Staying Cool

These rain-washed flowers do not show how hot and steamy the days are now! They are so beautiful, orange daylilies, white shasta daisies, blue wild sweet pea, and purple verbena and oh yes, not to forget the black-eyed susan's!
My sister, Suzanne, brought in a large bouquet that we both arranged while she was visiting here yesterday. I go out for a few moments and then race back into the air conditioning (two good sized window units at either end of the house). Then I get to look over at the vase of wild flowers while I sit and sip my tea as I hand hem the binding of "Cotton Candy," my version of Roll Roll, Cotton Bowl. It is almost done! I can't wait to show it to you. You can see a bit of the pieced backing here in this picture:

Independence Day Early

I'm glad that I snapped this picture yesterday because first thing this morning, I noticed that all the baby birds had flown away! My visiting sister helped to identify them as Least Flycatchers. They all left at once and I did not see them go, but now the nest is empty and the parent birds are gone from the immediate area, too. I sure did enjoy them when they were here!

The Twiggy Wreath

This year, a pair of slate colored juncos (I think?), [no! Alder Flycatchers, I learned] decided to build their nest right beside our busy kitchen door in the top of the heart-shaped twig wreath. I almost discarded that wreath this spring! Now there are four babies in the tiny nest that is under an alcove protected from the sun and rain.

The nest is so crowded! I fear that one may topple out as they grow. Both adults are attentive in the feedings.

A Different Design Wall

My design wall is actually a chair in the living room that I keep covered with a white cotton woven bedspread to protect the upholstery. It sits opposite MY chair, so it is perfectly placed for when I am resting or watching TV. I keep putting up new blocks and enjoying the view. In addition to the endless stream of Sister's Choice (my goal is to make one a day) blocks, I also started something new. Yeah, I know, VERY BAD GIRL with all the UFO's around the Quilt Cave.
Here are the Sister's Choiceblocks:

The new project that is so fun is a scrappy red block that I threw together myself. I have no idea if a couple of four-patches matched with squares of fabric to make a giant nine-patch block has a name or not. But I noodled around with it and I liked it! I confess that the idea was partially inspired by Nann Blaine Hilyard's pinwheels on her blog, With Strings Attached. It just so happened that I had bought a passel of rather orangey reds online this winter. Six yards of different reds, and I've been just itching to use them.

I've been doing the Bonnie Hunter leaders & enders with the 2 1/2" four patches for a while, so I had accumulated a stack of them. With the 4 1/2" red squares it makes a 12 1/2" unfinished block. My goal was to make four blocks a day. Here is design play before it started to rain every day.

It looks so disjointed. I think the light X's are off in this shot on the deck. The breezes came along and blew all the blocks around and that was it for the night! LOL! I had a ball!

Matthew Graduates!

If you have followed for a bit, you know that Matthew Abraham is a 21 year old man that helps Felix out around the farm and barters for tutoring in American History. That was his last semester course in Adult Education for Pembroke Academy High School and we were thrilled that he got an A!
It was a sultry and humid day that threatened thunderstorms, so the school decided that the ceremony would be in the gym which has no air conditioning. Whew! It was very hot, but it was a very well done graduation ceremony. We were so proud to be invited and I took all the pictures.

Even Matthew was delighted to escape the heat of the gym afterwards.

The Grassy Slope

My house sits up on a crest above the Route 140 roadway and there is a steep slope there. I cannot plant it with nice plantings because once a year the State of New Hampshire road crews come by and brush-hog it. It is far too steep to have my hubby mow it. So about 3 or 4 years ago, I tried some lupine plants in the terrible clay soil surrounded by thick quack grass. They grew!! And they have survived brutalization by the brush-hog and come back stronger. I'm planting more of them this year.

Even better, they are deer-resistant, too. That's important for there are a herd of 4 to 6 deer that tramp across Route 140 right at my house and snack on Felix's baby apple trees on their way. Sigh.

Sky Song

My best friend and husband and I were just recovering on May 30th, which was our 41st wedding anniversary, from a very bad bout with a virus. So we decided to wait until we felt like celebrating and postponed our trip to the Hong Kong Buffet until tonight. This is what the faintly sprinkling sky looked like as we were ready to leave!

It was so special that I wanted to share it with you! (Photos are unedited).

Matthew's Quilt

Last summer and fall I worked on sewing up a huge bunch of Broken Dishes (Hourglass) blocks from a big bunch of swapped nickels (5" squares). They certainly were scrappy fabrics and many of them were brights. As I was working on the layout on the shade of the deck, my garden boy, Matthew Abraham came over. He was interested, so I let him complete the final arrangement. He was quite surprised at how much effort it took to change the blocks around to see what looked best. The bending and placing of the blocks is a lot of excercise, too!

So it became "Matthew's Quilt!" He wailed out loud when I spoke of donating a quilt to charity, "It better not be MY quilt!" Of course, I reassured him that no one would take his quilt away from him. But it had gotten on the back burner, all but forgotten. Matthew's High School graduation is coming up, so it will be the perfect time to present it to him.

So I dragged it out yesterday and worked today on adding the second wide border in a very BRIGHT orange that Matthew picked out himself at Joann's Fabric store. Tonight I'll prewash the multi-colored star printed flannel for the backing and dry it in the dryer to shrink it. Then it will be ready to go to the longarmer.

For the record, this is not cheddar-colored fabric. It is highway safety-cone ORANGE!!!! My husband, Felix, suggested that we call the quilt, "Orange Julius!" We'll see what Matthew says.

When Random Isn't Wonderful

When I made the Blockade Blocks from the Civil War blog, I found them to be a lil' more challenging than I had thought they would be. All those light triangles needed to be placed such that their tips would overhang in a lil dog-ear. And it looks SOOOOOOO much better when they are NOT random!

The really fun block was the Illinois Roads Block! It is so easy and simple but really pops. I sewed the 2 1/2" strips together and cut them apart for the rail blocks. Then I had a few leftovers for my growing pile of 4-patches, too!

Lastly, I did another Sister's Choice, but I hate the green in this one! Ugh! Felix looked at it and laughed that it is the color of a teenaged girl's cell phone! Ewwww!

Pom-Pom Girl

Here is what is my newest favorite drink mix. I call it a "Pom-Pom Girl", and it can be delightful just as a 50% mixture of diet cranberry pomegranate juice with raspberry-lime seltzer water, or if you wish, add a splash of vodka to make it a cocktail.

Canadian High!

A magnificent Canadian high pressure system has run in and swept away all the stagnant hot humid air and left us with bright fresh cool air!!!! We all feel so energized now! Here are some snapshots of the Black Forest Nursery where my sister, Anne, took me to buy a few annuals to pop in here and there. I also bought her one lovely Patricia Ann clematis that was in bloom to plant in memory of our dear departed sister-in-law.

This morning, in the mild 70 degree sunshine, Felix and I weeded out and planted the welcoming planter out front. He prizes his German everblooming irises that are in their glory right now.

In the planter, there are bright red petunias, cobalt blue lobelia, and all around the outer upper ring of the planter is a densely planted circle of my baby marigolds. I raised these from seed and they are the orange pygmy variety. Only the red petunias are visible right now, but I'll try to remember to take another picture later in the summer.

I also put together a few new Sister's Choice blocks. Here they are:

Warm Enough for Me!

My goodness! Here in New England, we say, if you don't like the weather, wait a minute! Today is sunny and warm with the 85 degree breezes blowing fresh air all about. It's a far cry from the 50 degree rains that had me dressing in layers with cotton turtlenecks.
When I get new quilting fabrics from my online suppliers, I like to prewash them. I used to do it in the washer with just a lil' Tide. And I still do that for pieces that are larger than one yard. But I have had some stockpiles of one yard pieces of bright reds, oh say, ten or twelve different ones. I swear that ALL reds bleed color!

So I've been doing just a few at a time in the big sink in the bathroom in hot water and Orvus. Then, I carry them sopping wet (in a bucket, so that they don't drip inside the house) out to my clothesline. They are so gay flapping in the breeze!

On May 30th, 1970, I got to marry my Husband Wonderful, Felix. We planned that day, which was traditional Memorial Day, so that wherever we were working, our anniversary would always be on the holiday. Little did we know that the government passed the Monday holiday law later that year. So this Memorial Day, we are celebrating 41 years of happy partnership.
We are going to plant red/white&blue perennial plants in the rock garden to enjoy our special day. And I think we will go out to our favorite Chinese restaurant, the Hong Kong Buffet, too. Here are pictures of the rock garden. Can you see that Felix has already planted the red English Daisey's? They are kinda hard to see near the big rock. The Dianthus will be the white, and the phlox will be the blue. I wish you could smell those lilacs in the background; they are heavenly!!!

The Process

Yesterday and today, I struggled with the "No Sunshine Blues" that all of the northeast is suffering for the past ten days or so. Everybody is depressed, irritable, or sleeping all day. When my husband, Felix's car door swung too wide and barely brushed against the mirror housing of the pick-up truck in the next parking space, the owner of the truck exploded in road rage! No damage was done and Felix apologized and even offered money, but the man was foul-mouthed and implacable. He finally shuffled away, grumbling.
I feel it too. I just can't seem to get enough energy together to have the ambition to do even the things that I enjoy. I'm eating way too many cookies.
But I tried the Union Square Block from Barbara Brackman's Civil War blog.http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/
Here is my first attempt:

I was very unhappy with how little contrast I had achieved in the corners with the green and the brown prints, so, today, I tried again. I still had two more blocks worth of that same green already cut and ready to use. But I chose a deeper hued madder print and a deeper brown print, thinking that the darker tones in the corners would do the trick. Not so!

It's better, but that green is too strong! So I tried a completely different fabric set with an indigo and medium blue. AHHHHH, now that's what I wanted to see! I'm very pleased with the last one here:

They say that the world will end tomorrow. Maybe. But I remember when it was supposed to end when I was in Foxboro High School in the late 60's and I had a math exam scheduled for that day. The world did not end, and I still had the math test. Funny, I don't even remember if I passed it!
So I guess this post is all about just going through the process.