Wrapping up Purple

Once again it's time to recap my scrappy sewing for the month. We worked on purple for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, and if you visit Angela's Scrappy Saturday post today, you can see some of the other wonderful things that have arisen from our purple scrap bins. But for now, you're stuck with mine, hehe!

The collage shows most but not all of my purple sewing. Not shown are the selvage tumblers (one purple row) and the selvage 4-patches. They just aren't very photogenic. However in addition to those, we have 2 Beachcomber scrappy blocks, a row of purple bitcoins, 10 cracker blocks (upper right; one is cut off the picture), six string blocks, 12 9-patch variations, 8 anvil blocks, 8 garlic knot blocks, and 6 purple International Sisters. That amounted to 56 blocks.

In October we will be working with our dark neutrals (black, gray, brown) and I will only have a few blocks to do. But that will give me time to begin assembly, basting and quilting of the 6 Rainbow Scrap projects that are waiting patiently for their Fairy Sewmother to turn them from mere blocks into real quilts.

The only real sewing I did this week was to begin an autumn wall hanging project (no pictures yet because I'm lazy) and to quilt 2 quilts for Quilts for Kids. I have one more QFK quilt basted that Cousin Kim sewed. I've also basted the International Sisters wall hanging for Harambe Humanitarian. That will get sewn this weekend so I can make my finish goal by month-end. I'll plan to get pictures of all of these for my end-of-month post.

Cousin Kim, Sarah (her daughter) and I went to see the Downton Abbey movie on Wednesday. It was so lovely to hear the opening music again and to see everything and everyone on the big screen. The plot of the movie is simple (the King and Queen are coming for a visit!) and enjoyable. The costumes! The scenery! Maggie Smith! We laughed, cried, and agreed it was everything we’d hoped the movie would be. Afterwards, we went to lunch together before heading to our respective homes.

For the rest of the week I spent more time out in the garden harvesting vegetables and fruit than I have for weeks. And time spent outside harvesting means triple the time working in the kitchen to sort, clean, preserve, cook and/or distribute the goods. I snapped some pictures of what I harvested on Monday and took to Weight Watchers on Tuesday.  Then there were two more batches of veggies and fruit harvested on Wednesday and Friday. After this week, all that's left are some Anaheim chiles, cucumbers, tomatoes and pumpkins. Oh, and some grapes in the upper reaches of the arbor that I may just leave for the birds.

Armenian cucumbers

Spaghetti Squash

Some of these carrots look like science experiments. But that's the real world of carrots.

A bag of Concord grapes. This was the second of three bagsful of the Concords. We probably had ten times this many of the regular green grapes (seedless varieties). Cousin Kim made juice, I shared lots with friends and neighbors, we've been eating tons (maybe a slight exaggeration), plus I've made raisins. Yummy!

And just when you though Alfie couldn't get weirder cuter, here he is with Bruce again one evening this week....

Low-Hanging Fruit

The apricots are ON!! This is going to be an amazing year for apricots for us, providing we can get to the fruit. I’ve never seen the tree so laden, but it’s grown into such a large tree now. We have two ladders - one is an extension ladder - but even that allows access to only certain areas. You know, you have to think of safety first, so you can’t go setting the ladders up willy-nilly. And the roof is out because all the branches near the house were pruned last year. Bruce did buy a fruit-picking pole with basket, however, so we’re going to try that out today. It’s got to beat standing out there with our arms open, waiting for fruit to fall into them! LOL. Seriously, though, we have been collecting the fruit on the low-hanging branches. There are lots of those. Besides starting the apricot jam, dehydrated apricots, fruit leather and canned/frozen packing, we are planning a trip around the neighborhood today to share the bounty.

But let’s talk about scrappy sewing, shall we? In the last week I’ve quilted two lap quilts (more about those in a minute), so there aren’t as many finished pink blocks as I’d hoped there would be. But it’s all quilty progress, so I’m not complaining. I’m linking up to the weekly Rainbow Scrap Challenge Scrappy Saturday.

First finished this week were nine anvil blocks (8” finished size).

And then there were the 14 garlic knot blocks, also 8 inches finished size.

I’ve got everything cut out for some pink International Sisters blocks, at least a dozen 9-patch variation blocks, and lots of pink strings ready to sew. They’re all on the rota for the coming week. 

And I have a Rainbow Scrap finish to share! Crumbcakes is now done and dusted!!

Crumbcakes is one of the quilts I mentioned above that I quilted this week. The other belongs to Cousin Kim, and once she binds it, we’ll get a picture. Anyway, Crumbcakes has been in the works for a couple years. I started out by making 6.5-inch crumb blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge in 2017. Then this year I began sewing those together in fours with thin black sashing to form a 13-inch (finished) Crumbcakes Block.

Crumbcakes measures 65x78”. And I used one of my favorite prints, which I’ve used before, for the back. It looks woven, doesn’t it?

Crumbcakes was Goal #1 on my Finish-Along list for the 3rd Quarter that I just posted a couple days ago HERE.

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And here are a few pictures from our garden this past week.

We’ve got some spaghetti squash that are getting big. We planted three times as many this year as we did last year because we can’t get enough spaghetti squash, and they store well for months and months.

Some of the big tomatoes are beginning to ripen ever so slowly, but I think the cherry tomatoes will probably beat them.

Although the spinach and lettuce are done, the lettuce is going strong. We’ve been sharing a lot of this, too!

This year we have some small pumpkins. I don’t remember the variety name, but they’re bigger than the Jack-be-Littles and are supposed to be good for eating.

The grape vines on the patio lattice are bearing fruit. We ripped one plant (of 5) out this spring and I've been keeping the remaining vines in check. That, along with a drastic pruning a couple falls ago, have resulted in a lot of fruit on the new second-year growth.

They won’t ripen until September or October, but they’re a really good size for this time of the year..

And the onion patch is thriving too. Since this picture, some of the tops have begun falling over and drying out, signaling that they can be picked. Of course, one can leave onions (and potatoes and carrots) in the ground until ready to use them. We’ll begin culling the onions this week as needed.

I don’t have a picture of the carrot patch, but we’ve been eating and sharing those too. We’re having main dish salads and/or stir-fry most nights for dinner. Later this week my DIL Kim and granddaughter Lauren are coming over to learn how to make freezer apricot jam. I’m looking forward to that. It was a year ago this week (and next) that we were all in Kenya together. Where has the time gone?

And speaking of time, the apricots and veggies are cutting into my housecleaning time, but oh well. I have my priorities. The housework can wait until the apricots are done, right? Thank goodness there aren’t any Housekeeping Police, hehe.

Hot Fun in the Summertime!

So many fun things happened last week. Diane Knott, one of my favorite quilters and authors (Scrap Quilt Secrets and Strip Quilt Secrets) was in town for a Handi-Quilter seminar. She was there to learn lots of new things for several days. You might remember that Diane quilted my Lattice Birds quilt, and did a beautiful job. So anyway, we met up for some fun shopping and a photo op at Quilters Lodge in Draper, Utah.

Diane is so warm and friendly, and we just talked and laughed (and shopped) like we’d known each other for years. Truly, a nicer person you will not find! Quilters are such a wonderful group, aren’t they??  That was Saturday, and I was finally rested from two trips to Wheeler Farm earlier in the week.

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Wheeler Farm is a county-run historical working farm that is a block from our house. After I retired from my full-time job as a credit manager, I worked part-time at Wheeler Farm as a kids Camp “Cow”-nselor and then as a bookkeeper and docent for almost 4 years. Wheeler Farm is almost 78 acres of trails for walking and biking, plus lots of farm animals (and participatory cow milking), farmhouse tours, a machinery barn, wagon rides, summer camp, pony rides, teaching gardens (in cooperation with the county extension service) and so much more. I have a label (hashtag) on the sidebar for Wheeler Farm that includes all the posts I’ve written about it over the last 12 years of blogging.

So, on Wednesday, Cousin Kim and Bruce and I went walking around the farm just for exercise. And then on Thursday, the grandkids from Colorado visited with their mom Emily (Bruce’s daughter), and we had to show them all the new stuff. These pics combine both visits....

The restored Farmhouse, newly restored gardens.

Looking from the Farmhouse to the west

From the farmhouse you can look northeast to see pastures for cows and horses, old farm trucks and the machinery barn.

Beyond the farmhouse are the two duck ponds. That building below is the Ice House, where they used to store the ice cut from these ponds. It’s also the headquarters for Kids Camp. 

The two ponds above are formed by water diverted from Little Cottonwood Creek, which flows down from Little Cottonwood Canyon (ski resorts Brighton and Solitude). With the spring runoff, they are running at very high and dangerous levels.

Looks like some folks (picture below) are getting a tractor-pulled wagon ride. The little playhouse at the right is situated next to The Lightning Tree (a box elder), so named because it’s been hit twice by lightening. 

Here are some of the teaching vegetable gardens with the in-process Nature Center that’s being built in the background. It’s scheduled to open this fall, but the wet spring later means that it will be late fall instead of early fall.

And looking in the other direction, you can see more gardens.

We loved this little “skep” made of two-by-four chunks of wood. It’s in the center of the nature walk/teaching area for kids. 

Naturally, Cousin Kim and I had to sit in it on Wednesday.

On Thursday, Abbie, Gunner and Deacon rested in the skep and certainly look a lot cuter!

And here’s most of the gang walking along on Thursday. 

The County cleverly had wood carvers transform the stumps of dead trees into wood carved wonders along one of the main walkways of the farm.  Here daughter Emily poses with Abbie, Deacon and Gunner.

Abbie

Gunner

Deacon, Abbie, Gunner

Emily and Deacon

Not to be outdone, Alfie and Darla wanted me to show you their pictures too.

Alfie’s favorite “hang-out” is to sit on the back of the couch and look out the front window shutters to watch the neighborhood goings-on. He even naps like that sometime. 

Meanwhile, Darla sits on the ottoman and pretends she’s asleep. But we know her better; she knows exactly what is going on. 

And a final picture for the week, just because. My volunteer hollyhocks are huge. They were planted several years ago on the other side of that bed, but somehow these sprung up here for the first time last year (ish). They’re just getting started. This picture was taken last week too, and the apricots are almost ready. We’re thinking next week at the latest. If the propped up branches can hold on.....

Good Fortune and Bad Fortune

So, first the bad. My trusty little iron died. It was about 3-4 years old, the longest I’ve ever had one of the little ones. (The big weight-lifting caliber Rowena still functions just fine, dammit!) I use the little one almost daily. Since it plugs directly into the multi-outlet surge protector (like the sewing machines), everything gets turned off when I’m finished working (which really means playing) for the day. Bruce, an electrical engineer, was able to fix it, but it was not designed to be put back together. Insert sad face here! So, I’ll be using an Amazon gift card I got for Mother’s Day to buy a new one - and some new quilting gloves. Since the weekend, I’ve quilted 4 small baby quilts for Quilts for Kids and finally really LOOKED at my poor gloves. They're hole-y and worn out, so I’ve got some serious online quilty shopping to do.

And speaking of Mother’s Day, which was over 3 weeks ago I realize, I also was given an orchid. I snapped a picture of it to prove I’ve managed to keep it alive for three weeks so far. My green thumb is definitely limited to the outdoor garden, not indoor plants and flowers. Here is a picture of the orchid along with some matching irises (pure “coinkydink") from the yard.

I won’t regale you with all the false starts I had in the sewing room today that fall under the category of Bad Fortune. Instead, here is my Good Fortune quilt that I finally added the binding to this afternoon. YAY!  It finished at 55x69” - I intentionally left out one of the borders. This was Bonnie Hunter’s Mystery Quilt-Along quilt for 2018-2019, and the first Bonnie Hunter quilt that I’ve finished - but not the last!

The back is the 2-tone green print that I’ve had in my stash for a few years.  The quilting I did was free-motion flowers, swirls, feathers and anything else I wanted to practice on. It actually looks pretty OK. You can kinda/sorta see parts of it in the picture below.  This was goal #2 on my Finish-Along list for the second quarter. You can see my list here.

Since we were out in the garden snapping pictures of Good Fortune, I had to take some more pictures of the garden. After all, I hadn’t taken any pictures since Monday. HAHA! Actually, we had some incredible weather in the high seventies/low eighties (F) on Tuesday and Wednesday. (Today it’s been raining and is breezy again. I guess those two days were our summer......) Anyway, look at the difference in some of these pictures!

So, this is my Chihuly rose; it’s a floribunda. The picture on the left was taken Monday, June 3 and the one on the left (different angle and time of day) was taken today, June 6.

Chihuly Rose

And this red climbing rose and irises are shown on Monday (left) and Thursday (today, right)

Our vegetable plants have gone nuts and are finally growing by leaps and bounds. Even one of our tomato plants has a tomato!

I know I’ve shown this vignette under the apricot a time or two already this spring with the bird bath, the miniature roses, Boomer’s headstone and the hollyhocks. But just look at how those hollyhocks have taken off. They’ll be blooming soon!

Now, I’m off to see if I still have time to pick a goal for June for One Monthly Goal (OMG) and link up.  

Orange Scraps and May Garden Update

Although I showed some pictures in my last post of the spectacular weather last weekend, it’s turned cool and really, really rainy here. Did the Salt Lake Valley get moved to the Pacific Northwest while I was asleep? We’re in a 10-day rainy pattern, so the pictures I’m going to show of things in our May garden (later in the post) are cloudy and gloomy.

But first let’s talk about happy, sunny things, like the color ORANGE for the month of May in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. There is nothing like a bright, warm color to lift your spirits when you’re sewing.  This week I made 12 anvil blocks that will finish at 8”.

They are fun to make and come together quickly as you chain piece them.  I now have 41 of the 72 I’ll need to make a 64x72” quilt before borders (if I add any). 

Next up was Garlic Knots.  These are also 8” blocks, and I made 10 of them.  I just started these in March (green), and have a total of 30 so far. No plan yet. 

And finally I sewed my orange strings into these five 9” (finished size) string blocks. 

They bring my total of string blocks up to 29 of the 42 I’ll need.  

I still have my 9-patch variation blocks to do this month, as well as my bitcoins. And then, since I don’t need any more crumb blocks for my Crumbcakes quilt (which will be assembled and finished in June), I will start another crumb project. Stay tuned!  

As well, I’ll be starting some International Sisters blocks. That may or may not be an RSC project, but I’ll definitely begin by sewing some of the ladies along with the rainbow color of the month. If you haven’t seen these blocks before (or even if you have), check out the free pattern on Preeti’s blog. She is not the originator of the pattern; it started out as an African Women block. But in the few years it’s been out, the original pattern source has been lost and links are broken. Formal attribution has cannot been made. I know Preeti really tried, and so did I. Therefore, since Preeti drafted it up, she is offering it free. Thanks, Preeti!

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We did get to spend a beautiful, warm Mother’s Day out on the patio and in the garden. Bruce barbecued chicken and we had some family over (son Shane, DGD London plus her mom and other grandmother). It was really nice.  But after that, the weather went to hell in a hand basket. We’ve only seen (or heard rumors of) the sun for a few minutes a couple times in the last week. The rain is certainly great for the garden and it makes me realize we really need to get a rain barrel. But anyway, here are some pictures I snapped this week in the gloom.

Here’s the back corner of the backyard, which I’ve shown before. I missed getting a picture when the neighbor’s lilacs were crazy in bloom. Oops. But we’ve added a shepherd’s hook with a couple pots of flowers back here for some color. The hook we have out in the front yard is very heavy duty and holds a Talavera pot. This hook is of lighter scale, so can only hold two plastic pots of the store-bought petunia arrangements. It’s perfect for this corner. You can see the lettuce and spinach coming up in the garden bed there. And there are three various pepper plants at the near end of the rows.

The rhubarb is going nuts and providing lots of stalks for Cousin Kim to make her pies and for me to make my strawberry-rhubarb compote for the year. The peas are well on their way. Bruce will string some string between the rebar for the peas to climb.

On the east side yard (where our driveway is), we have lots of irises. 

I don’t know what that other blooming thing is, but I think I bought it last year. I can’t remember. (I hope someone doesn’t tell me it’s a weed, haha!)

And just a little ways away, also on the east side yard but closer to the front, is this grouping. There are lots of little lobelia bunches planted in the bed along the inside of the curbing. That bush at the left by the chimney wall is the new burning bush that Bruce planted. There are more irises; they are sort of tucked away.That is a little nook where I plant the rhizomes I’m not sure of color-wise. Then I can further thin and transplant them to other areas. Our garden dragon guards them. To the very right is a dwarf Japanese Maple that can be seen from the front and the side along the driveway

And our little poppy plant has bloomed! It looks like there is another bud about to open. We used to have a giant poppy here for a decade or more, but it eventually died. We replaced it a couple years ago with this very similar one and are looking forward to it growing!Isn’t that an interesting rock behind it? It reminds me of a pinto horse!

And finally, the front pots are planted and out. Keep in mind, these are early season pictures. Bruce just hooked up the drip irrigation lines, which we haven’t needed yet because of all the rain. Once the sun comes back out and the lines soften from the warmth, we can move them around a bit and tweak their positions to become less visible. 

We got our two last new windows installed this week in the front bedrooms, but that’s a boring picture. But before the blinds go back up, one bedroom will get a wall repainted. It’s scratched up from the futon that used to be against it. I also removed the old valance and rod that was over the window to clean up the look a bit. The paint is purchased and waiting for us to return from my brother’s house next week. The other bedroom will get the ceiling painted, as well as the ceiling fan blades, the closet doors and the baseboards. Time to freshen things up a bit. We’re still waiting for the new back door and storm door for my walkout basement studio. Then we’ve got a few other little projects to accomplish this year. But it’s one thing at a time.....