Our trip

On Friday morning, April 13, we gathered all of our suitcases and headed of to the MTC to catch the shuttle for the airport. We each had three suitcases. The best deal was that to Brazil the luggage limit is 70 pounds instead of the usual 50 pounds. Because of space limitation I had to jettison the Stars and Sprigs quilt so I ended up with just the Lollypop trees project. Anyway back to the story. We managed to get all the luggage in one car but then there was no room for Brad and Alisa who were taking the car back home. We ended up taking two cars.
After checking in with Delta and going through security we had three hours to wait. Mike and I pulled out our computers and started indexing the 1940's US census. I am having a kick with the Arizona one. I have been doing a bunch from Clifton. Mike prefers Utah. At noon we went looking for food. The SLC airport has changed vendors and many of the places we thought would be available were closed and the ones that were open were very crowded. We decided to walk to another concourse where there aren't as many people. I wanted to walk and not do the moving walkways. As I was going along I felt my skirt hitting lower and lower on my legs. Strange, I thought, I know this skirt is not that long. I looked down and my slip was about down around my ankles. I started to laugh and headed for a quiet corner where I just pulled the thing down and completely off. I stuffed it in my purse and went on. I  thought removing it was better than trying to pull it back up. That would involve exposing more than I cared to. My saving grace (if there was one) is that there weren't very many people around. Mike thought that I should recreate the episode with photos. I declined.  We have laughed about it so often since.

When we were boarded for Atlanta I pulled out my Kindle ready to read a novel I had been saving just for the trip. It was one I looked forward to with great anticipation. When I turned the Kindle on half of the screen was scrambled and the other half was an ad. I tried turning it off and on several times and nada. No change. Argh! Well, the movie was the second Sherlock Holmes movie which I hadn't seen. I love Robert Downey Jr. I dug out my earphones, plugged them in and nothing but static. The flight attendants were of no help either. Whole row out? Nothing can be done. Too bad. Argh! So I dug out my computer and did indexing while Mike read on his Kindle fire. I was so jealous.

The trip from Atlanta to Sao Paulo was better. I was able to watch "The Artist." It was a fun movie. The flight was 9 hours and I didn't get a bit of sleep in. I was very envious of the guy in front of me who slept the whole time. I pretended to sleep and hoped that would count for something. It really didn't help. We arrived sleep deprived, jet lagged and exhausted.

It was with great joy when we saw the two men holding signs for Elder and Sister Stephenson. They had been sent by the temple president in his wife's car that held all the luggage and four passengers. Driving the roads in Sao Paulo can be very exciting. I was so glad I wasn't behind the wheel. Listening to the two converse was interesting. I caught a few words here and there. Mike could keep up with pretty well. I try to speak when I can. It is really a lovely flowing language. The people seem to appreciate it when I try.



After we settled into our apartment we went exploring. We tried our hand at self photographing. I think the sleep deprivation shows on our face. Also note the curling hair. The high humidity is making my hair curl. So much for straight hair. This was taken outside the temple. Ned always does so well. I guess I need more practice.  We discovered the temple has camellia bushes and they are just now forming buds. Mike's mom loved camellias. We are looking forward to the blossoms.

 We wandered around the temple grounds and then noticed a Walmart was just down the block so we went to check it out. While exploring there a young woman called out to us. She noticed our name tags. She and her husband are LDS and they visited with Mike. She used some English with me. Her English was much better than my Portuguese. They were so kind.

I am glad to be here, be unpacked, and I am looking forward to sleeping in a bed. Man was not meant to sleep upright.

MTC places and people

We spent the first two weeks of April in and around the MTC (that's stands for Missionary Training Center). Our group of senior missionaries was one of the largest and numbered 93. We were divided into districts. Most had 8 - 4 couples. But when they got to the end of the alphabet they ran out of rooms and teachers so our group totaled 15. We had six couples and three single sisters. These people came from everywhere and were going everywhere.

Mike and I spent a lot of time with our Portuguese tutor Daniel Benson. He is off to law school at Duke in the fall. He was so patient with me. When I had a meltdown or two he picked me up, dusted me off, and then we got back to work learning Portuguese.

The spring flowers were out and they were just beautiful.

David Archuleta was in the MTC. Many were star struck but the guy was just trying to keep a low profile. One lady in our group asked if she could take a picture and he said he would rather not. Poor guy had to deal with that alot. I took pictures of flowers instead of David.

The week we spent training at the temple was wonderful. There were 25 of us temple missionaries. 12 couples and one single sister. Two couples were off to Cebu City Philippines Temple, one to the Freiberg Germany Temple, another to the Santiago Chile Temple. The single sister was going to Madrid Spain. Several couples were going to Washington DC temple and one to the Manhattan temple. They were a great bunch of people. No picture of the group.

We had a great time but were anxious to get on with our adventure.

New Direction

I am hijacking my blog and it will be going in a new direction for the next 18 months. My husband and I are going to be serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We will be living in Sao Paulo, Brazil and working in the LDS temple there.

Since the first of December I have been going to Portuguese lessons with a private tutor three times a week. Oh my goodness, there are so many things I do not know. So many words, so little time. Fortunately my DH does speak Portuguese so we should be able to get along.

I will be taking along a couple of applique projects to work on in my spare time. I am wondering if I can get along without my sewing machine for 1 1/2 years. I guess I will find out.

The first project is Lollypop Trees.

 I love this pattern by Kim McLean. Since the first of the year I have collected a lot of bright florals. Most are Phillip Jacobs designs. Love them. I preshrunk them and had this mess:

After ironing them they tamed down to a small stack:

The second project is Stars and Sprigs also by Kim McLean.

 I will be using the same bright fabrics. If I get all the applique finished I figure I can hand piece the stars. So to prepare for that eventuality I pulled bright almost solids and cut a square to use. Aren't they pretty?

I am trying to maximize the space/weight that this will take in my suitcase. I figure it is about 10% of the weight allowed. I think it is justified. We will soon find out if it will all fit.

So if you want to hang around and find out how I manage in Brazil you are welcome to. I don't know how much quilty stuff will be talked about but I will post my progress.

Bom dia.

Long time, no post

A lot has happened since my last post. My vertigo abated some. It is still on the edges some days but nothing like the episode in August. I did a LOT of quilting for others. In  six months I quilted 35 quilts.  I regret that I didn't get pictures of all of them but I want to share a few of the ones I did take a picture of.

This is a small wallhanging.

Twenty-five patch with a large leaf meander over all. I really like how this turned out.

The name of this quilt is Wash Day. I love it.

I did do a few for me. First was a quick Halloween quilt I made to hang in my entry hall in October. It is made from the Wild Thing pattern.

Last of all I was able to get the two Halloween hexagon quilts made for my daughters-in-law for Christmas. They absolutely loved them. Score one for me. I quilted them in a spider web design.

For my stash report for the year 2011 I finished with 25 yards in the black. Woohoo. This year will be a lot different from last year. I will post more about that soon.

No Ducks Allowed

I am sorry that I haven't been blogging. For the past two weeks I have been battling vertigo. Talk about the world spinning by. The first week I was in bed and then later I was able to move to the recliner. After ten days of no quilting I was willing to put up with anything to get my quilt fix.

A local quilt shop has a mystery quilt club that is similar to a block of the month program only we don't know what the finished quilt will look like. It has a theme and it runs from July through June of the next year. This past years theme was 30's prints. This is very successful for the shop because they have over 500 people sign up. Many techniques are used to build skills and introduce new notions.

I liked all that was done except for one large red work embroidery block that was a duck. I hated the embroidery and I hated that duck. I came to think of the project as that Dumb Duck quilt.

Later when three small red work blocks were assigned I chose to applique the blocks instead of embroider them. When the final quilt was shown I decided that I was going to do something else. Here is the shops version.

First of all the duck had to go. With some graph paper I figured out a new layout. It used less blocks but it needed some fillers here and there. I finished the top and then I found that I could quilt on my large machine without much dizziness.

My head stays still while my arms move. So the top is quilted and bound. I call it No Ducks Allowed. Another bonus is that it is different from the other 500 plus quilts out there.

I didn't count the fabric that came in because it went right back out but I did use 4 1/2 yds for the backing and binding.

I am slowly getting better. I notice more on a week to week basis other than day by day. Thank goodness I can quilt.

Blast from the Past

Lately I have been going through my old stored stuff to make room for my daughter to move back home. The economic downturn is hitting here too. Combining two households is forcing me to go through boxes of stuff that have been around for way too long.

One of the boxes I found had quilting items from when I started quilting almost 30 years ago. At that time we did not have rotary cutters and rulers. There were very few books and copiers were expensive and not too reliable. As I was sorting I came across about 30+ envelopes that I had made up templates for blocks from cereal boxes.

On some of the envelopes I had drawn the block and listed the block size.

There were a couple that were applique blocks.

I must admit that I am so glad to have rotary cutters and rulers that are so accurate and easy to use.

Know what I did with these antiques? They all went into the round file. No need for them now.

The Last in Line?

I think I must be the last one on earth to try the cute butterflies that have been flying around for about a year now. In June I went on a formal shop hop and for driving 312 miles (round trip) and visiting 13 shops I was awarded a small charm pack of Cherry Fizz. I had 22 or 23 squares. In considering what to do with it I remembered this great tutorial by Mrs. Schmenkman for charm squares of 5".

I chose the best 20 and used some light pink solid leftover from Ashcroft #1 and 2. Here are the 20 blocks sewn together.  It was a donation small quilt for our quilt guild to auction off. A good friend ended up with it so I know it will have a good home. Here it is quilted. Too bad you can't see the little butterflies quilted into the border.

I am considering doing a large quilt with my brights and a black solid. We shall see.