I Like #227

Welcome to another week of things to like.  Some good news in my world this week, a big research grant I'd been waiting months to hear on finally came through at work, so we're very pleased.

Wonderful new-to-me art this week, Italian artist Peeta makes paints buildings to look like amazing 3D sculptures.  (via)

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I finished knitting a new pair of ankle socks this week.  I screwed up the Kichener stitch, so there's a weird look at the toe, but otherwise they came out good!  I decided to try making a ruffled edge and it I love it.  It was annoying to bind off because to make the ruffle you wind up with 4x as many stitches as you started with which is a lot to bind off, but that's ok.  Here's hoping I can keep them away from Spooky!

Someone put this up at work this week and it made me giggle.  I love puns anyway, and gnomes, and genomes, so :)

Poor Bentley got himself really stuck inside this plant stand this weekend,  he was so freaked out and stressed and stuck.  I'm so grateful I was home and I have now put that plant stand somewhere else where he can't get to it.  I did help him calm down before taking the picture, but it was stressful because of course spooky and blue thought it was a great game.

Spooky hoping he won't have to go to bed in his crate (hot take: he did have to go to bed in his crate).

Blue is such a love~  My legless seal dog.

I hope folks are having a good week!  Click over to LeeAnna's for more things to like!

 

I Like #226

 This was a good week; Alex came up to spend the three-day weekend with me and we had lots of fun, going to the zoo and the swimming pool, eating ice cream, and playing with the dogs.  He's such a hoot!

Becky adopted two retired research guinea pigs from the university and I took them to her this weekend.  They poop a lot but are super adorable little potatoes.   They are now named Fudge and Coconut.

Alex drew a great picture for me to give to the vet at work thanking her for letting us adopt them.  <3

The zoo had a fun exhibit of dinosaurs (both animatronic and skeletons) installed in the butterfly garden which was a fun thing to walk through.

All the dogs are doing great, Spooky has been eating the apple tree constantly.  Alex loves playing with him, so we had lots of fun with that too.

That is not a stick.  That is a broken branch he retrieved from the apple tree.  Sigh.

Alex asked if he could use the sewing machine, so I helped him make this little banner.  He stitched it all, front and back together and then stitched down the letters and did the top stitching.  The sewist in me was so excited, but the science nerd wasn't sure about the message.  He was super cute though, when finished he only wanted me to take a picture of the back because he wanted to surprise his mom with it at school on Tuesday.  

I hope everyone is having a good week!  Click over to LeeAnna's for more things to like!

I like #225

Welcome to another week of things to like.  It's been a chaotic week and kind of a struggle for me, but there are still some things to like.

A wonderful new-to-me muralists:  Nespoon, who makes gorgeous lace like murals (amazing) (via) 

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And of course the pups are wonderful and snuggly

Spooky and I went on a nice hike with our friends Cash and Brett.  Brett picked up some pretty barite rose rocks.

I found a cool praying mantis on the one zinnia still alive in my garden.  I've never seen one before- super cool!  According to my identification app it's a Carolina Mantis.

I hope everyone is having a good week.  Click over to Lee Anna's for more things to like!

I like #224

 
Welcome to another week of things to like!

I wanted to get up a post this week about the opening of our show at the Tubac Center for the Arts, but didn't have a chance so I think I'll just put the pictures here.  

The opening was wonderful!  Well attended and everyone was great about masking (yay!).  There was another show opening in an adjacent gallery space at the same time as ours so I think that also helped bring people out.  It was so so wonderful to only pieces by Mom and me in their own gallery and I love the way they looked together.  It was great to get in there to take some pictures before the space filled up.  This is the first time this show has hung in person, and it was great to be able to be there with Mom.

And our cousins came to the opening with us!  It was so good to see them.

In other news, this was a good week for pups!  Bentley managed to snag the chair at least once (along with my in-progress painted fabric), and Spooky only chewed up a few things that didn't belong to him.

My friend Melody has been doing a year-long Breed School where they get sent wool to spin from different sheep breeds each month.  She knit little bitty (~1-2 inches) sheep out of samples from each of the different breeds.  Aren't they adorable!

There are so few flowers in the garden as a result of all the horrible bugs that killed off so much, but I do have this petunia blooming.  It's special because it's one that was almost completely dead (only one green stem) that I rescued from a trash pile in our parking garage a couple months ago.  Now it's filled back out and this week came out with the prettiest stripey flowers.

I hope everyone is finding some good things this week in the midst of so much stressful news out of Afghanistan.  Click over to LeeAnna's for more things to like.

I like #223

 Once again I missed a week of I like posting, so there are two weeks to catch up on.  Last week I was on a whirlwind road trip to southern Arizona to deliver my art quilts (and my mom's) for our show currently hanging at the Tubac Center for the Arts.  The show turned out wonderful and I'll do a whole post about that this week.  

For now I'm glad to be back home.  It was a very long road trip, somewhere around 2,200 miles, and it rained most of the way coming back.  But it was a lovely trip.  I got to stay with my cousins and some friends from graduate school who I hadn't seen since before COVID.  Everyone at the opening reception was really good about wearing masks, and I got to spend some time in the Sonoran Desert which is one of my very favorite ecosystems anywhere.  My cousin Annie who I was staying with lives about five minutes from Saguaro National Park West, and one morning I got up early and went for a beautiful hike in the Tucson mountain area of the park.  They've had way more rain than usual and everything is blooming, super green, not quite as hot and even more gorgeous than usual.  So rare for August!

Hedgehog cactus!

The washes actually had running water in them (not just when raining)

I've never seen the ocotillo this beautiful.  They were so green with leaves so big and juicy.  They look like super soft green giant (!!) pipe cleaners.  Spikes underneath though of course.

The art center was down in Tubac, this was just outside Tubac.  This is in the middle of the desert, 20 miles north of the Mexican border.  Just insanely green and beautiful.  The day I walked around by the art center, it was 72 degrees and raining.  Two weeks earlier I'd been on the Canadian border where it was 95 degrees and so dry the trees were losing their leaves.  Just completely crazy.

My mom flew in for the opening, it was so fun to see her too.  She's here with my cousin Virginia.

And my other cousin Annie!

It was really a great trip.  I'm super behind now at work, and it's good to be home, but definitely a couple of weeks filled with blessings and things to like.  

And of course now that I'm home, my beloved pups!!

I was so happy Blue curled up under my sewing machine while I was working the other day. :)

And a cool Woodhouse toad in the yard!

I hope everyone has had a good week!  Click over to Lee Anna's for more things to like!

I Like #222

 

Welcome to another week of things to like!

First up this week is my crabapples!  I love my crabapples, I picked them all before I left on my vacation, and this past weekend I spent almost all of Saturday processing them, and then Sunday making jelly, crabapple butter, and fruit leather.  So very tasty.  I still have about half the juice left, so more jelly to come once I get some jars from my mom's place.

I love my pups!  They're such sweeties <3.  Spooky chewed up another dog bed this week, but still lots of snuggles and playtime and walks all around.

I'm really enjoying the garden.  I picked tons more tomatoes this week, and am eating them just as fast as I can.  So tasty.  And I have some really lovely big zinnias that just make me smile.  This giant grasshopper was trying to steal my tomatoes, and I rescued this one, but there were several others that had become food for other garden residents before I could get them picked.  

This pretty hibiscus tree was blooming in my friend Brett's yard; I had no idea they'd even grown here.

I love the fiber Christmas in July festival!  It's a smallish fiber festival between here and Tulsa, tons of beautiful yarn, roving, batts, and wool.  I always pick up some of the spun roving-wrapped wire, and this year I also bought some yarn.  I couldn't resist the neon pink (I'm currently out of neon pink), and the dark moody blue green (on sale even!) is to go with my orange hand dyed.  

I hope everyone is having a good week!  Click over to LeeAnna's for more things to like!