It Doesn't Get Any Better Than This...

Warning: If I totally drop off the radar screen for a bit, it's because I'm having gremlins in my stupid laptop again. No more Dells!!! I'm hoping DH surprises me with a new HP for my birthday next month.

It's been awhile again since I was on here. I guess that's just the way it goes in the summer.

We've been busy with our Little Green Acres, watering, watering, and more watering. We did finally get much prayed for rain last week, 1.4" in 24 hours. But that was about it, nothing measurable since. We NEED it, June is our month for precip.... so if June is dry, it doesn't bode well for the rest of the summer.

My neighbor youth friends, Makiah and Nathan, have continued to come over and help me with the yard work this past week.



I also spent some one-on-one time with Makiah, teaching her to piece by hand.

I just love working with this impressive young lady! She is so mature and composed for her age, and is interested in everything, and is always up for anything, whether it be gardening, or sewing, or even helping in the house. She definitely is NOT afraid of working! In fact, she's quite eager for the opportunity.

One afternoon Makiah joined my granddaughter Darian and I for some sewing with all three of us together.



So between the three of these young people, one or more of them either sewed or gardened with me, or both, every day but one last week. It doesn't get any better than being totally immersed in your two favorite hobbies...

I'm always amused at how amazed young ones are at themselves the first time they sew with a machine. Makiah's words were identical to my granddaughter's on her first go-round, "I can't believe I'm sewing on a sewing machine!"



I mentioned in my last post that Darian has begun a new bargello project. It's moving right along, and she's doing a very good job with accuracy. She had some good help with fabric selection from one of our most favorite quilt shops, Bismarck Sewing and Quilting, but she also does a good job with colors herself.

Darian's New Project

Oops, I just got an email that my sister is going to be checking in, so I better hurry up and post something so she has something new to look at. :)

My granddaughter came over today, and she is starting a new quilting project.



Don't anyone take notice of the shirts in the background not being ironed... while the cat's away we mice will play! ;)



She's planning on making a bargello lap quilt.



This is going to be fun, fun, fun!!!


Is it just me, or are you others who are both quilters/gardeners torn between being outdoors in this beautiful time of year, and doing quilty things?

Click on the images to zoom in. You really need to see them blown up to get the full impact of nature's glory!

It's Arrived!

Look what's here, it came 2 or 3 days ago. I have been so anxious for its arrival. I really haven't had that much time yet, to explore just what all the differences are between EQ6 and EQ7. But I'm pretty happy abut the unlimited number of activiations. Because of all my PC gremlins and bad luck in that area, I ended up having to purchase EQ6 twice, due to exhausting the number of allowed activations, including a courtesy one at the end. What a string of bad PC luck! Oh well... and soon I'll get Windows 7 and get rid of this darned Vista 64-bit, and hopefully that will make life easier too. I really suspect my hobby software applications don't like to play well together: (EQ 6, 4D Embroidery, and now my Babylock embroidery software), because after I got my Dell laptop back from the factory for major repairs, I didn't load hardly anything else back on it, and have still had nothing but horrendous performance with it. Perhaps I just got a lemon.... Next time an HP!

Got another DJ triangle done last night, LS7, Sally's Steeple.





And our forest is growing on 'Little Green Acres'.... :)



We put in 3 Quaking Aspens this week. Now we just have to water the heck out of everything because we keep getting rain forecast, but it keeps skirting around us. It even missed us yesterday, with a 70% chance of rain!!!

A Very Busy Week

What a busy week it's been. DH and I were contemplating on it as we took a break at the end of the weekend and thought about all we've accomplished in just the last week.

Our time has shifted away from finishing my quilting studio for the time being, and into his shop and outdoor work. Since I got his undivided time and attention all winter, I guess I won't complain (at least for the time being). :)

Here's a closet he built around his heating system in his shop. The French door was really a bit of over-kill, but it was free, so what the hey... When we bought our home, it was part of the many materials that had been left in the basement by the former owners who never quite realized all their ambitions. Since the door is pine, and our woodwork is oak, we had no use for it in the house. My job is the 'painting princess' for this and any other finishing project.



I want to call attention to my French friends of a couple of the artifacts up on the shelf. When we were living in France, we loved going to the open air flea markets. We found LOTS of treasures there. One thing we were collecting were the old galvanized steel watering pitchers, which you'll see a couple of. And also at the left end of the shelf is an old metal carrying 'tote' for bottles or whatever (like our old milk delivery pieces here in the US). We developed a real appreciation for French wine while there, and we had wine bottles sitting in this item for decoration purposes, as much as anything. Ever since then, Dennis has referred to it as his 'French 6-pack'.

Then we turned our efforts to outdoors. We got instant forest two days ago. We have some really great neighbors, and a couple of years ago they gave us first shot at buying some really nice big spruce trees from their lot. To make the deal even more enticing is that they have a friend who moves trees, so we got these very mature trees for a song. We moved 8 of them 2 years ago, and 8 more Monday. I'll try to show before and after shots of the various spots where they were planted.


















Can you say Happy Farmer???




How it's done...









And today, we are FINALLY going to plant our vegetable garden. We had debated about not even having one this year, what with hurting knees and feet (for BOTH of us). But we just couldn't quite make ourselves do without... especially fresh tomatoes! That's why we're getting the late start. We were lucky to even find nice plants anymore at this time of the year. (We never start with seeds, our growing season is too short and/or the kinds of veggies we concentrate on are more conducive to just starting with already established plants.)


After all the hard work, it was time for another sewing day with friends. This time it was with Evelyn and Denise. I really wanted to get a day in with Denise as she is starting a new job very soon, and had a couple week lapse between the last and the new one. And I definitely wanted to take advantage of that window of opportunity. Evelyn was finishing up a quilt top on a mystery quilt we started in guild workshop last Saturday (which Denise taught, incidentally).

Denise was working on a Jinny Beyer BOM, Moonglow, from Bismarck Sewing and Quilting, a favorite shop I've mentioned recently. (N-O-T to be confused with a very unscrupulous local shop who shall not be named, which I've noted has recently taken part of Bismarck Sewing & Quilting's name as part of their advertising, to plant branding confusion: "Bismarck's Sewing and Quilting Headquarters". No coincidence, I might add.) Denise also works part-time at Bismarck Sewing and Quilting. Small world isn't it?



Anyhoo, she got me going again on my Jinny Beyer project, and now I'm all inspired to keep working on it. Thus far, I had only done the first block, and block #6 is now out! I had ended up hand-piecing block #1, which I'm finding myself doing more and more when I'm challenged with something tricky when machine-piecing. But I think it may end up being a combination of paper piecing the various units, then hand piecing them together. We'll just see...

And last but not least, I did knock off another Dear Jane block last night. This was B-3, Mirror Images.

OK, that was NOT last, need an update of 'how my garden grows'...


Same hosta scene, different day.


Note the pixie, not the errant weed!


"Stepping Out" Irises from Mom! Don't you just love them!?


What an assist the sun gives in this beauty.


First time seeing this little bloomer. It's a variegated miniature iris.

And did I mention spring is absolutely my favorite time of year!!!???? :) :) :)

BR-7 & K-9

Been a quilting kind of 24 hours. Last night I finished a challenging triangle, BR-7.



Then today my good friend Chris came over and spent a wonderful day sewing with me, and I finished K-9. She worked on a gorgeous UFO that she had rediscovered recently. She was having a frustrating day with her markings for her beautiful hand-quilting, but knowing her, it will come out impressively, no matter what! I'll repost a picture of that very pretty wall hanging that I had posted much earlier before she got ready to quilt it. I probably should have taken an updated picture of her working on it yesterday with all her markings, but maybe she wouldn't have liked that..., what do you think? :)






In between sewing fun, I even managed to get a lot more prepared for guild Saturday, which put me a lot more at ease, and I also got some requisite painting help done for hubby in his shop.

Not bad for a day's work, huh...?

Can't close without an update of 'how my garden grows' today... Get used to it, I love spring, and the flower gardening that comes with it. :-) Perhaps I should explain that the part of this bed that's out from under the overhead deck is temporary. There will be 'proper' landscaping done in the future, it just hasn't gotten to the top of the priority heap yet. And that's why the bricks swerve every which way, I just threw them down quickly to 'draw' a border of where to stop weeding for now. And with work continuing on with hubby's shop, it doesn't appear likely this project is going to appear on the horizon anytime soon, certainly not this summer. :) Oh well, I'll just be happy if we get my quilting studio finished this summer (it's SOOOoooo close), and hopefully a bathroom constructed on that same lower level.

K-2 Grandpa's Chickens

I guess it's time I post a little something. It's fun to have the counter/map to show how many visitors I've had, but if I don't get on the ball, nobody will come calling anymore. :)

I also haven't had much chance to work on my Dear Jane babies. But I did get this little nipper done.


It's been a busy week or so since I last wrote. We had company over Memorial Day weekend. Hubby's brother and his wife came for the weekend.


Just before they came, I brought home a new 'baby', a Babylock Embroidery Professional. So I was able to play with that while we were squirreled away in my quilting sanctuary! :-)

Wow, is that fun! Of course, I got it from one of my very favorite quilt shops, and Bismarck's "First and Finest" Babylock dealer, Joy, at Bismarck Sewing & Quilting. She and her husband even delivered it and set it up for me, and helped me get started with excellent guidance on how to operate it. We got it ready to embroider, then went upstairs, and when we went back downstairs, here was this sweet little monogram, all done!!! ....six thread colors, with no manual thread changes in between!





I'm not able to play with it as much as I'd like right now because this weekend is my first guild meeting as president, so I'm trying to hurry and get myself up to speed on parliamentary procedure and such matters. I'd love to take part in the morning workshop, a really fun sounding mystery quilt. But I just don't think I'm going to have time between now and then to do the prep work required! As usual, I always think I still have plenty of time, until the 11th hour is upon me, and I wonder where the time went!

We're also busily trying to give some new arborvitae and other shrubs that we just planted, a good start. So that takes some intensive watering every single day for the first week. Have to give an upate of what we're seeing today in one of my flower gardens.



Hydrangea

On a totally different note, I'm having fun starting to look forward to a road trip to Fargo for their annual quilt show, and taking a few classes with good friends. That isn't for months to come yet, but it's already time to start thinking, planning and getting registered to make sure we can take the classes together that we've selected. More about all that later.