One Beaded Pill Keeper Finished

The first pill keeper is finished.  I added a little design to the top and stripes to the side of the lid.  The reason....for the person using it to know which end was the lid of course!

The two photos below are side views of the pill keeper - one with the lid off and one with the lid on.  I used a two part epoxy glue to stick the beaded sections to the wood.  Just put a tiny amount on the very bottom and a few tiny dots of the glue around the top edge to hold it all in place.  The lid especially wanted to slide off so this hopefully will keep it together so none of the beaded parts get lost.

Am trying to ignore a job I have to do today - ripping some machine quilting out.  There isn't that much to do but it is oh so tedious.  I have found lots of other things to keep me busy up until now but still don't want to tackle that job.

Maybe I should just sit down and do some more beading so at least I can say I got something done today!

Lynn

Beaded Pill Keeper

I have been working on beading in the evenings as I can do it sitting in my chair with a lapboard and watch my favorite TV shows. I am working on covering a squatty wooden container with beads and am calling it a pill keeper for carrying in a purse. I wanted to use the same dogwood design I used in the needle cases I made previously but the problem is that this wooden case has a larger diameter and is shorter than the dogwood design I used on the needle case so the pattern needed to be adjusted.

One of the things I discovered when Googling beading websites was beading graph paper for several different beading stitches that I could print out and color in with the design of my choice. Used the peyote design paper and the dogwood flower design and figured out the pattern for the size I needed. Of course I needed to string some beads and see how many I would need to go around the pill keeper, keeping an even count of beads, and estimate how many rows tall it needed to be then I was all set to space my flowers on the graph paper.

The penciled diagonal line and the small tick marks and small circle marks are added to help me keep track of the rows as I bead. I have a tendency to get lost and can jump up or down a row if I am not careful.

So far I have most of the bottom beaded but have not beaded the end yet. I do need to make sure I have beads right up the edge of the lid so I don't have a gap so when the lid is beaded I will add more rows to the bottom if needed then finish the very end.

The container isn't real big and will hold a few aspirin but I'm thinking it will be a lot of fun to carry in a purse.

The two photos below show the finished needle case and the unfinished pill keeper so you can see the difference in size.

Writing this later than I usually stay up but John and I went to the local cattlemen's meeting tonight and we didn't get home until 10 pm. It was the annual business meeting but one of the really good things about going to cattlemen's meetings is that we always have a wonderful dinner. They do have programs of interest to the members and keep on top of legislation that will affect our business so it is a worthwhile organization but the food...it is always so good. Tonight it was a prime rib dinner....ummmm it was delish! I have my quilting organizations and John is involved in cattlemen's organizations on the local and state levels so we both have groups to keep us active and up to date on what is important to us.

Lynn

Quilting Ideas Needed Please!

The borders are finished now on my Scrapaholic quilt as I decided to not put the other two borders on that I was originally planning. When I laid them out next to the quilt as it is now the border section just overpowered the center. The quilt now measures 79" x 90" - that's it! I really do like the red pieced border as it pulls the red color from the blocks. The red fabrics on the top have some bright ones there too but the photo just doesn't show them. I tried to distribute the different reds all around the quilt.

I just don't have a big enough wall to photograph the quilt so pushed the living room furniture back and laid it out on the carpet. I stood on a chair and held the camera up as far as I could, almost was at the ceiling, but the quilt is still quite distorted. At least you get the idea.

OK everyone....I need ideas on how to quilt it. The blocks are 12" (5 blocks x 6 blocks). Each of the little half square units are 2" - each 12" block has 48 pieces. The light blue border is 3 1/2" wide and the red is 5 1/2" wide finished. There is so much piecing with so much color in the blocks I just don't know what to do to quilt it. The border isn't as hard since I could do some kind of feathers there.

I will give you some help....I like to quilt feathers and most any other designs and can draw any design to fit if only I have the ideas. Am hoping some of you can suggest some ideas for me.....please.

I really think I am going to try to machine quilt this myself on my Bernina - that is the plan now anyway. I will baste it using Sharon Schamber's method using the boards. If you have not heard of her check out her website for a free video of this and lots of other free videos. As you know I am a big fan of her work and her videos are great.

OK...get your thinking caps on.

Lynn

EID, VID, Injections....Oh My

This afternoon we worked our last years calves in readiness to sell them this week. We ran them all through the chute and gave them another ear tag. When the calves are born we tag them with one similar to the blue one and write the cow's number on her calf's tag. This makes it easy to sort the pairs when taking them to the pasture and other times when we need to know who belongs to who. The tags are kind of like getting your ears pierced. This tag is called a VID tag, meaning a visual identity tag. You look at it and read the number...right!

Today we added another tag to the same ear of all the yearling calves - an EID tag. It looks like the white tag above and this is a special tag with a number that can be read with an electronic reader (the same number printed on the outside) and will identify this animal for it's entire life to our farm, the date it was born and it's sex. EID means electronic identity tag.

This isn't our calf but you can see both kinds of tags in this calf's ears. Besides the new ear tag the calves got a booster pneumonia shot.

My job for this process was to record the tag numbers, EID and VID and the sex of the animal in the Excel spread sheet on the laptop computer. I also recorded the information on paper too as a double check. It is very important that this information is correct as it will go to a national registry.

I did get to sit in the pickup (truck) with the window rolled down next to the chute and John would let me know the numbers and other info for every calf. I did get a little chilly by the time we were done since I was just sitting even though the temp. were in the mid 40s today. We had the help of our part time hired man and his high school son. With the sorting system we have it worked pretty well and we got them all done in a couple hours.

Did some beading this evening and hopefully some stitching tomorrow.

Until later,
Lynn