Valerean

I'm making progress with the last panel for my summer art quilt; I have the fabric elements attached and now I'm working on the embroidery. Because I have a need to punish myself, I decided to use some avocado-dyed cotton twine as an embellishment. I'm couching it with gold holographic thread into a spiral right now. Despite being very thick the little patch of faux leather wasn't as tough to attach to the foundation fabric as I thought it would be. I used a carpet mending needle, worked slowly, and used a blanket stitch and size 8 variegated perle cotton, which all worked out fine. The little leaf brooch was something the seller of the vintage bundle sent. Since it's going to be very difficult to embroider the leather I decided to use that as the embellishment for the patch.

May your day be as pretty as this flower. :)

I promised Kat I would text with her while she's away working, so my guy got me a smart phone. Evidently they're now as cheap as the disposable drug dealer burner phone I carry in the bottom of my purse that only costs me a hundred bucks a year. This one costs a hundred and twenty a year plus whatever my guy paid for the phone (fifty bucks, I think) so that was the first lie. I cannot believe how much crap is on these phones. Edward had to spend hours deleting and removing stuff that comes preloaded, and he keeps warning me not to do stuff. I.E. "Don't touch this or it will call 911" and "Don't do this or it will turn on by itself and run apps." P.S., it took me half an hour just to figure out how to turn it off. Jesus Christ, I'd rather carry plastic explosives in my purse. Anyway, I will check it once a day for messages from Kat, and reply to those. That's all I've agreed to do. I hate this.

I've started embroidering the fourth and final panel of my summer art quilt. This one will have a small patch of faux leather (bottom right) that I'm now trying to figure out how to attach to the panel's foundation fabric. It's pretty thick.

I relocated Kat's birds to the living room, where they can see us more frequently and look out the window at the back yard. I think they'll be happier here versus alone in her old room with the rat cage.

After sewing on the two fabric elements I tried feather stitching in a circle over them, but this time I used different colors of thread. The consistency of my stitches has definitely improved. I wasn't sure if I was finished the embroidery, but the longer I look at the panel now the less I want to add anything more. I think I'll set it aside and move on to the fourth and last panel.

On the weekends Kat has been exploring the local area where she's living. This pic is from a visit she made to a museum. Man, that critter was big. :)

I finished the embroidery on the second panel of my summer art quilt. This panel was more meditative for me than the first one. After arranging the fabric elements I focused on the stitching, and improvised as I went along. I wasn't thinking about anything in particular as I worked, but instead let go of that huge part of myself that always wants to plan everything. It was a good exercise in mindful needlework. These are the pieces I'll be using for the third panel, which I'll start tomorrow.

Using most of a bleach pen and about a dozen color grabbers I was able to remove about 75% of the yellow dye migration and 90% of the green dye migration stains from the vintage double wedding ring quilt. It's still shedding dye, believe it or not, although not as much as it did during the first laundering. I do have to stop trying to remove the dye now, as a few of the more fragile pieces of feedsack in the patchwork are starting to wear from the exposure to bleach. This is why chemical treatment is so dicey with older quilts. I've also created a bit of repair work for myself. Honestly, I don't mind. The quilt looks a hundred times better than it did, and I feel like I did my best to rescue it.

I finished embroidering the first panel of my summer art quilt, and I'm mostly happy with how it turned out. The spider web was particularly difficult to do, and took me a couple weeks. My couching isn't the best, but overall the effect is what I wanted. I do love my little beaded spider. Working on the second panel now.

Dad, your baby granddaughter is all grown up now, but I thought I'd remember you this year with this shot from her second birthday. Katherine has grown up to be a beautiful, smart, incredibly talented woman now. I'm so proud of her. I know you would be, too. I love you and I miss you. Happy Father's Day.

We've got the first (potential) tropical storm headed for the central Gulf coast, so I've started checking the National Hurricane Center web site each morning to get into that habit again. Edward ran our generator, which is working fine, and he got all the trees properly trimmed this spring. He's also been keeping our tanks full and keeping enough fuel stored to run everything we need should the power go out for days. For my part I've restocked the bottled water, batteries and nonperishable food supplies we need -- it's not much now that it's just the two of us. I also checked the first-aid kit to make sure that's well-stocked, but I generally keep it that way year-round. We also keep the house prepared for storm trouble all year, so if/when a bad one heads our way all we basically do is move the grill and the porch plants into the garage and rearrange the vehicles to protect them and whatever side of the house is facing the wind. Some of our neig

The kitchen garden is still thriving. I've harvested enough basil, oregano, chives and thyme to last the rest of the year. It's way past strawberry season now, but ours are still producing every week. The artichoke is doing well, too. We've picked all the radishes, but the basil is still producing so much I'm going to start drying some for the neighbors now. The pole beans also didn't get the end of their season memo. I'll pick these and cook them up for dinner tonight. So much fun.

I know I am probably the only writer in the U.S. who never saw Twin Peaks , which is so critically acclaimed as a television series that it's become legendary now. Anyway, when Netflix made the show available in June I made time to watch the pilot episode. Well. Okay, to be honest? That's and hour and a half of my life that I'd like to have back now, please. I can use the time to go watch the grass in the back yard grow, which would probably be more interesting. A couple of disclaimers: I will never get David Lynch (the filmmaker who created the series) and his surrealistic approach to storytelling. He doesn't engage me; he just keeps getting weirder and more disjointed and nonsensical. His special quirks (which the critics adore) seem so stilted and artificial to me that I'm immediately and repeatedly thrown out of the story. The eighties weren't like this. I was alive back then; I should write a book about the eighties. Anyway, if you want a styl

I selected one section of the heartbreaker quilt to treat with a bleach pen, and then I washed the quilt with a color grabber. I did this twice. After both treatments and washes the grabber sheets came out the same color: yellowish green. Yep. The quilt is still shedding dye. Here's how the treated section looked after the second wash. Here's a side-by-side comparison of the treated section with an untreated section. The bleach pen worked better than I thought, and while it didn't do much for the yellow migration stains, it lightened the green splotches a lot. So I'll keep at it and see if I can clean it up a bit more.

I bought a bleach pen to try to remove the dye stains on the vintage double wedding ring quilt. I'm just going to test one small area this time to see if it works, and use a color grabber to see if it's still shedding any dye now. And yes, I know that I'm being pig-headed, but one more try won't hurt.

I rewarded myself for getting through Katherine's move by buying two more of Cassie Bell's art pieces. This one is a sun catcher. And this may be the prettiest bookmark I'll ever own. Keeping it on the work desk for life.

My kid doing her new job. :)

I'll apologize in advance for the poor quality of these photos -- none of the subjects wanted to sit still for their pic. While Kat is off being a scientist I'm pet-sitting her two birds and two rats for her. You might recognize the white bird in the back of the cage; that's the one that I used to play with on my desk. She's forgotten me, and she's very unfriendly now, too, so no more desk visits. On the other hand Kat's male cockatiel happens to be pretty friendly, which is nice. He and I are quickly becoming good pals. The two rats are senior citizens, and very skittish. One allows me to pet him; the other shies away from me. Transferring them to a holding cage so I can clean their big cage is a bit challenging, but so far we've had no mishaps. We're ready to bring a new dog into the family, but we're having trouble finding any in our area that are suitable for us. We won't buy from a puppy store, and all of the local reputable

I picked up this 24" square Victorian era silk crazy quilt piece to study the lovely embroidery work. I'm hoping I can figure out the stitches and try to replicate some of them on my summer art quilt. From the back you can clearly see all the decorative stitching. Really lovely, and all intact. Here are some closeups of the needlework: I'm also going to repair the few patches that have shattered, frame the piece and hang it on the wall in the sewing room for future reference and daily inspiration.

At times it was almost painful for me to watch the k-drama series My Shy Boss , so it took me a couple of months to get through all of the the episodes. I think most socially awkward introverts who have been tormented by others over their shyness would feel the same. Although it has some major flaws, especially in the way the script was written, in the end I think it's worth seeing. As CEO of a PR firm, Eun Hwan-gi (Yeon Woo-jin) occupies a penthouse suite and mostly avoids his employees, social situations and anything that would require him to speak in front of a large group or be the center of attention. He's also taken the blame for the suicide of his secretary, Chae Ji-hye (Han Chae-ah), after a tragic incident that involved his future brother-in-law and best friend Kang U-il (Yoon Park). Over the three years since Ji-hye's death Hwan-gi has kept watch over her younger sister Chae Ro-un, a stage actress with whom he falls in love. Unaware of her secret admirer/p

My kid started her new job the day after she arrived up in the Pacific northwest; this is her morning traffic. One of the places where she's working. I think this is her boss. She'll be working with him out in the field collecting water samples, and then test them for invasive species DNA back in their lab. This is exactly what she wanted to do as a scientist. I'm so happy her first job is in such a beautiful place.