belonging to my husband, which I couldn't get rid of without consulting him.

While all those books were in storage, we were of course collecting more. I don't have a one single place to store books now; they're all over the house. Luckily, this house had a bookcase built in by the chimney in the den, as well as the bookcase that matches my desk. We have two barrister bookcases that my father-in-law built for us, and an old stacking bookcase we bought from Yield House thirty years ago. When I redid the kitchen I made sure there was a glass-doored cabinet for cookbooks (at least the ones I use regularly).

So books are everywhere.
In the den:
In the guest room:
In the kitchen: And dining room: In the spare bedroom (aka computer room):And usually on a lot of side tables and nightstands. Having something to read is a constant in my life, and I try now to keep the book I have finished purged and donated to the library, unless they are special. They could very easily take over the entire house.

A trip to the bookstore

I left the house all civic-minded this morning to go and vote early. My state has had early voting for several years and it was handy when I was working. I always thought of it as a great advantage. Then I got to the mall and saw the line at the temporary polling location. There were probably 150 people there, and the line wasn't moving very much. I had used this early voting location for congressional races in the past, and it seemed to be one of the worst-managed and slowest-moving ones in the city. So, I decided that I didn't have over two hours to stand in line today and would vote on Election day. On the way out of the mall I stopped by the cut-price bookstore (you know, the ones with the huge tables of books that look so tantalizing but you can't find anything in the piles!) and decided I would give them five minutes and see what I could unearth. Well, it was worth the stop.

I found the Edmund White biography of Marcel Proust that I had always wanted to get, for $3.00 in hardback, no less. And a very nice traditional applique pattern book by the AQS for $7.99.

And this little gem for 99 cents:
I couldn't resist the title. Even if it's complete drivel, it's worth 99 cents of entertainment.

And oh, yes, I went out later to the other early voting location at the local recreation center and voted.

Show and tell

Here's a little show and tell for a Monday morning. This is my teacup block swap quilt. Because the 3 blocks I received were so different in fabric and execution than mine, I decided to use the nine of mine that I got back on the front and inset two of the three others on the back (one went to a bloggy friend). I found the Moda "Bistro" line fabric and it was just what I needed. Now, it's a coffee cup quilt for my husband, the coffee drinker.



Here's a detail of the border. Love the design.










And a picture of the back, showing the two swap blocks.












Here's the Thimbleberries Club 2002 spring wall quilt, finally appliqued. I will be sending all four of the Thimbleberries designs to be quilted this week. I think I will have a special quilting job on the coffee cup quilt since it's applique.

What's your favorite quilting magazine?

Without a doubt, mine is Fons and Porter's Love of Quilting. Every issue I find a quilt that I want to make. In the most recent issue, I found three! (Oak Leaf and Rose, Pinwheel Play and Christmas Sparkle - I'm definitely making the first one after the first of the year, and the others are going in my holding pile. I even know what fabric from my stash I'll use.).

McCall's Quilting, American Patchwork and Quilting, and Quiltmaker all have appealing patterns at times, and I often clip photos and designs for my inspiration notebooks. I read Quilter's Home for the articles, but Mark Lipinski's design aesthetic does not jibe with mine at all and I'm letting the subscription expire. None of them appeal to me like Fons and Porter. It's the only magazine than I devour when it arrives, muttering "Oh, that's great!" under my breath and dog-earing page corners.

Their designs are what I call "updated traditional". Their patterns are firmly rooted in traditional designs, with just enough modern use of color and layout to make them fresh and new. They seem to appreciate the history of the craft. I have nothing against abstract quilts, pictoral quilts, and all the other design innovations in the art, but they're not me.

Keep 'em coming, Fons and Porter. I'm waiting.