Arlington National Cemetery

Yesterday we took a trip to the Arlington National Cemetery for 2 reasons. One we live here and it would be a shame to have not visited this place where our Veterans are buried. Arlington is one of  131 National Cemeteries in the US…

It would have been a more spectacular photo opportunity last week when there was snow… but the graves and wreaths have just as much impact without the snow. Sadly, only a small percentage of the markers get wreaths, there are many more graves that are not presented with a wreath, here and in other National Cemeteries. I must say thank you to the companies that supply the wreaths, the companies that ship them and the volunteers that place them. I hope next year I can volunteer… it would be my honor to honor our hero's!

There are more than 250000 military graves at Arlington Cemetery. But there are also family members buried here as well making the total closer to 400000 graves. Along with the plain headstones, there are many that are larger and more prominent. In some cases, the headstone marks more than one grave, (a soldiers wife or child/children) are also marked and added to the back of the smaller stones. There is a fact sheet about the Cemetery here if you are interested in more information.

Among the memorials; we visited the Kennedy Memorial, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the Challenger Memorial. We also saw the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. A very sobering sight!

We had to leave after only 2 hours, as sometime in the last week I did something to my left knee… I suspect it is all the stairs in this house, but the walking… did me in. I did think to take ice with us… so I iced it all the way home. I think a doctor is in my near future….

More later- Beth

Stitching!

There is something about this house that keeps me cleaning too much…. Having 2 dogs -both started shedding massively, one much more than the other in the fall and continues even now. And 4 flights of stairs…. with carpet (that shows some of that massive amount of dog hair) need to be vacuumed regularly and a dark hardwood floor that shows even more!!! So even though it seems like I spend too much time cleaning… I do manage to get to the sewing space.

The quilt guild is already at work on the 2014 Raffle Quilt. I volunteered to work on the embroidery parts of the quilt. Earlier, in September, I embroidered 2 blocks about 14 inches square -a rose and a cardinal on a branch, both redwork in the backstitch. Next up were the borders. I did one of those as well. About 72 inches, a total of 6 repeats…

I also made a baby quilt for a great-niece. Very simply done, Disappearing 9-patch. Nothing too special. Shipped it off and haven’t heard a peep about it. Hope they like it.

Since I am trying to knock out some UFO’s… I completed 2 little wall-hangings as well. These were started and the tops completed before moving to South Africa in 2010. They were on the list…. to do… but I just couldn’t get motivated. But… they are done now. About 27 inches square. One has beaded jimmies on the cupcakes and the other has beaded sprinkles, otherwise identical. The only reason I made them was I got one kit, a Snap Sack, for a buck at the Bernina USA yard sale and a friend gave me the other… for the same reason I bought one… They were cute!

        

More later…. Beth

 

 

ICE

For a change, the weather people got it right. We got snow yesterday morning, about 3 inches total. Then it stopped for a few hours and then the sleet arrived… it spit for a couple of hours and added a firm coating to the snow. I don’t think the temperatures got out of the 20’s the whole day.

When I went to bed, there wasn’t anything falling from the sky… however, when I got up this morning, it was still below freezing outside and there was rain coming down. Very gently. The results were beautiful.

Doesn’t this one remind you of a snow globe?

More later- Beth

The Letter ‘B’

A finish.

I started this shortly after I finished the “M” monogram for my sister back in August but I didn’t really like where it was going so I set it aside. It is the 3rd in the Monogram series… There may be one or 2 more in my future, but I think they will be smaller. Maybe with some applique….

The top is white Dupioni Silk over a wool batt. I started outlining the B with MasterPiece and Bottom Line threads, but even though I was using a stabilizer, the silk was drawing up. I switched to KingTut and decided I liked. I backed it with a cotton and bound it with the same silk as the top. I used Superior Omni to quilt the background.

Originally I had planned to run a braid or rat tail along the edge of the binding, but finding the color or size became more of a hassle. So I switched to using the stem stitch and a rayon thread from either India or China. I think I like it as well as the original plan.

A better detail…

A couple of crystals for sparkle… and its done. Approximately 16 x 20.

Remembering

Although this is the largest house I have lived in, (not including a basement) it has very little space for keeping things that are not in use… (read as storage). In an effort to find a bit more space, I have been going through some boxes that mostly contain paper. I have carted these boxes around… for many years, since 1997. As long as I had the room too keep them, not an issue, but lets face it, how long does one need to keep bank statements? bills? tax returns for someone that is deceased? So I was able to discard or shred several boxes worth.

My mom was an amazingly strong, gifted and talented person. She could cook. I mean really cook. While growing up in Sonoma County California my friends were eating meatloaf, macaroni and cheese or pork chops for dinner. We were eating the things that Julia Child was making on PBS -veal parmigiana or cheese fondue or bacon wrapped tenderloin, sweet breads, cow tongue, string bean almandine, wilted spinach salad, asparagus, artichokes, crepes, Danish Pastries, home made breads- the lists go on and on. As soon as I could reach the cutting board and the stove controls, I was cooking too. While I can cook, I don’t cook with the same ease she did.

She could draw, sketch and paint too. I didn’t receive any of that particular talent… not even slightly. When we were young, and she was a stay at home mom, for pocket money, she would make posters…. hand lettered- for the college, theater, etc. I remember her doing those… In one of the boxes I found her books on lettering. I have a couple of her watercolor from 1968 framed and hanging in my upstairs hall.

She could also play the piano, not a virtuoso …. but she could read music play a bit. When we were kids, she would play Schubert, but we would just call it the ‘Charlie Brown song’. Me, again talent wise, not even slightly….. she tried to teach me piano, but I have a tin ear and no rhythm.

She could sew too. Her sewing skills were top notch, and when I was young she made many of our clothes (she made tailored suits for herself and little dresses and blouses for the girls, and pants and shirts for my brother) up until I was about 12, when one year she asked me if I liked this, this and this at the fabric store… and when I was expecting “I’ll start on these next week'” I heard “Good, you’d better get started on these now for school”. I liked homemade clothes as long as mom was making them…. not when I had to make them. I was her early assistant though… helping her pin, set tailors tacks and cut out patterns as soon as I could hold the implement. I think embroidery was what she liked to do the most!!! She made some amazing items to showcase her embroidery skills. Many of her handmade items have been published or featured in shows. She also had an extraordinary eye for color.

She was also an author, she wrote “What Color is Your Aura” , a minister, a public speaker and conducted seminars for personal enrichment. She was gifted! She was passionate!

My mom seemed to me to be fearless. She went back to school in 1965 (Sonoma State College) to become a teacher, (our family had fallen apart and she needed to support herself and 3 kids, 8, 7 and 4 years old) and got a Teaching Credential with a double Masters in History and English (photo is from her first teaching job in Marin County, CA around 1969). In 1993 she packed up the things she wanted to keep, put them in a 20 x 20 self storage locker packed as full as it could be, sold off the rest and moved to Germany to live and work.  When she left for Germany, she did not speak German or really have much of a plan. She had a laptop, a sponsor and the desire to LIVE abroad; and that was about all. Sadly, her adventure only lasted 3 years. She did well enough to have her own apartment, car and business and she loved it!!!

What brings me to this post is that I found a binder in the boxes of papers, that came back from Germany, that had all the email we, (she, my sister & her 6 kids, my DH and myself) sent back and forth for about a year. This was during Windows 3, when you still had to dial into your service provider (CompuServe) and at that time, 28.8 baud rate was the bestest!!! I know because it was discussed in an email, around Christmas 1995. It has been so fun to read about an entire year in our lives; the trials, tribulations, major and minor issues and fun we shared through the email. We shared so many more details about our lives because we did not have write in longhand or wait for the postman to deliver and we could respond immediately. So many things in these email messages I had totally forgotten about, from seemingly insignificant (now) to some major monstrous upheavals, mostly stateside! Stories about the people she met and the travels she did while away, for work and for pleasure, and her visitors too. I am very glad that this binder remained hidden and unknown, because I don’t think I could have read some of this before now.

This  marks the 17 year since this week since she passed. Reading through this binder and the other materials in the boxes remind me that I really miss her. I plan to share more about my mom here, some of her works of art and some of her “momism’s” that make me smile when I think of them.

More Later-Beth

Holiday Post

I’m off for a Thanksgiving Feast with family and friends. I hope you have/had a wonderful day!

More Later!  Beth

Houston Classes

I had 2 classes. Both of them all day.

The first class was called Navigation- Charting A Course For Your Soul with Lesley Riley, she has a blog here. It was an interesting class with a couple of unique questions, but I’m not sure that I have a style or a course to chart. I don’t think I am a ‘free’ enough thinker to be truly original in my design or process. I don’t think I am an artist with a statement to make… I am probably more of a ‘crafter’ with a vast amount of ‘crafty’ knowledge. We were provided with a ‘journal/sketch’ book to work in. Ms. Riley supplied a sheet of questions, quotes and exercise outlines and an ‘art journal’. Our first exercise was an interview with a partner… where we answered the questions and the partner wrote our responses in our journal for us. The second was a scribble to open ourselves to options. Another was over our lunch break; to either take pictures or notes about quilts that caught our eye in the show and to find a common thread as to why we liked it; and then as a collection.

Based on the pictures I took, (I did not go through the whole show, just a couple of rows for these), I was drawn mostly to bold graphic quilts and bright colors.

Another exercise was about time, something I don’t really have a problem with, other than just getting up to the sewing space and using all the time I have!!! I think my bigger problem is focusing…. and choosing a project to work on especially if I don’t have a deadline.

In the morning, Ms. Riley put an apple in front of each of us. The she said that we should describe the apple and that we had a time limit of 5 minutes. We repeated the timed exercise twice more; with no instruction other than to describe the apple. It was my favorite exercise of of them all … I think I would like to take a course with more of these types of exercises… to work on my creativity… rather than the course for it.

The last exercise was to go through the interview again… answering the questions from possibly a new perspective after the exploration. There was also a discussion about using a journal… for sketching, but my feeling about sketching is similar to the one I have about writing… I am not good with the pencil… and showing/using my rudimentary drawings makes me feel as self conscientious as writing in a journal does.

My second class was Beginning Electric Quilt 7 with Barb Vlack, she has a web page here. Yes the beginning, and very basic. Not having used the program… and whenever I tried, I found it to be NOT intuitive. So I thought a class would help. It will, but I must make a plan to open and play at least once a week. We spent the whole day on just the basics. I signed up to be the “teachers pet” when I saw that there wasn’t one for the class. I am sure glad I did, because the number of ladies that could not keep up or had equipment (not familiar with their laptop computer) issues would have kept us from even getting half way through the syllabus, which was only 10 pages, half of which were images! Another was the number of students that had opened and tried to use the program and came with personal stumbling blocks (pun intended) that ate up valuable class time.

I think it is very difficult to pick a class from the limited description given in the catalog, and often going to an instructors web page is not much more helpful. My friends Wolfie signed up for several classes, but only got into 2 of her choices, and my friend Trish signed up for 2 and only got into one.

Have you picked a class from the description, only to find the description did not adequately describe the class?

More Later!!!-

                                   Beth

Houston IQA

I am home from Houston…. I had a great time!!!! Only one glitch, was the headache I got from carrying the laptop to and from class. It ruined Saturday totally for me. But after a bottle of Tylenol, a nights rest…. (and a massage at the show) I was good as new by Sunday morning.

Meeting my friends was the best!!!! Trisha and Wolfie!

Lisa Sipes - Trisha - Wolfie!

The only hard and fast rule was getting to the convention center… on time. Of course the rain storm on Thursday morning…. got in the way of that. I was late for my class. The last time I attended Quilt Fest the car I had reserved was gone, so they upgraded me to a mini van. So I didn’t really put much stock in getting the car I reserved, and of course this time we got the true economy car, that I reserved. We got a Nissan Note…

I thought for sure it would drown a couple of times on our way to the convention center!!! There was so much water on the road, rain still coming down in buckets and no where for it to go… Water was pouring off the overpasses, huge standing puddles on the highway and roads, coming down faster than the wipers could clear the windshield. For some reason, the “fast” setting on the wipers was not all that fast….

We stayed off site, out on the west side of Houston in a very friendly Fairfield Inn by Marriott. The staff was the most friendly ever. Greeting us each time we came to the lobby. Always smiling and asking if we needed anything… at all.

I took 2  classes…. Navigating/Charting my Course to Creativity with Lesley Riley. We created a journal…. and did a bit of exploring…. some exercises…. that may prove useful… some where in my creative process. But since I don’t seem to be truly inspired most of the time or have a personal vision for my ‘quilty-self’, I don’t think it will help me much…. I am also not a journal keeper…. I would probably find some really fun ideas… down the road, but I am just too self-conscious about a journal… to keep one. One thing I did discover…. after traversing most of the continental USA is that Lesley Riley lives and works just across the Potomac River from me in Maryland!

I also took a class on EQ7. This program has eluded me since loading it in 2010. It is not intuitive in the least, even though it is on the Windows Platform. It was a great class and now that I have a basis… for the tools and how the program functions… a bit… I may actually use it. This was another case of going around the world to see the instructor. Barb Vlack is a master in the program and comes from the Chicagoland too. Oh well, we do live and learn don’t we?

I will post more about the show and quilts I saw… later… in the mean time, on Sunday we took a little bit of a road trip. First, because we were a bit early, we took Wolfie to a Michaels Craft store and then to a Joann Fabric Store.

We then made our way to a local sight, the Beer Can house”, but for some reason the curators partied the night before and didn’t see a reason to open the house on Sunday for visitors. NO explanation, just didn’t show up. I called the number and got an answering machine that indicated that Saturday night was some party… Thanks! Next we went south to the Kemah Boardwalk. We spent the afternoon walking around and taking in the area. The number of boats going in and out was amazing… although the water seemed a bit rough….

On the way back to Houston we drove to the Nasa Space Center…. we opted not to go in, but we walked the grounds and looked at 2 of the outdoor exhibits. The Space Shuttle Independence has been moved here, and is still undergoing preparations as an exhibit. It is massive in size! At the front entrance is a little park called the T-38 park and had one of the lunar modules and 2 T-38 jets on display. Pretty cool…. actually.

After 4 very long days… we turned in the glorified roller skate, we called a car and headed for our separate homes. Trish to Wisconsin, Wolfie to Sweden and me back to Virginia.

As always more LATER! Beth

Happy Halloween!

As am adult I don’t go in for the Halloween holiday… its not what it used to be and Axel goes nuts at the door. But when I did the World Wide Photo Walk earlier this month, I saw these tombstones and what better time to post grave markers than on ‘All Hollows Eve’?

I’m on my way to HOUSTON!

to see the International Quilt Festival. This year it is truly International, as I will meet my friend from Sweden. It is her first visit to a huge gargantuan quilt show. I think even a large local show would be overwhelming for her, as there doesn’t appear to be too much in the way of quilting overseas… and I know, with certainly -not on the same level that we do it, !!!

I am also meeting up with many others. But more about friends and the actual show, vendors and classes when I get back home.

This year I submitted pictures for the ‘Eye of the Quilter’ photo exhibit. The theme this year is Fauna and Flora, my 2 favorite subjects, ok I like any theme of nature. Since some of my favorites of the fauna…. were taken in South Africa… I chose 2 of those to submit and one taken of flora over the summer in the Virginia area. I am happy to report that all 3 were accepted. I won’t post them here…. now, but I will share them when I get back.

More Later, I promise!!!

Beth

Recent Projects

In the last few weeks I have completed 2 projects… and I am working on one that is not mine.

The quilt guild just raffled off a quilt and we have already begun the next raffle quilt, which is usually the case with raffle quilts. I volunteered to do 2 of the blocks in red work embroidery and offered to do one of the borders. It is about 72” long… and there is a lot of work in it. I have about 2/3 of it done!!!  But no pictures so far.

I did make a baby quilt too. Nothing fancy and I think it is the way I will go in the future. Most babies are not visual in the early months and then when they are, black and white is the most stimulating. The pattern is simple, the Disappearing 9 Patch made with bright fabrics for the centers. It goes together quickly and will work for boys (more blues and purples), girls (reds and pinks)… and unknowns (an equal amount of all the colors).

The backing for this quilt is flannel… in a very colorful graphic!

For myself I also made another little jacket. My DH picked up the fabric for me on his first trip to South Africa. I deliberated between using a wax batik or this hand printed cotton. I have made this jacket before (see here) no modifications, and I made a pink elephant one that modified by lining with flannel.  Once again I modified the pattern (The Raglan Topper), by making it longer, used the binding to hem instead of turning the bottom edge up, added some pockets and curved the front corner. The jacket is totally unconstructed and simple to put together-no lining and no interfacings… the pockets won’t hold much, in terms of weight, but they are nice to have.

The only other things of note are… I cleaned up my sewing space…. not perfect, just put away the treads, rulers, cutters, etc. and gave the floor a good vacuuming!

Next up… International Quilt Festival Houston!

More later-Beth

Fall

It is fall here… days are getting noticeably shorter and cooler, and the trees are turning… It would have been nice to go over to the Blue Ridge Mountains to see the color there, but the Shenandoah National Park was closed with the rest of the Government. So this weekend we went looking for some local color.

We had the DGS with us Saturday and Sunday, so we took him out for a walk at a small reservoir. The breeze was a little chilly…and the sun was out. I didn’t find much in the way of color… Lots of yellow, green and orange. The poplars are done (leaves gone), the dogwood is not a pretty red and the oaks may be brown before good color sets.

and there were power lines in the way for vista shots. This was the best shot with color. Also found some dogwood berries, it was the best red I saw. As you can see the leaves were dull purple-y brown.

This was my favorite picture -a gold field with a few remaining bits of color- but then again I always like thistles.

We found some active bits of nature… a few butterflies and grasshoppers flitting about and some Wooly Bear Caterpillars. DGS wanting to hold the ‘bear’, but the ‘bear’ wasn’t going to climb on a human. They all seemed to be on a mission… could it be preparing for winter?

For more information on these guys you can go here or here. Interesting… reading about what they become, what they eat and how fast they can travel! Oh and can the really predict the winter?

It seems that the winter prediction between the caterpillar and my dogs are way different! The dogs say harsh…. the caterpillar says mild. Interesting!

After walking and looking at nature, DGS was done and opted for a ride back to the car. We all forgot that he is sensitive to ragweed… so he was feeling a little punkie… next time allergy meds before he arrives at the grandparents house, unless we get a good frost first, which may happen this next weekend. YaY for frost on the pumpkin!!!

More later--- Beth

Day 15

Of the shut down-We are now at 3 weeks without pay.

If it were up to me…. I would fire every single one in Congress! I would tie their compensation to hard deadlines. They don’t get paid! and if they can’t get the job done, they pay US, as in WE The PEOPLE.

On the news last night, “I” heard that some of these elected persons think that we want them to HOLD the line… and not reopen the government, not give in, hold the line. REALLY? Have they seen the polls on this issue? Their constituents must all be independently wealthy -because what I hear is really different!

I don’t know where we can go from here… but as a country we the people need to take back some control. Our politicians seem to think being elected to Congress is about them and their views, not those in their home districts or Political Party as a whole.

It has become so divisive and fractured that they are willing to cripple the entire country (debt ceiling) to be right. I don’t know about you, but I am tired of struggling to live every single month, in an economy that is just barely staying ahead of failure.

I don’t want to experience a depression. The last several recessions have been enough!

I think we need some reforms. I think we need some National Referendums to make some changes. I think we need to simplify our government, and start by instituting term limits, campaign contributions (imagine how nice elections season would be if they didn’t have so much money for awful commercials), outlaw PACS- let states govern themselves… and keep the Federal portion confined to the big picture.

Of course what I think doesn’t matter…. I generally won’t discuss politics, because it can be so contentious… but I think right now we are all fed up with the whole bunch!!! I know I am!

What do you think????

 

Wild Flowers

World Wide Photowalk 2013

Yesterday I participated in an annual even… see the details here….a first time for me on one of the walks…. None have been where I’ve been or when I have been available. Plenty of things tried to get in the way of this… for me…. Jinny Beyer Studio BIG 1 day sale, a Quilting Store going out of business sale-last day, and the Waterford Fair.

Since one was happening right in the town I live in, Leesburg Virginia, and I have not (in the whole year I have lived here) walked in the downtown historic area!!! I joined.

The group met at 10 in the morning, about 50+/-, walking and shooting until noon, and then meet in a local place for lunch. I couldn’t stay for lunch… the  kids were coming for dinner…. and I was cooking!

So…. my favorite shots from the day (I’m saving a couple for posting that are Halloween appropriate until then).

Almost Dead

Classic Door

Red Wall

Iron Detail

Through the Doorway

Wasp or Hornet

And this guy I think I am going to post as my entry…. Not a prize winner, but different!

Do you have a favorite of the ones here? Which one and why?

More later…. Beth

 

What

in the world am I going to blog about? It is the question I have been asking myself for the last week or so. I don’t have anything to say… at least nothing I think anyone wants to hear about.

The DH (dear husband) was away on business last week. It was a long week. A very long week, not really sure why.

I had quilty things that I attended -a bee and a couple of meetings. Both were enjoyable, but neither one was very exciting. I have accepted the nomination for Guild  Secretary. I think it is the only position I have never held on an Executive Board level. May have to practice penmanship. I have suspended the work on the Chickens, because I had a baby quilt to finish. Its done and good thing too. The baby arrived so the quilt will go in the mail soon. And I am quilting another large throw quilt… about 70 x 70, as long as I have the machine set up for quilting… It has been waiting all summer to be quilted.

There is a single constant these last few weeks though. Both of the dogs, Axel and Linzi, are dropping hair like there will be no tomorrow. Between the 2 of them they deposit a small dog every other day. I find the little “fluff” dog floating around on the hardwood floor. So I vacuum just about every day, either the floor or the stairs! I brush them as well, but it never ends. I have never seen these 2 shed like this. It will be interesting to see if it correlates to how cold the winter is.

We also have a new wrinkle. The ‘Budget Impasse’.  DH of course works for the government, but his job is considered essential so he has to report for work regardless. Which means he is employed, but he doesn’t get paid. Is there a term for that? You know when you are out of work and pay its called unemployment. Is there a term for someone that works but doesn’t receive their pay? Oh and all the rules regarding time off, change too. If you have leave scheduled and take it, it’s now called “self-furlough”.

Really?

and of course because we need a picture. One that I think sums it up.

Storm clouds… taken from the back deck in June. It looked like a fierce storm, but didn’t produce much in the way of… storm…..

More later…. Beth

 

Houston …. 2013

First a picture. A sparrow.

I mentioned at the end of my last post that we have been back in the states for year now. I can still remember the anticipation of our move to South Africa! and when we left we thought that we would be gone at least 3 years, and possibly 5 years, and returning would be to Chicagoland. Isn’t it amazing how things can change?

I figured that we would settle down… here and get quiet… and back into a routine. OK, for the record, I never have a real routine… I don’t know how some folks do it, because I don’t do the same thing from one week to the next, never mind day to day!

I was happily unpacking, putting things away and basically finally settling…thinking that my adventures are over for awhile -when an email arrives early in the new year. Would I consider going to Houston for Quilt Festival this year? Escorting and helping a friend around the city and venue? I know you are all thinking a friend from South Africa, but no. A friend I have known online (-A Pickle-) from a Yahoo Group, that hails from Sweden. Yes none other than Wolfie!!! (she blogs here).

We have been working out the logistics and details… and are in the final count down. For me, the trip is hop and a skip, but for her, somewhat longer…. We have planned classes, shopping, viewing the quilts, site seeing and anything else we can cram in to 5 days!!! Are you going to Houston for the Quilt Festival this year?

and last another picture.

For lunch he had Spaghetti-O’s. How he got it on his forehead I have no idea, but I at least had the foresight to cover his clothes with a towel.

More later- Beth

Sewing Progress

So no progress on the toaster front and since everyone appears to be in the same boat as I… poor quality toaster… I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing and try not to waste too much bread.

In the sewing room I have cleaned up the cutting mess from the strip swap and pulled a baby quilt together. The baby quilt is awaiting quilting… but I will hold off on that for a few more days… The baby is due this month sometime.

Between the really hot days, sight seeing, and the local flower gardens I also made another “Initial” piece, for my sister. I was unable to talk about it,

 

because it was a surprise for her birthday, so now she has it and I can talk about it. Her favorite color combo is blue and white. So naturally, it is blue and white! I used many of the same techniques that I used on the Black and Red “H” (see here).  However, in this one I did not use a wool batt. I used the standard cotton and lots and lots of thread.  A bit more detail in this picture, you can click on the picture for a larger view

 As a side note, I have recently begun using the new Pellon batting product and I think I like it better than the Warm and Natural. It has a bit more loft and doesn’t seem to shed quite as much… I have used it in several baby quilts and it washed up very well after quilting too.

I am working on another ‘Initial’ piece, but… I started it the same way as the original “H” but didn’t like it. So midway, I switched it to a variegated cotton thread (King Tut) in neutrals, and I like it much better. You can see on the upper right where I still need to add some King Tut. More of what I had in mind from the beginning. I wanted it to appear lacey. But we are stalled on this while I play with the baby quilt and the Chickens.

I haven’t gotten too much more sewing done, since the DGS is visiting again for a few days.

Saturday marked our 1 year back in the states from South Africa. There is not often a day that doesn’t go by that I don’t miss some aspect of living there.

More later!

Beth