We've had so much fun getting to know Mr D. We saw him 3 times before he turned 1 month old! Not bad for a baby that lives 3 hours away! Of course it does help that DH loves to play golf over there. He gained 2 lbs the first month - the doctor asked if he had any other hobbies other than nursing!! NOPE! But cute as a button and starting to do those involuntary smiles!! Fun to watch him grow.
We were up in Portland last weekend and were surprised to see a giant patio project finished before we even knew it had started!! What a nice job - and so much fun to play with the kids somewhere we can also sit while waiting for action to continue! No seats on the cul de sac out front!! They are going to get so much use out of that space - fun, fun, fun!
But of course, we had some rainy days there too - it IS Portland! But L had a 'rainy day activity' hidden away. A "Mousetrap game-like" marble track toy. Unfortunately, it took two adults to figure out how to put it together while a third adult entertained the munchkins out of sight!! LOL! But very entertaining after that.
Did I mention what I got for Mother's Day from L and DH??? Well, L had found a card catalog built like a barrister's bookcase. [It comes apart for easy moving or rearranging!] Lucky for me L didn't find a space for it in her house and it came to me!! DH was not excited - there was work to be done. We hired a cabinet-maker to make a top and toe-guard for it. Then there was a whole lot of elbow grease to clean it up. [No wonder I was having allergy attacks!] - years of spiderwebs, dust and mouse doo-doo! But I'm really happy with the way it turned out. And it holds a lot of little stuff for quilting, of course, you have to remember what drawer you put it in!!! On top is this month's flowers - Flora Pacific does such a good job with monthly bouquets! It was a great gift from DH.
While I was in the quilt cave - I took a full picture of the design wall [instead of just that tease in the other picture]. That's Pies & Tarts on it. My friend J, back in Nebraska got this pattern as an English paper piecing BOM. She's been working on it for a year and it's fabulous. When I saw it a year ago - I tried to join that BOM but no luck. I did get the templates and one of the fabric packs. But then left it to 'age' for a whole year. Does anyone else do that???
This year I had a workshop on 'paperless paper piecing' and figured this would be a good project for that method, especially since I hate English PP! And it's working out well. I'm aiming for 64 pies - that will be a nice 60 x 60ish quilt that will hang in my quilt display space just right. Let's not even mention my ambitious plan of sewing 3 pies and 3 tarts by machine each day and hand appliquing them onto the background each night in front of TV. We all know that's not going to work!! LOL!
The tarts are just 'patted' on since you don't sew them until the blocks are together. I studied pictures of this project on the web, since I had to make up my own fabric selection. I had to make sure that I didn't always line up the dark wedge with the center top. [gives it a little movement] And some blocks will have darker backgrounds with light wedges. Being me [LOL!] I cut wedges for 60+ blocks and an assortment of backgrounds before I really got into production - but it is addicting to see what the next block will look like!!
We have an unexpected sunny day today, in exchange for an unexpected grey day yesterday. We've been having wonderfully civil [8 - 10ish in the mornings] low tides this week. We were down on the beach yesterday and got to see a young teenage? deer frolic in the tidepools! It was running and splashing and you could see he was loving it!! I laughed and he stopped and looked at me like "What are you looking at??" And then splashed some more. FUN!
