The Book of Kells

Woohoo!  Sunshine!  Finally.  It appears the hot part of summer has arrived after all the rains.

Which is great for outside activities on the 4th of July weekend.  This was the morning view yesterday out of the front window.  Sun!  Wait a minute....  It's raining!  It rained with some intensity for about 15 minutes in the sun.  I'm assuming somewhere, someone had a nice view of a rainbow.  Not me!

All the local ponds are chocolate colored with all the rain, ours is no exception.

Rain or not, our holiday project was to continue cleaning the garage.  This is "my side" with all the garden tools, lawn mower, garden cart, cleaning stuff, and pantry cabinets.

And I do admit to a few sewing machine cabinets.  Still thinking about what to do with them, but at least we can walk through now.  :-)

Another one hiding by the fridge.  Hmmmmm.

And this is "The Tramp's side."

Tools, tools and more tools, but now there is a space for the workbench he's been waiting to build.

Just about everything we haven't carted off to the dump or thrift shop now fits on the shelves or is hung on the walls.  Yay!  The Tramp walked into the garage this morning and from the kitchen I heard him exclaim, "WOW!" and I ran to see what happened.  "Look," he says, "I can walk in here!"  Yep.  It was pretty bad.

The biggest item yesterday was organizing all the loose bits and pieces into these cabinets.  It took hours.  I began to think that no one has more hardware bits than we do, except maybe the hardware store.  Geez!  It was worth every minute though, as I no longer have to watch The Tramp paw through several bins of little boxes of hardware to find the right screw or nail, and we won't be buying even more of what we've already got but can't find.  :-D

So that was yesterday.  Today we dropped off the last load at the thrift shop and drove down to check on The Other House.  We had a wonderful visit with the neighbors and were humbled again by their willingness to mow our lawn when we're not looking.  I got to coo over their sweet great-grand baby and even left with a bunch of flowers from their extensive garden.

Dad had his cataract surgery today.  We dropped in at their apartment to see how he was doing and enjoyed his delight at being able to see bright colors again.  Like most people he didn't realize how much color vision he'd been missing.

So what does this post have to do with the Book of Kells?  In the evenings, after washing off all the sweat, dirt and spiders from the garage, I've been working on my Kells Wyvern.  The pattern is by Melinda Small Paterson and is inspired by the illuminations in the Book of Kells.  I started it so long ago that neither of us remember if the fabrics were bougtht here or in New Jersey!  I don't remember when I put the body together either, but now the legs are finished and tonight I finished stuffing the wings.  Very fiddly and time consuming!

The teeth and tongue.

The lower jaw.

And this is how it will fit on the head.  Next job is the front and back of the head.

Then I get to do the paint embellishments before it all gets sewn together.  Fun!