Coming to terms with baby quilts

More snow. Nature was kind last evening though. The Thursday Night Quilting ladies went out for dinner and the giving of gifts. The snow held off till overnight. Not good for the guys this morning but great for the driver last night. We went out for Italian and it was good. The place we went to has been very meh the last few times we went so I was hoping that they got a new chef. Don't know if that was the case but my dinner was wonderful. I had lobster and shrimp tortelloni. Very yummy. We exchanged lovely gifts and spent a couple of hours telling tales and laughing a lot. I really don't know why we don't make this a thing to do every couple of months instead of only a couple of times a year. I happily forked over the bucks last night. It was worth every penny and we didn't spend a moment talking about quilting. We can do that weekly. It was a while since we've gotten together so there were funny stories all around.

I still have a bit of the headache I had yesterday but I've really decided that it's the weather. Lots of pressure and dryness makes for a pain. It's still snowing on and off a little but the temps are going way down tonight so goodness knows what will fall later.

On the baby quilt front here's what I think I'm going to do and I expect you to hold me to it. There are 3 babies coming in the next few months. One of those Mommies to be is a darling young woman who grew up at the same time my James did. She's a year or so ahead in age. She doesn't like anything traditional. No blue, pink, yellow or green......no I'm not kidding. For a while I thought maybe I'd do something very modern in black & white. Last night I heard that the baby's room will be a couple of soft shades of cream and chocolate. So much for the lavender and lime green. Her brother and his wife are having their second child. I made a quilt for the first darling daughter and they loved it. The third baby is a very special one for me. My best friends son and his dearest are having a little one in the spring. I think I'll just buy something for the first two and spend my time on something special for the last couple. My friend's son is an artist and I have long been seeing some of the really wonderful free-style patterns in new, more modern fabric. I think I'll go outside the box and be a little artistic but still baby-ish. I'll figure that out soon. Anyway, having made that decision will allow me to return to making something out of the many blocks I have already done with the American Jane fabric that I love so much. I never tire of looking at that fabric and it inspires me-so much so that I bought a layer cake of it and some of the measuring tape fabric in the same line. Now to find it....
I hope to spend some time getting some bins of fabric and supplies a bit organized-or even found. Slow going.
Time to get a few things done. Hope you have a sunny weekend.

a lighter note...

woke with a nearly violent sinus thing and a bit of dizziness to go with it so I'm not off to the great start I imagined. I don't like taking stuff for that-it makes my tummy have problems back to bed I went and now the day is half gone and I'm still not feeling all that well. I wonder if it's the dryness and bitter cold. Past experiences with this type of thing made me think it was the damp but it's bone dry and screaming sunshiny bitter cold. Oh well, suck it up Dee.

Here's a picture is one of my new shelves. They will never look as neat as this again. Right now I'm revelling in the spare neatness. This is the fabric I got for a baby quilt. Yesterday I found a lovely pale aqua shade matching that focus fabric and a slightly different green that's also in the fabric. I've decided to make a whirly gig pattern. That's simple and goes together fast. Then I can move onto other things.
First I have to get this headache to calm down.....dark room...hot tea.

Does anyone know why I can't get my pictures to move around the written parts like you could previously. They all wind up in one blog wile I'm writing and then they're in the wrong order because they can't be moved. It used to be simple like right click, hold and move. Now they won't move.
I'm off to figure out what's for dinner and find a non-sunny place to sit. Talk to you soon.

RANT

If you don't live in the NY/NJ area or the tri-state area that includes Connecticut this is one time that you should be jumping for joy. We are, how shall I say this, inflicted, cursed, damned, with Cablevision. Until very recently that was the only way you could get cable television. I give away my age when I say that I'm still pissed that I have to pay for tv to anyone but nevertheless, if you want a clear picture and semi-regular service when you turn on the box...it's a Cablevision world I live in. I'm given to understand that it's now possible to get something else but I haven't heard any great things about them either. The problem is that Cablevision is a monopoly here. It's their ball and they can make you stop playing if they want. I have friends who tried the Dish. We live next to the ocean on an island that is damp and prone to thunder and lightening storms. Dish doesn't make the grade.
About a year ago Cablevision took away a number of our stations...just like that, some 9-10 stations disappeared over night. Six months ago they took away several others like Lifetime, travel channel, AMC, We, and a bunch more. No notice...just gone. Mind you, we are still paying the same bill-only with many less channels. New Years day Cablevision got into a pissing contest with the Food Network, HGTV and something else I can't remember. THE FOOD NETWORK.....GONE into the ether- No warning. Here's the reasoning from both sides. The Scripps Howard Co. that makes FN & HGTV wanted to raise their rate for sending those things to be re-broadcast by Cablevision. The current price that Scripps was getting for FN is around 15 cents per viewer-HGTV is around 40-ish cents. Scripps wants more money. I don't really blame them and I'd gladly pay a bit more for the FN. Here's a link to an article in the NY Daily News explaining it far better than I. My really angry point is, since Cablevision took all these channels in the last year and a half-why the hell can't they pick up the cost by including it in the volume of mega bucks they got when many others decided to pay for more expensive premium packages so they wouldn't lose the aforementioned networks I listed above. I have such hatred in my heart for this company. My friend called their office to complain and ask why they took even more stations off the air to regular subscribers and she was told, in a snotty tone, "because we can!"
Anyway, I'm sort of pissed at Scripps too. They simply removed their connections and are running an add every five minutes on all channels blaming Cablevision. There's plenty of blame to go around. They didn't need to make the channel unavailable either. They could have continued to allow broadcasting while negotiations went on. It's like to very evil twins are destroying everything in their path to get the biggest piece of candy.
I know this is a small blip in life in light of all that seems wrong in the world today but it just seems to add that piece of straw that breaks the elephants back. We pay a LOT of money for the privileged of getting a bunch of crappy channels. Now the cable companies monitor your viewing so they know what makes you happiest and they will be charging you a premium for it. It's happening in my neck of the woods but you can be sure it's coming to your hometown any time now. Other cable and dish companies are watching Cablevision and they see what one can get away with. What I can't figure out is why this isn't in some way illegal and fodder for a class action suit. We signed up and pay for a service that is now missing up to 15 of the channels that were in the package we signed up for. Where is the pro-rated bill for all those missing stations?

Cablevision, and to a certain degree Scripps Howard, are horrible companies but that seems to be the nature of the beast and it's a bully that can't be beaten. I really hate that and I hate not having ANY recourse to this problem.

Sorry for the rant but it just boils over now and then. We will resume our regular programming tomorrow. I got some baby quilt fabric today to add to the cute stuff I bought before Christmas. I needed a couple of soft colors to add to the mix and I found them today.

January sloth..sort of

Something about the whole turn of the calendar, combined with the deep freeze that surrounds us right now is creating the hibernation instinct in all of us lately. It often happens this time of year. We just burrow down and have these sleepy days. The bitterness of the past few days and the howling wind is causing that effect to triple. It's just not natural to get up when the wind is screaming and it's 16 degrees outside.
We did have a wonderful holiday together. My guys were all off for a few days and while they did some guy stuff, I got some movies I hadn't seen. I have a DVD player in the bedroom as well as downstairs but for some reason(sheer laziness) I never figured out the method for getting the player to work with the new big screen tv upstairs. First thing that would happen is that I would want to tear my hair out because there is also a cable box. Right there that makes 3 controllers. About 5 minutes of that and I wanted to fling all 3 controllers out the window. The result of that was having to ask the guys to help me. Even though they did, I didn't use it often enough to remember the secret magical sequence of voodoo that were required and the result of that was not watching a Christmas gift of 2008 until two days ago. I got a boxed set of Elizabeth Gaskell BBC DVDs. The best of the bunch is "Cranford", with Judy Dench, who I adore in anything and is wonderful in this. "North & South" is also very well done. I'm still on the second disc of "Wives & Daughters", which I find a little looong and just slightly annoying. The characters are quite pissy. Sorry, but that's the only word I can find that fits. Of course, it could be that I've just over-dosed on the whole drawing room thang...and need to take a break with something different. I should have interspersed it with the viewing "The Tudors", which I also adore and I spend two evenings with season 3. I must say that season 3 is a bit gruesome and less appealing than the last one but that's to be expected since it covers the sorrowful Anne of Cleves and horrible murderous Oliver Cromwell, who came to a really ghastly end. I know I'm the last to see it on earth but I also rented "Julie/Julia and hope to see it later.

On a quilty note, my guys got out to the Home Despot and got a great set of shelves for my room. I set up the machine, the cutting mat and I'm almost on the case. I have to unpack fabric and get it organized on shelves in baskets. Stuff like that will get done tomorrow. While it's bitter out, at lest it's not snowing so I'd better get some things from the store for dinner and make a couple of stops. Brrrr.

Stay warm if you can. Back with pictures soon. The camera is not co-operating today. For once I can't blame Blogger.