Bookmarks, Aqua, Family, Garden

This has been a crazy busy week, and all of it wonderful. The stuff of which memories are made. The weather, which started out rainy at the beginning of the week turned warm and dry by Tuesday, and it has been so delightful to work out in the yard and do things outside.

A week ago, on Saturday afternoon, we got to attend DGD Lauren’s cheer/tumbling end-of-year program. I’ve attended them before, but Bruce has always had to work. Now that he’s retired, he got to come along and see it. It’s amazing what the young ladies can do! You may remember that Lauren went with me and her mom to Africa last summer.

And here is my son Ryan, with Lauren and DIL Kim.

Over the next couple days I sewed on my aqua (turquoise, teal) scraps for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I finished lots of blocks.

Four 9.5” strip blocks.

Five 6.5” crumb blocks, which joined those that I’d made last year to complete three 13.5” Crumbcake blocks.

And a column of aqua bitcoins to join the other colors made so far this year. This isn’t all of them, but most. I’m hoping to have enough by year-end to make a rainbow border around one of my RSC quilts.  I’m linking up to Scrappy Saturday over at Angela’s blog.

On Wednesday evening, we had a gathering of local Harambe Humanitarian Board members here at our house. We had fajitas, rice and beans, fruit salad and homemade pie for dinner, then set about working on the bookmarks. We finished about 150 (of the 350 we set out to make). Then we had an online meet-up with the other Board Members on Zoom. Here are some of the bookmarks.  

All the fabric is African wax fabric and was brought from Kenya by Marilyn. She has a friend who owns a fabric/dress shop in Narok (the shop I visited when I was there last year), and the friend donated lots of scraps for us.  I did all the graphics for the bookmarks. We were able to get them printed at an Office Max, luckily. Had the tagboard been any heavier, we would have had to go to a real printer. Bruce did the cutting and hole punching ahead of time, while I cut the fabrics with pinking shears. Everything was ready for assembly when the gang got here on Wednesday, so we were able to just talk, work, laugh and listen to music - all 9 of us!

On Friday, Marilyn and OD went up north to Logan (2 hours north of Salt Lake) to Utah State University, where my DGS Easton (Ryan and Kim’s son and Lauren’s older brother) and his fraternity had a fundraiser for Harambe. They set up a couple tables to sell some more African things (the bookmarks, jewelry - ALWAYS the jewelry - sandals and more) for additional funds. Here’s a picture of the gang there. Easton is on the very right (in the blue shuka); Marilyn is the only woman and OD is the only African!  :-)  I can’t tell you how much I love these people!!

It was an amazing success! (There were other youths and tables there too).

We also had two sets of contractors here this week. The first one measured for a new back door and a storm door with screen for my studio. The second was for two new double-paned windows for the front two bedrooms upstairs. Everything is ordered and should be arriving in 4-6 weeks. That completes all the door and window upgrades that we’ve been working on for our home for 10 years! Next year we’ll be replacing all the old INTERIOR doors. We still will have the linen closet expanded this year too, and a couple other small things. More about those as they develop....

And finally, here are a few pictures of the garden. This is way early for much of anything still. After all, it’s only April. Bruce will be planting today (Saturday) while I set up the patio furniture. But the garden beds are ready now. 

I set up the Talavera pottery birdbath that I bought in Arizona last February. There are lots of blooms ready to burst there, and the apricot tree has lost the blossoms and is beginning to bud. Yay!

The tulips are blooming along the grape arbor. The grape vines are awake and beginning to bud. I’ll have to show this same view every month so you can see how they burst forth with abundant growth to shade the patio behind.

Three of our 8.5 garden beds (the .5 is a half-size) are below. You can see the rhubarb. That is another plant that you can practically watch grow! A month ago you could barely see it breaking through the ground. We’ll be harvesting rhubarb in early May!

In the front yard, I still have some daffodils in the front planter under the living room window. It’s a northern exposure, so things are a little slower than in our south-facing backyard.

And last but not least (or maybe it is the least....), I have been working on my One Monthly Goal (OMG) for April. I’m trying to get the quilt top of my Bonnie Hunter's Good Fortune quilt top sewn. This week I decided on the size of quilt I wanted and finished sewing all the component parts. Then I got all of the pink/orange blocks sewn together.

Now I’ve started on the green and blue blocks. The first one went together satisfactorily. But the second one gave me fits. No matter how many times I ripped out stitches and re-sewed (three, to be exact), it came out wonky. So I finally took it all apart. I’ll try again this afternoon; sometimes just pairing up different parts helps. 

My goal for the next week is to get the blue/green blocks finished, all of the blocks sewn together and sew on whichever borders I decide to include so I can complete this OMG. And I also want to get some quilts mailed out to a couple of the Hands2Help charities. Hopefully I can get that done and show it all in a mid-week post.

Have a wonderful Easter everyone!