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tierneytravels

Mt. Dora, Florida – A Lovely Town!

tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

I was going to try and just focus on my crafting adventures but I just have to sneak in some travel stories. I love travel nearly as much as crafting.

Back in mid January, before we decided to do something crazy like suddenly sell our house and buy a new house, I went on a little trip to Mt. Dora, Florida with my sister.

It is a charming little town that is not as touristy as some of the bigger tourist towns in Florida…sort of a hidden gem.

We had so much fun wandering around the beautiful downtown area filled with eateries and lots of sweet little boutique shops.

Each evening we were treated to glorious sunsets by the water:

But you do have be aware of/be careful of the alligators (we didn’t see any but we knew they were lurking somewhere!):

We ate diner one night at an awesome restaurant called The Goblin Market that was set up like you were having dinner in someone’s comfy house…with a nice library!

We also attended one of the largest indoor/outdoor flea markets in the US – Renninger’s Flea Market & Antique Center. It was quite the experience! We spent nearly an entire day there and still didn’t see all of it!

Here is a write up about the place from visitflorida.com:

“Two Separate Shopping Experiences, Located on 140 acres, just east of Mount Dora. The Antique Center has over 200 shops in an air conditioned enclosed building. Shop owners, indoors and outdoors, will answer your questions and provide you with personal attention. Most dealers accept charge cards and checks. Be sure and visit the buildings in the “Street of Shops” The Consignment Area has over 40 Cases & 30 Booths. You will find Antique Furniture, Hand made Gold and Diamond Jewelry, Paintings, Vintage Books, antique & vintage Glass, China, Porcelain, Shabby Chic & Primitive Collectibles. Eat at the Grub Hub, the best place in Mount Dora. Don’t miss the Special Shows every month.”

Yes you read that correctly – a 140 acres of flea market!!!!!

They had many quirky things at the flea market and we exhausted ourselves (but in a fun way) trying to see all of it. There was a shop that specialized in vintage televisions and radios; and related supplies to fix vintage televisions and radios. The shopkeeper was as quirky as the things he was selling.

I could have done a whole series of posts on our flea market experience but I was too engrossed in the experience to take very many photos.

To close out this post about our trip, here is a random photo from our trip that stimulated my creative muse – a section of the boardwalk deck was designed in a very cool pattern:

Studio

Project Linus Mini Retreat, Part II

tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Here is the second part of my two post series on the mini quilt retreat I attended on Saturday with my community quilting group to group make  Project Linus quilts. Please see Part I of the story on this post – Project Linus Mini Quilt Retreat, Part I.

As mentioned in the Part I post, one of the quilt group members hosted the day retreat at her house in her basement that she had turned into an AMAZING quilt studio. In this post I thought I’d give you a little tour of her studio. 

Here is a video I took at uploaded to YouTube (I was so proud of myself that I finally learned how to add music to replace the random snippets of conversation that were originally peppered throughout the video):

Here are some photos of the main section of the basement studio:

She is amazing quilter (making many of those complicated Judy Niemeyer patterns) and an amazing long arm machine quilter. Here is an example on a floral panel of some of her spectacular long arm quilting:

She did a little trunk show of some of her Judy Niemeyer pattern elaborate bed sized quilts she had quilted and I didn’t even think to take photos, darn it! (I was just too busy gasping!)

Since the studio is in a basement, it had window wells. Creatively she lined in cool landscape scenes her window wells!

I showed John and I’d like to do something like that someday in our window wells!

Oh and here is room attached to her studio which is set up little a quilting classroom/workshop area, in which I worked on my assigned Project Linus quilt during the retreat. I didn’t do the best job photographing the space as I was distracted visiting my new quilting buddies, but there are tables with power strips set up all around the room.

Quilt Retreats, Special Events

Project Linus Mini Quilt Retreat, Part I

tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

One of the things I like about the new community that John and I now live in is that they have a lot of community activities and clubs.

For example John joined the Poker Club and the Sports Fanatics Club, and so far I’ve joined the Quilting Club.

Saturday the Quilting Club met at the home of one of the members who has turned her entire basement into an AMAZING quilt studio (which I will show photos of in part 2 of this series of posts), to work on Project Linus quilts.

If you aren’t familiar with Project Linus, it is a volunteer organization that “provides handmade blankets to children 0-18 in the United States who are seriously ill, traumatized, or otherwise in need” (projectlinus.org). The “blankets” donated are usually handmade quilts or crocheted/knitted blankets.

My community quilting group has many years of experience making quilts for kids as part of Project Linus and the group thought a day of intense group quilt production would be a great way to whip up some donation quilts.

We were assigned either cutting, ironing, or sewing; and the long-arm quilters in the group would do the machine quilting on the quilts. They chose a simple pattern and precut packets of coordinate fabrics for those of us assigned to sewing (I was in that group):

I brought my little travel Bernina and had fun hanging out with the other “sewing assigned” quilters, sewing our pieces together while the “ironing assigned” quilters came and took out chained pieces from our machines to press!

Here I am with my completed quilt top at the end of the mini retreat day:

Here are some of the other quilts (same pattern) in progress or completed:

And here is one of the completed quilt tops on the long arm machine getting quilted:

It was a very fun day, though we joked we were in a “quilting sweat shop” – ha! We did take breaks and visited/chatted a lot. We had a wonderful potluck lunch.

We got at least 5 quilt tops completed and a couple more started.

Next post I will show you a tour of the amazing full basement quilt studio of the lovely woman who hosted our mini retreat.

A Crafter's Life

Light Rail Adventures

tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

We are getting settled into our new home and yesterday we decided to go and explore our new easy access to Denver’s light rail – Regional Transportation District (RTD). Previously we lived deep in “suburbia”, far away from public transportation.

So on Tuesday we headed to the RTD light rail station park and ride just a couple miles from our house (we could have taken the bus to the light rail station if we wanted to be purely public transportation):

We had around a 25 minute train ride and we were in downtown Denver!!! By car it would have taken us 30 – 45 minutes in traffic (or longer in rush hour) and then $10 to $20 for parking!

We arrived at Union Station in downtown Denver and we were greeted with a bookstore immediately when we got off the train!

After browsing in the little bookstore connected to the train station, we wandered around the historical interior of Union Station (built in 1881) and then around the lovely surrounding area.

We spent the afternoon exploring downtown Denver by foot visiting the Dairy Block area:

And Larimer Square:

We stopped for an adult beverage at GarageSale Vintage which is a bar and vintage/thrift shop in Larimer Square!

We ate a delicious taco lunch at a food truck parked in front a downtown office building and sat with office workers from the surrounding skyscrapers having lunch.

We also wandered around the 16th Street Mall (outdoor shopping street mall) area and wandered into this cool private feeling courtyard area in a residential section and had a nice break there:

Then it was time to head back to Union Station and take the train home.

But first we stopped at MilkBox Creamery in Union Station, got some delicious ice cream and sat outside on the 80 degree day to enjoy!

On the train ride back to the Park and Ride I did get a little hexie rosette sewing (I packed crafts of course for the train ride…which I thought would be longer…):

We returned to the Park and Ride very satisfied with our fun day of playing tourist in our town!

John and I came to the realization that we can actually go out to dinner now in downtown Denver (which has a fabulous culinary scene) via the light rail – the fare is very low, we don’t have to pay for parking; and we save time and money by taking public transportation!

Adventures in Paper Piecing, Knit and Crochet Away!

Starting a New Granny Square Blanket

tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

A couple years ago on a whim I bought several skeins of Lion Brand yarn’s Re-Spun line of yarn. Re-Spun is yarn made from recycled plastic (see my post Plastic Yarn?).

I decided to make a granny square crocheted blanket with the yarn and crocheted up some of squares:

I hated them. They looked okay but they were too flimsy and didn’t feel right (not sure how to specifically describe it) and I didn’t think they would work well for a cozy blanket. I was crocheting them in the only granny square pattern I knew at the time.

So I abandoned them and put the granny squares, in various stages of completion, and the yarn away.

Then I taught myself via YouTube how to make the sunflower block granny square and made this blanket which is now sitting on the recliner in my living room:

Near the end of last year I stumbled upon a stash of the Re-Spun yarn in the thrift store for $1.99 a skein (it retails for $8.99 a skein now). I grabbed all they had (you can’t see all the colors in the image below but I’ll share more images of the yarn in a future post):

I think it was an “out of body” purchase experience, because when I got home I thought: “What were you thinking? You abandoned the project with the original three skeins of yarn!”

Then I remembered the sunflower pattern I loved (it made a very cozy blanket) and decided to do some frogging (I never heard this term before until I read it in the post of other bloggers and now I know it is unraveling your work) on the previous granny squares because it would be an atrocity to throw them away when I originally bought the yarn because it was “eco-friendly” – ha!

So after what seemed like tedious frogging, and then crocheting, I have made 58 centers for my new “flower” (they are not sunflower colors) granny square blanket:

I’m going to make a total of 100 centers and then move onto round 2.

Here is the pattern I am using in case you are interested:

I really like the instructional videos by Hooked by Robin!

So I am going to have a cozy “flower” granny square blanket for my library/dining room area. I’ll update you all on the progress.

Postscript

Little follow up on the post ScrapHappy April 2026: Update on the EPP Quilt:

I made myself work on TEDIOUS sewing the sides of the hexie flowers on the remaining 50 blocks. If I don’t start doing it, I won’t have anything to report for May’s ScrapHappy post on this quilt!

I got 6 done yesterday, 44 to go.

If only little magical creatures could sneak into my studio at night and finish them….

Image credit: https://etc.usf.edu/clipart/3900/3960/fairy_7.htm

Library Adventures

New Library for Me and a Poetry Surprise

tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

If you’ve been with me for a while in the blogosphere then you know I love libraries. As an awkward introverted kid I used to hide out in the library all summer, riding my bike there everyday, and getting to know the librarians.

On this blog I used to do a regular series of posts called The Library Stack where I would share my latest stack of library books borrowed. I eventual stopped it as I figured readers were tiring of seeing my library borrows, ha!

Well Tuesday I went and checked out the library near my new home which is part of the Denver Public Library System :

Image credit: denverlibrary.org

After meeting the librarians (yes I am a complete library nerd) and introducing myself as new in the area, I went immediately to my favorite section:

And then onto the crafting section which was paltry…

But no worries, my small community library doesn’t have a large catalogue BUT I have access to the entire Denver Public Library system and I had already put a bunch of books on hold and was there to pick them up!

Mine! (The “Hoga”s)

While wandering around the the library I discovered they had a special display for National Poetry Month:

I grabbed one and what a delight when I opened it up later at a local brewery we stopped at for a beverage:

It was the poem Dreams by Langston Hughes!

How amazing and meaningful to me because I created a Langston Hughes quilt for the show Black Pioneers: Legacy in the American West.

So it was a very satisfying trip to my library with this poetry surprise!

I’ll close this post with my new Library Stack from my new library for those of you who remember me torturing you regularly years ago with images of my latest library stack 😉

(Oh I am very interested in making Bojagi curtains for my new house and this is what started my search for library books on the subject, so I could learn how to do the seams…)

Adventures in Paper Piecing, ScrapHappy

ScrapHappy April 2026: Update on the EPP Quilt

tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

April? It’s already April?!??!

Well hello, it’s the 15th of the month and I’ve rejoined the monthly ScrapHappy posting group hosted by Kate of Tall Tales From Chiconia.

Here are links to the blogs of the ScrapHappy participants:

Kate, Eva, Sue, Lynda, Birthe, Turid, Tracy, Jan, 
Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys, Claire, Jean, Dawn, Gwen,
Sunny, Kjerstin, Sue L, Vera, Ann, Dawn 2, Carol, Preeti,
Viv, Karrin,  Alissa, Tierney, Hannah and Maggie

Update on the Scrappy English Paper Piecing (EPP) Project

So here is my update on the scrappy English Paper Piecing (EPP) hexie rosette project I’ve been working on since 2016 that I previously posted about in this post – ScrapHappy February 2026.

If you are just joining us, it was inspired by this quilt on the cover of the premiere issue of Quiltfolk Magazine, Issue 1: Oregon:

Image credit: quiltfolk.com

This was my progress back in February 2026 when I had 37 EPP flowers machine appliquéd to scrap denim:

I’ve machine appliquéd 12 more blocks since then:

I’ve would have done more but there was this little thing going on in my life called moving house…

Here are the 49 blocks now completed:

I have 50 more blocks to make for a 9 by 11 (99 blocks) setting.

My little challenge is the remaining 50 blocks need my completion of sewing all the hexies in the rosette together! They are just a center hexie with 6 hexies sewn to the center but not sewn to each other…

So I need to settle in for some serious hand sewing to be able to report progress in May’s ScrapHappy post 🙂

Studio

Journey to My New Studio, Part 5 – Full Studio Tour

tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Well we’ve come to the end of my series of posts on my new studio in the upstairs loft of my new home. The previous related posts can be found in these links:

Journey to My New Studio, Part 1 ,  Journey to My New Studio, Part 2 , Journey to My New Studio, Part 3 , and Journey to My New Studio, Part 4 

Plus the Beastie Guest Blogger posts Guest Blogger: The “Beastie Tower” is a Disaster! and Guest Blogger: The “Beastie Tower” is…Fabulous! 

Thanks for reading this series of posts on my journey to put together my new studio and here is the full tour.

Full Studio Tour

The stairs up to the loft (photographed looking down from the loft):

Entering the loft:

Around the room:

Projects stored in baskets under studio table:

One of my favorite signs:

So the journey is complete and that is enough about where I create, it’s time for me to get back to creating! This will be my focus for my future posts 🙂

Beastie Adventures, Guest Blogger

Guest Blogger: The “Beastie Tower” is…Fabulous!

tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Okay, it’s tierneycreates Beastie providing a guest blogger follow up to the post Guest Blogger: The “Beastie Tower” is a Disaster! .

Tierney got her act together and got John Beastie and my tower house together finally and it looks pretty decent!

It’s located on a shelf in her new studio in the loft of their new house, which looks like it was custom made for the Beastie Tower:

I asked Tierney to help with a photoshoot of the tower as I do not have opposable thumbs.

Here I am on the top floor in my studio/closet:

The floor below is our library with a picture of John Beastie’s son Zach Beastie:

The next floor in the living room with a picture of John Beastie’s granddaughter Faith Beastie:

If you’d like to know more about our Beastie-sized record player it is in this post – Guest Blogger: Teeny-Tiny Turntable Adventures .

The kitchen is below the living room and Tierney added in some storage seating to our table:

Beasties get very hungry so we have a lot of food. Since we are knitted we don’t gain any weight with all we eat!

On the bottom level is John Beastie’s basement studio and game room. He likes to hang out there with Mikelet as it leads to the yard where he and Mikelet can play ball.

We are avid gardeners and find plastic plants very easy to care for!

Thanks for stopping by our relocated home.

Studio

Journey to My New Studio, Part 4

tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Recently I moved and I am continuing my series of posts about setting up my new studio. Here are the previous posts:

Journey to My New Studio, Part 1 ,  Journey to My New Studio, Part 2 , and Journey to My New Studio, Part 3 (plus the pesky Beastie Guest Blogger post Guest Blogger: The “Beastie Tower” is a Disaster!)

One of the big things I had to deal with was to get all the boxes of craft books I had in boxes into some type of storage/holder/wrangler (ha!) at my new home.

First before we moved I did a lot of purging and then while unpacking at the new house I did a lot of purging.

Then John built me two bookcases from plumbing pipe and scrap wood – one for my books and one for my magazines.

It took me several days but I got them all organized!

The books are organized by publisher instead of topic this time (it was the mood I was in as I liked how publishers, like Stash Books and C&T Publishing have books of similar sizes. The magazines are just organized by magazine title and I did purge many while packing. Only kept the ones I really love (which unfortunately are a lot, ha!)

Next to each bookcase I have thrifted cushions that I used to have in the living room of my previous house, for sitting on while looking through books 🙂

Postscript

Oh recently I tried to return to Instagram and it was a disaster and I gave up.

I first reinstated my account, made a post, and tried to refollow anyone whose Instagram name I could remember that I followed before.

The next day I received notification from Instagram that they had closed my account for violation of their policy. It appears they did not believe I was a real human.

I followed the appeal process and uploaded a live video of me. That was not enough, they wanted a copy of my scanned passport or Drivers License.

I decided that the Universe was telling me not to return to Instagram, ha, so I just gave up!

Studio

Journey to My New Studio, Part 3

tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Continuing my series of posts on setting up my new studio in the upstairs loft of our new home.

See the previous posts  Journey to My New Studio, Part 1 and Journey to My New Studio, Part 2  (and ignore the Beastie Guest Blogger post Guest Blogger: The “Beastie Tower” is a Disaster!  because I’ve been working hard at putting their house back together!)

I have a new piece of storage furniture in my studio – a new Ironing Table/Storage Organization Unit.

For years I had this piece in studio that John made me that I used as an ironing table and storage:

John was unhappy with the quality of the piece (he made it in his earlier days of woodworking) and he wanted to make me a table/storage unit like the Outfeed Table he made for his woodworking studio:

So back in January he started my replacement table:

He finished right before we decided to buy the new house, and we decided to wait until we moved to thenew house to get it set up in my studio.

It is now set up in the new studio and it awesome!

I really enjoyed organizing my stuff in the drawers and labeling them:

It’s a very sturdy, well built table/storage unit and I love the area to keep extra cutting rulers, Cricut supplies and papers, and small cutting mats, etc.

Beastie Adventures

Guest Blogger: The “Beastie Tower” is a Disaster!

tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Hello Everyone!

This is the tierneycreates Beastie guest blog posting along with John Beastie and our dog Mikelet (if you are new to this blog, my backgroudn story is on this post: I’m A Monster!!!; and you can see all my posts at this link: Beastie Adventures).

Tierney in her two previous posts Journey to My New Studio, Part 1 and Journey to My New Studio, Part 2 shared her challenges of getting her studio together and the new house. John Beastie and I were sort of irritated with this posts because she didn’t address what a terrible state our home, the “Beastie Tower” is after the move!

Here is what it looked like back in early February at the old house:

And here is what it looks like now! Chaos!

Yikes- our beautiful home is now a disaster!

All our stuff is randomly strewn about including on her studio table (which she has cleaned up a little bit):


John Beastie and I are so frustrated we finally just took Mikelet for a walk around the new neighborhood (it’s warmed up nicely, you will notice I ditched my sweater for my warm weather T-shirt):

I’ll update you all in the future to let you know if it gets better or if John Beastie and I need to take some sort of action…

Studio

Journey to My New Studio, Part 2

tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Continuing the story from the post Journey to My New Studio, Part 1…

By March 24 (according to the date on the photos) I got to this point on pulling my new studio together:

I also got to add this “sweet” thing to my life to help control my left knee pain:

Studio

Journey to My New Studio, Part 1

tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

It’s been a while since I blogged and I’ve missed reading the adventures of the bloggers I follow. I did recently attempt a full catch up and if you know I follow you and I missed your old posts I will catch them next time you post. I plan to return to regular blogging again 🙂

We moved to a new house on March 5th and then a little over a week later we had our first out of town visitors to the new house and they stayed for 5 days. Their visit was planned long before we knew we would suddenly be buying a new house and preparing our old house for sale.

John did so much work on the old house getting it ready for sale (goes on the market next week) and I did most of the unpacking. We completely exhausted ourselves and forgot we were “old” and shouldn’t try to be doing all that at once. John hurt his knees and back (but has since recovered) and I twisted my knee (which is getting better). We really abused our bodies for over a month!

I am taking the upstairs loft as my new studio in the new house and here is what it looked like after we moved in:

Before our visitors arrived we put our all energies into unpacking and setting up the main floor of the house and the guest room.

After our visitors left on March 22, I got to work on sorting out my studio. I began the “Journey to My New Studio” which I will share in a series of blog posts.

Here is what it looked a couple days after working on sorting it out – very scary but lots of progress:

You can see John trying to help me set up something on the desk I will be sewing at.

I absolutely hate clutter, and there were times I just sat on the floor and cried in frustration! I moved from a perfectly cozy little studio I had just recently moved into (when I changed rooms) and here I was setting up everything again!

ScrapHappy

ScrapHappy March 2026: Scrappiness About the New Home

tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Hello, it’s the 15th of the month and I’ve rejoined the monthly ScrapHappy posting group hosted by Kate of Tall Tales From Chiconia.

Here are links to the blogs of the ScrapHappy participants:

Kate, Eva, Sue, Lynda, Birthe, Turid, Tracy, Jan, 
Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys, Claire, Jean, Dawn, Gwen,
Sunny, Kjerstin, Sue L, Vera, Ann, Dawn 2, Carol, Preeti,
Viv, Karrin,  Alissa, Tierney, Hannah and Maggie

I’ve completely fallen off the blog-o-sphere with the move to our new home. After days of endless packing now there are now days of endless unpacking.

We closed on the house on March 2 and the began moving in over a couple of days via many carloads and then on March 5th we had professional movers move our large furniture items.

My new studio in the loft of our new home currently looks like this:

So there are no scrappy creations to report for March’s ScrapHappy post.

However I wanted to participate in this monthly celebration of working with scraps/recycled materials so I will provide a tour of some of the scrappy quilts now on display in my new home.

I don’t do well living in chaos so John and I have diligently worked over the past week to get the main floor of our new home livable and even kind of cozy.

1) Scrappy quilt in my new living room on the sofa:

This quilt was made in the 2000s with batik fabric scraps.

2) Scrappy denim quilt hanging on the wall of the new living room:

Made from recycled denim and home decor fabric samples.

3) Scrappy mini quilt wall hanging in the new living room:

A piece I made in a hand embroidery class at the Stitchin’ Post in Sisters, Oregon when I lived in Central Oregon.

4) Scrappy quilt hanging on the wall in the new kitchen:

This quilt was made with Northcott Fabric’s Stonehenge line scraps. Year ago I was completely in love with this fabric line and a friend their large collection of Stonehenge scraps. Along with a set of fat quarters from the fabric line I made this quilt.

5) Scrappy quilt used as tablecloth in new kitchen:

This quilt is composed of scrappy pieced blocks set in Peppered Cotton.

6) Another scrappy quilt made with Northcott’s Stonehenge fabric line scraps, hanging on the wall across from the new kitchen:

I had so many Stonehenge scraps I made another quilt with the stash.

7) My scrappy quilt The Lesson and the Equation I made for the show Visioning Human Rights in the New Millennium: Quilting the World’s Conscience, hanging in my new dining room/library:

I call this my “Dad Quilt” as the lessons my father taught my sibling and I inspired it.

8) My scrappy quilt Trees Outside My Window hanging in the stairway up to the loft:

Improvisational pieced fabric scraps along with trees I stamped on fabric were used to create this very scrappy quilt.

9) Scrappy (and not ironed yet) table runner in my new dining room/library:

My friend Wendy H. that some of you have met through my blog gave me a collection of leftover pieced blocks and fabric scraps which I turned into the table runner.

10) Another scrappy quilt made primarily with batik fabric scraps, in the stairwell down to the basement:

11) A couple scrappy denim, clothing and home decor fabric scraps wall hanging in our new primary bedroom:

12) Scrappy quilt in the new dining room/library for snuggling under while reading:

There are more scrappy quilts hung about the house but I figured a sampling of 12 was enough for this post.

Apologies that I currently can’t keep up on my blogging buddies posts or read/reply to comments on my posts right now, but I plan to catch up someday.

We have our first out of town visitors to our new home arriving this upcoming week so we are trying to get the basement guest room together. I feel like I have one operational brain cell right now…

Looking forward to settling back into regular life again someday 🙂

A Crafter's Life

Sending Love and Appreciating the Magic

tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

I participate in economic protests, I am thoughtful with my voting in my allegedly “constitutional federal representative democracy” and I distance myself from people who support hateful, misogynist, racist regimes.

It never seems like enough during these “dark times”; and I applaud those who throw themselves onto the front lines of protesting though at times it seems like nothing is accomplished (and some individuals have lost their lives like happened in Minneapolis, MN recently).

I observe the actions of those working to “Make America Great Again“, and it feels like each day they are stripping “America” of what once made it great. I’m not seeing any greatness on the horizon and I don’t know how long it will take for the “country I live in” to heal the fractured relations with the world.

As a person of color (I have both an African American and Native American ethnic background) I struggle with seeing the leadership of the “country I live in” (and once loved) try to erase/hide the country’s past because it makes some people uncomfortable.

I remember when I was first working on my undergraduate degree and I met a woman who grew up in Germany in my German language class, and she told me as a teenager they went on a school trip to a concentration camp. They do not hide from their youth the unfathomable terrible time in history of their country. Studying the ugly historical moments in your country is a path for a society not to repeat them. Our current leadership wants “American” history whitewashed (this word feel very appropriate for what they are trying to do).

But enough of my rant. I had committed not to be too political on my blog but to me this doesn’t feel like politics it feels like a battle between love and hate (racism, lack of empathy, trying to control others life choices, etc.) I’ve always tried to be empathetic and respectful of those who think different from me politically and consider where their perspective arises. but I am struggle with what the “far right” wants to accomplish for the “country I live in”.

What I’ve decided to do additionally in protest of the current state of the “country I live in” is continue to be a loving person and send love out to the world and the people I interact with in person and through online mediums such as this one.

Because love is magic.

Life is magic.

We are the only officially known fully sentient life forms in our galaxy and perhaps the entire universe. That is some big magic!

I’d like to share the words and music of Stevie Wonder which celebrate the magic of love and life to close out this post of my musings:

If It’s Magic

by Stevie Wonder, 1976

If it’s magic
Then why can’t it be everlasting
Like the sun that always shines
Like the poets in this rhyme
Like the galaxies in time

If it’s pleasing
Then why can’t it be never leaving
Like the day that never fails
Like on seashores there are shells
Like the time that always tells

It holds the key to every heart
Throughout the universe
It fills you up without a bite
And quenches every thirst

So
If it’s special
Then with it why aren’t we as careful
As making sure we dress in style
Posing pictures with a smile
Keeping danger from a child

It holds the key to every heart
Throughout the universe
It fills you up without a bite
And quenches every thirst

So
If it’s magic
Why can’t we make it everlasting
Like the lifetime of the sun
It will leave no heart undone
For there’s enough for everyone

  • Source: Lyricfind.com


We all have hearts… If you have a heart, love somebody. If you have enough heart, love everybody.  – Stevie Wonder

Feature photo credit: Aditya Saxena on Unsplash

ScrapHappy, What's on the Design Wall

ScrapHappy February 2026

tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Hello, it’s the 15th of the month and I’ve rejoined the monthly ScrapHappy posting group hosted by Kate of Tall Tales From Chiconia.

Here are links to the blogs of the ScrapHappy participants:

Kate, Eva, Sue, Lynda, Birthe, Turid, Tracy, Jan, 
Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys, Claire, Jean, Dawn, Gwen,
Sunny, Kjerstin, Sue L, Vera, Ann, Dawn 2, Carol, Preeti,
Viv, Karrin,  Alissa, Tierney, Hannah and Maggie

Life is currently crazy and filled with lots of boxes (see post How Did We Get Here? ) but I do have an update on the scrappy English Paper Piecing (EPP) hexie rosette project I’ve been working on since 2016 that I previously posted about in this post – ScrapHappy January 2026: Moving Forward on the Hexie Project .

In the January 15th 2026 ScrapyHappy post I shared this progress – 9 scrappy EPP flowers machine appliquéd to 6.5 inch by 6.5 inch scrap denim backgrounds:

I made some great progress since then and I now have 37 EPP flowers machine appliquéd to scrap denim:

I’ve developed a rhythm to my machine appliqué of the flowers onto the denim and it’s now so cumbersome now to do it.

I stitch them on a slightly larger than 6.5 inch by 6.5 inch square and then trim to size after I stitch them onto the scrap denim.

Only 62 more blocks to make of the 99 EPP flowers I’ve created.

Postscript

Just a little follow up to my previous post – How Did We Get Here? 

The house is currently in such chaos I needed a calm place in which I could blog and sew if I wanted until we get closer to our move date in early March. John came up with the idea of moving a table into our bedroom in front of the window and setting up my laptop and my sewing machine.

We also set up an area in our bedroom where I could sit and stitch on the quilt I am hand quilting (Hand Quilting “Go Boldly”) or read a book…or just enjoy an escape from boxes…

So now I have a place to escape the madness in the rest of house and write or create (even if most of my stuff is packed up now).

A Crafter's Life, Special Events

How Did We Get Here?

tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Boxes, boxes, boxes everywhere!

We are in the process of packing up our house in order to move to a new house in early March 2026 and put our existing house on the market.

So far I’ve packed 75+ small boxes (the image above is only a small sampling) while John works on various house projects to put the house on the market.

In a December 2025 post (Chaos in the Craft Room!) I mentioned that John and I were looking at downsizing and selling our house someday. At the time I wrote that, “someday” meant in early to mid 2027. We didn’t have any plans to move in 2026!

So how did we get here?

Well a month ago, on a lovely day in late January 2026 (we’ve had a bout of unseasonably nice weather in the lower elevations in Colorado…we live at 6000 feet above sea level which is a lower elevation in this high altitude state) John and I decided to go explore neighborhoods north of us.

We absolutely fell in love with a new-ish community near the Denver Airport (but not on the flight path, ha!) and found a perfect ranch-style house (one level living but this ranch house also had a loft where I could have my studio and a 70% finished basement) and made a major life decision to move now instead of next year!

You never know how much stuff you have until you try to pack it…

So John and I put an offer on the new house, which was accepted, and began packing up our lives. We’ve also been purging a lot from our lives. This has been kind of freeing and kind of frustrating as we wished we hadn’t bought the stuff in the first place. Oh well, the charity thrift shops will have some nice things to sell.

I didn’t purge more fabric as I’ve already had a couple purges over the years, but I did purge more craft books (I guess I’m never going to get into macrame or making paper flowers, ha!)

Here is what my studio, that I just moved in December to a smaller room, currently looks like:

It’s been an exhausting whirlwind of major life change but we are trying to focus on the excitement of moving to our new “forever home” and that John will have a new woodworking workshop in the garage and I will have a cozy studio in the loft.

Plus it is a new construction home (it is a former model home) and we will be the first people to live in it!

Beastie Adventures, Guest Blogger

Guest Blogger: Tour of the Expanded Beastie Tower, Part II

tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Greetings, tierneycreates Beastie here continuing the tour I began in my post Guest Blogger: Tour of the Expanded Beastie Tower, Part I of my expanded Beastie Tower home that I now share with John Beastie!

Thanks for your comments and guesses on what Human Tierney and Human John are up to. Several of you guessed it correctly: they are working on moving to a new house. Tierney will share the back story and update on their currently journey of trying to pack up a life!

Okay, I covered the first two levels in the previous post, so I’ll start with moving on to the 3rd level, our Living Room. (Please note you will continue to have endure Tierney’s terrible photography, sigh…)

Level 3 – the Living Room:

This is our main hang out area where we listen to records on our turntable (see my guest blogger post Guest Blogger: Teeny-Tiny Turntable Adventures), have Beastie-sized cocktails, snacks and I can work on my knitting.

Human John made the furniture and above the table is a framed picture of John Beastie’s one any only grandchild – Faith Beastie (see post Guest Blogger: New Member in Our Beastie Family).

Level 4 – The Library

Well John Beastie and I don’t have a large collection of books like Human Tierney. We have a couple books that we are storing on the shelves in the but that’s it. So for now we are storing Tierney’s collection of miniature plants and some Knick Knacks.

On the wall you’ll find a framed picture of Zach Beastie, one of the sons of John Beastie (see post Guest Blogger: Another new member in our Beastie Family!)

Level 5 – My Closet and Sewing Studio

And at the top of the Beastie Tower you can find me contemplating working on a new sewing project with with my Beastnina, the Beastie version of a Bernina sewing machine!

Okay well that is the tour and now I need to nudge Tierney to respond to post comments and catch up on her blogging buddies posts. Just because she is nearly buried in moving boxes doesn’t mean she can fall off the blogging wagon!

Postscript

John Beastie and I are pretty excited: in the new home that the Humans are moving to, there is a corner ledge in the loft area that will nicely fit our Beastie Tower!

Screenshot
Beastie Adventures, Guest Blogger

Guest Blogger: Tour of the Expanded Beastie Tower, Part I

tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Greetings! This is the tierneycreates Beastie guest blog posting (if you are new to this blog, my backgroudn story is on this post: I’m A Monster!!! ; and you can see all my posts at this link: Beastie Adventures).

Tierney hasn’t posted in a while because she is working on a challenging but exciting life event that she will share with you in the future (see the Postscript section of this post for a sneak peek); so I thought I better step in and do a post for her as her occasional “Guest Blogger”.

In my November 2025 guest blogger post Guest Blogger Post: Introducing the Beastie Tower I shared that Human John (Tierney’s husband, I am married to John Beastie – see post Guest Blog Post: Mail Order Groom) built me a new house – a 3-level “Beastie Tower” which was much larger than then one level place I was living in.

As I mentioned, I am married to John Beastie and John Beastie was living on the shelf above Human John’s desk. John Beastie and I met with Humans Tierney and John and discussed that it was time for us to move in together!

So Human John expanded my tower to 5-levels and John Beastie moved in!

I have to rely on Tierney to take photos as my little knitted paws are too small to operate her phone camera. Tierney is very distracted these days so my apologies that you will have to put up with her rushed photography…

Let me give you a tour of all 5-levels.

Level 1 – Ground Level – John Beastie’s garage area:

Hope you make out some of the fun stuff in his garage with Tierney’s terrible photography. He has a foosball table so he and I can play; and a Skee ball game that Tierney got him for Christmas.

Our dog Mikelet (named after the late Mike, Tierney and John’s dog) now gets to hang out with John Beastie all the time instead of only visiting with him when John Beastie would sneak up from his shelf in the basement. Mikelet is waiting to go outside with John, who is distracted by holding a winning poker hand, and play ball,

Tierney found John Beastie a tiny golf club set and he has some tiny tools and a little Yeti cooler in the garage also. On the wall is a photo from our trip to Ireland in 2022 (we are enjoying a giant pint of Guinness) and the framed postcard from Crawcraft Beasties in Dublin, Ireland where I was born.

Level 2 – The Kitchen:

Beasties like to eat, we are always hungry and Tierney and John have made sure we have enough food for our 5 – 7 meals a day and snacks. Luckily because we are knitted we don’t gain weight from all that eating!

You can see in the images above John Beastie’s famous dish of spaghetti and meatballs; and some naughty “fast food”/”takeaway” food that Tierney found in our size!

Tierney found the kitchen while on her trip to Florida in December 2025 (see her post A Little Jaunt to Florida) and now I have a proper kitchen with a refrigerator that has its light turn on when we open the door.

Tierney forgot to photograph that for you but here is a little video about our new refrigerator:

I’ll continue the tour in my next installment!

Oh Tierney, due to her major life distraction, is very behind on reading her blogging buddies’ blog posts but I will strongly encourage her to work on catching up soon!

Postscript

Can you guess what Tierney (and Human John) are up to? Sorry no additional information beyond this image at this time…


Beastie Adventures

Preview: Beastie Tower Expansion

tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Just thought I’d share a little preview to a future “Guest Blogger” post.

The once decorating is complete the tierneycreates Beastie will share the news that she and John Beastie have finally moved in together; and human John has expanded/added an addition to her new tower home that she introduced in the post Guest Blogger Post: Introducing the Beastie Tower.

She provide you with a full tour in the future. More to come 🙂

From the Woodshop

From the Woodshop: Printer Stand/File Cabinet

tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

I shared in the post John Builds Himself a Desk  that John, the self-taught woodworker living in my house (ha), built himself a Mission-style desk using images from the web to inspire him.

Well John decided he wanted to replace our existing file cabinet, that we got for free secondhand, with a printer stand/file cabinet combo piece.

So he developed a design and went to work building it:

And here is the resulting piece!

The two drawers on the right of the piece are set up as file cabinet drawers, while the drawer under the printer is a storage drawer. I forgot to take a photo of it but the area under the printer pulls out for easier access to the printer!

We are pretty excited about it and we had fun purging old files and arranging our files in the new file cabinet drawers.

Did you notice the old computer sitting on the new printer stand/file cabinet? Well that’s the computer that John built with his Dad when he was 10 years old. John spent a career as a computer software architect and it all started with him learning to build a computer with his father as a kid.

Oh and what became of the secondhand file cabinet we no longer needed? Well serendipitously we discovered our neighbor across the street, a new father trying to keep up with life, desperately needed a file cabinet!

So John brought it over to his house and made him very happy!

Knit and Crochet Away!

I Finished Another Hat

tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Here is a follow up to the post I Started a New Hat from early January 2026.

Since snow is now here in Colorado, I figured to was time to finish the hat I started knitting at the end of 2025.

Here is John modeling the hat at my favorite part of hat knitting: the double pointed needles to finish the crown:

And here I am wearing the finished hat; and then an image of the top of the hat (I love the swirl that decreasing the stitches for the crown makes):

Yes I am snuggled in the Sunflower Granny Square blanket I finished last year (Sunflower Granny Square Blanket Assembled (and Holiday Decorating)) as it was pretty cold in Denver (a little blizzard occurred while we were watching the Denver Broncos football team lose the semi-finals).

So I kept the finished hat on after I took the photo and snuggled under my sunflower blanket!

Quilt Shop Tours, tierneytravels

Quilt Shop Tour: Kathy’s Fabric Trunk, Del Norte, Colorado

tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

As I mentioned in the post 2025: Year in Travel, Part 2 during our 2025 year of travel we spent time in the South Fork, Colorado. One day we went into a neighboring town, Del Norte, Colorado and visited a quilt shop – Kathy’s Fabric Trunk in downtown Del Norte.

First we stopped at the Up Top Cafe for some breakfast, coffee (John) and tea (me):

It felt like we spent a couple hours on their cozy couches (there is another sofa across from the one in the photo) eating breakfast and drink our hot beverages. I think we only spent an hour there actually but it was a delightful hour!

Then we walked over to Kathy’s Fabric Trunk to wander around:

Immediately upon walking in we were greeted by the staff and a very cozy and cluttered (but the fun kind of cluttered) quilt shop:

And there was a dog napping that I had to just walk around, he didn’t want to be disturbed by shop visitors!

There was a second section of the shop where they had a huge fabric sale going on of older fabrics and a “Husband Seating Area” for John.

(John sat on the other side of this fabric on a table with sewing machines for sale.)

It was more cluttered than I captured in photos but I had a blast wandering around and even found some fabric that I could not leave the store without:

It’s the Northcott Fabrics Barn Quilt line and here are the fabrics I bough a couple yards of each (images from Northcott Fabrics website):

Not sure what I am making with these fabrics but I totally fell in love with them!

They also had a collection of antique sewing machines scattered around the shop like this one:

Lots and lots of buttons:

And another shop dog that couldn’t be bothered with shop customers – ha!

Hope you enjoyed this little tour 🙂

A Crafter's Life, Studio

Update on My Studio: The Evolving Layout

tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Back in mid-December 2025 I shared in the post Chaos in the Craft Room! that we had moved my quilting/crafting studio from the large Primary Bedroom to a small bedroom in preparation for putting our house on the market and moving to a smaller home.

Since then I’ve been playing/sewing/crafting in my new studio and doing some re-arranging to make it work best for me.

I added back in my tea station and little refrigerator (we tried to make it work in our Primary Bedroom but I didn’t like the low volume noise the refrigerator made when I was trying to sleep at night; and I missed easy access to tea as I need a couple cups a day to keep me happy, ha!):

Thanks to my friend K who attended the 50th anniversary 2025 Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show and got me a poster! (I used to attend it every year when I lived in Oregon for 14 years and had exhibited quilts in it along with my quilter late husband several times…and sold quilts)

I had to rearrange where I kept my projects in queue because this is what the area looked like previously:

Now the projects in queue are stored under my cutting table (I forgot to take a photo).

I added a floor lamp (left side of image below) to my half design wall area (we had to break up my former design wall to make it fit in the room). As we plan to sell the house and move next year to a smaller house, John didn’t want to install track lighting in this room like he did in my previous mega-studio that was in our converted Primary Bedroom (which has now returned to being a Primary Bedroom):

I am pleased with the floor lamp and it illuminates the design wall nicely.

I’ve done additional rearranging and here is what the rest of the room currently looks like:

You might think it would feel very cluttered moving from a large studio (see the post Thrifting for the Studio if you’ve recently joined us and haven’t seen my previous studio) but it feels COZY and like a HUG of CREATIVE INSPIRATION whenever I go into the room.

In addition to being visually “warm and cozy” it’s also physically/temperature-wise warm and cozy because there is less space to heat compared to my big studio. In my post Magnetic Poetry to Ease My Soul I discussed, in the Postscript section, “Creative Restraints”/”Creative Limitations”/”Creative Limits”; and it appears that a smaller space to create in is really fueling/stimulating my creativity!

During the studio move and reorganization I’ve had an “archeological dig” of unearthing old projects in progress (or “UFOs”/Unfinished Objects as quilters like to call them). For example I discovered this partially finished table runner that would be wonderful on the table in our entryway:

I actually sold a couple of these when I had my Etsy shop going (see my post from 2017 – What’s on the Design…Ironing Board?) and I guess this one another one from 2017 that I was going to finish and list in my Etsy shop.

I continue to work on the English Paper Piecing hexie flowers quilt that I shared in my post ScrapHappy January 2026: Moving Forward on the Hexie Project ; and I love sitting my little studio and working on removing the hexie papers from the back of the flowers (so so so many to go…):

(I’ll share an update on the hexie quilt progress during February’s monthly ScrapHappy post.)