Saturday Nights are different now!

And I am thrilled!  Instead of rattling around the house with nothing on tv, I've been spending the last few babysitting.  Last night was 2-month-old Zoey's first sleepover at Gramma's and the little sweetheart slept through the night and even slept in until 8:15 a.m., much to her mother's chagrin.  Isn't it wonderful to wake up to this smile!

Last weekend, Alex had a turn.  He made a fort with quilts and then pretended it was a train.  I had to sit behind him and be the whistle for a while, but was able to talk him in to letting me get off.

The next morning, I pulled out the old rocking horse that was my brother's and he had a ball pretending he was a cowboy.

Such concentration!

This horse has quite a story.  It was made by prisoners at Oakalla Prison in New Westminster, BC in the early 1960's and shipped to the military base on northern Vancouver Island, where a sister of one of the guards (and we) lived.  She would help sell them so the prisoners could make a little cash.  My brother got it for his first birthday and our children all used it too. Now the next generation is here and using it!  It still has its original paint job and leather ears. I plan on passing it to my brother's daughter when she has her first child, but in the meantime my grandbabies can use it.

Not much has been happening on the quilty front.  I hit a by-the-pound sale at a LQS, and spent way too much money on scraps (they sell off manufacturers samples), but scored about 5 lbs of wonderful batiks, and about 4 lbs of mostly new and unreleased fabrics, including selections of Parisville by Tula Pink, Amy Butler and more.  Here they are piled up in my new wicker laundry basket I got for $5 at a garage sale.  This basket stands about 14" high, and it was almost full!

Here's another perspective, with my foot adding a sense of scale.  Most of the fabrics hide a stack of coordinating fabrics underneath.  This pile extends almost 6 feet.  In case you are wondering, 9 lbs of fabric equals about 22.5 metres or 25 yards of wonderful, glorious scraps!  Now I can create scrappy quilts a la Bonnie Hunter to my heart's content.

While the babies visit and sleep, I do work on my hexagons.  Here is my little kit that I like to travel with, including my punch for more cardboards in case I run out.

I'm still thinking about doing a Red & White challenge, and I'm floating the idea around that I might make blocks from the Midget Blocks, Barbara Brackman's Civil War blocks, and the 100 Block magazines (I have Vol. 2 & 3).  I'll end up with a buch of different size blocks, but I can visualize a pretty fun quilt with sashings of flying geese and other designs.