"On the road again......."

I shouldn't really quote Willie Nelson.  We only went about 100 miles round trip on Sunday, but since I haven't been anywhere for a while it felt like the "open road."  lol   I suppose the song popped into my head as I've been getting emails announcing Willie Nelson is coming to town.  I think we'd better get tickets while he's still touring!

Anyway.  We drove out to Chapel Hill to buy something offered on Craigslist.  Well....The Tramp drove while I sky-watched.

On the face of it, the weather was lovely, but we kept driving through surprise rain showers.

Since we were already halfway there, we drove on to JR in Burlington to get The Tramp some new Wranglers.  You can't beat the prices.

(I really do have a cloud fetish, don't I.)  We also enjoyed all the yellow daylilies planted along the highway, in some places combined with pink crape myrtle trees.  Of course I didn't get that photo.  :-)

There was no lack of people on the road.  Not really surprising on a holiday weekend.

In the evening I got the wyvern's "mask" stuffed.  I couldn't resist pinning the parts together to see the effect!  Now I need to add paint to all the pieces.

Today it was back to t-shirt quilts.  These are Virginia Tech shirts.  All eighty-nine of them.  Gulp.

It's a large two-sided quilt with "burnt orange" and "Chicago maroon" borders.  This is going to take me a while.  :-)

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!

Quick?

I believe the rest of pack is moving off towards bed so just a quick post (well....as quick as I seem to be able to manage) to catch up.  :-)

In case you were wondering, this is what a melted car engine looks like.

Eldest Daughter's much loved PT Cruiser was plowed into by a taxi.  It is assumed the driver was quite drunk.  Thank goodness they weren't in the car, as it is badly damaged and the engine went up in flames.  :-(

The rain has been endless.  The pond is permanently brown.

There have been moments of blue sky but then the black clouds move in yet again.  I stopped to take this photo while running to hop into Red.  It was a nasty storm to drive home in.

If you enjoy watching clouds it has certainly been interesting.  :-)

Of course that means it's great weather for working in The Sandbox.  So this t-shirt quilt top and memory quilt top have been finished and delivered.

I also quilted a charity quilt for Quilts on Wheels.  Another guild member made the top and I volunteered to quilt and bind it.  I took my inspiration from the book, Quilting Modern, and had fun playing with the settings on my Bernina to get the wavy effect.

It looks even better nice and crinkly after washing.  :-)

I didn't make this quilt either.  It's for the Heritage Day Quilt Auction and I volunteered to bind it.

This is the Auction quilt my bee put together at our retreat back in May.  Cathy quilted both of these quilts and apparently I had volunteered to bind this one too.  I think Cathy's quilting design complements the irish chain very nicely.  I hope it brings in a good price!

A wet Charlie after taking a shower with me.  :-)

The garage cleaning project (ugh!) continues.  The nice neat wall of tools and bicyles I posted a photo of was an illusion.  We have so much more to do!

Last weekend we sorted lots of stuff even though no one but us would know!

We packed the car full of items for both the dump and the thrift shop.  More garage work coming up this weekend.  Happy holiday!  :-)

This is the beeswax candle on our dining room table.  The coil is almost gone and I need to find a source for a refill.  We burn an inch or so at dinner time and when I look at it I can't help but think of all the lovely quiet time and conversation we've had at the table, just the two of us.  And of course, with three dogs laying at our feet and Charlie yelling from the other room.  Ahhhh.  Family life.

Growing things

It's summer and everything is growing.  It's hard to keep up.  :-)

Grands are growing fast.  Five and Batman boogie-ing on the beach.

Stardust looks very grown-up on her first day of camp.

The Viking is 37 weeks-old  already.  Wow.

The juvenile bluebirds hanging out at the feeder.  It hasn't been too awfully hot so I have some hope there will be a second brood this year.  :-)

Also growing are all kinds of summer flora.  We've attacked many of the weeds, poison ivy, and persimmon sprouts, with varying degrees of success.  Happily, there are "good things" growing as well.  :-)

There is even an azalea blooming!  Crazy.

A few days ago the view across the pond changed.

Yep.  The last willow tree keeled over during the night.  It looked healthy enough but now it's broken it's easy to see it was a hotbed of termite activity.  Too bad.

I've been going out early in the mornings before I take my shower, to putz in the gardens while it's "still cool."  Heh.

We have a pepper!  It's supposed to be red so I guess I just have to leave it until it turns color.

Peas.

A jalapeno.

Lots of tomatoes.

Some stuff is more successful than others.  We are thinking we will add to the frames next year to make the gardens deeper.

Two bags of compost added to this flower garden showed results in just a couple of days!

I used to be able to garden all day long....and I did.  Up north that is.  Here it's just too hot.  Look at how red my face and neck are.  I get scary red sometimes.  And this is before 10am!

On Saturday morning while it was still coolish I dragged The Tramp out front to help me mulch the flower beds.  A great improvement.

Since there was no sun, the dogs were able to lounge on the porch watching the neighborhood and enjoying a rawhide chew.

We also spent part of both Saturday and Sunday cleaning the garage.  The junk in there seems to grow and multiply of it's own accord!  It rained off and on while we worked and you can see the fresh brown water spreading across the pond, which is already very brown from all the previous rain storms.

We had cabinets lined up against this wall and decided we could use the space more efficiently.  The bicycles are now hanging instead of leaning here and there always in the way, and all the garden tools are neatly hung rather than leaning willy nilly in the corners.  Yay!  Cleaning implements are better stored as well.  Vacuum cleaners have a home and The Tramp and Sailor Son's boots are no longer a hazard.  :-)

The "pantry" cabinets are now backed up against the shelving units in the center of the garage.  We cleaned them out, washed the interiors, threw away old canned goods and organized what was left.  The second cabinet is overflow Tupperware, Pyrex, baking pans and such. We have a big box for the thrift shop now.  The floor is swept too.  Lots of spiders but only one dead snake thank goodness!  Still a bit more to do on this side and next weekend we tackle the shelving and "workshop" in the other bay.  I'd certainly like to sweep and vacuum out any more spidery and snaky things....shudder.....and The Tramp is anxious to do more purging.

On Friday Mom and I sold raffle tickets for the guild's quilt at the Sewing and Quilt Expo at the Raleigh Convention Center.  Isn't it a gorgeous quilt.

Plenty of vendors to keep a sewer busy all day!

We all oohed and aahed over this quilt covered Volvo.  What a great way to advertise a quilt show!

And speaking of growing things.  My quilt blocks have grown into this.

And today it grew borders!  Woot!  I love it.  And it's one UFO crossed off my challenge list.  :-)