Hustle and Bustle

We had so many things on our plates this week that the word “busy” just didn’t cut it. Luckily, a lot of that busy-ness was time spent with friends and family. 

In my last post, I showed what happened to our ornamental pear tree in the front yard. One of its main limbs broke off (Bruce says he relates, LOL). That happened before the damage of Hurricane Isaias on the east coast, so I’m not complaining about our minor mishap. It’s nothing compared to what so many thousands are going through now, and my heart goes out to them.

Our lawn guys moved the downed branch out of the way to mow and edge the lawn. They gave us a very reasonable bid for pruning our trees and bushes, clearing the grapevines off the patio roof, and going through our flower beds (front and two side yards) and removing all the weeds and grass, plus trimming down all the spent perennials. All that work took place yesterday (Friday). We were up at 7am to put in a morning of work in alongside the guys. I deadheaded roses and tended to my flower pots and Bruce weeded the garden and harvested vegetables. Then we got our showers, had lunch and spent the entire afternoon at two different appointments for Bruce. Well, he did. I drove, then napped in the car with the air conditioning on. Our vehicle is a hybrid, so it doesn’t idle. The engine comes on periodically to recharge the battery, but that’s it.

Cousin Kim came over to sew last Sunday. We decided that after 4-plus months of both our families isolating, practicing stringent social distancing and masking up, that we could safely merge our two family bubbles. Her granddaughters will be going back to school online, so once that was decided, we all relaxed.  Kim fell in love with the Zipper blocks, and has started making some. She’s addicted too!  I made ten more blocks this week. The first six are the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color of the month - purple.

And here are all ten of them together. That brown guitar fabric also became additional masks for Bruce and our granddaughter Lauren, who plays the guitar. I made another nine masks this week for various family members. With school and autumn coming, and no end of Covid in sight until next year at the earliest, it seemed like a good time to supplement everyone’s supply.

On Thursday we got to visit our long-time family friend Terri, who recently had shoulder surgery. It was heartwarming to see her again as it’s been 3 months. She visited us out on the patio shortly after Bruce’s arm was amputated. It was beyond great to catch up. Terri and Mike (her late husband who was Bruce’s lifelong best friend) are about as close to being family as anyone can be, and we’ve missed our visits. 

In between visits and yard work, I did get time to sew more purple stuff. Here are my selvage half-hexie blocks along with some fabric half hexies (maybe I should just call them trapezoids?)

I’m not sure if I’m going to sew them in horizontal rows like this or whether I’ll do them in vertical rows. I think I’ll just wait until I’ve been through all the selvage colors, and then play. My guess is that there might be enough to make two or more quilts.

Moving along, I also sewed some Twin Sisters blocks. Have I mentioned how much I love these? Yeah, probably every month! Twelve blocks made in purples.

I also had some time to make three blocks for my August One Monthly Goal quilt. I sewed the yellow spinner block in the top right, the red folded box block in the second row (leftmost), and the aqua block at the bottom. And I played with red for the sashing. What do you think? I like its bold brightness. It really amps up the youth feel, which I like for this donation quilt. Here are things just pinned up on the design board. The red sashing will also be used for an outer border. Just two blocks left to sew. Their designs and colors are already selected.

Also this week, our toaster and my portable small iron died. I guess if we count the fallen tree limb, that makes three bad things this week, so I have high hopes for a quiet week next week. We had replacements in hand the next day thanks to Amazon Prime. Here is the new iron, posing with my new (last month) wool ironing mat (I love it) and my newest little furry squirrel friend. 

That cute little squirrel panel came from Sally with the scraps I won a couple months ago. It will become a wall hanging before fall. But isn’t that plushie CUTE? I saw it at the grocery store in the gift section and couldn’t resist. The cats’ reaction? Totally uninterested. 

I’m linking up to Scrappy Saturday at Angela’s blog. Today Blogger isn’t letting me center my pictures in the post. It’s always something with them, isn’t it?