AUGUST 1, 2024

 Hello again.

It is August.

Our rainy season begins.  Summer is over.  Harvest begins.

This is what I harvested today:

Raspberries are ripening so we are picking a bowlful of those pretty much every day now.  We are gonna get a lot of them this year.

Lemon verbena, lemon balm, and "kitty nip"

All of these will be dried to make tea.

Basil, sage, oregano.

Chamomile flowers for tea.

Strawberries, raspberries, and radishes.

I picked the rest of the radishes because they were bolting.  If these aren't too woody I'll probably just snack on them.

As I said in my last post, we took a trip to Fairbanks over the weekend.

Tried to get pictures of the doggies cuddling with their new quilts that I made for them.  They wouldn't cooperate very well, so this is the best I could do.

On Saturday we went to Fort Knox where Kristian works.  They were having a Family Day and giving people a small tour to show us what they do there.  They had different booths set up and giving away some goodies and answering questions you might have.  It was cold and rainy so luckily we brought our raincoats, but we had a hard time keeping our hands warm.

One booth had a gold bar that they let you hold. It was heavy (about 13-1/2 pounds).

Who would've thought I would ever be holding $520K in my hands?

Kristian is a security guard there, so he showed us the truck he drives.

This is the kind of truck he drove when he was a hauler.  It's really big.

They also had other big monstrous trucks there for us to see.

Then we took a little guided tour to see the haul roads that lead to the pit.

Everyone had to wear a yellow vest and a hard hat and get on a school bus.  Boy, getting on that school bus really took me back to my school days!

It was kinda foggy out, but these are haul roads that lead to the pit where they dig for gold.  They didn't let us see the pit.  Hauling rocks on these roads is what Kristian used to do before he became a security guard.  We stood out there for about 10 or 15 minutes.  I was glad to get back on the bus cuz it was "freezing" outside.  The weather was rainy and windy.

Then we got another bus where they took us to the "mill" where they process all the rocks to get the gold out.  It was indoors, so much more comfortable.  However, they provided ear plugs for everyone because the machinery was very loud.

They have a big giant "drum" in there that turns like a ferris wheel.  They were explaining that this is how they get the rocks smaller and smaller and smaller.

It was all very interesting, but I didn't understand it all.

On our way back, Kristian showed us the building where his office is, but we couldn't go in there.

They were also serving catered food like hot dogs and hamburgers and pulled pork sandwiches and beans and so forth, but by the time we got there, it was slim pickings and they were out of plasticware.  For this reason I only made a pulled pork sandwich - this was all they had left for meat, and I think we used up the last of what buns they had left.  Chuck took some beans but I don't know how he ate them without a fork.  I think he threw them away after realizing no one was gonna put any more forks out.

Anyhoo, it was fun and interesting, despite the weather.

On Sunday we went to church, and in the afternoon we had good weather, so we went for a walk to the boat launching pad at the Chena River.

Then we saw this really old building.  A remnant of a strip of buildings that used to be there on the riverfront.  There's a sign on the building, but I don't remember what it said.  They are trying to preserve it, but I don't know what they plan to do with it.

The only occupant in that building now is Mr. Squirrel.  He was just sitting up there under the roof watching us.

So that was pretty much our weekend in Fairbanks.

After I got home, I resumed my effort to work on that FPP pumpkin.  After much weeping and gnashing of teeth, and using my seam ripper, this is how it ended up:

It looks "okay", but (of course) I ended with a mistake.  The right side and the left side got mixed up.  This is why the teeth don't look right.   This is the problem with FPP.  It is way too easy to get things wrong.  After suffering through getting Section A together, I pretty much felt like "I HATE FPP"!  I even got so frustrated enough to give up and I actually threw the pattern in the garbage.  But after awhile I fished it back out with a new determination to make myself learn how to do it.  So I kept working on it, watched more YouTube videos, and cherry picked my favorite ways of doing it.  After awhile I came up with my own method, and by the time I got through Section D, I felt like I was getting the hang of it.  My feeling of "hate" was gradually transforming into "not liking".  I was still making mistakes, but fewer of them, only to finish with a bang and make this mistake at the very end and sew the wrong sections together.  How typical of me to make mistakes along the whole way, and then end with one final last mistake that I'm not in the mood to rip out.  Maybe I should name him "Jack the Ripper" cuz he's seen a lot of my ripper.  Oh well, live and keep on learning.  Now I'm trying to decide if I want to try making another one.  If I keep practicing, maybe I can go from "not liking" to a neutral "meh".   But at this point, I don't see myself liking it and doing it on a regular basis.  But never say never, right?   Anyhoo, now that I'm sorta getting the hang of it, I think I want to try again, and hopefully the next one won't need any dental work.

I just have to let all my frustrations with this one pass before I start again.

Putting this one together almost felt like punishment.

JULY 23, 2024

 Time sure flies between my posts.  I keep telling myself to post more often, but I get too busy or distracted with other things.  I hate waiting too long because after a certain time of not posting, I have to take extra steps to get logged in, and that's a pain in the butt.  I'm not sure what the time limit is, but that is what I am trying to avoid.  Even if it's a really really really really boring post.

I wanted to post an update on PW's quilt.  

I got all the sashing sewed on.  I think it looks really cute with the striped sashing.  Some of the blocks ended up being a tad askew, but it's homemade and this was my first time doing this method of QAYG.

This is how the kitties turned out.

In my last post I expressed concerns about how they would turn out.  I think I'm happy with how the front paws turned out, but I'm not happy with how the ears turned out.  The kitty block was one that I had to do the math myself and expand the size of the original pattern in order to make it usable for this quilt.  When you're working with points like this, you have to account for it in your seams, and I guess I'm too much of a novice to figure that out accurately.  Anyway, if you step back and look at the whole quilt, it's not anything that jumps out at you right away.  If PW doesn't like it, I'll keep the quilt myself (but I know she will like it).

So now that I got that part done, the next step is the border, and I want to try  putting a picket fence border around the whole thing.  I've never done that before, so it will be a new challenge.  Before I can proceed with that, I need to go to a quilt shop and buy some fabric, which won't be until maybe next week, so I put PW's quilt on the back burner for now, and started a smaller project to work on.

I found this pattern on Pinterest.

It's cute, BUT!  it's FPP (Foundation Paper Piecing), which I really suck at because I have almost no experience with FPP.  I was playing around with it last night, and had the worst time getting it right.  You have to make sure your pieces are big enough, and turned the right way.  It's so confusing because your fabric pieces get turned and flipped, so I kept asking myself which way do I sew this on?  I made three attempts at Section A before I finally got it.  So Section A is done!  But when I started section B, I made a mistake right away, so that is when I decided to just walk away from it.  Maybe tonight I'll try it again.  I've watched a lot of YouTube videos about FPP and found one method that I really like that I'm going to stick with.  I like this method because you're not sewing through the paper only to rip it all out later. And I'm not dulling my sewing needle, and I can use the same pattern paper over and over again. So anyhoo, I'm hoping I'll get better at doing this so I can put it together without wasting so much of my background fabric - I only have two 10" squares of the cream-colored background fabric and I need it to be enough for the whole pumpkin.  I have a feeling I'm going to run out before I'm done.  Anyway, if I get good enough at this, I would like to make three of them (one for PW, one for Steph, and one for me).  On the same website, they also have a pattern for a black cat and also a witch.  But I just want to focus on the pumpkin for now.

So last Saturday the weather was so nice:  warm and sunny.  Temps were in the 70s.  So out of the blue, Chuck decided he wanted to go to Talkeetna.  This is what we saw on our way up there.

It was so pretty!  I tried to get a better picture, but when you're moving on the highway, the scenery changes really fast and then the trees get in the way.

When we got to Talkeetna, there were a lot of people there.  That happens when the weather is nice.  Lots of tourists there.  I was really mad at myself because after we parked the car, I got out of the car forgetting to grab my camera.  So I had to rely on Chuck to take pictures.  He only took two pictures of this:

We walked around and went inside some of the shops but didn't buy anything.  Then we came to my favorite part:  a quilt store called "The Patchwork Moose".  Every time I go to Talkeetna I end up buying something from there.  I always look forward to going in there.  On the way home Chuck made a comment about going there just for an expensive quilt shop trip.  Heh, heh.

I found a few things in there that I am excited about, but would also entail new skills that I haven't tried yet.  One of them is a collage picture of a chickadee (I'm nervous about putting that one together - I'll give it to Steph if it turns out nice).  The other one is something that I found that would make a really cute rag quilt.  I've never made a rag quilt before, but I want to try it.  I hear it's supposed to be really easy, even for beginner quilters.  Anyway I found a  panel there that has all the letters of the alphabet and with each letter there is an Alaskan related picture.  Like the letter O is for Otter, P is for Puffin, S is for Salmon, etc.  Anyway, I saw that and said to myself:  "that would make a very cute baby quilt!"  I have no grandkids (yet), but I am going to make this as a rag quilt for my first grandbaby.  If I never get any grandbabies, then I will just keep it for myself.  I also bought some fabric with birch trees - I have no specific plan for it - I just liked it.

As for my garden, it's doing really well.  My tomatoes (in the greenhouse) are growing very nicely, and yesterday I noticed that our beans are finally starting to come in. Chuck was excited about the beans cuz he gets impatient waiting for things to grow.

We are growing Suyo Long cucumbers and they are doing very well.  We already ate one of them.  We are also growing Little Leaf cucumbers (for pickling), but for some reason we are only getting male flowers on them, so we're not seeing any of those cukes yet.  As you can see in the background, we have lots and lots and lots of yellow cucumber flowers.  I hand pollinate my cukes, but it's a waste of time to do that if they are all male flowers.

My flowers are also doing really well, but I only wish we had planted the seeds earlier because they are just now starting to bloom.  These are called "Bees' Friends".  They get really tall and attract bees.  We often see Mrs. Fuzzybee flitting around them.  We alway like referring to "Mrs. Fuzzybee" because of a Jerry Lewis movie that we sometimes watch.  The movie is called "The Disorderly Orderly" and there is a patient in that movie and her name is Mrs. Fuzzybee.  We always laugh at that silly name, so we always think about that when we see "Mrs. Fuzzybee" in our flowers.

The columbine plant that we bought from our local greenhouse is also doing very well.  I always stop to admire these flowers when I walk past them.  They are so pretty!

So this weekend we are going to Fairbanks.  They are having a Family Day at the gold mine where our future son-in-law works, so I think that will be interesting.  But there is rain in the forecast for Fairbanks all weekend, so hopefully that won't ruin it for us.  We will have to be sure to bring our raincoats.

So this week I am getting prepared for our trip.  Making snacks to take with us on the road.

So anyhoo, hopefully I will have something interesting for you in my next post.

My Own Private Quilting Retreat

So this will probably be boring to you, but...........

So Chuck left for his annual motorcycle trip last Wednesday.  I always hate to see him go, but at the same time I welcome having my own space and time for a while.  And I really wanted to get some quilting done because I was missing it!  The first couple days that he was gone, I only got a little bit of quilting done because I had to catch up on things.  His friends came over for breakfast so I had to feed them and then clean up after they left, did my daily Bible studying, cleaned the bathrooms, etc.  So Wednesday was a long busy day for me.

Thursday was a little better but it wasn't raining so I had to water the garden, but I only did part of it.  Friday I watered what didn't get watered on Thursday.  Saturday it rained, so I was able to get some serious quilting done.  My priority was getting those kennel quilts done because I need to have them done by the 27th.  I had the first one almost done, so I spent Saturday getting that one finished.

I know..........it's ugly.  But it's for a dog, so who cares?  I know......whoever heard of making a quilt for a dog?  At least that's the question I was getting when I was working on it at the quilting retreat.  As I explained to those ladies, these quilts are made out of my crumbs (bits and pieces of leftover fabrics).  I didn't want to throw them away so I made blocks out of them.  I ended up with a little over 50 blocks, so I made two quilts using 25 blocks each.  Anyhoo, since they're ugly, why not give them to the dogs who could use some cushioning in their kennels?  I used all scraps, so I did not spend any money to make this quilt except for the backing fabric, and also I bought some fleecy stuff for the batting (I didn't want to use expensive batting in these).   I think what makes it even more ugly is the brown sashing, but I had it in my stash and I wanted to use it up and get rid of it.  I'm glad I didn't have enough of it left to use on both of them.  But I still have some left, which is now in my "crumb" bin to use for another crumb quilt later.

Anyhoo, here is the other one.  Since we started getting rain a couple days ago, I had time to put this one together too, and just finished it today.

It has more striped blocks in it, and I used blue sashing that I had in my scrap stash, so this one I think looks nicer.  Plus, I was really pleased that pretty much all of my corners matched up almost perfectly in the back!  That never happens!

I was practicing a new method of Quilt As You Go that I learned from watching videos from a lady in Australia.  I practiced on these doggy quilts because I want to use that method to finish PW's quilt.  Hopefully the back of PW's quilt will turn out this nice.

So now all I have to do is applique these labels on them and then they are good to go!

When I got those done, I took PW's quilt out and tried to figure out where I left off cuz I really haven't done anything with hers since the quilting retreat.  I knew that I still had to add some quilting to these kitty blocks because there was too much unquilted space in them.

I was procrastinating on it because I don't know how to draw and I wanted to add the right kind of lines to make it look like a sitting kitty.  I especially didn't know how to draw the front paws curled under - you know how kitties curl their wrists under their chest?  I always think it looks so cute when they do that!  That's the look I wanted but didn't know how to make that, so what I ended up doing is just using the top part of a heart stencil, not really knowing how that was gonna turn out.

Then I used the same heart to add some stitching to the upper square piece.

And this is how they turned out.

I still don't like how the front paws look, but maybe they will look better after the blocks are joined.  For the eyes I just made swirly circles.  

So now I got all the blocks made and tried laying them out.

Chuck said he will probably come home tomorrow so I'm debating if I want to spend my whole evening working on this.  The next few days are supposed to be cloudy with no rain, which means I might not have time to work on it this week.  I have normal duties you know.

But this has been nice for me, having all this quilting time with no one to bug me.

On the side, those guys that we hired to cut down our cottonwood trees - they were delayed for one reason after another (the 3rd was his girlfriend's birthday so he was spending the day with her, the 4th was a holiday, then it started raining for a few days), so today they finally came back and got started again.  And of course, a couple neighbor boys were eager to watch the action and help them out.

I know you can't really see anything in the picture.  But I sure do wish we had those cottonwoods cut down a few weeks ago before they shed all their seeds.  They make such a mess!!  I'm hoping next year I won't be picking all those white things out of my garden beds.

Something funny:  our neighbor boy (in the picture that you can't see very well - I think he's 6 years old) came to my door today and informed me that we have a dead bird in our yard.  I already knew this of course.  And of course I already knew that Peeka was to blame for it.  Anyhoo, he was asking me if I knew what happened to it because he was thinking that maybe it choked on a worm.  LOL!  I was chuckling about that all day imagining a bird actually choking on a worm.   Maybe I should've just humored him and let him believe that, but I told him that my cat killed it.  Then he wanted to know how my cat kills birds.......and why.

I hated to be the one to educate him about the dark side of cats because he looked kinda sad about this new revelation.  Maybe I should've just let him believe that the bird choked on a worm.  Anyway, I am still laughing about it.  What a cute kid.

Desert Southwest Trip, Desert Botanical Garden

 Well, today is our last day!  We woke up in Phoenix, found some coffee, and discussed where we wanted to spend our last day.  We had to be at the airport by 4:00 pm, so that gave us a big chunk of time.  After considering several choices (like going shopping which is not fun for Chuck), we decided to go to the Desert Botanical Garden.  

I thought it was kinda pricey to get in (no free military passes on this one!), but since you can easily spend a whole day there, I thought the price was worth it.  You can tell they really put a lot of work into this place!  And they did a good job keeping the place neat and clean.

There are different sections that you can meander off into and one of the first sections was this flower garden where they had some interesting flowers and different plants.

Another section was the Butterfly Pavilion.  I think this was my favorite part.  It's a closed off place where you go in through a plastic sheet (they don't want any butterflies to escape!)  and there's thousands and thousands of butterflies flittering about.  When you first walk in, they give you an envelope with butterflies in it that you can set free.  When I opened mine, one of the butterflies sat on my thumb and didn't wanna get off.  Anyhoo, it was really cool to walk around in there with all those butterflies flying around.  They tell you to watch your step cuz sometimes they sit on the ground and you might step on one.

Too bad our cameras couldn't catch the image of how many of them were flying around.

Anyhoo, the rest of the park was interesting - lots of desert-like plants.

I really loved this yellow tree!  It was like walking into a painting.

It was really hot out that day, close to 100 degrees, but it was fun walking around by these giant cacti, plus it's easier to bear the heat when you know you're gonna be out of it soon.

There were lots of displays to look at on the side.

And Chuck always took pictures of the interesting flowers.

We even saw some interesting wildlife.

After spending probably about 3 hours in that heat, we were hot, thirsty, and hungry, so we ate at the restaurant that they have on the premises.  It was a very nice restaurant with good food and the prices weren't too bad.  If you ever get to Phoenix, this Botanical Garden is a day well spent!

So that was our trip!  It was great fun, and there is still so much I still want to see that we missed out on, but it was time to go home to our kitties, who I'm sure were missing us and waiting for us to come home.

yeah.

We are thinking our next big trip will be in the Colorado/Utah area because Kayla is supposed to graduate, but we'll see how things go.

So it's been two months since we came back, and I feel like I'm still trying to get into my normal routine.  After we came back, we had one day to unpack and get ready to leave again.  This time we spent the weekend in Fairbanks so we could attend Stephanie's graduation commencement at UAF.  There were 1000 names to sit through, so it took awhile.  But I'm glad we went.

Then the weekend after that was the quilting retreat.  I stayed there (same place as last year) for 2 nights and got a lot of quilting done.  I was the 2nd one to arrive there on Thursday, so I had a lot of choices as to where I wanted to plant myself.  Last year I was next to that bear head, but this time I moved over to the table next to it cuz I needed to set up my iron this time and that bear head was gonna be in my way.  By the time I left (on Saturday afternoon), the place was maxed out, so I'm glad I left.

One lady was making a "temperature quilt".  I've never heard of a "temperature quilt" before, so I was intrigued.  I think it would be interesting to make one for Stephanie based on Fairbanks temperatures, since they have both extremes there.  I've already been on Pinterest looking for different patterns and found some really cool ones, but I haven't committed myself to doing one just yet.

This is outside of the lodge.  Very pretty there, but, being mid-May, it was still too cold to sit out there for very long and be comfortable.  Anyway, I went there to quilt, not to sit outside.

Since then, I've been pretty busy getting my garden established, so I have not done any quilting until just recently.  We've made some changes this year, which have kept us busy.  And now that the garden is established, I am staying busy maintaining it.  There's always weeds to pick, but watering everything is so time consuming.  It's nice to have warm temps and sunshine, but it also means I have to go outside and spent two hours traipsing across the yard with a watering can.  So when it rains, I welcome it because that means I don't have to go outside and water.  Rain brings two hours of extra time to my day!  Anyhoo, that is why I haven't had much time for any of my fun hobbies lately.  There's just always too much to do outside.  And now that Chuck just left for his motorcycle trip, I'll have even more things to do, but I am determined to get some sewing done while he's gone!  Starting tomorrow.  Hopefully.

And maybe I will bore you with all that in my next post.

If you can bear my bore.