Did you know?

Did you know that it is now summer?  It sure is.  And a hot summer at that.  Record or close to record high temperatures every day, with thunderstorms in between.  Summer.  No question about it.

Did you know I went on my bee's retreat to the mountains?  Yep.  So much sewing.  I took the 301 and all the small bits of fabric I showed in the bin on the last post.  Many got put together, but there is sooooo much more to do.  We stayed in a very comfortable house with a fabulous view of Grandfather Mountain.  Very pleasant in every way.

Since I got home I've been plugging away putting the blocks together.  Soooooo many more to make. :-)

Did you know I've been on a hat sewing kick?  Yep.  About eight so far.

Did you know that strawberry season has come and gone?  It's too short!

Did you know I made another purse from my favorite pattern?  Very fun fabric, but I've decided it isn't my colors.  Great for the summer though, and it was a good experiment in using Soft and Stable batting in a pattern that doesn't call for it.  I'm definitely going to try it again in the autumn.

Did you know I also went off to the North Carolina Quilt Symposium?  I had "help" packing too.  Do you know how hard it is to explain to a two-year-old that "his" suitcase isn't broken?  He was convinced it was missing wheels because it only has two.  :-)

We took a happy selfie when we finally arrived after the long drive.  A lot of smile in that photo!  More smiles when we saw how many ribbons some of us (not me) won at the quilt show.

The venue was very nice and included this interesting historic mansion.

The famous Georgia Bonesteel lives very close to Bonclarken and was a gracious hostess when some lucky folk went on a tour of her house and studio as one of our classes.  Her cat, Rose, got into the act too, which meant I had to go outside for a while to get away from the cat dander raised while flipping quilts and use my inhaler, but even so I enjoyed the tour thoroughly.

My other classes were with Sue Nickels, learning to draw feathers, and with Laura Wasilowski, in her Tiny Homes and Garden of Eden workshops.  All were fun and fabulous.

Did you  know I could draw feathers???  I sure didn't!!

Have you ever heard of a water castle?  I hadn't either.  Every once in a while The Viking would mention castles when we were driving around town.  Castle?  Where in the world would you find a castle in North Carolina?   Neither I nor his parents figured it out until one day when we were out of the car he pointed out the water tower behind Trader Joe's and told me it was a castle.  OHHHHH!  Behold....a Water Castle!

Of which we have many.  :-)

Did you know it is so much fun to see your grandson playing with your childhood toys?  :-)

Did you know if you start a walking program you sometimes have to walk in the pouring rain?  Yep.  You do.

Had you heard of a new migraine therapy called Cefaly?  Neither had I.  I'm a couple of weeks into it and I'm not dead yet.  I'm taking that as a good sign.

Did you know that Em Ems taste better with sand?  (M&Ms)

We've been spending time at Jordan Lake.  Someone is wondering if Nini remembered to bring the Em Ems again.  :-)

Do you know how important it is to have a "beach project?"  After a few trips to the beach I realized I needed something to do while the boy plays.  Granny squares seem to be the ticket.  No sharp objects involved.

I saw the idea of putting holes and eyelets in a plastic box for your yarn.  So we made one and it seems to be a good way of keeping the sand out of the yarn.....mostly.

Did you know baby owls nest in cars?  The Viking declared, "I have a seat belt.  Baby Owl have a nest."  Works for me.  :-)

Did you know dogs like to rush out of the airconditioning and take up posts in the sun in 100F heat?  Honestly!  We don't keep the house that cold!!!  Good grief!  Dark fur gets HOT.

We had lots of family over (on Saturday) for Father's Day and I failed to take many photos.  But here is one of the happy fathers and his namesake great grandson.  Love you Dad!!

What I should be doing now is......

....many things.  Not the least of which is sewing.  At least my cold is mostly gone and it's springtime pretty everywhere you look outside.

Well.  Some things are prettier than others.  The pollen has been horrendous.  This is the re-accumulation two days after we vacuumed the porch.  I don't dare open the windows.  I also seem to be much more sensitive to the pollen this year (cough, cough).

So the new vacuum system has been getting workout...inside and out.  There is a learning curve though.  I'm figuring out how to maneuver all that hose around without too many kinks and tangles.  Kind of.

The pond is covered with a pollen slick as well.  Every surface is covered.  The dogwood trees are still pretty though, and the early azaleas are blooming.  Today I noticed the wisteria has burst into bloom as well.    I can't tell you how much I'm enjoying the greening of the view out the front window.  Cheers one right up.

As it's been an uncomfortable couple of weeks, The Tramp has done his best to cheer me up.  Awwww.  Isn't he a sweetie!

Piglet discovered very quickly that she could just step through the porch railings and gate.  After chasing her several times and endlessly worrying when we had to open the front door, we finally got around to browsing the aisles at Lowes and found a cheap simple solution.  So far so good!

And because dummy me left the windows open one night in the kitchen and bonus room, I spent most of a day on pollen clean up.  The first wipe around the kitchen sink got me this.  Good grief.

I left four windows open in The Sandbox.  Did I say dumb??  OMG  Rather than just vacuum off the ironing table I realized it was high time for a new cover.  After The Tramp and I stapled the new canvas over the batting, I sprayed it with water.  The wrinkles disappear immediately and the canvas dries tight as a drum.  It's like magic!  It's also pretty magical to have a nice white surface to work on again.  :-)

 So I recovered my portable board too.  Nice!

Yesterday was Dad's ninety-third birthday (wow) and we had a pleasant dinner together.

The Viking had the pleasure of spending last week with his other grandparents.  They had lots of fun together and he misses them, but it is nice for everyone to be back in their regular routine.   So today we took advantage of what may be the only non-rainy day of the week and spent some time at the park.  It got pretty hot in the sun.

So he wasn't too terribly reluctant to break away for lunch.  You can see how sweaty he was under his hat.  Selfie time!  He loves to mug for the camera and watch himself in action, but hasn't quite figured out that it isn't always a video and he sometimes needs to be still for a moment.  So we took umpteen photos to get a few vaguely in focus.  :-)

French fry!!

And of course for some reason we had to make french fry smiles.

Sewing is calling from all around me.  Two t-shirt quilts are waiting for their borders and UFOs abound.  I did finish the cutting in preparation for the upcoming retreat.  5,390 little pieces in that bin.  Crazy!  I can't wait to get my hands on them.  Tee hee!

In the meantime, I think I'll go to bed.  The Viking will be here bright and early, and since it will be raining we can spend some quality time in The Sandbox.  Me with fabric, and he with his trains, planes and automobiles.  Sounds like a plan.

Now I have to convince someone to move over and make room for me.

Doing

Doing.  I've been doing lots of things and doing nothing.  Having a nasty cold causes hours of doing nothing.  I spent one whole morning just sitting in the rocker in the sun.  You know I wasn't feeling at all well when I took some silly selfies to send to The Tramp at work.  Oh my!  :-P

The dogs didn't mind the quiet.  This is what the two sun worshippers would be doing on a sunny morning anyway.  Soaking up the rays.  Cute how they arranged themselves around Ngaire's shadow.

Dog TV for the others.

It's a hard life.

But somebody's gotta do it.

Until we get too hot of course, then Ivy gets in her five minutes of sun.

Now it's getting too hot in front of the window, some of the thanksgiving cactus have been moved to a new corner....and are blooming nicely!

I'm happy to say The Viking has spent his usual days with me and not caught my cold.  I also took Dad out to do some errands.  The Viking "drove".  I'm glad to say both my parents are doing fine.  They haven't caught my cold either.  I seem to be going solo on this one.  Maybe this is the cold they all had in February that I didn't catch.  Hmmmmm.

"Em Ems!  Em Ems!  Fank you so much!"

And this is what we were doing on Thursday while waiting for a contractor who didn't show up on the appointed day last week.

Painter's tape train tracks and Duplo tunnel.  Happy boy.

What the contractor was doing was installing a new vacuum system.

Which of course comes with parts we had to make room for.  (What else is new??)  But the darned thing works extremely well.  The carpets are still reeling from the shock.  :-)

Piglet would be an outdoor dog if I let her.  Now it's warmer she plunks herself down in the sunny dirt at every opportunity.

The backyard is still in awful shape.  We started our holiday weekend raking up leaves and pinecones, hauling rocks, and The Tramp hacked up a few large roots.  Sadly, laryngitis is no excuse for avoiding that kind of work.

Sooo far to go.

The other thing I've been doing is continuing to shuffle sewing machines around.  Several of the vintage ones have gone out the door to The Tramp's great relief.  (He will deny that. ;-))  I've also not fallen in forever love with the Bernina 710.  :-(  The machine itself is fabulous, but it's a 9mm stitch machine and I eventually realized I just don't like that part of it.  After much laying awake at night and worrying about it I decided to take it out of the table and sell it in preparation for buying another 5.5mm machine to replace the 440....which I should have kept.  Hindsight is wonderful.  Yeesh.

So I've packed it all up and started putting the word out that it's available.

In the meantime, I retrieved my Juki from the person it was temporarily loaned to and it's back in the table.  Ahhhhhhhhh!  Relief.  Things are back as they should be.  You never appreciate what you've got 'til it's gone.   I had no idea how happy I was.  Send The Tramp a sympathy card.

My plan is to work on the Omigosh quilt at bee retreat in May.  So I've pulled it all out again and am making up strip sets and doing some preliminary cutting.  The first step is tiny nine-patches made from 1" squares (1/2" finished.  Yikes!).  I need 1100 dark-light-dark units and 550 light-dark-light units.

That's 300 right there.  I have lots more to do!

My sinuses are killing me, my voice is still croaky, but there's nothing wrong with my fingers.  I can sew!  I'm going to leave you now, go stroke my Juki for a bit and get busy with Omigosh.  Oh.  After I feed the dogs.  They certainly let you know when you're falling down on the job.