What is your Lunar New Year / Chinese New Year sign?

At Nicholas Conservatory, these signs and the accompanying  cute little animals were scattered about. It took me a few minutes to realize that the animals went with the signs. 

Flying(?) rat

Ox

Tiger

Rabbit

Dragon

Snake and Horse

Goat, Monkey, and Rooster

Dog

Pig

I was born in the Year of the Rat. How about you? Is the Chinese Zodiac sign accurate in describing your personality?

I looked up the Chinese Zodiac and found the following from no.china-embassy.gov.cn:

The Chinese zodiac, or shengxiao, refers to the circle of 12 animals that measure the cycles of time. Signs or animals are determined by the lunar year in which you were born.

Legend has it that a god beckoned all animals to bid him farewell before his departure from Earth. Only 12 of them, namely the rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog and pig arrived, with each given a place of honor in a year based on the order of arrival.

Different people born under each zodiac sign are believed to have different personalities that represent animals of the year. Sometimes people consult with their zodiac signs for compatibility before getting married.

A fun weekend

We just finished what we think is our last weekend of hockey games. We rented a small cottage in Machesney Park, IL, that was recently remodeled and quite nice. The weather was very springlike and sunny.

On Friday, we did a few errands including a stop at Quilter's General Store to buy some backing and binding fabric for some quilt tops.    

Backing and binding 

We enjoyed watching our oldest hockey playing grandson Friday night. 

We began Saturday with a stop at By The Dozen Bakery. After seeing an ad on TV and realizing that it was very close to our cottage, we decided to splurge on breakfast. The glazed old-fashioned donuts were fantastic! 

Nicholas Conservatory and Gardens was our next stop. 

There was an orchid display and a celebration of the Lunar New Year. Here are a few photos.

   

We enjoyed watching two younger grandsons play hockey Saturday afternoon and the oldest one play Saturday night (on LIveBarn TV - he was in a Chicago suburb playing). On Sunday, we once again enjoyed watching the oldest play another game. Then we headed home. I'm hoping to find a little more quilting time this week.

Note: More about the Lunar New Year at Nicholas Conservatory in the next post.

How can it be the end of January???

Most of a month has passed since I've written and I've kept busy. First, we've had some wicked weather with many inches of snow,

which is finally melting and our biggest problem now seems to be morning and nighttime fog.

The weather has been a great reason to stay home whenever possible. I've been doing a little cleaning in the basement each day and I've been quilting quite a bit. I have piles again - quilts to be quilted and quilts to be bound. Life feels normal again!

I do have two small finishes; both are donation quilts. Both quilts began with panels from my late friend Colleen's stash. The first, Ahoy is a 30" by 36". Although it is small, I think it will be a nice blanky for some child. 

I quilted a meandering stitch using #32975 light turquoise 40-wt Glide thread. The back is a turquoise water print.

The second finish, Junior Safari, is 39" by 48".

The animals are cute and I love the browns and blues together.

I also quilted this with a meandering stitch. I used light tan #24695 40-wt Glide thread. The back is a brown print which is also from Colleen's stash.

I had this 1/2 yard bundle from Colleen's stash and decided to find a project or two. 

The tops - all three of them - are now waiting to be quilted. Here are sneak peaks. You may figure out that after fussing a little with the first, I then used up the fabric making the last two.

The green square with red leave on the right below is pieced as is one other block. It was fun to use all of the fabric!

On my drawing table is a hockey quilt. I've done lots of planning and I still have a little fabric to gather. Hopefully I'll have pictures to show soon.

It's time to sew!

 Happy New Year!

I ended the old year and began the new year with lots of cleaning out - as in my fabric stash, fabric scraps, fabric orphan blocks, fabric strings... A few days ago we delivered 5 garbage bags and 4 boxes to a place local to us where some ladies make donation comforters and quilts. I delivered 2 small boxes to them earlier. They were happy to get the fabric and I'm delighted to have things cleared out. I do not like clutter so all is good. 

I have a quilt on the frame of my longarm ready to quilt. It's a panel with borders. I did all of the stitching with my serger using a chain stitch. I just had to try it and it worked extremely well. I thought there might be a bump where the stitches are but there isn't! 

The stitching

The back of the stitching

I'm slowly assembling a scrap quilt. 

It sounds like we are in for quite the winter storm tonight and tomorrow. We had almost 5" of snow a week and a half ago and it sounds like this next storm might be even more snow with strong winds.

A week and a half ago

I think we'll have chili to eat tomorrow and it's already made. So bring on the snow - it's time for to sew!