A Capital Time

A couple of weeks back Rich and I thought it would be fun to see a hockey game. So, we looked up the Washington Capitals schedule, and of all the remaining regular season home games, there was only one that we'd be able to make it to. We bought tickets and went to see them play against the Montreal Canadiens.

We had so much fun! The Verizon Center was packed. I don't know if it was sold out or not but there weren't very many empty seats. It was a great crowd. I know very little about hockey, but the action was non-stop. The Caps are having a great season and were expected to win. And they did. IN DOUBLE OVERTIME! I can't begin to tell you how exciting that was.

(I dated this back when it happened, but at the time that I'm writing this, the Caps have just beaten the New York Rangers in the first round of the playoffs and will be facing the Pittsburgh Penguins in round two. GO CAPS!)

Comcast Has Left The Building!

Late last year Verizon spent quite a bit of time wiring our building for FiOS. It became available to us last month. We mentioned it to our landlord and he said that he preferred FiOS over cable and that if we didn't mind he'd like to switch services. If we did, he'd make the switch when we moved out. We've never had FiOS but have heard so many wonderful things about it that of course we didn't mind.

We've had FiOS less than 24 hours. We're lovin' it.

My Next Applique Project

So now that I've finished all of the appliqué on Thru Grandmother's Window, it's time to start the next project. I like to always have at least one hand appliqué project to work on while watching TV in the evenings.

I decided to work on Happy Hauntings by The Vintage Spool. You can see a picture by clicking on the underline.

I've finished one block so far:

I think this will be a fun one to work on.

Now They're Really All Done

One of the biggest challenges for me when working on a project is choosing the fabrics. I've gotten a little better since I first started quilting, but I still make some bad choices now and again. One of them was with this block:

I don't know what I was thinking, but I just did not like the leaves that come out from behind the tulips. I set the block aside and finished all of the others, and still did not like it. Since those pieces are behind the tulips, I didn't want to take everything apart to fix it, so I chose a different fabric and appliquéd it on top. Now, the block looks like this:

It's hard to tell that this is the same block since the block looks different due to the lighting. I do like it better. The new leaves might be just a tad too bright and too "teal" for the blue center, but I like it better than before. It may still not be perfect, but I can at least live with it now.

Here are all of my Thru Grandmother's Window blocks. You'd never know that the backgrounds are from the same fabric since the pictures were taken at different times with different lighting, but they are. Maybe at some point I'll take new pics all at the same time.

Now, I need to start working on how I'm going to sash these.

Chocolate Heaven

The weekend before Valentine's Day, Rich and I went to the Chocolate Lover's Festival in Fairfax, VA. There are events all over town, but we just made it to two.

A Taste of Chocolate was held in the Old Town Hall and it was wall-to-wall people. There were hundreds of chocolate items to sample made by area confectioners. There were cakes, brownies, fudge, cookies, candies, truffles, ice cream. The chocolate fountains made my mouth water just watching people dip fruit and pound cake in them. There were so many things to choose from that after a while I was on sensory overload and couldn't even choose anymore.

We then headed over to the City Hall Atrium where they held the Chocolate Challenge competition, chocolate cakes and sculptures with categories for professionals as well as amateurs. I really loved this cute purse with the lipstick.

Gung Hay Fat Choy!

Okay, I don't know for sure that that is how you say "Happy New Year" in Chinese, but I learned that a long time ago and it has stuck. It certainly doesn't look Chinese, maybe it's phonetical? Anyway, Chinese New Year was on January 26th which fell on a Monday. This year is the Year of the Ox.

Rich and I went to the Chinese New Year parade in Chinatown on Saturday, February 1st. Because, you know, I love parades. It was a pretty short "neighborhood" kind of parade. The dragons are always fun to watch.

The highlight was supposed to be a giant firecracker. See the long, red ribbon in the picture? That's a string of firecrackers! I don't know exactly how long it was, but they lifted it up about five stories on a crane and about half of it still snaked around on the ground. The time that it was supposed to be lit came and went. Hazmat was called in. Don't know what the problem was, but it was called off due to "safety concerns." So very disappointing.

Bonnie... and a milestone of sorts

I mentioned a couple of posts back, that there was no way that I'd miss the inauguration. There was a bit of a conflict though. You see, the quilt guild that I joined booked Bonnie Hunter to give a lecture and trunkshow on Inauguration Day.

I first found Bonnie's website about 3-1/2 years ago when I was finally able to devote a little more time to quilting. I love scrap quilts and she just made it all seem so simple. She has dozens of free patterns for scrap quilts up on her website. Even though I didn't have much in the way of scraps, I started following her Scrap User's System to better organize my scraps as I accumulated them. I also started using Leaders and Enders the way she did. I subscribed to her blog. I was so excited when she started giving lectures even though I knew that she probably wouldn't be traveling to New Mexico any time soon. I really hoped that I'd get to see her in person.

So, you can imagine how disappointed I was when I realized that I wasn't going to get to see her on Inauguration Day. Imagine the sigh of relief when I looked at her calendar and saw that she was going to be at another local guild two days later!

I was so excited to see her! I got there a little late because I took a wrong turn, but I don't think I missed much. Most of what was in her lecture I'd read either in her blog or on her website, but it was so great to hear her say these things instead of reading them. I'd seen all the quilts on the website, but pictures rarely do a quilt justice and to get to see them all up close was wonderful.

I bought her new book which I've been wanting since it came out last October. And, she even signed it for me.

Oh, the milestone? This is my 100th post!!

Having a Ball! (Or not)

Once the Inauguration ceremonies were over, I had to make my way to the Convention Center. I would have liked to have stayed on the Mall because the parade was going to be broadcast live on the jumbotrons, but I needed to report at about the same time that the parade was going to start. Getting where I needed to be with about a million other people also trying to get someplace meant that I didn't have time to hang around.

What can I say? It was FREEZING! I was standing in the middle of the street scanning tickets. Wind chill brought the temperature down into the single digits. And, even though I had warmers tucked into my gloves and shoes, within half an hour my fingers and toes were beyond numb.

I was scanning tickets at the entrance for the Neighborhood Ball. I saw a handful of celebrities, but I have to say that I was concentrating so hard on trying to get the tickets to scan that I barely made eye contact with any of the people. There were a number of people that went by that I thought, "Hmm, you look familiar."

It was fun, for about an hour or two. After that things started to break down just a bit. There weren't enough of us to take frequent breaks because some volunteers left without telling anyone and never came back. Our team captain disappeared to warmer areas and wasn't there to help when we had situations to deal with. Ticketmaster didn't send anyone to be on site, so when the scanners started malfunctioning (probably due to the extreme cold), there wasn't anyone to help out. Secret Service was telling us that no one could go through unless they had a valid ticket. Yeah, great times.

Here we are just before getting started when we were still excited.

Inauguration Day

When I first found out that I'd be spending a year in DC, I remember thinking about all the things I'd get to do while I was there. One day last July or August it hit me that I'd be there for Inauguration Day. Now, you have to remember that last July we didn't even know for sure who the party nominees were going to be let alone who would be elected President. I knew then that I'd be taking part in the inauguration festivities. Well, given the historic nature of this particular inauguration, there was no way that I was going to miss being there.

It was another freezing cold day so we stayed at the apartment as long as we dared. Live coverage on TV showed that things were filling up rather quickly. When we left, we knew the Metro was going to be packed and almost impossible to board, so we walked from the apartment, by the Iwo Jima Memorial, across Memorial Bridge and into the National Mall area. It's about two miles. In fair weather, it's actually a rather nice walk. We made our way to the World War II Memorial and staked out a fairly nice spot where we could see one of the jumbotrons.

Rich and I left Kathy and Dan there while we went to see if we could find a better spot near the Washington Monument. It was so packed with people that we almost couldn't get back out! Rich was able to get this picture. See the Capitol building way in the background? See the mass of people? We went back to the WWII Memorial.

It turned out to be a great spot. The way the memorial is shaped a lot of the wind was blocked and it felt so much warmer there. There was so much energy in the crowd. Even though people were freezing, they were excited and happy and, dare I say, hopeful.

This is a day that I will remember the rest of my life.

Operation Gratitude

On MLK, Jr. Day, Kathy, Dan and I (Rich was sick and stayed behind) headed out to RFK Stadium to participate in Operation Gratitude where we helped put together care packages for soldiers. I think the goal for the day was 75,000 care packages and I believe the goal was not only met, but surpassed.

It was really well-organized. Each participant was given a large zip-lock bag and as you walked past a row of tables, other volunteers put items into your bag trick-or-treat style. At the end of the tables, you sealed up your bag, it went into a box (for shipping) and you got back in line to start again. I think we each did 15 to 20 bags, I lost count.

Once done, there were thank you cards to fill out that went into the boxes with the care packages.

You want to know the best thing? Everything was donated by Target. All the items that went into the care packages, the shipping materials, even "goody bags" for the volunteers (a Target shopping bag, a bottle of water and a brownie).

The second best thing was that it all took place inside a heated tent.

We Are One: Opening Inaugural Celebration

One month ago today (has it been that long already?), my sister-in-law and her husband came to spend the Inaugural weekend with us. We were all pretty excited to be right in the thick of things.

You might remember that the Sunday before the inauguration there was a big concert at the Lincoln Memorial. We braved the cold weather and headed over there with about half a million other people. Since we arrived only about an hour before we couldn't see the talent from where we were, but we did get lucky enough to be right in front of a jumbotron.

It was a star-studded concert. Despite the freezing temperatures, we had a great time. I've never been in the middle of such a huge crowd where everyone was happy to be there. People sang and danced and cheered. It was so much better than if we'd stayed at the apartment and watched it on TV (which we had considered because of the cold).

Even getting out went smoothly enough.

And Done!

After finishing my last Thru Grandmother's Window block, I decided to work some more on my pumpkin blocks. I think I was really just procrastinating on the tweaking that I decided to do.

In any event, I finished the remaining 12 pumpkin blocks. Like I've said before, these go really, really fast and they're fun to do.

Done!

I finished block #12 for my Thru Grandmother's Window quilt! I wish I could say that I was completely done, but I've decided to go back to one of my earlier blocks and tweak it just a bit. I really don't like this one block. I thought that maybe by the time I'd finished all the others that it wouldn't bother me anymore, but it does. Even after laying all the blocks out, it just sticks out (and not in a good way) to me.

My friend and fellow quilter Olive says that "they don't all have to be your favorite" and that's true. So, instead of starting over, I'm just going to tweak it a bit. I think after that, while it still won't be my favorite, I'll be able to live with it in my quilt.

I'm a Volunteer!

Well, I was at any rate. That's what happens when you get so far behind in your blog posts. It's kind of hard to talk about things as though they just happened.

So, a while back I saw that the Presidential Inaugural Committee (PIC) was accepting online applications for volunteers. I figured that living in DC for the year and being a tourist for a year, what better way to add to my "DC Experience" than to volunteer for the PIC? So, I submitted my application and then received an email telling me where I could attend a training session.

There were several training sessions, and mine was three weeks ago. I think there were about 5,000 people there, all volunteers. Even the organizers for the training were volunteers. It was so incredibly organized. Seriously. It was impressive. We had a general session where we were given some general info and then we broke up into smaller groups for breakout sessions which is where we'd be given our assignments.

In the general session they told us that over 80,000 people had submitted applications and only about 13,000 were given jobs. Not being any more qualified than the next person, I'm not sure how I was chosen over so many others, but I was excited.

My assignment? Scanning tickets for one of the Inaugural Balls at the Convention Center! Now, this doesn't mean that I'd be IN the convention center. It means that I'd be scanning people's tickets before they went through the metal detectors before they were cleared to go in the Convention Center. Still, how fun to see people all dressed up, maybe a few celebrities, who knows?

I was even given a dorky cool hat to wear while working and a lanyard with "souvenir" credentials. The real creds were to be given out just before the event.