I caught a glimpse of this pair of doves at my feeder recently. They've been seen many times in my yard, scavenging seed dropped by the other birds (I've never seen them on the feeder). Maybe they are nesting in our yard or nearby? There continue to be lots of goldfinches at my feeders along with song sparrows, house finches, cowbirds, cardinals, etc. I enjoy all the visitors!
It has been even longer since I last wrote a post here. Life is full right now as I continue to help my niece Kimmie settle in to our area and unpack her goods in the new condo. This week our challenge is to find her a good doctor and get her necessary medicine prescriptions renewed.
I made a huge booboo this week by blowing away all the appointments and notes in my calendar. Major sighs!! It will take some work for me to research and reconstruct all my appointments and commitments. :P Really not how I'd like to be spending my time.
Let's see, what have I been doing? I finished sewing all the string blocks for my Halloween panel quilt and am now adding the pieced borders. I have two more sides to sew on, then I can cut and sew on the outer fabric/slab border print I bought. Then it's off to the quilter - maybe it will be done in time for this Halloween? (fingers crossed)
I finished the embroidery on my sashiko crab:
Now I have to quilt the panel so I can construct a pillow with it. I'm debating whether to machine or hand quilt it (will machine quilt the backing for the pillow).
My friend Patty and I went to a rubber stamp convention (hard for me to call it that as it is much, much smaller than the conventions we attended together in the past). It was last Saturday in Westminster, Maryland and I enjoyed it enormously. So fun to see what are the new/exciting technique and tools. I bought very conservatively, though I saw a number of things I would enjoy possessing/using - don't have the pocket money at the moment (well, can't justify spending it) with all the condo expenses. :)
Here's what I did/bought:
This is a quick pic at one part of the show, taken as we sat down to eat lunch (the food was provided by a local 4H club and was very good)
This was the result of a demo at one booth (I apologize for the out-of-focus shot) ... the technique was pressure embossing an etched design onto vellum (used a fine ball embossing stylus to trace the grooves in acrylic plates). I am supposed to color the smooth side of the vellum with colored pencils or markers to achieve maximum impact.
This pretty flower is the result of using dye inks and five different layering stencils. I was sorely tempted to buy some of the sets but none of them truly 'spoke' to me loud enough. :) I think this might become a book cover.
I bought this set of pan watercolors. They are all metallic/shimmer pigments with gemstone names.
This set of leaf shape dies are to cut paper into shapes; I could not resist such lovely leaves. :)
I came home Saturday evening and played in my mandala/glue book with the leaf templates. I have to fiddle with my embossing/cutting Sizzix machine to figure out how to shim the cutters ... so I used a leaf for a template and made some framing/background shapes for a spread:
The young woman is a photo from a recent National Geographic. I think she is the quintessential Earth Maiden and made a collage to glorify that idea. :)
I finally bought some yarn to finish the Berocco spring sampler project I started back in late April (ran out of yardage about 2" before the bottom of the triangular scarf). Now I am carrying that around to meetings so I can finish it up. It's almost scarf weather here.
I have to make a zillion phone calls tomorrow to try to find out about my lost list of appointments. Sigh. Wish me luck!
:) Linda
