Panera Bread and mountain sunrise in Florida

Heading to work today I stopped at the new Panera Bread that opened 1 mile from my house. I had clipped a buy 3 bagels get 3 free coupon and did not have time to pack a lunch today so I thought I'd fill my belly with bagels. Well as I drive into the parking lot what do I see during the very foggy sunrise but "mountains" in Florida. now the highest elevation anywhere near where I live in the Tampa Bay area is an On-Ramp to any highway. And as I just returned from Hawaii you can imagine my only 2 1/2 hours sleep surprised eyes! I had the camera with me and snapped a couple of pics. The first is just set at auto, the second taken on the sunset setting(no sunrise setting guess it is suppose to do double duty) and this is what I got.
On closer inspection (read as: blown up onto 19" monitor screen) i can clearly see that those are not mounds of dirt for the "developing" that is going on there, but actually the housing development behind this new Plaza. The mound in the foreground near the pitiful looking scrubby oak tree IS a mound of elevation raising/leveling dirt for the continued construction.

I almost wish I had not looked at the full sized photos so I could still think there were mountains of developing dirt piles in my site. If I had taken the pictures before I went into Panera they would have been less distinct and thus, no unveiling of the realistic truth that indeed, my quiet quiet neighborhood is becoming the new suburb to the suburb to the suburb of Tampa. sigh, in time, all things must change.

Have a blessing filled day and do a random acts of Kindness today in memory of my dear friend Joanna who passed of breast cancer in May '07. On the bookmark made for her memorial were several quotes. but two I will remind you of today:

Kindness Matters

monthly self-exams can save lives, but a cure would be nice too

teary eyed hugs,
denise/deBRAT

RAK contest at another blogger's site

Hi all

Ruth (on a laceknitters yahoo group) posted today that she is having a RAK contest. So hop on over to her blog and leave a post with your RAK today! She is giving away some nice prizes and two others jumped on in and offered up a couple of prizes too! People can be so nice :)

http://pencraftco.wordpress.com/2007/12/05/another-rak-contest/

now if you came from my post on Ruth's blog you saw my discretionary income. the amount is correct. Yes, I went to hawaii this year. dh had a business trip there so no flight or hotel cost for him. He had enough free mileage to purchase me a ticket (read as free) I gave up my chiropractor appointments, my massage therapist appointments, worked through every stinking lunch for months at work so I could pay for the time off and have some money to spend while there. And my birthday was 5 days before that. more incoming money. And our 22nd wedding anniversary was the day we flew back from hawaii. So no, I did not do it on the $5.67 a week I can spend how I please, but I found a way to "do" this trip-of-a-lifetime as I doubt the chance will EVER occur again! Oh, and my dear quilting friend put me up at her condo in maui and drove me absolutely everywhere on Maui so I had some me-and-my quilting friend time too!

I did not want anyone to think I was talking out of the wrong side of my mouth when I posted on the RAK contest.

So the link again is

http://pencraftco.wordpress.com/2007/12/

and after yo upost your RAK to Ruth's blog, be sure to go back to the link she gives to Sheri, at The Loopy Ewe's blog to enter "her" RAK contest that inspired Ruth's.

have a grand day everyone, mine is warmer and looking up!

denise/deBRAT-jane in cool today, bound to be warmer tomorrow Tampa Bay Florida

Florida-meets-Alaska-Norwegian-Thang

A quick pic of my most recent knitting project for my friend in Alaska who I will finally get to meet in Maui in just 31 days!

this was a week ago, now it is done down to the bottom and waiting on sleeves and my edging decision. i finally ordered two skeins of www.knitpicks.com donegal fingering weight superwash yarn. if it is white enough it will be a large portion of the sleeves. if not i will have to koolaid dye it and then it will be a large portion of the sleeves.

it is meant to be an oversized, very cuddly wrap. i hope it fits her as such. i just found out she is about a medium, as she says she has put on a lot of weight. and she stands only 5'2' !!! it will be down below her butt at the length I made it. and it will certainly go OVER other clothing as she is much smaller than me. it fits me perfectly as a cardigan in length and width and i'm a tight medium sweatshirt and 5'6" tall. oh well, she DOES live in Alaska, as my hubby says, it will be perfect!

The Memorial Tree

Oh my, I have been so far behind in everything I do that I have yet to post the picture of the Memorial Tree we planted to remember our two doggies, Snicker labor Day September 1996 and Chocolate (Choco to those who knew him) June 9th, 2007.

http://www.fastgrowingtree.com/indexT2.htm
Found on the left side at the link above.

We chose a Royal Empress Tree because when i googled (now officially a word in the Dictionary I believe) when I googled draught tolerant trees for my growing zone it returned only three. two were in the fir/pine family and as I'm allergic to several of those, including the Australian Pine in our yard already, I figured those were easy "no's". The only one left was the Royal Empress Tree.
(Here you can see my foot -a size 7 for those who must know- next to the tree. It has 10 leaves at this point but you cannot see some of them underneath the large ones on the far side.)


It arrived on a Monday , hmmm lets see if I can figure out which Monday. Choco died Saturday the 9th, there is no way it arrived on 11th so therefore the earliest it could have been here was the 18th of June. it had to sit out in the yard in the shade (under a table LOL) to aclimate itself and then slowly Neal moved it out into the yard. For some reason I think this was two weeks, or just shy of two weeks time. At any rate, it went in the ground on either June 24th or July 1st. When it arrived it had only two leaves, large-ish but drooping down the stem/trunk that was only about 6" high and not even as big around as 1/2 of my little finger!


(Here you see it from above looking much larger than you would expect it to get in what, three weeks?

soon it was sprouting two new leaves about every 5 days! When I went in to tell Neal that 11 and 12 had shown up as wee buds at the top between the last two leaves to come in the other leaves had begun to get very large!






(As you can see here! The leaf my hand is on actually has another 3 -4 inches of leaf off from where my fingertips end!)

Now looking at this same picture, just to the right of my wrist between the smaller leaves showing, are the buds for #11 and #12.

On Monday, July 16th (Brother in Law Brian's 50th B'day and Neal's first day at the new job) it now had 20 something leaves! It has begun to get buds at the base of all the stems the 1-12 leaves are on the "trunk"! It is a riot to watch and I'm so pleased that we chose this tree to grow never having seen another one in our entire lives! So brave we are.

I hope I remember to snap a picture of it tonight with all of the new buds coming out. the best way I can describe them is they look like the "sucker" leaves tomato plants get that they tell you to pinch off. I don't want to pinch these off until I know for sure they should be. Surely there is a world of difference between a tomato plant and this gigantic-to-be Empress Tree?

So here are the pics finally of the lovely tree we planted after Choco died. He is right next to Snicker and they will end up being directly to the left of the tree as I look out into the yard from my sewing studio window.

Have a grand and glorious day all,
denise/deBRAT in too hot, too humid, but thankfully we're still IN Florida!

Stashbuster's July '07 Weekend Retreat Mystery Quilt

Here are some terrible pictures of fabrics used in the original quilt. these fabrics use COLOR rather than value for it's look. sorry they are terrible pics but the real camera is dead and the phone camera takes a terrible picture it would appear

Fabric A

Fabric C

Fabric B

yellow skirt finished! (title added on april 19, 2011)

hmmm no ability to click in the Title space so this post will be title-less?



oh well, the long awaited picture of the Stashbusting YELLOW skirt is here! it is such a happy skirt. I wore it to the dinner for my dear friend Joanna's b'day party, 5 days after her death. I wore it to the local, non-traditional memorial service on June 3rd 15 days after her death, and numerous other days... including today. This morning dh (dear husband) was awake and up and about this morning so I had him take a picture with the phone camera and here it is!!!



wow! the walls we just painted in the kitchen are sooo bright that my white on top, yellow on the bottom shell top appears beyond-white-white! and you can see my barefeet. glad the trashcan appears mostly empty! do not mind the over-tired-workworn-sleep-deprived woman wearing the skirt... don't look above the skirt teehee!

it is 6 tiers of various fabrics and I can't wait to have time to make another skirt from my stash! I want to make a purple one, and a purple top for my b'day in october. I will be official red-hatter age on the 19th of October and I can hardly wait for it to get here! but i have so much to make before then that I will not rush it along. now to see if i have any purple stash left. i used a lot of different bits for a 3 1/2" nine patch block swap (on block_swappers list) recently and i'm hoping that I can salvage enough from that bin of fabrics to make the skirt and top from. in any event, here is the skirt and hope you like it!

denise/deBRAT-jane off work today at 2 pm to go celebrate my step-dad's 84th b'day at Red Lobster for dinner tonight. can you say, cheesey biscuits? yummmmmmmm

Joanna, more to remember

If you read this blog I thank you for putting up with me posting my random posts about Joanna to my different yahoo groups so I can have all my rememberances in one place.
Re: quilt displayed at services
sorry if this does not belong here but i promise to be brief.joanna was a quilting student turned friend. and in her case myvery bestest friend i have ever had in my entire life! the quiltwas made at her request. the ladies at the quilt shop wanted tomake her a quilt but rather than making it for her and giving it toher they procrastinated and it never got done. so on May 5th,Joanna, her mother-in-law, myself, her friend from VA who flew inthat day to visit with her went to Rainbow's End to ... pick fabricfor her mother-in-laws very first quilt... pick fabrics for joanna'svery own quilt at her request made from my pattern magically fastcrazy blocks-the basic method (basically stack n slash with a coupleof twists to give you more flash for your sewing time) and it was torecreate one she had made the summer before as a housewarming giftfor a cousin who's house they stayed at on their dream trip toFinland. The quilt is very much like the original only queensized. my mother who lives not far from Rainbow's End in Dunedin,FL met us there and we had lunch at Jolli-Mons and laughed andgiggled and had the very best of times!On the following Saturday, a group of us got together at the LQS tosew the quilt top for her. We got 30 14 1/2" blocks sewn, trimmedand into a top (sans borders) in ONE day. there were three sewers:her mother-in-law linda who had NEVER sew anything on a machinebefore, the other student-turned-friend and her daughter(7 yo) asthey asked to help, and Caroline (one of the couple's card /gameplaying friends)myself and one person was sick with a cold so couldnot be around Joanna with her immune system so non-existent. webegan shortly before 10 am and finished at straight up 5 pm and agood day was had by all. That was the first time I saw Joanna astruly looking sick. her eyes were a horror movie yellow and herskin a green from her failing liver. :(that week i worked many 8-8 shifts and so on the friday of Mother'sDay weekend I sewed on the borders, pieced the backing, pieced thebatting (we wanted Thermore and that was not quite large enough).saturday i went to another friend's house and used her large formallivingroom floor to roll up and then spray baste all the layers with505 spray and fix. saturday and sunday i quilted it in straightlines until there were enough diagonals and horizontal and verticallines to hold it together with the thermore batting (up to 9" apart)more quilting would have been nice but time did not allow for it. idid quilt the 7" border in a 1" apart channel type quilting so itwould look nice once washed. you know, that old fashioned puckeringlook you get as if you had used a cotton batting? I put the findingto the front with the machine and considered it a night. My dh hadkept saying to me to take a break and I kept saying oh let me finishjust this part here then i'll take a quick break and come back atit. i never took a break except to eat dinner that night.monday, at work i whipped the binding down to the back by hand. Italked to Joanna several times that day and her one thing was "don'teven call if you finish it tonight please" at 7 pm that night ifinished the last stitches on the binding. at 8 pm i left work. at8:15 she was sitting in her special chair with the quilt over herand the biggest smile you could ever imagine on her face. pettingit and crooning over it. when i realised that she had a heating padon to relieve the ache in her belly (we are in florida it is HOT) welaid it on the bed. Joanna got up to see it laid out on the bed andgave me what was to be the last hug I would get from her.tuesday, I spoke with her several times and laughed and joked. wewere all about hte laughter. the last lengthy conversation i hadwith her that day at the end of the call she said okay bye, I saidbye she said Good bye. it took me until the next day to realise shesaid a true good bye to me that night. we rarely said bye when wehung up it was catch you tomorrow, let me know when you get out ofchemo... etc. but very rarely bye. i spoke with her very brieflythat night when she returned a call showing on the house phone whenshe was resting and her dh took the call. i had volunteered to ridewith them on saturday if she wanted company in the "rented van" forthe 4 hours drive to her parents where there was to be a bigbirthday party for her. she was so glad i had volunteered to rideover and entertain her :) her party was not to be. the day of theparty was the day she died. the next thursday, the 24th she wouldhave been 33.so see, the quilt is not from her clothing, or even a spectacularpiece, it is just a quilt that she spent the last 5 1/2 days of herlife petting and wrapped in saying "my friends made me this" overand over again. this quilt was mentioned on the "list/carepages"that her dh kept to keep everyone informed and so it is appropriateto display it at the gathering(s) for people to see the last thingthat meant so very much to her.sorry this has gotten long... i loved her so much. she was a partof nearly every portion of my days. she brought out the very bestin me, even the brattie part of me she adored. I asked her once howwe wound up friends. She said, we are kindred spirits. I saw inyou myself. I tried to deny that saying what a mean person i am etcand she would not allow me to say that about myself. truly, theworld has lost a kind and wonderful person that given more time andmore energy would have made a huge difference in so many people'slives.and now that you are this far down the post, i will ask you to tellsomeone today that you love just how much they mean in your life!if you find it hard to begin with words then get the sappiest cardyou can find and send that! that should open the lines ofcommunication for you to say it. joanna was 16 years my junior butnever once did i feel i was a mother figure. i always felt herequal. she just made everyone around her feel good aboutthemselves. I wish for you a friendship that is this deep andtrue. but caution, it will mean a loss greater than you could everimagine should that person pre-decease you.now wipe your tears away and hug on someone you love and go forthand have a grand and glorious day for it is gorgeous outside, evenin the rain and wind or snow....thank you for reading this and for allowing me to share.denise/deBRATi'll try to put a picture of it on my blog, providing there is acopy on my work computer. i think it may have to come from mylaptop which i have not turned on since tuesday at work.http://debratsquilting.blogspot.com/