Checking on the neighbors

I heard a little thunder off in the distance, and thought I’d do the neighborly thing and check on the children playing next door.  No need, Mom (circled in blue) was keeping watch over the little ones (circled in orange).  

The minute the camera clicked she warned them to run, and run they did, LOL!   

New Neighbors

So I’m standing at the kitchen sink overlooking the back 40 and I see a very plump squirrel scampering across the yard.  Hmmmm that's pretty round for a squirrel… so I put on my glasses and look again.  That’s no squirrel, it’s a miniature groundhog and there’s another one and another one and hold on a minute. 

left is Mom (I think), center Chuckie and right is baby#1

Sure enough after careful observation we have a new family in the neighborhood.  Chuckie’s bachelor days are over and his girlfriend and at least 5 babies have moved into the woodpile.  

I've decided...

I’ve decided what I am going to do with the web site now that I’ve finished my quilting history… well finished it as far as the past goes anyway.  The future is still a WIP, work in progress. 

I’ve been thinking about the BOMs and Projects for a few months really.  For the last sixteen months I’ve shared my past history, along with a project/pattern from each page.  But what to do next, I’ve teeter tottered here and there with ideas.  I had lots of ideas for sure, but just couldn’t find one that I thought the quilting world would enjoy with me. 

Over the last week I’ve gotten several emails about smaller blocks, how to make blocks smaller, and how to combine different size blocks in the same quilt… and an idea started growing. 

Now, let’s see if my blurry vision will allow me to get something done before the end of the month...yikes, the end of the week…   wish me luck!  

Checking in

I had a post-op visit today, and all is going well.  My biggest “problem” is still the blurriness and that’s going to continue.  As long as I need the ointment I will have the blurriness and I will need the ointment for another four to six weeks.  And all I can say about that is $#!+

However we took advantage of the outing and my chauffeur and I went out for a nice seafood lunch.  http://www.medingsseafood.com/ordereze/default.aspx  After lunch we joined the traffic to the beach, detouring home as soon as we could escape the masses......summer is here and so are the tourons!

 

Still gardening?

Kathy wanted to know if I was still gardening or if I’d gone off on vacation again… hardly.  But it’s nice she’s checking on me. 

Actually I’ve spent a lot of time, 15 minutes of every waking hour, with either ice packs or hot pads on my face.  I had those annoying bumps removed from my eyes and right now I’m thinking the bumps were easier than this “recovery” period.  But I guess I’m just a whiner because it really isn’t that bad. 

What makes it most uncomfortable is that I have an antibiotic ointment that I have to put on my eyes four times a day.  And when I put it on I’m guaranteed almost a full hour of blurry vision. 

So my day goes….

8ish - Get up apply ice to reduce the swelling 

15 minutes later apply antibiotic ointment

Hour later, more ice if needed and if not then a hot pack

15 minutes later I can do what I want, IF my vision is clear enough for me to see, which it usually hasn't.

Hour later, hot pack

15 minutes later usually vision is clear and I check email, facebook and then whatever I have time for before another hot pack

15 minutes later apply antibiotic ointment

Hour later, hot pack

And so on…

When my vision is clear I’ve been working on future BOMs and possible mysteries.  But honestly, I’m not getting a lot done.  And that blue fabric I'd been waiting for... yep it's here now.  

 

Flowers in my garden

Let me start by saying that I am NOT a gardener.   Not even close to one anymore thanks to arthritis.  I don’t have the strength in my hands to pull weeds or dig things up or pretty much anything.  (There are days I can’t type too but I can’t always blame the fingers for that!)

But we have a lovely garden occasionally mostly thanks to many people who have shared with us.  Today while I was out getting my 15 minutes of sunshine I snapped these photos of flowers currently blooming. 

The Columbine came to me from a friend in Tennessee.  She sent me an envelope of seeds and told me to spread them around the yard where they could grow.  I have them in the shade, in the sun, under trees (like these in the crepe myrtle) and almost everywhere.  Every year they produce more seeds which I spread around with hopes of more flowers and they rarely fail to grow. 

And these yellow Iris came from a local friend.  They were trying to get rid of some of their Iris and I said I’d gladly take some.  I came home from grocery shopping one day to find five large boxes of Iris tubers to plant.  Not knowing what colors I had, I just planted them and waited for them to bloom.  I have a rainbow of colors that keep on blooming year after year.  Yellow is always the first to bloom.  

 

Happy Mother’s Day

Day late I know but we’ve had some excitement around here and I’m behind on everything. 

Remember the plumbing job done Wednesday… well there was air in the pipes somewhere, and if you’ve ever had air in the pipes you know what that sounds like.  Our toilet sounded like it was taking off every time someone flushed it and the kitchen sink hissed at me so much I was afraid to turn it on. 

That meant the plumber had to come back again, and he did, and he fixed it (bad seal somewhere) and he didn’t charge us for the return visit.  At the same time he noticed the neglected boat in our yard and asked about it… 

I bought the boat from a friend as a Christmas present for John back in 2003.  Many years of enjoyable boating for him (I hate boats) and then an electrical problem came up.  He had neither the knowledge or skill to fix it, so the boat sat there year after year after year. 

Glenn said he was interested in getting it out of our yard and made us an offer, and John happily accepted that offer. 

That however presented us with another problem… where is the title?  I told John he had to have it because he registered the trailer, and to do that, he needed the title.  He said no… but guess who found it in his files after I’d gone through every file I have in the house… 

And that created another problem… it had been some time since I “cleaned out” the files and that’s what I’ve been doing for the last three days.  Six bags of shredded papers and we finally have neat and tidy up to date files.  I sure hope it never falls that far behind again. 

 

Cheri's Bee

The other night my sister-in-law Cheri stopped by for a short visit.  When she parked she noticed the sunlight was highlighting the front garden, so she took a few pictures.. she’s a terrific photographer and enjoys it as much as I do.  

After we’d eaten dinner she wanted to show us some of the pictures she’d recently taken, so we sat down for a viewing.  At the end of them were the last few she’d taken in the garden.  

We all (John Cheri and I) liked this one a lot and I zoomed in a bit to get rid of some of the junk in the background and THEN Cheri noticed the bee!  None of us had seen it before I zoomed in and it really made the picture special!  

 
(click to zoom in more)

What I did today….

This morning I woke up to a beautiful day.  I decided to hose down the porch and then remembered that we didn’t have an outside hose anymore.  The faucet had snapped off last fall and the resident un-plumber had done more damage trying to fix it, so there was no outside water at all. 

So I called our friend the plumber.  Actually he’s a friend of our son Jonathon, but we’d called on him before and I knew he would do a great job whatever we asked him to do.  He said he’d be here shortly after noon.  He arrived at 12:09.

While under the house fixing the broken pipes and replacing the outside faucet he couldn’t help but hear the pump running, and said there was something wrong with it.  We’d suspected that for a while, but…  Well Glenn said that it might last a few more days, or it might last another month, but it needed to be replaced.  And since he was here anyway… 

When you live in the country and the pump is being replaced that means you don’t have any water.  Fortunately I had water stored for such emergencies, but not enough to finish my spring cleaning, so I took a day off.  And since my fabric still hasn’t gotten here I couldn’t sew, so I did the next best thing, played with Electric Quilt. I had an idea, and it worked, nicely if I do say so myself, and a new mystery is now in the works. 

Glen left at 4:30 with a huge check… well it was a normal size check with big numbers written on it.  But we have a new pump and new bladder and an outside faucet once again.  It’s too late to start cleaning another room now, so I’ll resume spring cleaning tomorrow, unless UPS brings me a package later today!

 

I've been sewing....

Not the last two days, they've been… well let’s just say I wasn't in the mood to sew.  I wasn't in the mood to clean either, but that’s what I've been doing.  It needed it so it’s getting done, unless I totally run out of energy.  Cleaning keeps my mind busy and it needed it, my mind and the cleaning. 

I’m also waiting for an order of fabric to come in.  I happened upon a good sale when I desperately needed some blue Kona cotton so took advantage of it.  Problem is that this shop doesn't work on Sunday and for some reason my stuff is still sitting in Lancaster… maybe I’ll get shipping notice tomorrow. 

What I’m working on is another UFO.  It started out to be scrappy Trips but I didn’t like them, so I took them apart and made 16 patches with them.  I had lots of ideas for 16 patches, and have made up my mind to make a totally scrappy Four Patch Chain.   I’ll show you how I’m making the 16 patches into this as soon as I get one finished, which will be as soon as the blue Kona gets here.

 

Yes but...

Watch this video and then come back here. 

http://blog.petflow.com/this-is-a-video-everyone-needs-to-see-for-the-first-time-in-my-life-im-speechless/

OK, everything he said was true.  So many of us let life go by looking at screens.  I am just as guilty as everyone else.  And if you’ve taken time to read this after watching the video, you are too. 

However..  I have 220 friends according to facebook.  Of those 220, 20 or so are family.  (I’m not wasting time counting to be exact!) 

Of the remaining 200 I’d say about 15% are people I’ve never met in person.  (Again guessing, not wasting time counting.)  And wouldn’t it shock you if I told you that some of those people I am friends with on fb who I have never met are family…  yep.  They are all important to me. 

Then there are the 20% that I met through Relay For Life and haven’t seen for years, some one or two and a few for over five years.  They are all important to me. 

Then there are the quilters who I only see once a year at retreats.  A huge number of my facebook friends are quilters, I guess at least half of them, maybe a bit more.  Interestingly none of my family are quilters and none of my Relay friends are quilters.  They are all important to me. 

My very best friend is not even on facebook, but we use the little screens to communicate, text messages and email.  And she like the majority of my friends do not live close to me, most are hundreds of miles away.  And that makes the little screens, computer and cell phone, very important to me.  They are my way to keep in touch with my friends. 

So yes, we need to get out there and live life to its fullest, and see all the world we can see, and enjoy nature and all that good stuff…  but we also need to share what we see and learn with our friends by way of the little screens… computers and cell phones. 

Just learn to put those little screens away when you are with those friends and family. 

 

Finish it Friday

OK, I really finished these on Thursday, but it was pouring most of the day and I didn’t get the pictures until now.  Regardless, these are two as far as I’m going to take them finished quilts.  And since I started them and finished them as far as I’m going to go, they were never UFOs, yea me! 

These could have been photos for Throwback Thursday too… these were swap blocks from a long long long time ago.  So far back I don’t remember when, but I think it was in the late 90s.  I’d saved them to age them until I finally found what I thought was a great pattern for them. 

These are Dancing 9Patches based on Bonnie Hunter’s pattern, mine are just not as scrappy.  And I could have made one big quilt, but since I’m not having it/them quilted Helaine asked for two smaller quilts.  (Easier for her to handle)  I’m donating the tops and backing fabrics to Bob’s Blankie Brigade. 

I am very pleased with the way they came out, and I might just use this design idea again someday…