I'm tired and possibly Canadian

Exhausting week of way too much work, and the clock radio and carbon monoxide detector conspired against uninterrupted sleep three nights this week. Woke up at midnight, having barely just gone to bed, by incessant beeping that I'd never heard before. Turned out to be the clock radio in my sewing room. Figured hubby had turned the alarm on by mistake when he was listening to the radio while ironing his shirts. He wisely irons his own knowing that I can press a quilt seam, but don't manage sleeves, etc. too well. Next night same thing. Apparently in my half asleep state I didn't completely turn the alarm off.

This morning about 5, the unmistakable beeps of a smoke detector whose batteries are winding down woke me up. I couldn't reach the thing, so hubby got up and took the battery out, got back into bed and another beep. It wasn't the smoke detector, it was the carbon monoxide detector nearby. At least I got almost an hour's sleep before my Wake Up Yoga class. Like the class, wish I didn't have to wake up so early for it though.

Later this morning I was reading an article in the Wall Street Journal about Canada's new citizenship law and looks like I might be Canadian. The government is promoting the change in the law with a You Tube video called "Waking Up Canadian."
Apparently in 2007 when the United States started requiring passports for travel between the U.S. and Canada a lot of people who applied for Canadian passports found out they weren't Canadian any more. The new law attempts to help those folks by granting retroactive citizenship to people who "lost" it between 1947 and 1977, and giving it to their children who were born outside Canada.

My mom was Canadian, but lost that citizenship when she became a U.S. citizen after marrying my dad. After dad retired, they planned to move to Canada and live on some property they had bought years earlier. It had been in my mom's family at one point and is near where many of her cousins still live. Mom and Dad applied for Canadian citizenship, but after two years nothing had happened with their applications and my dad had died from cancer. He was buried in the churchyard in Canada near where they planned to live.

Anyway, Mom decided to go back to Canada after Dad died, and she's been living there for more than 10 years as a landed immigrant, which is what she ended up doing so she could live there again because nothing was happening with the citizenship application.

As of Friday, she might not be a landed immigrant any more. She could be a Canadian again. And, having been born to a Canadian parent, I might be Canadian too!

Always felt like I belonged to two countries with most of my "known" relatives living in Canada and going there all the time to visit. Maybe now when folks say, "You have an accent. Where are you from?" (just because I pronounce words like "about" and "borrow" differently) I could say, "I'm Canadian."

I won't start saying "eh," but I wouldn't mind a butter tart.

A little of this ...

... and a little of that. Haven't had time for much sewing these days. Work has crept into my weekends lately, and yesterday was spent with hubby.

We flew up to Sheboygan, WI, and had lunch at the Final Approach restaurant at the Memorial Airport. Really yummy! I don't mind flying in little airplanes, but I get a bit bored. There needs to be a destination and I need a book and/or some Sudukos to keep me occupied. I've tried applique, but it can be too bumpy. Conversation is difficult with headsets so there's not much of that, and he doesn't seem to mind. He just loves flying and having someone with him.

The restaurant was nice. Service was good and food was excellent. The waitress told us about their Monday night special: Martinis and manicures. Sounds like fun. He can fly and I can drink and get my nails done. We'll have to wait until later in the summer when it stays light long enough for us to go, enjoy ourselves and get back to our airport before dark.

Today he went back out to the airport, and I managed to get these off the design wall:

They've been up there for awhile taunting me. You can make so many different blocks with half-square triangles.

Awhile back I'd dug out my UFOs and listed them all. Quite a lot hasn't been finished around here. Including putting that list on the blog. Does your unfinished project list include fabric combinations you love, but havent' found the right pattern for yet?

I did get the half-square triangle quilt done, but then I got distracted by all the other half-square triangles I'd found (and the ones I didn't need once I cut back on the size of that project). At one time I collected triangular scraps from projects (mine and others) and used them to start and stop my chain piecing. You know, run one through the machine before starting chain piecing so that if the thread bunched up on the underside it wouldn't affect my "real" project. Then when you get to the end of something and need to press it, you feed another set of triangles through so you can take your "real" project off the machine without creating a thread tail.

Just some of my collection of itty-bitty triangles. The ones in the plastic bags will finish at 1-inch. How crazy is that?

Eventually, I had gobs of triangles that then had to be pressed and trimmed. So instead of working on something that was partially done, I started messing with the triangles. Grouping like colors together and making up blocks. Finally this weekend I got the last one off the design wall.

This block is 16-inches by 12-inches.

Not sure what I'll do with them. I've put them in a box with other orphan blocks. I like the idea of making a quilt of all these odd blocks. The one I saw in New York keeps popping into my brain. But that one was unified by similar fabrics (1930s feed sacks) and my blocks are all over the color map. Have to think how I could possibly unite what's in that box.

I did finish the backing for Luke's quilt this weekend. Very scrappy. And am contemplating taking some of these to a long arm quilter because at this rate, I'll never get them finished. Depends on whether I've made the backings big enough for the longarmer. Might not have as I had illusions of doing the quilting myself. Even bought the batting. They're mostly small-sized quilts. Baby quilts, really. Surely I can quilt them myself, even if I do mostly do straight-line machine quilting. But now there are five in the stack, and I still have the twins' quilts to piece. Where's that measuring tape?

Another top waits to be quilted

Zach's Sort of Bargello is really a lot brighter than it appears. 52" x 52"

Zach's quilt is done. Minus the back. I did make binding though. Now I can toss it in the pile with the other four waiting to be quilted and get started on the baby quilts for the twins. I like the top-making process lots more than the machine quilting process. Hand quilting? I think not. I've been hand quilting the same wall hanging for years, and most of these latest tops are baby quilts that I would prefer not to give to these kids' kids.

The twin's nursery has blue walls and is decorated in monkeys. Two hours of surfing the Internet and I found this Michael Miller flannel of monkeys playing in the water. Isn't it cute. Would have prefered it wasn't flannel because the babies will be in Atlanta, but it was the cutest monkey fabric I could find. And in person, it's even cuter. I found a block called Monkey Wrench that is not the traditional version. It's more of a snail's trails block. I'm thinking light and dark blues and browns in that pattern with the flannel for the border.