Quilt Challenges & Dogs

Do you love quilt challenges/contests? I do! The fabric shown above is the challenge fabric for the "2007 TQP Challenge". TQP is a yahoo group - The Quilting Post, and every year we have a challenge. One year, we chose a yellow/blue floral and everyone had to use that fabric somewhere to make a Blooming Nine Patch from the book Tradition with a Twist by Blanche Young. One year the challenge was to make something using the book, Totally Tubular, by Rita Hutchens and you had to use a certain amount of brown fabric. Anyway, this year the challenge is to use the above fabric in at least 25% of your quilt not counting the borders and background. Contests/challenges result in pushing my limits, trying things I wouldn't normally try and I enjoy them immensely. Thanks for all your tips/comments about the log cabin. My mom says a cabin is a one bedroom/one bath camp and this is not a cabin so . . call it what you wish, I'm calling it a log cabin and I have decided that I can be brave and I can learn to stay by myself after dark or at least I can do it and not let anyone else know how scared I am. As far as getting a dog, not gonna happen. After my last chocolate lab, I swore I would never have a dog that is bigger/stronger than I am. Here's my dog story. We got Chip when he was a puppy and you know how darling labs are. Chip was a darling dog but he was enough to make dog lovers dislike dogs. He was an escape artist! We could not keep him in a fence, we could not keep him even inside one of those huge metal kennels. When Vince and I married, Chip was 5 years old so he was no longer a cute puppy but he was a beautiful full grown dog - strong as an ox! Vince did not like dogs . . not even a little bit but Chip was part of the "package" (which included me, Chad, Chip and the van, which was probably the worst part of the deal and we still have the darned van but that's another story for another day!) Anyway, Vince got to drive the U-Haul from Louisiana to Kentucky, with Chip riding right next to him. Chad and I rode in the van. So, we get to Kentucky and Chip had never lived out in the country and he barked all night for days and weeks. Thank goodness we had no neighbors! We finally had to get one of those collars that shocked him when he barked. Otherwise, none of us would ever have gotten any sleep! He was a digger. He had dug up half of my mechanical sewer system in Louisiana. Vince made sure he put him way away from the field lines. That dog would dig holes so huge that when he stretched out in his holes, he was totally below the ground. One winter, it got really cold and I insisted we bring Chip into the garage. He chewed the corner off Vince's work bench! Not good! The next winter, we brought him in but Vince kinda fixed up a corner so he couldn't get to the work bench. He chewed the corners off the steps going from the garage into the house! Not good! The next winter, Vince bought bales of hay and kinda fenced in his dog house with hay to keep the wind off him, then rigged up a light that put off heat because there was no way Chip was coming in the garage again. Chip would escape, we'd put an ad in the paper, find him and he'd stay home for a while. Finally, several years ago, he left and we never found him. So, if I were to mention getting a big dog, I would probably be living in Chip's old dog house. We're looking at the cabin tomorrow at 4:30. Keep your fingers crossed! Judy L.