I feel somewhat like this hopeful kitty today. It was warm (74 degrees?) and breezy and _smelled_ like spring ... but we know it isn't spring quite yet. :)
Mimi Dietrich's Grad Class met today at The Bears Paw quilt shop in Towson, MD. Patty and I drove up to the park and ride in front of First Presbyterian Church (at Rts 29 & 108) and met Barbara ... who drove us into the Mt. Washington area of Baltimore to pick up our friend Vera Hall ... and then onward to Towson. It was WONDERFUL to see the folks again! I have not been to an in-person meeting in some months and it was a pleasure to see my quilt-y buddies. :)
The bonus for the day was that the shop had a fabric sale going on that I had fun with. There were two plus rows (not shelves, ROWS) of sale fabrics, including a lot of batiks, at $4 and $5 a yard! I have not bought 100% cotton fabric for that little in a quilt shop for 20 years or more. I did not go entirely hog wild, but I did some damage - bought nine yards of a pretty soft green bamboo print batik to be the backing for my Chicken Scratch quilt (and spent less than two yards of a wide backing fabric would have cost me at regular price). I also bought 26 fat quarters (at $2 each!) for making the chicken salad applique quilt that Lori Holt is blogging right now.*
(*For whatever reason, one of my few thematic hold-overs from a childhood growing up on the farm is a love of chickens:).
Was a wonderful day all around! I rested a bit when I got home and then turned to my embroidery while watching three more episodes of Time Team on YouTube. I have never been much of a YouTube viewer but I'm certainly digging in lately. :) I managed to start in on the cross stitching for the leafy green bits of my happy garden photo:
I can only work on this design for a couple of hours at a time before my eyes start to squint and I have to do something else. :) That's ok, it's not a race.
I did finish piecing the body of Eva's interlaced Morris quilt this past weekend ... and, just as I suspected, the two remaining borders must be taken apart and re-pieced. The instructions neglected to tell me (and I did not notice by looking at the sample) that the borders are mirror imaged. Sigh. The project is in time out right now so I can get over my annoyance with myself. :) Here is a quick picture I took of one corner to document the interlacing:
I had a surprise when I got home this afternoon. The vinca minor (vine-y ground cover) growing in my side yard is flowering!! I did not realize that it would do so before the daffodils.
Pretty little blue faces beaming up at the sky. :) Once upon a time I had crocus growing by my front step but they all seem to be gone now. Maybe the squirrels dug them up? Several times today as we drove through the somewhat-posh neighborhoods of Baltimore I saw yards overgrown and filled with flowering crocus - usually the first spring flowers I notice here in MD. So pretty. Don't know why the ones I planted didn't naturalize like that. Shrug.
I have an appointment with my dietician tomorrow afternoon. Skip asked me to stop at the office supply store to buy a new ream of printer paper while I was out. We need to do taxes but we don't have enough paper in our current ream to print out all the forms he wants. :P
:) Linda
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