Sewing Aqua and Friends

It’s hard to feel motivation to do much when you’re entering the second week of a 100-degree+ heat wave. Ask me how I know. I’ve felt like a slug. Yet I do manage to find time for HOA meetings indoors, (working outside for than 10 minutes at a time is nearly impossible), take naps, swim in the evenings, and do laundry in between naps. And I’ve been drinking lots of water and, if I’m being honest, new Diet Dr. Pepper with Coconut. Simple pleasures… 

But even though I’ve been Missing In Action from blogging for a couple of weeks, I have been sewing. What’s not to enjoy about sitting at my machine with a very green view out the window, the fan overhead whirring softly, good tunes playing in the background, and fun scraps lining up for their turn under the needle?! 

Here’s some proof that I’ve made progress with July’s Rainbow Scrap Color of the month, Aqua (and teal, and all the blue-greens):

Three Color Stix blocks:

One 16-patch star to finish at 12”:

And three Windmill blocks to finish at 8”:

And yes, I finally got my design wall up with the help of my friend Ruby. She also found a 100-yard roll of white flannel she had stored from her days as a home dec seamstress, and gifted it to me/us (our little sewing circle). 

It’s been so nice to have a design board again, even though space in the sewing room is at a premium. You may notice that there’s a quilt top lying on the table. 

The Anne of Green Gables top is ready to be basted, finally! That’s my primary job for today. Along with meeting another set of contractors to get a bid for resurfacing the irrigation ditch that runs through the condo property. Yeah, fun times…. But I digress. The Anne top measures 66x80”, and when finished will be a gift for my friend Ann. 

Since I’ve finally caught up on some serious sleeping, I may even have enough energy to cook something for dinner tonight! But if the energy is gone by supper time, there are always ingredients for sandwiches or salads.

And just to make this a more colorful post, here are some pictures of my little courtyard garden…

My echinacea (coneflower) is loving life. The rhubarb next to it, however, is being eaten alive. But the ground has been treated and the slugs and snails are history. But the plant will die back naturally in the heat anyway (for the season) and I will keep a closer eye on it next year. I’m finding that we’re having to deal with a lot more pests in this condo than in the old house - ants, snails, and wasps here at our place and other plant diseases in the trees and shrubs of the condo complex. And I’m learning a lot. 

I don’t think the petunias (clumps of green) are loving their too-shady spot, but everything else is happy enough. Begonias are real troopers for sun or shade. And the blackberry bush in the back corner - a cutting that I transplanted from the old house - is actually bearing fruit. Three whole berries so far, LOL, with three more on the way. But that’s OK. Our old bush started out that way, too. Next year it will grow and produce significantly more, and then by the third year, look out!!

The hydrangea is loving its life! The little plant in the white pot is a bell pepper plant. It seems to be doing well, too, although I don’t see any peppers yet. But there are buds. What is it waiting for??

And here’s Ringo the (cockatiel? Macau?) bird standing guard over the courtyard. My granddaughter Lauren and I painted it together years ago…

******************************

Now, the rest of this post, which I’ll try to keep brief, is personal stuff that you can skip if you’re just here for the sewing. But I have to let some people (and my personal record) know what’s been going on. 

Bruce’s annual cat scan to check for cancer after his 2020 arm amputation came back in May showing an enlarged lymph node. This in itself doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but the doctor ordered a biopsy. The results said non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a very treatable cancer. Since the doctor herself is an oncology surgeon (who Bruce will continue to see annually), he was referred to an oncology specialist for the new cancer. He has had a series of three monthly blood tests (and treatment for slight anemia), and the specialist revised the diagnosis - CLL, or Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia. It’s not the horrible acute leukemia, but a chronic type wherein the bone marrow is making cancerous white blood cells. It is verrrrry slow in progressing, thankfully, and some people have lived 30+ years with it. Since Bruce is 76 and relatively strong and healthy, and because CLL is relatively easy to control, this is likely something he can live out a normal life span with. But still. This is his third cancer. 

On a brighter note, as I may have mentioned before, we are in the process of making a VA (Veteran’s Administration) claim, and expect that due to his Agent Orange exposure in Viet Nam, he will be granted 100% disability. But that process will take months. 

The final news for this week is that our contractor let us know this week that it was time to make our lighting selections and the vent/fan selection for over the range. Wanna see the pendant lights? 

These will go over the kitchen island - not sure yet if we’ll need 2 or 3. But the MAIN news is that demolition begins a week from Monday, so I’ll be spending this week packing up the kitchen. Luckily, all the fancy dishes, rarely-used items and decorative items (cookie jars, Pyrex) were never unpacked from the move. So, I only have the basic pots, pans, dishes, glasses and silverware to do. And the pantry will stay the same, so that’s good. And I get to figure out meal prep with a refrigerator, microwave, toaster and barbecue only! I see a lot of dining out in our future for 4-6 weeks! Hey, in this heat, it sounds good to me!!

Linking up to Scrappy Saturday. 

Goodbye Beautiful May, Hello June

It’s been a great week here in the Salt Lake Valley. I hope you all had a lovely Memorial Day. Ours was quiet, but nice and restful. 

Tuesday was a gorgeous day, sunny and bright. That is, until I changed into my swimsuit and coverup. The clouds came out to threaten, but I walked to the condo pool a block away anyway. The wind came up and all the cotton from the cottonwood trees began falling and swirling like snow. By the time I’d sat and talked with friends at the pool for about 15 minutes, the surface of the pool was entirely covered with cotton! But I wanted to get in anyway, so I did! I just splashed and cleared an area for me to immerse up to my neck and paddle around for a few minutes. Then I called it good, got out and dried off, donned my shorts and coverup and walked home with the friends. Two hours later, the sun was out again and the cottony wind abated. I hope my next pool foray will be more successful, hehe. My friend Karen said it took her two hours to clean/skim the pool when I saw her later that evening as I was out walking. 

On Wednesday, Bruce and I drove up to Ogden to visit my friend Pat and her husband Eddie. I hadn’t seen them for about 8 years, and Bruce had never met them. Pat had a load of fabric to pawn off donate to me and Quilts for Kids, my friends or whomever could use it. The fabric, in a half dozen almost full tubs, came from her twin sister who no longer quilts due to health issues. 

L-R: Bruce, Cathy (me), Pat, Eddie

So, on Thursday, my friend Ruby came over and we spent about four and a half hours sorting through the fabric. My plan was that anything I took for myself would be primarily things that would work as quilt backs for my kids quilts, or small scraps in colors I was getting low on. I also ended up keeping a quilt that just needs to be trimmed and bound (and donated), a set of blocks ready to be sewn together, and green scraps that may potentially match a quilt I’m planning for another friend (story on that to come in a couple weeks). Oh, and fabrics for more potential kennel quilts. But my storage space here is limited. So, for everything I do end up keeping, the plan is to remove from my existing stash (and donate to QFK) an equal or greater amount of fabric. 

Ruby took several in-process quilt tops and block sets that were clearly not intended for kids. She also took some yardage and lots of precut squares in sizes from 2.5” to 10”. I had recently shown her an easy way to make 4 half-square triangles from 2 blocks of equal size, so she wanted to match up some of the squares to try that method out. She’ll take what will work and return the rest so they can be passed on. When her stuff was taken home, I snapped this picture of the remaining fabric. Down to 3 tubs and a few piles! 

Much of the fabric is too dark or too thin or just wrong for kids quilts. That’s what those three tubs in the foreground are. Cousin Kim will go through those on Sunday, then the remaining fabric, probably 2-3 tubs full, will be donated to my friend Bernadette who works with several other quilting charity quilt groups, like Project Linus, guilds who make placemats for Meals on Wheels, retirement homes and the like. No scrap left behind!!

So anyway, I haven’t made a start on my June Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks yet. Angela has called blue for June. We usually divide blue into two months; darks/brights one month and lighter blues another month. But this year Angela wants us to just go for it with all the blues together and I’m up for the challenge! I did get my blue scraps all sorted and made a list of all the blocks I need to sew in June, so I’m ready to jump in with both feet!

I did finish up the last of my pink scraps and made eleven crumb blocks that will finish at 6”.

I also sewed up a column of pink scraps. Here are the five columns I have made so far this year.

I’m going to sew two blue columns this month, and the width of at least one of them will be a couple inches wider for size variety. 

Here’s a recent pic I snapped of the brilliant red of our Japanese maple, the green of the other landscaping and the blue of the sky. 

And one picture taken as I looked up, mesmerized. 

What can I say? I love color. And so do all the quilters who participate in Scrappy Saturday and the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. So why not follow the link and come check it out? Until next week, be safe and be happy!

Running in Circles

Two steps forward and one step backward. (Or is that one step forward and two steps back?) Same old same old. Spinning my wheels. Pick your cliche’! Basically, those are all overused ways of saying what I’m feeling these days. Uninspired. Tired - of crappy weather, of too many errands, of a To-Do list that never seems to get shorter and never seems to produce anything when items do get checked off. I have too little time to sew and too little motivation (restlessness) when I do get time to sew. Is this old-lady-onset ADHD? I think I need a good day of sunshine, a nice stiff margarita, and a day with no obligations, LOL.

After a stormy day today, the weather is finally forecast to clear up and warm up as the long Memorial Day weekend unfolds. Our condo’s pool is opening on Monday, and I plan to take serious advantage of it this season. 

There actually has been some sewing going on here, along with all the many other things. I’m now officially on the HOA Board (as an alternate until November’s annual meeting), and Bruce and I are still waiting for the final kitchen remodel bid. But this week we did have a ceiling fan installed in the master bedroom and picked out paint colors and bedding for that room. Slow progress, but progress nonetheless. 

But let’s talk about May’s pink scraps. I managed to get 32 pink string blocks (finished size 6”) sewn over the last two weeks (I didn’t have a blog post last week), and added a couple dozen of the light neutral/white string blocks to make a scrappy string top. The light blocks were made last fall during my string frenzy. 

I think it will look better when it’s finished off with pink binding. The top measures 42x48”.

And I’ve also been working here and there on the Anne of Green Gables quilt. Here are the first two (of 5) rows up on my “design wall”. That’s just a plain wall in my sewing room and some painters tape. Sorry the lighting is so bad. It’s just been dark and gloomy weather lately…

My goal is to get the top finished this week and hopefully basted as well. I’d like to gift it to my friend Ann sometime in early June.

I have a few garden/courtyard pictures to share, even though there is no sunshine in them!

Everything in the Greenstalk planter has sprouted  - and needs to be thinned. There is alyssum in the top tier (not shown). Then there’s lettuce, carrots, basil and spinach (or is it spinach and then basil?) Whatever.

We also have a small tomato plant in the foreground pot and a rhubarb plant loving its life behind the pot. After the season, the rhubarb will be moved to another location so I can plant a rose there. It’s the sunniest spot in the courtyard. That is, when the sun deigns to make an appearance.

The rhubarb will eventually go in the area behind the serpent in the picture below. The rest of everything - a mix of annuals in the foreground and perennials along the back  - will fill in as time goes by. 

Here is the flowering almond bush that is on the outside of the gate to our courtyard. Its tiered flowers almost remind me of strings of garland on a Christmas tree. They smell heavenly. 

That’s about all I have for you this week, but at least it’s something. I’ll be sewing the rainy afternoon away today. We have no formal plans for the weekend yet, but that may change. See you next week, and thanks for dropping by!

Linking up to Scrappy Saturday at Angela’s blog.