All Decked Out: February 2012

Fiesta!

Sunday, February 19, 2012 9 Comments »

My daughter's father-in-law, Aurelio, was born in Mexico. Most of his family lives there, although Aurelio has lived here in Pennsylvania since college. My son-in-law, Paul, and his 2 brothers spent many summers in Guadalajra with Aurelio's brother Antonio; Antonio's 3 children each spent a year with Tio Aurelio and Tia Lori here in the United States going to school. Paul's oldest cousin, Julio, was Best Man in Kate and Paul's wedding 5 years ago.

That's Julio, with his two sisters Carolina and Daniela, at Kate and Paul's rehersal dinner in Puerto Vallarta, June, 2006.

Julio has been the perrenial batchelor, but he finally found a woman who could tame his wild ways. Eleanora is an artist, very independent, and has captured his heart. Their wedding will be held in the historic town of Tlaquepaque, outside of Guadalajara; Kate and Paul will be going to the wedding in March, along with the rest of Paul's family. We are not able to attend, however I wanted to send something very special for Julio and his bride.

Somehow Kaffe Fasset's fabric remind me of a Mexican fiesta, so that Kaffe quilt I've been working on will travel to Mexico along with Kate and Paul as a gift for Julio and his artist bride. I finished the top today, and am thrilled at how it turned out. I'll put the back together tonight so it can go off to the long-armer tomorrow. Believe me, it's going to be very very hard to part with this one!

Fiesta de la Boda Kaffe Fassett fabrics. 82" x 92"

Double Trouble

Friday, February 17, 2012 12 Comments »

I'm having an angry C.O.W.* moment.

Google has decided that we need to add an extra layer of security to the commenting process on our blogs. No more single word verification, with funky words that invite funkier definitions. Now we have this:

Can you read that first word? I can't. Talk about a PIA! My eyes are old, my brain is feeble, and I'll thing twice about leaving a comment if it means having to decipher that hot mess. Bah, humbug and phooey.

Given a choice between putting up with the spam, or making people do that -- especially those of you who do your bloggy reading first thing in the morning or last thing at night -- I choose the former. Sometimes you just need to let your inner C.O.W. out & take a stand.

* C.O.W. Cranky Old Woman (with props to Nancy, for having brought the Cult of the C.O.W. to blogland).

Addendum: Lori, at Humble Quilts suggested just turning off the word verification requirement by doing this:

Go to Dashboard, settings, comments, scroll down this page until you find word verification- fill in the NO bubble. Click "save settings" at the bottom of the page.

Of course this leaves you open to potential spam. You can avoid having spam show up automatically on your blog by turning on comment moderation (same page as shown above). This won't protect you from receiving spam, but it will allow you to dump it before it shows up on your blog page.