Cool green

In the middle of a project The Tramp's brad nailer went kaput so the fun new purchase of the weekend was a Porter Cable compressor which included a new nailer.  He had a blast with it (no pun intended) while I was upstairs with my nose to the grindstone Juki.

The project?  A gate for the front stoop.  Since a great big covered porch is not in our near future I figured a gate would allow the dogs to be out front with us while we are puttering in the garage or gardens. 

It still needs a coat of paint but I think it looks great!  And it operates perfectly.  I keep telling him he's talented but he says he doesn't believe me.  Sheesh.

Ivy had no problem with it.  Give her a mat and she just settles down to watch the crazy people.  :-)

Maisy and Ngaire are not so sure.

The pond is still brown from the storms.  Yesterday a neighbor added algae treatment and you can watch it spread.

I tried to get a picture of the wonderful blue-black feathers on the goose.  Looks almost like fur.  This is the best I could come up with, without him moving away.  Click the photo and you might get a better look.  

Today we drove out to Lake Jordan to visit friends.  They have a new RV and this was the test camping trip.  Storms were predicted but the weather was quite fine.

The Tramp gets to see the lake every day.  The road on the other side of the lake is on his route to work.

The RV is comfortable and has everything in it you could want!

I've had a week-long migraine so it was nice to sit quietly under the trees surrounded by cool green....with no quilt, no weeds, no housecleaning and no animals clamoring for my attention.  :-)

The Tramp was a bit green today too!  LOL

I checked the bluebird box this afternoon and where there were eggs yesterday there are now five tiny bald and fuzzy chicks!  They all begged with open mouths when I opened the box but only for a second or so.  It seems they are so young their heads are too heavy to hold up, they kept falling forward :-) ...and too young to make noise either.  It's a lousy picture, I lightened it so you can see one persistent open mouth (I guess he/she is the oldest) and the back of one head.  Maybe I can get a better pic tomorrow.

All the stitch in the ditch quilting is done and I've quilted around all the flowers.  I've done a small stipple around the flowers in the baskets and will move on to the baskets tomorrow.  Still thinking about what to do.  The crazy quilt is so big it's taken me some time to figure out how to wrestle it into submission.  But I'm getting better!

On Wednesday I had taken out my Pajama Quilter Reloaded DVD to review some of Dawn's quilting techniques and the darned thing wouldn't play.  :-(  We tried it in both laptops and the regular DVD players but nothing worked.  Part of the issue for me is the sticky label on the DVD.  The Macs have slot-loading drives and it's always a bad idea to insert a CDROM or DVD with a paper label on it.  I emailed Dawn to ask for a replacement and possibly one without the label.  She was very gracious about it and a new DVD arrived today.  With no label!  She wrote on it with a felt marker and as a bonus I now have her autograph.  :-)  Thank you Dawn!

Tonight I'll dream about Dwirling.  :-)