I finished John's quilt last week - I had pieced the quilt top and the quilt bottom, at my recent trip to the beach, then it was quilted by my friend who is a long-arm quilter.  Then I sewed on the binding.  This will be for John's big boy bed!  

                             

Here is a better picture of the border -

                             

And the back - the biggest part of the back is another piece of fabric from the "Riding the Rails" fabric line, then I used the left over fabric from the top to piece around it -

                             

I made a label by cutting a piece of the train border, and writing on it, then I appliqued it to the finished quilt -

                             

It's hard to see in the picture, but in the clouds, it says, "For John, From Grandma", then on the hilly part "February 2013", and then my name at the bottom by the train track.  Oh, well, trust me, it's there!

 

 

On the needles:

                              

This is the beginning of a scarf, which was really an Advent 2012 scarf that my friend Pam found on Ravelry.  We knew we couldn't do it in those weeks before Christmas, so we thought maybe we could do it in the 40 days of Lent!  Still hoping to get it done by Easter!  If you look closely, you can see where there are several patterns - you do one pattern each day, or, in my case, in several days!  How did anyone get this done during Advent when some of it takes so many hours?  You can see that I have been putting lifelines in all along; I haven't needed to use one yet, but I have done my share of TINKing - KNIT backwards!  I'll try to keep it updated!

                             

Last Friday, we had an unexpected 2" of snow here in the Roanoke area.  It was the 3rd or 4th Friday in a row of snow here!  I usually watch my grandchildren on Fridays, just to have one day when I can spend time with them a week for sure, and to give Amanda some free time.  Or time for doctor's appointments, which was the case last Friday.  The snow arrived overnight, and the temperatures were warming up, so we knew it would melt, so once John went down for a nap, Charlie and Megan went outside to play.   Here are some pictures of them in the snow -

                        

                        

                        

                        

                        

And by 3:00 in the afternoon, that area they were playing in, looked like this -

                        

And Megan looked like this!

                        

One more post about my beach week.  There are such yummy restaurants in Myrtle Beach!  We had decided before the trip that we would only eat one meal at a restaurant a day, and we shopped for groceries the first night, and we were very good all week long about eating healthy and walking as much as possible.  One day we ate at a Red Lobster for lunch because we had a coupon.  Another night we just got a pizza and had enough of that for leftovers another time.  We wanted to try a new seafood buffet, one that Sheila hadn't been to yet, so that she would know if it was another good choice for when her family goes to the beach.  We found a winner!

                               

It had an amazing seafood buffet of so many different things, both fried and grilled, and it had steak, roast beef, and chicken as well, with lots of country foods too.  The big thing there is crab legs.  Sheila had some of those and did a great job of cracking them open.  But did I have my camera for that??   Nope!   And it had a very long table of every dessert imaginable!

We decided to go to Margaritaville for lunch one day.  Neither of us had been to one, and it was a lot of fun to see all that went on, watch the "Hurricane", listen to the music, and shop in the gift shop!

                              

This is where you went in to the area the restaurant was in -

                              

                              

We walked in, and the first thing that had me laughing, after the large hurricane up on the ceiling, were TVs all over that periodically had Jim Cantore from The Weather Channel talking about a hurricane coming - I of course knew that the Hurricane at Margaritaville was talking about a drink, but I have spent so many years glued to the TV watching Jim Cantore talking about, and being in the middle of, REAL hurricanes, that I found it quite fun!

                             

                             

 

Now to see if the "Hurricane" at Margaritaville comes out as well in the picture as it was in person -

                             

                              

                             

Ok, so in this hurricane, the bottle of Tequila, I think it is, comes down out of the hurricane and fills up the green pitcher.  It all happens right after Jim Cantore's newcast.  So to speak.  And that all happens I guess every half hour or so.  Maybe less often than that because I think we only saw it once when we first went in and once more.  The music playing brought back memories of my youth, and it was a fun experience.  Sheila told me that in the summer, every restaurant, and especially this one, is packed and you sometimes have to wait a couple of hours to be seated.  I would never have waited that long!  But we didn't have to wait at all, in the winter, and so we enjoyed it!  My hamburger, which was suppose to be their Cheeseburger in Paradise without the cheese, came with the cheese on it, but I just took it off.  It was good!

Oh, and one night we asked at the desk for an Italian place, again hoping to find one that was new to Sheila, and were sent to a steak and pasta restaurant.  It was relatively new, and very good, but NOT Italian, except for the few pasta dishes on the menu.  We each had a steak and shared a side dish.  

 

That's the story of my quilting week at the beach!  

I have been struggling with high blood pressure and was instructed to take my blood pressure every day at the same time with the spiffy cuff blood pressure machine I bought at CVS before the trip.  It was great all week long!  Jim said, when I told him over the phone how good my blood pressure was doing,  that he expected it WOULD be good when I was spending a week at the beach quilting with Sheila!  Truly, however, I am convinced that it is the exercise I am doing, walking every day, weights, and stretching, that is keeping my blood pressure in normal range.  Now, if I could get all the other important numbers in a normal range, THAT would be success!

                             

I had to get a picture of Sheila's adorable white featherweight sewing machine!

                  

 

And, on to the quilts I worked on.  The first is one for my grandson John, when he moves into a big bed, which will be soon.  It is a train fabric grouping called "Riding the Rails" and is so cute!  The pattern I chose took some careful cutting and measuring and piecing, so it took me a good bit of 4 of our days to get the top pieced, and the back pieced as well.  These pictures are not all that good because you can't see the outer border,  but the good news is that I gave it to my quilter friend last week, and she told me today that she has it finished!  So, I will get it from her this week, put the binding and label on, and take some better pictures before I give it to Amanda for John!

                  

                  

                   

 

The second project I worked on took a couple of days too, but it is a gift, so I am not going to show pictures right now!  Then, I brought the blocks I put together at quilt camp in November, of what will be a lap-sized quilt for our living room.  I got the inside part of the top put together, but I forgot to bring the border fabric with me, so I will need to finish that later.  But here are the blocks as I was laying them out to decide what went where. 

                 

 

I worked on parts of other projects, and I finished another flower of my Grandmother's Flower Garden while we were sitting and doing some handwork, and I finished 3 ruffly scarves on the car ride.

 

Next time - some of the restaurants we went to!

 

 

                 

                  

I am finally getting to this blog of my trip to Myrtle Beach!  Thanks to Sam for helping me get my pictures on my computer again! And I am trying Safari instead of Google Chrome to see if it lets me put more than 8 onto xanga at one time.  We'll see!

I went to the beach with my friend, Sheila, for a week!   She has a timeshare and is so generous in inviting me to go with her - we take our sewing machines, and we work on our quilts all week long!

The place where we stayed was absolutely wonderful!  We had lots of room for our sewing stuff!  We had a nice kitchen and could eat most of our meals in - we ate one meal out a day - pictures of some restaurants later.

The view from our room overlooking the beach was beautiful!

                   

                   

                   

                   

                   

 

Here are a couple from on the beach, looking up at our condo -

                   

Our unit is the one right under the columns - it was the 15th floor, out of 16.  The 16th was the penthouse; we didn't have that one!

                   

 

And here we are at our sewing machines!

                   

                   

 

More pictures of our quilts and restaurants next time!

 

We had some interesting technological issues while we were there - well, I did, anyway.  Why does this stuff happen when you are away from home?  The first was that we were the victims of credit card fraud.  The bank caught it immediately, put a hold on our credit card, and called right away.  Jim called me to see if I knew of some VERY unusual charges - one for the Palace Hotel in New Mexico and another for a tech charge out of Thailand.  It was stopped before it got very far, we weren't liable for the charges, which weren't much anyway, and we were issued new credit cards the very next day.  Kudos to the bank for monitoring our credit card!

The second thing that happened was that my cell phone chose that very week to die on me!  It started the day after we arrived, with difficulty getting service, then by the next day, it was jumping through my apps without my even pushing a button, and by the 3rd day, I could only randomly make calls or text anyone.  By the time we got to the Verizon store, it was not working.  I had an upgrade coming, and fortunately, I could contact my technologically knowledgeable kids to see what they recommended (Sheila's phone worked, so I used that, and she works with Jim so she has his number in her phone!  Very helpful for calling one's husband to say, oh, by the way, I am buying a new phone!)  So, I bought an iPhone 4S for all of you people out there who know about that stuff.  And I am learning!

It was a wonderful week at the beach!  Very relaxing, peaceful, and the weather was ok - 50's and 60's early in the week; 40's mid-week, but then way too cold by the last day to walk on the beach.  I was not complaining, though - it was VERY cold at home in VA!

 

More Myrtle Beach next time!