On TV Again - check me out

Tell everyone you know so we can finally ID these horrible people who dump sick and malnourished animals and prosecute them.

WBRZ at 5 pm on Tuesday.  They will put the story on their website at http://www.wbrz.com/home/ after it airs tonight.

http://www.wbrz.com/news/animals-dumped-at-caaws-in-baton-rouge/

This will be from the interview we did this morning about the dumps at the CAAWS building. So far in the last year we have had these same women dump over 96 dogs and now 9 kittens in the middle of the night at the building. We have security footage of them but up till now the sheriff’s deputy says we don’t have enough to ID them. In the last three weeks these same women have dumped over 25 dogs and the 9 kittens. We have some really good footage of them now.

you can go to http://www.caaws.org/dump/index.htm to see the women and the videos if you can identify them.  We are pretty sure we know their names.  And we are talking to the Sheriff's dept to work on prosecution.  If you have any information you can call us at CAAWS or the Kleinpeter Sheriff's office and talk to Deputy Harbin.

They put all of the kittens into the smallest crate size, all 9 of them. They were stuffed in there. And there are 7 diseases among them, mange, weepy eyes, conjunctivitis, crud around their nose, bellies distended from worms. Stuffed into that crate.

And the dogs were in no better condition. We can’t bring these animals into our facility and harm our current animals.

This scene has been repeated for the last year.  CAAWS need help with donations and foster homes just to take care of the animals we have from our own Animla Control and owner surrenders.  We need to stop these women from dumping these sick animals here in Baton Rouge.  I'll guess they are doing it at other places as well.

So watch me and Greg on WBRZ at the 5 pm news. Rachel Frost, the reporter. Spent 2 1/2 hours with us at the CAAWS building taking video and talking to us. We have the footage from the security cameras as well that will be on the news. And we have some dogs there from previous dumps. You can also see the story after it airs on www.wbrz.com on their website.

Yes, check me out. I never said the word “amazing”…..not once!

glen

Design wall 6-27-11

Would you believe nothing has changed?  I'll bet you can believe that.  Where does the time go.  I lay in bed at night and think, what did I accomplish today? 

And somethimes it is hard to find the answer.

We did work on the charity quilts for the August show, so I guess I will claim that as progress.  I got my red and black one partially quilted.  So it was really SOME progress.

Camera needs charging, I left the download cord in last night so you will have to be satisfied with the same old picture again! 

Hope your week was more productive.  Check out Judy's Design Wall post for this morning.
glen

Sunday Drive

Since no one is commenting on the blogs I am assuming you are reading as fast as I post them.  Don't miss the last post with the paintings we did of the dog that looks just like ol' DiNozzo the Destroyer.  And the one before that of Leaders and Enders and the Bow Tie block tutorial from Anna Lena. 

In the fall we are planning a bike adventure on the Tammany Trace.  So today we took a ride to Covington to have lunch with my dear Diane-boo-kins-ville.  She lost her Ralphie just about the time we got DiNozzo.  Remember?   So we met her for lunch and took a ride through Covington to the Train Station that is the head for the Tammany Trace Rails to Trails program.

That door says Covington Rails to Trails Trailhead.  We took in the movie about how Covington got started (a guy named Wharton bought 541 acres of land from a guy named Collins who got it from the Indians.)  It got burned down twice and it has evolved into what you see today.  Over lots and lots and lots of time.  During the very early days, every man was expected to "give" 12 days of labor to the city per year.  That is how the buildings got built, the docks along the river got manned and the lumber got cut and cleared.  Interesting.

 
We saw the trailhead and talked to the lady in the museum.  She said, Don't ride the distance until the fall!  It is way too hot right now.

Covington Trailhead



Covington Train Station



So we rode down to Abita Springs and pas the Brewery and stopped at the Pavilion.  The Pavilion was built probably during the 1920's as the center of town.  It is like one of those bandstand pavilions you see in the movies.  Really. 





Abita Springs Trailhead



Pavilion



And the rich people would come and bathe in the sulphur springs and drink the sulphur water (yuck, it stunk) for their health.  We would drive up from New Orleans when I was a kid and fill buckets and containers full of the water that flowed freely from the spring by the Pavilion.  My brother and I would play in the pine woods, we would stop by the great grandparents graves, stop by the old shipyard property my great grandfather owned and then cross the 26 mile long Causeway Bridge over Lake Pontchartrain home again.

Nothing looks the same.

glen

They Painted DiNozzo!

I have to do this quickly as i have to get to a sew in for the charity quilts........aughhh!

Painting and Pinot sponsored a painting class to benefit CAAWS last night.  It was a fabulous night.  Frank really didn't want to go, and i think Ann was having second thoughts for a week.  But they both were troopers and ended up loving it.  You don't really have to have any painting talent, witness my dog.  The paintings are fairly abstract.  This one looked just like my guy DiNozzo!  Doesn't it! 

  Valerie had his picture and everyone was amazed at how perfect the rendition was.  He is a little crazy so it totally fit!

Here are some shots from our dog class!  Keep scrolling down till you see them all!

PS  They did  tell us to paint him yellow and green!  LOL.
glen

 

L&Es

I had a few questions about L&Es and what they were and why those bow ties would be a good L&E Project.  So let me explain what they are.

Bonnie Hunter, scrap queen extraordinaire, introduced a concept to us quilters a couple of years ago that was one of those "duh" moments.  Many quilters will use a strip of scrap fabric at the end of a chain of patches.  This is the Ender.  It saves you from pulling out the last piece, having 3 or 4 inches of blank thread hanging out there.  Then when you start the next chain of patches you have that 3 or 4 inches hanging out the beginning of the chain.  It needs to be cut off eventually and tossed.  Just more work and a waste of thread. 

ENDER

LEADER

When you sew on to that scrap of fabric it also keeps the thread ends from tangling and becoming a rat's nest under your first piece.  I would have two, one for the beginning of one chain and one for the beginning of the next (so I wouldn't have to cut that first Or, if only using one, I would cut the beginning off and use it to start the next chain.  A "leader" and an "ender".

Somewhere in there Bonnie Hunter began to use scrap pieces from her scrap bucket as her leaders and enders.  Duh!  We all said:  How come we didn't think of that?

If you keep a stack of small pieces by the side of your sewing machine to use as Ls and Es you will be amazed at how quickly you can sew them together.  And in no time you will have a "free" quilt!

Bonnie has a book called Leaders and Enders to help you get ideas about putting the pieces together and how to set up your workspace to make it easy to just pick up a set of blocks and use either as a leader or an ender.  You can see her book and the discussion of this technique at:

http://www.quiltville.com/leadersenders.shtml

glen

Bow Tie Blocks

I actually have a box of churn dash  blocks that I have been making out of scraps for the last two years.  I have no idea how many I have now, but not too few nor too many.  I need to use that as a Leaders and Enders project, (why didn't I think of that a year ago?)

Anyhoo, I just came across this bow tie block from Anna Lena.  She provides a nice basic tutorial for you to make either 6 inch or 3 inch blocks.  I am thinking it would be nice to have both in a quilt.  I think I will start making those bow ties as a L&E Project.  Thanks Bonnie Hunter for thinking of that most obvious but not realized fact that they can be done!  And thanks, Anna Lena for putting together the tutorial for the bow ties!

http://annalenaland.com/2011/06/19/summer-bow-tie-quilt-blocks/

glen

Traveling with Pomegranets

The BookClub I belong to chose this as the book for June 2011.  I found it on the internet in cd format so I listened to it while I sewed.  It is a good thing I did not waste my time actually reading it, I would have given up early!  It probably won't be a bad read for someone who likes to connect everything that happens to them, yes, every little thing, to God, or actually it is Mary who becomes her hero in this book.


And if you like to get all touchy feely with relationships and menopause, then this is the book for you! 


I came across this review by a reader while I was looking for the questions for the book club discussion.  Which, by the way, I never found, I guess the book can ask all those questions, but we can't.


glen:  I don't have any pictures of pomegranets or else I would put them right here ------}

Nov 19, 2009 BarkLessWagMore rated it

I picked this up hoping to experience a trip to Greece through the two authors but instead I'm finding that it is more of navel gazing piece. Sue Monk Kidd is turning fifty and having a difficult time coming to terms with the back end of her life while her daughter Ann is suffering from depression because she wasn't accepted into a program to study Greek history and doesn't know what to do with her life. The two have a conflict free but somewhat distant relationship, they don't connect closely...moreI

Sue's portion of the book spends a large amount of time delving into Greek mythology and feminism which has become repetitive and dull already (only on disc 2 here) when listening to the audio. Ann's chapters are more down to earth but her problems, mainly the fact that she wasn't accepted into the graduate school of her choice, seem rather minor in the grand scheme of things. It seems a great shame that she's in Greece and not really enjoying the experience because she's too busy being all glum. Someone hand her some Prozac, the poor traumatized child. Such is the curse of the young and privileged.

These two have each other, wealth, their health and the freedom to travel for months and months. They haven't a clue as to how tough life can be for most people. It reminds me far too much of Eat, Pray, Love which I despised because it was another "woe is me, my life sooo hard" type of book penned by a spoiled writer with an Eeyore complex.

I'm just grateful I picked this up from the library and didn't contribute to the author's next depressing trip to wherever . . .

I want to just stay home and be

Yesterday I spent most of the day at Valerie's putting together the last of MY Charity top quilts.  It is the very same pattern as the others but we laid out the blocks in a different order.  So we now have three in three different layouts.  I love doing that!  The blue on the left is Valerie's layout.  She stepped out of the box on that one as her second charity quilt.  My black one above it all is more modern looking.  This is one of the very few I have found that looks better in person than it does in the pictures.  The picture forces you to see the crosses, while in person you see more of a lattice work in the black part.

 

And Toastmaster meetings last night.  Then this morning doctor's appointment and on to the CAAWS building.  Martha and I spent all morning cleaning up the office.  Now that "cave" is loosely called an office.  It is used to keep Patch the Cat separated from the rest of the group because they seem to dislike each other.  Now that Frank and Greg put up the new glass doors you can see into the really really messy cluttered office. 

We spent about 3 1/2 hours working.  There was a half inch of dust and enough cat hair to fashion three additional cats.  OF course Patch is semi-long haired so he had hair everywhere!

Martha and I tossed out 2 computer CPUs, 7 keyboards, 3 telephone systems, 3 boxes of Mardi Gras beads, 14 (count them) 14 old phone books and tons of old mail from the 1990's.  The place is not totally spotless but it is actually looking good! 

Now I just want to take a good bath and be left alone in my own little corner of the world -- my quiling room!

glen

Design Wall 6-20-11

This is the only thing I have worked on in weeks.  Charity quilts.  Four so far.  We have had two Sew In Days and I have worked my fingers off doing these babies.  There will be one more Sew In next Saturday, that will make three for this Charity project.

On Friday Valerie and I cut out 7 Charity Mystery Quilt kits and 3 Jelly Roll Race kits for the Sew In on Saturday and very few people showed up.  I think there must be a problem with some of the people and personalities.  A "take my ball and go home" attitude that they think will hurt the show.  But, unfortunately for them, the show will go on.  I hate those petty problems when it is the guild who is trying to do something for Charity and its members. 

This is it.  No more for me for this show.  I need to concentrate on the things that I will be putting in the show.  And I have some obligations I need to fulfill in my Virtual Bees and Solids Challenge. 

Here is the latest one from yesterday's Sew In just off the sewing machine at lunch! 

 Here are some of the officers looking over the fabrics and antique quilts that will hang in the show.  The quilts were beautiful.  Becky's grandmother and great-aunt made most of them.  The work is incredible!

 

 I have several quilts that are currently UFOs that need to be completed for the show.  I hate to do bindings, but that is the stage of two of them.  And my AAQI quilts need to be sent off.

glen:  too much work and too little time, isn't that the story of my life!

What is your favorite thing at the farmer's market?

Frank LOVES blueberries! We just bought a flat of 12 pints for $25 at the farmers market downtown.

You are not supposed to wash them but lay them on a flat baking sheet (with a small rim or they all fall off before you get them to the freezer!) and freeze them for about an hour.
Bag them up and keep in freezer for fresh berries all year.

To unfreeze them, Frank puts warm water in a glass measuring cup in the microwave for 1 minute. Then he tosses in a handful of berries and lets them sit while he puts cereal into his bowl, milk then adds the berries.  The water always turns purple so I let it cool and drink it with my fruit and yogurt.  He used to just toss it down the drain!  Ack!

Fresh berries every morning!

The best thing at the farmer's market though is the tiny tiny thin carrots. Like eating a stick of sugar! Yum!

This week the creole tomatoes were like sinking your teeth into a sweet ball of love!

glen: we go every week to the farmer's market and get a flat of either strawberries or blueberries to freeze during their seasons.

Swissy Raffle Item

This is what I made today.  I took some dog related fabric scraps and tossed together a tote bag for the National Specialty Raffle.  It will go off with some other items that I will fashion out of the remaining scraps of dog related material.  I also have some printed fabric sheets with kaleidoscopic Swissys that were supposed to be in a quilt but I got concerned about the washability of the items.  I think now they will go into either tote bags or wall hangings. 

I made a wall hanging a couple of years ago with Lulu on the beach as a test.  It was fabulous!  They loved it.  So I think that is what I will do.

Any other ideas?  I have to ship these things and they have to be dog related.  BIG dog related.

glen