A sunday morning at the flea market.

Central New York Regional Market

Mother's Day weekend is now over but we had a lovely time.  I got to spend a lot of time with my daughter which is GOOD,  Don't get to see her nearly enough.  Enjoyed seeing my grandson  who must have grown another foot!!!   And other family members as well.

After a full day of yard saling and regular shopping on  Saturday, Sunday morning meant we would go to the Central New York Regional Market, one of our absolute favorites!  Click here to learn a bit more about it.

We like to get there by 8am to get the best buys.  The first stop is always the "junk dealers" who bring in boxes and boxes of stuff, usually gotten at auction or out of a house. You never know what you will find but generally, with patience, it can be very rewarding. You must look through every box or you might miss something wonderful.

Not very pretty to look at but oh the stuff we found.

After leaving that area we head to the regular vendors who have lots of variety of items.  I only took a few pictures but I must say there isn't much that you need that can't be found here.

Here are some of the variety of things we saw.  Not that we bought much of this.

The first picture is purses.

 

Old Toys and more Old Toys

 

 And how about a brass bed?

Lots of flowers!

 

And veggies and food........................

My favorite part of the day was getting to meet a great vendor named Sandy.  I imagine she was pleased I came by since I bought several items from her.  Things I just HAD TO HAVE.

The chairs will hold little potted plants up in my kitchen window, the herb embroidered picture will hang on the kitchen wall and the metal lady is going to be a part of a collage I am planning.

And so another fun day at a flea market came to an end.  The weather was excellent. 

The only problem with the day was that the donut guy wasn't there!

Check out my blog tomorrow for "Tea Cup Tuesday" where I will show off a few more things

I saw at the flea market. market.

Birds in the Backyard

Birds in the Backyard

My husband spends a lot of time (and money) feeding the birds in the backyard.

  It pays off with interesting sightings.

Here is a Robin sitting patiently on her nest.  While she was away we "peaked" in and saw three eggs.

 This is a pair of rose breasted grosbeaks.  They are such a pretty bird and they do seem

to like the choice of food that has been provided

And finally a large group of gold finches at their feeding station.  There is always a crowd on this feeder.

Daisy, Daisy

Yesterday I was able to pick up the quilt project I had inadvertently left at the quilt shop.  Here it is.  This square is not quite done.  the daisy needs a center circle.  Then I need to make three more which I plan to start  today.  I will show my progress here in the next couple of days.  I have gotten all the parts cut out and the petals stitched.  So it shouldn't take quite as long as the first one.

If you click on the picture you can see a larger view and you will be able to see the machine applique.  I am still learning on this new machine but it turned out pretty well.  The best thing about this technique is now smooth the petals are.  I am very pleased so far.

As to our snow, it is melting away thanks to the sun.  There is only a little over an inch out there now., except where the snow was shoveled up.  It is due tp rain again this week.... maybe this time?????

Snow again..... enough already

We have had bare ground for a week at least.  Then we got two days of heavy rain.  However, overnight the temps dropped and this is what we woke up to today.  I won't be going out to the quilt shop for awhile, or maybe not at all if they don't open because of the storm.  They follow school closings.


At least the birds are finding food in our yard.  Here are  Mr. and Mrs. Cardinal at the feeder.  You have to look closely on the left side of feeder to see the female but she is there.  Naturally Mr. Cardinal is right up front!

Tune in Tuesday to see the results of my quilting class.

I took the class and it was so much fun.  I was planning to show you how far along I had gotten.  UNFORTUNATELY  my finished work is still at the shop.  The shop lady had taken the piece to match up the fabric I would use for the trim and then forgot to put the square in my bag.  I didn't notice and by the time I got home it was too late to go back.  But Monday morning I will be there to pick it up, I hope.  Unless we end up going away somewhere that I not expecting at the moment.

Anyway, I had such fun in the class and did pretty much finish up one of the squares.  Three more to go but they won't take as long as the first.
The secret in this class was learning to use QuiltSmart.   It is a product I didn't know about.  In this particular project there are a lot of curved lines in the petals and this makes it so simple to applique.
Click here to see the kit for the project I am doing is this one......  Black Eyed Susan.......    Mine won't look quite like this because I am using very different colors.   But so far it is beautiful.  Can't wait to show you.
I was hoping to work on another square between customers in my shop today.  However I need to make the other squares the same way as the first one, meaning the various fabrics must be in the same location on each square and I don't remember how I did it.  OH WELL....  I will just have to work on it later in the week once I get it back.
NEXT TIME I will pay attention..............   LOL

    I also got a lot more practice on my new machine, doing machine applique which I had never really done before.  So between learning a new quilting method and getting more proficient on my machine I feel the day was very much worthwhile.

We are presently having a LOT of rain.  It has been raining pretty steadily since last night and is supposed to continue on into tonight.  But it shouldn't stop me from opening my shop.  Or entertaining friends for dinner tonight.  But some folks in our area may suffer from flash flooding.  We live up on a hill so shouldn't have any problems.  And IT ISN"T SNOW!!!!!!

Off to a quilting class

This morning I will be going to my local quilt shop to take a class.  The picture below shows the pattern and the selected fabric.  This is a new technique using a special kind of interfacing.  That is all I know at the moment.  I will be making a wall hanging.  Tomorrow I will show you the results. Or at least how far I have gotten.

Books, Books and more Books

If you know me very well you know I love books.  I love to read.  I also like books about things I am interested in.  At the moment I seem to be adding books about quilting and paper arts.  And always new cookbooks.

I obtain books everywhere.  I get them from Library, borrowing or buying from their book sales. I get them from yard sales, flea markets, regular bookstores, places on line. AND I trade or accept gifts of books.

In our house in Maine every time we re-did a room we made sure to add bookshelves.  In this house we haven't so many places to put bookshelves.  HOWEVER that hasn't stopped me.  In one of our walk in closets we added thin shelves and that is where I store a lot of books.  In the remodeled kitchen we made sure there was a good sized bookcase.

These are all cookbooks!

And when all else fails I find places to get rid of them.  I take a lot every summer to a local flea market where I trade them for credit to buy more books.  Also I put books out in my antique shop and fortunately some of my customers find they need to buy them!

So now I have discovered Paper Back Swap on line. You list the books you are willing to trade, people ask for them.  You send them and you get credits to get some for yourself.  It isn't the cheapest thing because you have to pay for the postage to send the books.  But the ones you get back are sent free AND media mail isn't too expensive.

So I have listed quite a few books and am having success, people want my books.  And I have already ordered and received some in return.  It is fun actually and except for having to go to the post office to mail them, not so bad.

Speaking of Post Offices, our little local post office just closed.  I loved going there.  It was just up the road, no parking problems and easy in and out.  Now I have to go down town, worry about a place to park, which I have to pay for,  and then wait in line inside.   I am presently not a happy camper about that.

But back to the mailing, here is today's load of outgoing books.  They provide you with the pdf to print out with address etc.  You just wrap and mail.

 Almost all of our snow is gone except a couple of places in deep shade.  So I went out to check out the daffodils.  There are three clumps of them in one of our beds that are doing nicely.  Looking forward to seeing their cheery yellow faces.  Here is one closeup.

       While I was out looking at my gardens to see if anything else was happening I found some Sedum just starting.

     And when I checked on my azalea bushes I found a few blossoms.  They have quite a ways to go but these are all hopeful signs of spring.

Hope to have more spring like pictures soon.