I am a failure...

At blogging! I forget about it in the busyness of life. Or maybe it's just that I have nothing interesting to say? I'm quite sure that no one wants to hear how many times a week I run the man child to tkd or a friend's,  or some school activity. I basically live in my truck. Or the fact that said manchild is now almost 15 and doesnt talk to me unless he has to....like  when he wants to go somewhere. But before I know it he will be driving and then he will be gone so i am trying to enjoy this last busyness of child rearing.

In other news I have a new sewing room! My sewing room is part of our bedroom, the part that dh intended to be a sitting room when we built it. But I outgrew it. So he told me I could switch the rooms. Our bedroom is now in the sitting room and my sewing room is now the bedroom. It means you have to go through the bedroom to get to the sewing room but since I'm the only one in there that's ok. 

I have a lot more room and my machines are in the middle which I really like. There's an armchair in the right corner that I can sit in and quilt or watch the fish swim. It really is nice. 

And here's a quilt on my design wall. I'm a little further along than when I took this picture. This is going to be a gift for the man child's tkd master who just got married. I need to hurry up and finish!

And here's another project I've taken up. 

This is a poncho I'm crocheting. It will be super cute with jeans and boots. I love the colors! And excuse the speakers in the middle of my floor. 

New sewing machines!

While we were on vacation a couple of machines followed me home! I was browsing FB Marketplace and came across these two for sale. I've wanted the Lotus decals for awhile and the Damascus....well I've never even seen one for sale! So I had to go get them!
Aren't they so pretty? Now to clean them up and get them running.

The Damascus was frozen up. The hand wheel would only make a half turn and then stop and the presser foot would not go down. Both now work and a bobbin has hopefully been found on Ebay. The Singer didn't need any special treatment.

I even broke down and finally bought some TR3 that is supposed to make them shine. It should be here today.

This has been my handquilting project for the summer. As you can see I'm getting lots of help from the resident quilt inspector!

Everything must pass her quality control. She thought my markings on this quilt were a little off so decided to move the ruler just a tad. This one will be a wedding present for dh's boss who is getting married in September. It just needs the binding put on and to be washed.

This one I have been working on all year. Its for my daughter who put everything on hold last year to take care of me and run the house while I was sick. Its a LOT of paper piecing (which I hate) and right now I had to take a break from it. There's a huge mistake in it and I have to work around that because I am simply NOT redoing eleven rows! It is going to be a design change!

To clear my mind from paper piecing and let it rest I'm playing with years of TOGA blocks. So far I like what I have come up with. Its been so fun to pull these out and look at all the different names and types of machines they were made on.

And that's all for today folks!!

So much for keeping up with this blog!

Life gets busy and this is the farthest thing from my mind. It has been a great summer though. School starts back next week for the boys so I will be inside more and maybe will post more often...or maybe not!

Most of my time has been spent in therapy this summer. Aqua therapy and Vitamin D therapy. It all happened right here.

Everyone worked so hard putting this amazing pool up this year. I am thrilled with it. See that beautiful clear water? It still looks that amazing! In years past I have struggled mightily with keeping the water clear. This pool has a sand filter instead of a cartridge and I love it! I have been in the pool every chance I could and I am dreading the thought of closing it for the winter.

I've also played with plants a lot this year. I didn't garden. I just did not have the heart or the energy for it. Here are a few of the plants I've been busy with. There's also a rock bed I created with help from my youngest son and a hosta bed.

I've also spent a good bit of time in urgent care with our youngest this summer. It has been the year for him to get stitches. I am threatening to wrap him in bubble wrap! First he hit his head with the tamper that they were using to pack the dirt for the pool and ended up with four stitches above his eyebrow. Then later this summer he went to a picnic for his tkd school and cut his knee open on bolts that were sticking out under the picnic table.
I'm not going to post pics of those.

To finish off the summer we went on vacation. It was a well deserved one for dh. He has been on crazy, long hours for too long. I treasure these pictures as we were able to get everyone together for a short time. It doesn't happen often anymore with everyone grown and having their own lives.

There hasn't been much quilting going on...

because FINALLY we have some spring weather and I've been outside! It only took till May! Oh my goodness how good it feels.

So on the homefront we are finally moving forward on some projects. The new hvac unit is installed and running. I am going to enjoy the quietness of the AC and not having window units. I still plan on using the woodstove in the winter but backup heat will be nice. This thing is huge though!


We finally got the aquarium sealed and running. Next up is plants. Let's just say that while the seals are holding and strong I don't think I will ever be good at caulking. The tape came off as soon as got it caulked.

The ducks also got a new pen. After I had to crawl halfway behind the fence and dig eggs out of a bed of poison oak I decided the girls can no longer free roam the yard. Of all the places they had to lay, they had to choose poison oak!  They seem happy (except for me stealing their eggs daily) and are enjoying more space than the small pen I had to put them in at first.

And I'm working on my flower beds. I've decided that this year is going to be the year I again enjoy flowers! For so long the thought of selling this place and moving to the country has dominated our thoughts and finally I accept that its not going to happen. So I'm going to be happy where I am and its going to be pretty. I'm working on small spots and this will not be a fast process but at least its progress.

 This pic is rosebush I was given while sitting in traffic one day. Scared the daylights out of me when someone came up to my car but I appreciate it. I can see it out of my sewing room window. I've added a few more plants and hopefully later this summer this will be a pretty spot to look at.

And that's about it for now!

A bittersweet Memory

A friend's post today reminded me of this. I can't remember the name of this plant. It's long though. The last time my Grannie was here it was in full bloom and every time she looked out the window and saw it she called me to come look at it and ask me its name. Alzheimers had taken its toll by then and she didn't remember that she had just asked me 5 minutes before. Oh how she loved flowers and she had the greenest thumb I've ever seen and could grow anything. She's been gone 8 years now and I still miss her. There are days I would love nothing more than to be able to pick the phone up and call her. Raising teens and adult children though also make me feel bad because I see in them myself and I am ashamed at how I acted with her. But she loved me regardless and prayed for me constantly and for that I am truly grateful. So Grannie just know that I love you still and am thankful for your patience and love.

Zoo Trip

Yesterday I took the boy child and a friend's granddaughter to the zoo. They had a blast and I managed to keep up with them. We walked over 6 miles! Needless to say they slept the whole way home and I crashed early that night! We only did half of the zoo too. We're planning on going back soon to do the other part. Here's a few pictures of our day. My favorite part was the aviary I think but feeding the giraffes was the most fun for them I think.

New Design Wall

OK I am excited over this! For as long as I have quilted I have used an old fleece blanket hung on a curtain rod as my design wall. It worked but was a pain as I had to pin everything to it. After our remodel in the fall my curtain was in the way of the ironing board dh built me. I moved it but it just didn't fit well. So after much thought and tossing ideas at dh this is what I came up with. It's lightweight so I can move it easily, there's nothing on the floor to trip over, and it wasn't outrageously expensive. It's 6ft across and 2ft more on the side that folds out. One more perk....the cats can no longer get to my fabric and rearrange arrange it!

It has been a crazy Fall/Winter

Shortly after my last post I got sick. Every single time I ate I wound up in the floor in tears. At first I thought it was a food intolerance. I tried eliminating anything it could be. Nothing helped. I tried antacids to no avail. I tried things like Zantac and Prilosec. Nothing. I finally admitted defeat and more pain than I could withstand and went to the doctor. Given my age and where my pain was they of course assumed it was my heart even though I told them it was my stomach. Lots of tests and blood draws began and a trip from urgent care to the emergency room and by midnight I was diagnosed with a Hiatal Hernia......one that needed surgery. Now given that I never have good blood pressure readings in a doctor's office you can imagine what that news did to me. And then they decided to take my bp again. Which led to a whole new round of medicine.

I saw a surgeon the next week and he petrified me. He didn't know if it would be better to go in through my abdomen or my chest to fix this.....Oh my! A week later he called to tell me he couldn't do it and was handing me off to another surgeon. At this point I took myself in to see a gp that my daughter works for and got a referral to a hernia specialist and was seen that week. It took 3 more weeks before the first surgeon called to "talk" to me about the referral. Yes there was steam coming out of my ears by then. 

The second surgeon ordered a whole new slew of tests and bloodwork. Some of these I can only describe as torture invented by Satan. It took 8 weeks from diagnosis to get surgery. It would have taken longer had I actually been able to eat anything. They took pity on me and moved it up 4 weeks.

Surgery amazingly was done laprascopically and went well. It was much worse than they thought though and said I was filled with inflammation and scar tissue. They also took my gallbladder out as it was inflamed.

I am now almost 3 months out and doing well. I lost a lost of muscle tissue and strength while down with this so am just slowly getting back into the hang of things.

I am quilting! Here's Pat Sloan's Grandmother's Kitchen that I was working on when all this started. Almost together.

 The Anvil quilt that has been a year long project is together and ready to be sandwiched. This one will be tied.

 And last but not least here is my newest start. This one will be for my dd who was a huge help while I was ill. She took care of grocery shopping, cleaning, cooking, and getting her younger brother to his classes. It is paper pieced and I am just getting started on it. I think this one will take at least a year also.

I'm still here!

I've been mia online for most of July. I took on a home remodel project that just got totally out of hand! Phew!

It all started with wanting to paint the den. It's been probably 10 years since we've painted and between kids, pets, and the woodstove my walls and ceiling were in DIRE need of updating.

So I talked to the hubster about it and he came back to me and told me if we were going to do the walls we might as well take care of redoing the hardwood floors that never got finished. Okay....I could do that. Then I told him I wanted that useless window looking out to the addition gone. Yes the quilt covering was pretty but let's get rid of it. The green quilt is covering the window....

All would've been good if I'd left it alone at that point. But have you EVER known me to do that? No!

Old useless window out! See the board behind? That's the addition.

 The new beadboard that went up where the old window was.

So I looked at that window we pulled out and I looked at my very messed up front window and thought since they were the same size it should be no big deal to switch them out. That is what got me in trouble! There's the old window halfway out....that's as far as I got before dh stepped in and said we might as well put a new one in.

Oh what a mess I can make! One of the problems with an old house is the windows now are different sizes. Nowhere we looked had this size window. But we did find a clearance window we liked. Another problem popped up when the hubster found out he was headed out of town for work. Gulp....replacing the window by myself was NOT on my list of skills. So a dear friend stepped in and helped us out. It took three days of HARD work but we took siding down, cut new openings, put in new windows, and got the siding back up.

And now that almost everything is back in place, we have furniture we can sit on, we can walk through the house, and most of the dust is gone I am thrilled with the den......even if it did take most of July and blood, sweat, and tears to accomplish it. Oh and my boys say that if I ever say I want to redo the den again they are moving out!

I'm still working on curtains though......

July is here!

And canning season has started. Whew! Yesterday was a marathon canning session. Both canners went all day long. I put up TONS of tomatoes and peppers. It seems that some years cayenne peppers do better and other years jalapenos do better. This year is definitely a jalapeno year which is good since my supply of canned ones was very low. The boys and I picked Thursday night and filled the wagon up.

See those monster zucchini? That's the last of the zucchini for the year. Thankfully they shred well to go in soups or spaghetti sauce.

On the quilting front I started on two of Pat Sloan's quilt alongs. It's fun doing a block a week and when I finish I will have two quilts.
Look at this bottom block. It's from her quilt Winter Solstice. This will be my first quilt where all the blocks are not the same size.

The top block is from the new quilt along Grandma's Kitchen. I'm going to do both of them quilt as you go. Grandma's Kitchen on the machine and Winter Solstice by hand.

All quilts and quilt blocks on the premises are inspected for quality as soon as they are made. Standards are high and this one passed with flying colors. I could barely finish quilting it before she took over. She had a bath and then a nice long nap.

And just in case you thought all I do is can and quilt (would be fine with me!) Here's a pic I took Sunday...dh asked me if I would iron a "couple" shirts for him.....