A Father's Day Quilting Bee

 

Little Sister had two containers filled with Dad's hexies. There are hundreds of them in there. I was shocked.  

She wanted to turn them into a quilt so she came down for the weekend and we set up an assembly line like we used to when Dad was still with us. My two sisters manned the machines while I did the cutting. 

We got this far before we got too tired and silly. We'll finish the top today-if we can stop laughing long enough. 

And today is Middle Sister's birthday. I wish I could remember how old she will be but I've forgotten because I am older and can't remember much of anything anymore. Beatles lyrics I can remember. Anything anyone just told me-forget about it. No recall at all. 

Nostalgia

 

Our Saturday farmer's market is held at our senior center and while The Mister shops Pup and I hide out on this shady sidewalk. Yesterday that sidewalk gave me a wave of emotion I hadn't felt in a long time. It's where they had set up the long row of chairs where we waited to get the very first of our Covid vaccines. I don't think I've ever been so terrified as I was that day. I was pretty sure I was going to be carried out on a stretcher.

I think the pandemic has been on my mind lately because of this. It's my latest listen. Someone asked me a while back if I liked it and I didn't answer because I didn't know. I dove in without knowing what it was about. All I knew was that Meryl Streep was the reader and that was enough for me. For the record, she is excellent. What I didn't know was that it takes place during the pandemic lockdown and the main character is enjoying having her college aged daughters all to herself for the duration. Her experience on her Michigan cherry farm was rather idyllic compared to what the rest of the world was going through and she acknowledges that. The loss of life can never be forgotten but the noise of the world being that quiet for so long was extraordinary. Sometimes I miss that.

 Thankfully all those feelings didn't last. The noisy world was right there in front of me again and I had things to buy.

Size Matters

 

I was chugging away every night on those last ten squares I needed for the last row of Audun when my alarm bells went off. 

The new squares seemed a little small and they were. By a lot. It seems I picked up the wrong hook. I have two blue ones and I was using the wrong one. Sigh....the whole frustrating mess gave me a terrific hot flash and seeing that we are under some sort of heat dome at the moment Audun is taking a break until fall. I just can't with it right now. 

On a happier note, Trim Day went very well and we spent yesterday afternoon piling stuff up in that finished room so we can.....

....start the hallway next week. First up will be spackling the ceiling. When we moved in it had one of those sloppy popcorn ceilings that I hated so I spent a summer vacation scraping it all off. I replaced it with a more subtle troweled look using a big bucket of drywall spackle but after an upstairs bathroom leaked a few years ago, it now has to all be redone. No fun there. 

Friday Fluff

It's been fun watching everyone get ready for this year's Tour. It starts on June 29th this year. I had no idea what I was going to work on until yesterday morning when I noticed this basket of cotton fiber I had stashed in the living room of all places.

I bought it a few Tours ago but lost interest in it. It's slow going on a spindle so this year I am determined to learn to spin it on a wheel. It's fiddly but as long as I don't expect perfection it should work. I haven't used my Ashford Traditional in a long while and it was nice to get it back in business. 

The Corridale I dyed for the handspun socks is off the Ladybug and just look at it. It's some of the nicest spinning I've ever done. Too bad it's going in those ugly socks.

As for the floor, we tackled the closet. That little bit took all day. No fun there. 

Today will be trim day so off we went to the hardware store for more of it. It's so long we have to hang it out the window. It's my job to hold on to it. 

Instead of doing my usual crafty stuff, I spent yesterday afternoon painting that trim instead. Soon we'll be tackling the big room and I told The Mister that we'll be working two days on and one day off for that part of the adventure. Three days in a row of all this fun is too much. Too, too much. TGIF.

 

Beat

 

All the crawling around and the up and down has really taken a toll on this old body. I woke up at 5 am yesterday and started to clean the house and then said the heck with it. I made myself a cup of tea and a fire and had a nice long sit down on the deck while the rest of the world was still asleep. We've had some unusually cold mornings and I decided to take advantage of it. The mess in the house could wait. 

After taking Pup for a short walk, it was back to the floor. We've got most of the second room done now. Today we should finish it up and start getting the new trim cut and painted.

Yesterday wasn't all miserable. I had a package from blog buddy NYPeaPod who makes the most amazing jams and preserves. I've been too beat for meals so The Mister and I are living off of anything we can pop in the toaster so this was most welcome. 

And....look at this. This has got to be one of the world's smallest puzzles. I'm fascinated by it. I've got quite a collection of some the greatest puzzles ever now thanks to you guys. I can't wait for life to slow down again so I can play with them. There's a spot in my brain that likes to be tickled by things like this. I think it's my old brain trying to tell me something. 

Thanks again, Ruth! It was most generous of you. 

Wednesday WIPs

 

My WIPs are looking pretty boring at the moment but I do have an FO. Riddari is done. It's sharing its mugshot with a stuffed alpaca. I couldn't find any of my many sheep stuffies. I think I packed them away downstairs. 

I'm not sure where Mr. Alpaca came from. It might be Daughter's from one of our MDSW trips. I always took her when she was a kid. When I was a kid I had this. The talking Push Me Pull You.  I loved that thing but it didn't age well being white and all. I'm sure Mom must have tossed mine at one point. Too bad. 

If you were thinking that I should have modeled my new sweater, I will in the fall. Right now it's packed away with my others. It's too darn hot. I can tell you that it does fit but the sleeves are too long. That won't be a big problem because pulling them down over mittens when it's cold out will be a good thing when the temps drop. Right now I'm basking in the AC. No way am I putting that thing on until November.

And....I've got new yarn. It's Malabrigo Rios and it's for a sweater but that's all I'm going to say right now. I've got two gray blobs to finish first.

Tiny Needle Tuesday

 

After a long and very busy weekend we are back to doing floor work again today. Yesterday we got the second room ready to go which means more clutter and more mess. Over the week I managed to finish up both sides of Village Quaker. I've got some big motifs to stitch in the corners of each side before I can go across the top so I'm far from being done-but I'm closer than I was.

I didn't have time for much else last week but I did finish the bottom border on Patchwork Ete yesterday. I think I've got a plan to get all four of these seasonal Patchwork projects done in the near future. I'm really tired of looking at them so I think I am going to get them all out and takes turns with them from now on. A different one each week. The problem has been that when I finish a repeating section I have no interest for the rest of the season to pick it up. Maybe switching them up will cure that. We'll see. 

And...I hope to be able to show off at least one finished Dear Jane block every Tuesday this summer. This is my tiniest needle work as I use an itty bitty quilting between sized needle so I don't prick the paper while I stitch the pieces together.

I know I won't get too far with this one but I did get tired of just sewing on the lattice so I started an entirely new block. The first in row D. With everything else I have going on around here this is plain nuts but it's stuff like this that keeps me sane when everything around me is in disarray.