I Like #132

Hello blog friends and welcome to another week of things to like!  I missed last week; a dear dear friend died unexpectedly and I didn't have the energy to pull out the positives.  But I'm back on a more even keel this week and ready to share some of the good things around. 

1.  The sinkhole in my backyard came back.  That's not actually a good thing, but luckily due to some pressuring from Mike they were able to come out and fix it again the same day!  Hooray!  (and THANKS to Mike).  And very kindly Mike also mowed my lawn and took pictures of my two finished quilts.  What a great great friend.  Hopefully this also means I'll get blog posts up about the new quilts sometime soon.  They're very different and I can't wait to share them.

2.  My pink dahlias are blooming away.  This was a bunch I cut to bring into the house.  So lovely.  Worth the painstaking watering all summer!

3. The pups are doing good!  Bentley's back end seems to be doing better than it had been so we've been able to go back to our normal walks.  And I managed to snap a picture of Blue at his most Dobby-like.  Those ear flops just bring to mind the funny little house elf!

Blue was pouting because I wanted to sit in his chair.

Bentley thought there was space to come around that side of the chair.  There was not. Poor guy, I unstuck him promptly.

4.  I love my new work table!  Part of the reason I re-did my big work table was so I'd have a large ironing and painting surface.  This week I got to test both out and really enjoyed having the great space.  I painted and then quilted two sets of fabrics for new abstract quilts,  the one below started as white crushed velvet.  I alwasys love seeing how different things take up paint.  And always shout out to Georgia whose fabric stash I will be enjoying forever!!  I painted this one while the fabric was sort of intentionally crumpled, and I love the little undersea volcano patterns that emerged.  Not sure where these pieces will go, but somewhere interesting I hope!

5.  While the paint was drying and I couldn't really sew,  I took the opportunity to work a bunch on my complicated shawl knitting.  I'm making slow but steady progress on it, helped along by my trusty cable needle and cable needle minder (thanks Melody!)  I also started a quicky idiot crochet project.  My friend Melody had what I thought was a fairly clever way to make a potholder; evidently it's pretty common but I'd never seen it so thought I'd give it a try.  More about that later!

 5.  I saw this cool large spider while walking the dogs!  It was quite big- his body was probably about 1.5 inches?  I was actually glad he was so big because his web was between the tree branch and fence where we were walking and if I hadn't seen the big spider I'd have walked face first through the web and that's always gross.

6.  I got a new car this week!  My trusty old prius (there below) has served me well for a long long time, but has reached that age where things have started to go wrong.  I had a really hard time letting go of it; I've driven it since 2007 and was very wrong, but my new car (a subaru outback) is lovely and hopefully will facilitate some of my long term plans.  Of course car technology has changed in the years I've been out of the market so I'm still trying to get used to the new whizz bang features!

I hope you're all having good weeks!  For more good stuff to like, check out Lee Anna's!

I Like #131

Just a quick update today-  we're running crazy at work, but there's always time to grab a few positive things to share. 

1.  My dahlias are doing really well right now.  At the moment the bright pink fuschia ones are perking up.  Unfortunately I also have a ton of white fuzzy caterpillars too and they're eating the leaves.  Oh well!  The zinnias are still blooming too (and even some early fall petunias!), in spite of the leaf fungus!

2.  We had a great crowd at knitting last week!  Those two hours of fellowship every couple of weeks with my church friends are so valuable to me, and it's always great when lots of people turn up.  I loved the coffee cup pyramid too-  we were setting up for a funeral reception the same night as knitting.  We were very sorry that our good friend Trish wasn't there-  she's back in the hospital, but will hopefully be home later this week.

3.  I got to quilt some on Sunday (yay!).  I was having some problems with my sewing machine, but I got through it.  I love how this is turning out.  Hopefully I'll finish it this weekend so Mike can take pictures of both new quilts this coming week.

4.  The dogs are being great snugglers as usual.  The city came by this week and fixed my sewer-pipe associated sinkhole (YAY!!!) so now there's not a giant dangerous hole in my backyard.  It's made playing ball more fun this week!

I hope you all had good things to be grateful for this week.  For more goodness, click over to LeeAnna's!

I Like #130

I'm behind again today.  Sometime I'll get back on writing these posts ahead of time so they post early, but not just now.  It's been a crazy week, starting with a wonderful trip to my parents' place for the holiday weekend and culminating with my car dying, expense to fix it, expense to get around without it, and expense to buy a new one. 

That's ok, lots of good stuff anyway.

1.  I love my plants!  The dahlias weirdly went through a great period of blossoming while I was gone and I have several in bloom (ignore the horrifying yard, I desperately have to mow).  Also I'm going to try growing begonias again (hope springs eternal).  My friend started a cutting for me, and currently it has a really cute furry spider living in it.  I've decided to call him Harry.  I had a hard time getting a good picture of him, but he has cute yellow spots on his back.  I wish he'd eat moths, they have entirely overrun my house and I'm getting really aggravated.

2.  I love my parents' and their home.  My mom is having back problems, but my dad and I got to hike a bit and I did lots of cooking and hanging out with my mom.

baking shortbread cookies

My mom in front of her house.  Everything is so green and all the flowers are blooming.

Making tomato sauce with garden tomatoes.

3.  I love the pups!  Blue and Bentley had a blast visiting.  I was so proud they both stayed with us on the hike (off leash).  They got along well with everyone, even the yappy long-haired chihuahua Sirius my mom is babysitting.

Sirius rules the bed when he visits.

I love seeing the brown dogs.

Happy dog on the hike!

I went over to pet Bentley, and Blue immediately came to sit on him.

4.  Finally!  No pictures, but I really like that the Great British Baking Show is back with a new season!  It's coming out weekly on Netflix and I watched the first episode the other day.  Hooray!!



I hope you guys have a good week!  Click through to LeeAnna's for more stuff to like!

I like #129

Welcome to another week of things to be grateful for.  We lost power for 24 hours this week after a major thunderstorm, but thankfully didn't lose anything from the freezer.  I'm super grateful to the OGE people who worked so hard to get it restored and hope they get everyone's back on soon.

I got to spend the weekend in Dallas with my sister for my nephew's birthday.  I took hardly any pictures but we had a blast.  We had a party for him on Saturday morning in my sister's backyard (it's really the funnest backyard ever). She baked him an amazing amazing birthday cake-  it was super delicious (alternating chocolate and white cake layers filled with peanut butter chocolate mousse.  She covered it with home-made fondant and sculpted all the fabulous pokemon decorations to go on it.  It was really one of the best looking and best tasting cakes I've ever seen. 

The dogs had a blast too;  Blue got to play with his friend Auto a ton.  And Bentley was thrilled because we put all the other dogs in the separate dog yard during the party, but Bentley is calm enough to stay out, so he got pretty much constant loves from everyone at the party. 

My dahlias are hanging in there, no flowers this week, but at least they're still alive.  I took this picture of my mother of thousands a couple days before the big storm and I'm glad I did because after the storm it sort of uprooted and also all the little babies were washed off the leaves.  I think I got it back safely tipped in its pot so that's lucky.  It's gotten so big, that it's very top heavy.

I finished the big quilt I've been working on since the spring, hopefully I'll have a chance to post about it soon.  Just as a palate cleanser, I started this small project last night-  it's fun to work on something different for a bit.

I hope you all had a good week!  Click over to LeeAnnas for more fun!

I Like #128

Sort of a short list this week.  The heat of the summer and lots of stressful things going on.  But there's good there if I look.

1.  I liked this grasshopper!  He sat on my studio door for a long time so I got to take several pictures.  Maybe someday he will work into a quilt.  There was also a really cute medium sized spider running across the floor this morning.  He ran into a giant tuft of dog hair (Bentley is shedding), and a whole bunch stuck to him (he was kinda furry).  I felt sort of bad as he ran off in the other direction with a cloud of dog hair surrounding him.

2.  I like movie night with friends.  We got together Saturday night and it's always a lovely time.  I worked a bunch on my never ending giant crochet shawl-  I'm so ready to be done with this, it's such a boring project I haven't even taken any pictures of it.  But it will be snuggly next winter.  I started it to have something mindless to work on, and boy is it ever.  We did get to watch one of my favorite silly movies ever, the 80s comedy Adventures in babysitting.  If you haven't seen it, definitely check it out.  It's pretty silly, but tons of laughs.

3.  My sinkhole is going to get fixed.  I'm trying to find a silver lining here, but it really is a good thing.  There's a giant dangerous eroded out sinkhole around my sewer line access in my backyard that's been getting bigger and bigger.  I called out the city a couple years ago and they blew me off but it's big enough now that I insisted.  Apparently it won't be too hard to fix and theoretically they'll call me next week sometime to schedule.  So that will be good.  Bentley did not like the utilities man, though Blue was super excited to have another new friend.

I hope everyone has a good week!  This weekend I'm headed to my sister's so that will be awesome.  Head on over to LeeAnna's for more positive things!

I Like #127

Welcome to another (late) week of things to like!  It was a rough weekend around these parts because my house AC was out and we're of course in the peak heat of summer, but I had an AC person out and it turned out it just needed a new filter and some coolant so that was an unexpected blessing.  I do need a new system, mine is from 1991, but at least I can wait until the fall.

Still some really fun things to like!

1.  I love crabapple leather!  I've always just made jelly from crabapples (rather than pies or dried apples or cobbler or apple butter or applesauce) because they're too small to core and with jelly you squeeze the juice through cheesecloth so you don't get seeds etc.  But I already made enough jelly this year so I googled what other people do with crabapples and there were lots of people who made applesauce and crabapple fruit leather and crabapple butter.  Come to find out, all you need is a food mill, which pushes out pulp without seeds/stems/peels.  IT was super easy, I didn't even have to chop the crabapples.  Just cooked them whole, put them through the food mill to make crabapple sauce, and then spread the sauce on top of lined trays in my food dryer.  I like things really tart, but plain crabapple sauce is really too tart to enjoy, so I added just a little bit of sugar.  The fruit leather turned out so delicious.  Chewy and flavorful.  Like the very best kind of fresh sour fruit candy.  Sooo good.

This is the food grinder.  The front side spits out these little goose-poop like things made out of seeds and core and skin, while the sauce pours out the back.

And here's the crabapplesauce before drying

And after drying.  So fabulously bright from all the good stuff in the crabapple skins.  YUM.  Also the end of the crabapples for this year so that's good.

2. I like doing my own DIY projects!  I DIYed drop leaves onto my home-made work table this weekend to make it wider and convert the whole thing into an ironing surface.  I'll probably do a whole post about it, but it was so gratifying to figure out how and build it all myself.  Hooray!

3.  And in the continuing construction mode, I installed a small hook and eye outside the sliding glass door.  That way when I go into the building I can keep the house door shut from the outside so Bentley doesn't AC the backyard.  Five minute fix I should have done years ago.We'll see how it holds up,  I think it will be enough to prevent him from opening it.  He's gotten to the point now that he won't even go through the dog door (he just opens the door with his big bony head) unless I'm gone and the board is in the inside of the door so he can't open it.  He's like oh- it's easier to just open the door than hop through the dog door.  But of course he doesn't close it behind himself....   Precious precious infuriating dog.

Have a great week everyone, and head over to LeeAnna's to check out more positive stuff!

I Like #126

Well I'm super late to the party this week, but I suppose better late than never!  It's hot and muggy here but that's what summer's for I suppose.

1.  I like quilting!  The air conditioner in my studio (a metal building) went out and it's roasting hot out there, but I've still been making progress on my quilting.  I get pretty quickly drenched in sweat, but as long as I wear a bandanna, I don't typically drip on the quilt.  Hopefully the air conditioner situation will be resolved within the next couple of weeks.  Keep your fingers crossed!

2.  I love hiking!  My friend Linda and I went down to the Wichita Wildlife Refuge last weekend to go hiking.  We hiked a new-to-me trail in the Charon Gardens area that was just exquisite even though it was a fairly warm day.  Really fabulous rocks and scenery.  We saw several Oklahoma collared lizards-  they are so beautiful, an intense bright turquoise with gold heads.  I put my phone away for most of the day, but I did get a couple of pictures.  We had two bison encounters-  One with this big guy who was just wandering right down the road at us- I had to back up several hundred yards with the car until I could find a place to pull out far enough that I wouldn't be in his way  (I took the picture from inside the parked car).  Then there was a whole herd of bison right on the hiking trail-  we detoured off the trail quite a ways to make sure not to disturb them.  In spite of waking up the next day with a million itchy bug bites (I'm praying they were chiggers from the hike and not something living in my house) we had a really lovely day.

2.  Blue got a new collar!  All he'd had before was the blue one he had from the shelter, and it was a pretty color but very plain and getting very faded.  I got him this cool personalized southwestern one from etsy. 

And Benley is a napping doofus.

Just a short list this week- no new flowers (everything is looking a bit wilty and sad), but goodness all the same.  Hang in there through the heat of the summer and click over to LeeAnna's for more things to like!

I like #125

Things to like this week!

Over the weekend Becky came up and she and Anna and I had a girls weekend.  We had an absolutely fabulous time together.  On Saturday we went down to the boathouse district.  It was really cool-  I'd never been there before.  Anna was absolutely amazing.  She went with us on all the activities, including climbing with us to the top of the six story open structure ropes course.  It was super fun and I was so proud of Anna for being so brave!  No pictures on the ropes course because no camera/loose items allowed, but really cool.  And then she climbed to the top of two different climbing walls-  here she is climbing one of them.  Phenomenal.

Then Becky helped me make a bunch of crabapple jelly (super tasty, and I'm still making it), and then we all made crowns/headbands together out of beads.  Becky made one for me that used some of the extra polymer clay teeth from Seymour, and it turned out really cool.  I actually wore it to work Monday (the teeth aren't too obvious.  All in all a great time.

On Sunday I did a bunch of quilting on my big quilt, but I don't really have any pictures to share.  It was nice to get a lot done though.


The dogs are being their regular selves (DOG!), and Blue had a good time over the weekend with Auto. 

Auto was here to visit for the weekend.

The flowers are still blooming.  One of my dahlias that's had big creamy white flowers now has a creamy pink flower!  Cool and weird!  We've also had a ton of wonderful butterflies and dragonfly things that are not actually dragonflies lately.   Also super cool!

I hope you are all having a good week and staying cool!!  Click over to Lee Anna's for more things to like.