Odds and Ends

I don't have a major theme going on here tonight, but I had some odds and ends to chat about.

A couple of you asked about the pattern for the quilt I'm making my brother and his wife--the one I was pinning yesterday. It's an older Swatches pattern:

If you're interested in the pattern, go to Quiltshops.com, type in the search box "Swatches Renewal" (without the quotation marks), and then click on the Thumbnails box, and you'll find a couple shops that carry the pattern. I modified my version of the quilt a bit by eliminating those small pinwheel blocks that go all around the outside border--although I think they're a really nice touch, I just wasn't into spending all the time it would have taken to make those scrappy half square triangles, and I had already used up most of my scraps of Kansas Troubles fabric in the larger blocks.

At work this morning, I noticed that over the holiday weekend, a ton of mushrooms had sprouted up all around this tree. Since I had my camera with me, I thought I'd take a quick photo of the fungus. Weird, huh?! It amazes me how quickly they grow!

Okay, here's a little bit of a teaser. I haven't talked much lately about thrifting--mostly because I haven't gone thrifting for awhile. I need to go again soon, though, that's for sure--I'm starting to get that itch that only a visit to a thrift store will scratch! In the meantime, I pulled out this sweater from a prior thrifting excursion.

Sometime this week, I'm hoping to make something with it. Hummmmm . . . now what could Kim be thinking about doing?!

Since the quilt for my brother doesn't have a big time deadline, I'm going to take my time quilting it and avoid the shoulder and neck pain that comes from sitting for hours in front of the sewing machine, pushing a bunch of fabric around. I think that quilting for one or two hours a night will probably be my maximum, so I want to have a couple other projects to work on, and that sweater is one of them. If you're curious, stay tuned to see what happens!