Down on the Lakadaisies Farm Blog # 21

Down on the Lakadaisies Farm Blog # 21

Sadness envelopes us at the farm. We laid our beloved Saint Bernard, Maggie to rest yesterday. She lost her battle with cancer, though she fought bravely to the end. Her last day was filled with her favorite pastimes, a pickup ride with dad and a walk. Her walks were getting shorter as the cancer took hold, but she enjoyed them so much we allowed her to go as far as she could go. She was the boss of our family for about 6½ years since she came to us at 6 weeks of age. She ruled with love and a stern hand. We will miss her dearly and hold her in our hearts. We will need your prayers to get through this tough time and focus on the coming months. John says that we should be happy that we were able to be in her company for at least a little while. I know that he misses her just as much or more than I do.... Well, I feel better now that I have got that "out".... Thanks for being such a good listener.

It will be hard to leave Quinn tomorrow as we head south to the valley for the RGVQG Quilt show in McAllen, Texas. Our daughter Ginny will spend the night with him Wednesday night and then our son David will take over. I don’t know how we could leave him alone. We would love to take him with us, but have no idea how to sneak a 185lb. puppy into our booth. Please let us know if you have some insight into this.

I have spent the last couple of weeks working on a new design. Seems like that work is the best way to keep my mind off of "things". It will be at the show and you can see a picture below. I haven’t quite finished the quilting, so don’t look too close.

We will have about a week between this show and a workshop in Rogers, Arkansas at the Rabbit’s Lair. Then we head to the AQS show in Lancaster, Pa. We will be gone about 10 days before we come back home. I am already getting "homesick" and I am still at home.



After that, I think we do the Country Living Festival in Austin and then John wants to do the Spring Wholesale Market in Kansas City in mid May. He hasn’t told me any thing else yet. I will share with you as soon as I know.

Well, I have miles to go before I sleep, so I better get going. Thanks for listening and all your support.

enjoy life




dolores Storm

Down on the Lakadaisies Farm Blog #20

Down on the Lakadaisies Blog # 20

We are back from the Jefferson quilt show. Life is returning to normal. We were greeted at the door Sunday night by two very happy Saints. Maggie is holding her own and is very happy to have Mom and Dad home. Quinn is overjoyed that Mom is home. The poor baby was starving. This new protein diet we have him on doesn’t get him very many cookies. It seems Mom is the only one with a soft heart. His brothers and sister kept him on the strict diet while we were gone. They don’t fall for that cute little " I really need a cookie speech", like his Mom.

They really were sweet to pitch in and take care of them though, if not for their combined efforts you would have seen only John at the quilt show. Speaking of the quilt show, it was great. I want to thank the ladies that host the show. They are not a guild and volunteer to do this show. They not only feed us, they politely listen to our input as to what they can do to improve the show each year. Jefferson is a great venue for the show, they have wonderful turn of the century homes, many of which are bed and breakfasts. We stayed at one along with several of our vendor friends. What fun.

I was anxious to see how my new quilts in our Hand Me Down series would be recieved and I was very pleased at the positive response. We visited with a lot of wonderful people and I enjoyed sharing my designs with them and hopefully inspiring them to incorporate their hand me downs into their quilts. It was hard to put a finger on their favorites, because they liked them all-but the "Pledge of Allegiance Quilt" seemed to be the biggest hit. I put a picture of it on Blog #17. I made a few kits and we sold them all. I am making more, but you might want to hurry. Not sure what will happen when I run out of the fabrics. We decided to sell the kits with the patterns not included. We thought that you might buy the pattern first and then decide to buy the kit, in which case you would have to buy the pattern twice.  John said something about offering some kind of incentive to buy them together. You will find them on our website under Kits stock # 1609. We did come across a couple of people who seemed to think that I changed the wording of the "Pledge" on my quilt. That is not the case. I decided to honor Francis Bellamy, who wrote it in 1892, by using his original version It was actually changed four times by our government. So, if you don’t like the changes, my question would be, "which one". I hope this clears everything up. It was not my intent to upset anyone by using the original version, only to honor the author. By the way, the rest of that story is fascinating--look it up.

A lot of our customers expressed interest in classes or workshops and I talked to them about our upcoming workshops in Rogers, Arkansas at the Rabbit’s Lair. Here are some pictures of the designs we will be working on.

I know that we will have a lot of fun and I hope to see you there. See my last Blog for information about that and Blog #15 for more information about the rest of my schedule. I am keeping my fingers crossed about the Country Living Fair in Austin, Texas. (April 27-29). I sent my deposit in and will let you know ASAP. Just call or email for more information. Who knows, you might even talk John into bringing me to your town. I don’t know what he has going on NEXT ...and now he has another saying " if you don’t want to go anymore-just stop". I don’t know where he comes up with them, but I guess I am not quite ready to stop so....Well, I have got to get back to those kits ....and there are some new designs just floating around up there...... ....waiting to be done.....gotta get them out... so I will say good bye for now and as always....

Enjoy Life

dolores Storm

ps   I am getting all of my stuff ready for the valley (our next show in McAllen Texas) let’s see now, suntan lotion, beach umbrella...hmmm....maybe I will let John run the booth while I enjoy that sand......sounds like a winner....