beadqueene's bits and baubles: blog hop

Greetings new friends! Welcome to my stop on Beth of Plum and June's 2013 New Bloggers Blog Hop. Please go check out all the other awesome blogs on the hop. You can see the schedule by clicking on the button over to the left, or this link I will also post the full schedule at the bottom of this entry. I am so excited to be participating and have already found a ton of new blogs to follow and some really inspiring new-to-me blogs. I apologize now for the wordiness... and the lack of quilty goodness... in this post, it's been a very busy week.

I guess I should start off with a little bit about me. My name is Liz, I'm 29, live in Western Maryland, and I'm a librarian. I have worked as a reference librarian at the Central branch of our County's library system since August 2008. I love my job! Every day there is something new: new questions, new things to learn, new books! In addition to reference services, I maintain part of our website, teach computer classes, and have become the de facto e-library guru.

The most exciting thing about my job is that we are currently undergoing a renovation of our Central library due to be completed in the middle of July. It has been two and a half years and I am so excited to get moved back in. I actually got to visit the new building yesterday and it was AMAZING. This is a picture of the front entrance.... almost finished :)

Awesome view during our recent trip to Cali

As far as my personal life. I've been dating my boyfriend, Ryan for a little over five years, and we have known each other for about nine. We met while working at Home Depot during college. After I moved to Philly for graduate school, we lost touch, then randomly reconnected when I moved back to Maryland, we've been dating ever since.

Right now we are hoping to buy our first house. Our "dream home" came on the market last weekend and our bid went in TODAY! Between showings and paperwork, I have had 0 time to sew this week.

Doesn't this room look like it will be the perfect sewing room? I'm so excited and anxious right now! So keep your fingers crossed for us :)

~~ETA (6/22/13): Our bid was accepted! We just have to sign the contract and have a good home inspection and it's ours :)~~
ETA (6/26/13): Looks like this might fall through :( Foreclosures are so frustrating!

Boyfriend says I have hobby ADD... which is pretty much true. I have always been into crafting, I don't consider myself artistic in any way, but I've always been drawn to color and texture. For the longest time, I was an avid beader, and some of my creations were even sold at a cute little handmade boutique in Downtown Frederick, MD.

Please ignore the weeds!

I am also a gardener, actually I am a certified Master Gardener here in Washington County. I have a roughly 18'x30' vegetable garden right now where we grow most of our summer vegetables. This year we even have strawberries and they are so delicious.

I discovered modern quilting in a pretty circuitous fashion. I actually bought my sewing machine last summer off Craigslist for $30 (it's a Singer probably from the '80s, but I don't know much else about it) to make cloth menstrual pads and maybe make a couple bags, but with no intention of quilting. One day I was trolling around the internet looking for ideas of something to get my sister for her birthday and discovered Smash books. While doing some Googling for Smash books, I found Holly's blog Bijou Lovely (where she has a post about her Smash book) and after reading her quilting posts, I fell in love on the spot. I bought the full line of Chicopee a few days later and my fabric stash has only grown since then.

I haven't finished a full quit yet -- lame, I know -- but I'm working on it. I prefer to work on small projects because between full time work, my garden, and volunteering, it will probably take me forever to finish an actual quilt. I also sew in our dining room, which also acts as our pantry, and has to be used as a functional dining room whenever we have company over... so large projects often get put away and don't make it back out very quickly.

I had plans to finish up my FMF table runner (using the Random Reflections tutorial from the Moda Bake shop) this week and have a giveaway with some scraps. I was able to finish and square up the top, but the giveaway will have to wait until next week when I can finish it up.

This sucker is HUGE. I made it so it will go the length of the table, then hang over by 4 rows on each side. I think it's taller than my boyfriend and he's 6'1". There is a good 10 inches hanging over the other side of the fence in this picture. I still haven't decided how I want to back it. Originally I was thinking of making a disappearing 9 patch back with my DS charms, but I started to make the blocks and liked them so much I might reserve them for a lap quilt instead... Any thoughts on backing? I am definitely going to use the Metro Living Circles in Red for binding, because it needs more red!

Like I mentioned before, I like to work on small projects. I especially love swapping because it gives me a deadline so I can't slack off. All of the items in the mosaic up there are from swaps I've done in the past couple months. Around the time that I discovered sewing, I also discovered swap-bot.com. Basically you can swap anything and everything there. I've also recently gotten more involved in swaps over on Flickr (if you don't have a Flickr account yet, go make one stat!) I'm planning to do a swapping primer next week, so keep and eye out for that :)

Well, thanks for stopping by!