Uptick

Slowly, I feel like I'm maybe getting a handle on this new situation we all find ourselves in.  This is very much helped by Wonderful Husband coming up with a kind of structure to the day, specifically for Squiddle learning time.  The new setup is that he has to pick three educational activities each day (reading, writing, vocabulary, maths, P.E., science, technology, music... am I forgetting any?) and gets playtime between them.  Today he picked vocabulary, technology (which was working on building the actually pretty darn complex Lego fire truck his grandfather sent him), and I'm going to make him do reading at bedtime.  We also got in a little bit of P.E. by going on a walk (me) / scooters (Squiddle and Jazzy) around the neighborhood.

It was actually fair weather today.  It looks like the two cherry trees I planted are about to break dormancy.  The plum tree, not yet.  With Jazzy's "help" I harvested the mint that's growing against the back of the house, then I washed it and dried it in the oven.  It's cooling now; in a little bit I'll strip the leaves off and jar them for tea.  I think I'll take the area the mint is growing in and turn it into a herb bed.  Mint's impossible to get rid of, so I might as well work with it.  I wish my order from Botanical Interests would arrive already, but it will arrive when it arrives.

I know that cooking-wise, I'm relying perhaps too heavily on prepackaged foods, but we're not having to go to the store or pick up takeout, so I'm going to give myself a pass.  Lunch for the boys was corn dogs, carrot sticks, and grapes.  I made myself a sandwich and had some pickled garlic (most of which Jazzy stole) as a side.  Wonderful Husband finished off the last of the fried chicken.  Dinner was rice and prepackaged orange chicken, which went across fairly well.  I realized too close to dinner that we were out of milk, which would be a debacle in this household, so I took five cans of evaporated milk and reconstituted them into just shy of a gallon, which fit nicely in one of my sun tea jugs.  (Next time I'll get to it sooner and defrost one of the frozen jugs.)  I also reconstituted a jug of orange juice, and thawed a container of turkey that was in the deep freezer.  Tomorrow, turkey pot pie!

I also got sourdough starter going again last night (following this tutorial) and I can already tell it's got live yeast in it by the thin layer of waste alcohol on the top.  I'm hoping in a couple more days it'll be ready to go.

And tomorrow I go pick up my orders from both the co-ops.

There is no WAY we can completely self-isolate for months.  Even if I had a full garden setup, which I do not yet, we would need to go to the grocery store every so often.  But I can stretch it out as long as I can to help break contagion chains.  If using evaporated and frozen milk means we only need to go to the store every two or three weeks, so much the better.  We have meat (and probably not enough veg, but we'll make do) in the freezer.  We have beans and rice and spices.  Heck, the last time I went to the dollar store, I kind of knew this all was going to be coming, so I bought plastic eggs and chocolate and egg-dying kits, because city egg hunts at Easter are definitely cancelled.

Plus Wonderful Husband and I have been carving out "date night" for the first time in a long time, and watching Good Omens after the boys are in bed. ^_^

Monday, Monday...

Not much happened today because I was feeling rather under the weather.  (Not coronavirus; totally wrong symptoms set.  Just a generic bug.)  And the weather was kind of mercurial today, going from sunshine to downpours to hail and back again, so no beach outings or garden work happened.

I've been working on Edyta Sitar's quiltalong and am currently only one day behind.  I'm thinking after I finish hers, I'll switch over to either Quilted Twins' or Bonnie Hunter's and catch up on them.  It's not like social distancing is going away anytime soon!

The one thing that did happen today (other than Wonderful Husband chipping the ice buildup out of the deep freezer, so it closes properly again; hooray!) is that we finally experimented with turning evaporated milk into drinking milk.  It's a bit richer than the 2% we usually drink, but tastewise it's fine and the boys didn't mind it at all.  So we have a backup to our backup, as milk is 100% without a doubt the food item we go through fastest.

One Year

A year ago today, we kissed and hugged my parents good-bye, got in our cars, and began the drive up to the Pacific Northwest.

Since last night's torrential downpour turned into a lovely partly-cloudy day, we celebrated this anniversary by doing yardwork.  Wonderful Husband got out the bush trimmer and worked at getting the briars by the driveway down to a manageable height, then hammered the fruit tree fertilizer spikes into the ground around the second apple tree.  Only the quince left to go!

I helped with getting all the briars to fit in the (now very full) yard waste bin, which fortunately gets picked up tomorrow.  And I finally got the rhubarb crowns planted and mulched along the back deck!

After lunch, we took the boys, some bubble wands, and last year's Paw Patrol kite to the Purdy Sand Spit.  It ended up being too blustery for the bubbles, but the three of them had great fun with the kite:

There were a couple other families there, but we had no problem in keeping distant from one another.  Plenty of room for all.

Out of the Mouth of Babes

We've been working with Squiddle on the hundred sight reading words on his list for kindergarten.  (When he masters all hundred, the school is supposed to give him a shirt, which he wants.)  As part of this, he has to give us a sentence for each word.  (An awful lot of these sentences end up being cribbed from Green Eggs and Ham.)  He has about ninety-five of the words down pat.  Today, Wonderful Husband told him this was getting too easy for him, and that we might be making him put two words together into a sentence.

Wonderful Husband pulled out the words "be" and "old."

Squiddle: ..."Behold!"

The thing is, he's not entirely wrong....

Panic Buying, or Bread-Making Boom?

Today I went on a grocery run!  First Costco, then Albertson's.  At the latter, I was amused by this:

This was the baking section (flour, sugar).  The eggs area was similarly bare.  From this sole data point, I am drawing the conclusion that everyone in Gig Harbor is going down those "things to do now that you have all this time at home" lists and hitting the "learn to bake bread" checkpoint. :)

Luckily for me, I'd already purchased eggs and sugar at Costco ("limit: 1"), and have flour at home.

Gardening

Did no sewing today.  Instead, I went out into the back yard and dug the trench that marks the edge of one of the new garden beds.  It goes along two sides of the patio, then wraps around the side of the house and ends at the door into the crawlspace.  Fifty feet and four inches of digging.  UGH.  My hands are sore, my back is achy, and I know the rest of me will be as well tomorrow.  But I wanted to get it done today, since for the next week the forecast never drops below a 40% chance of rain.

About two thirds of the new bed has had cardboard on it for the last several months, so the plants have been smothered.  Now I just need to lay cardboard on the rest and cover it all with mulch.  (And plant those five rhubarbs!)

Catching Up

Ugh.  Kind of a no energy day all around, not helped by it being drizzly again rather than clear.

I made the boys help me (somewhat) with making pumpkin brownies this afternoon.  They turned out not bad, though a bit more cake-like than I was expecting.  I'm trying to get Squiddle into practical math (if a recipe needs 3/4 cup flour, how many times do we need to fill the 1/4 cup measure?), but it's a bit more difficult when Jazzy wants a turn scooping and stirring too.  For dinner, I made oven-fried chicken and Rice-a-Roni.

My cousin apparently had her daughter two weeks early, on the 23rd.  Now I really need to get moving on that baby quilt.  And I've finally caught up on Edyta Sitar's quilt-along, using the Crown of Thorns blocks as leader/enders.

Bits and Pieces

Let's see.  The state of Washington is now under lockdown.  Which I have no problems with.  I think my mother and sister are annoyed, though, that I'm choosing to obey the restrictions rather than take the boys and go to the inspection of my parents' new house today.  And my parents leave to go home to California tomorrow, but it's not like they won't be moving back up here in one to two months.  So, no, I'm not sorry that I'm choosing not to be a contagion vector.  (And, I mean, my sister is a nurse!  She should know and understand how these things work.  But OTOH she doesn't vote either because she doesn't think it has any effect on who gets elected.  At least she's not an anti-vaxxer.)

Yesterday I didn't get much done other than pruning away at the farther apple tree.  Which is starting to look a little better.  There's one more branch I want to take out for this year, as it rubs against five others, but it's about four feet out of reach, so I'm waiting for another dry day when I can take the ladder out and not worry about slipping off it.  I also powerwashed the lattice fence around the propane tank, which, UGH.  The vibrations of the power-washer do not do my arm any favors.  So I've told Wonderful Husband that henceforth it's his tool.  I only got half the lattice done, and resorted to hand-washing what of the tank I could reach with a dish scrubber, then rinsing it off.  It's ever so much cleaner now.

We did get a brief spate of hail yesterday!  That was unexpected and fun.  But predicted temperatures are warm enough that I've finally taken all my over-wintering plants out to the patio.

I've been quizzing Squiddle on his vocabulary words, which he is doing quite well at, and yesterday we got out the watercolors!

Squiddle's:

Jazzy's:

Mine:

I was pleasantly surprised by how dark the colors could get.  But the printer paper wasn't the greatest to work on, so I've ordered some watercolor paper for us, and some real brushes.

Jazzy kept dipping his brush into the water cup and sucking on it, so he ended up having naptime a little early, after "no" led to a bit of a meltdown.

As for the rest, I'm still working at the Quarantine Quilt (yesterday's block) and the Crown of Thorns blocks, in between other things.:

Surprise Blocks

Not much got done yesterday.  I did sew the ninety-six half-square triangle blocks into twosies, but that's about it.  A good deal of time was lost rummaging through my sewing area trying to figure out where the jiggins I had left my bottle of sewing machine oil.  Eventually I found it (on the windowsill, hidden behind something else) and gave my machine a good cleaning and oiling.  It's hence running a touch quieter.

Amid all the rummaging, I turned up a bag with six blocks and a bunch of pieces:

With my stack of Crown of Thorn blocks for comparison!  Not quite the same pattern, but close.  I'm contemplating if I can turn these into a baby quilt for my cousin's daughter.  Maybe I'll take the extra triangles and make pinwheels to go at the corners of the blocks?

My Soul Is Fed By Needle And Thread

Ugh.  Yesterday was not a good day.  My parents left to go spend a couple more days with my sister and niece before flying back home Wednesday (assuming the airports don't get closed by then).  And I just had no energy or enthusiasm for anything.  We did go for a walk around the block!

In an effort to combat depression, I resorted to making.  Sewing is self-care for me.  I'd seen about the blogosphere that Edyta Sitar is doing a sew-along, and since it was only on day two, I thought I would join it.  Of course, she's doing it from one of her beautiful carefully coordinated fabric bundles, and I'm doing it scrappy, but each to their own.

Twelve blocks done:

And I stitched together the half-square triangles for the next set of six Crown of Thorns blocks.  I've got eighteen finished, and if I decide to make it a queen-sized quilt, I'll need forty-one....

The sewing does seem to have helped.  I don't feel as bad today as I did yesterday.

The Last of the Roses

The last two roses are planted!

The east side, before and after, with the white Claire Austin rose.  It's not as close to the gate as I would have liked, but the size of the cement block the gate's set in kind of nixed it getting any closer.

...and, below, the west side with the pink Strawberry Hill rose.

Another Day in the Yard

I did a bit more gardening yesterday!

The boys and I went out to the back fence and cleared away some of the grass (...and blackberry runners...) and dug a couple more holes, this time for the trellising roses to go over the gate.  There were not nearly as many rocks this time; of course, there were only half as many holes.  And This time I actually remembered to take before and after photos!

The east side of the gate.  This is the Claire Austin white rose.  I need to nail those two bottom rungs back in place!

The west side, with the pink Strawberry Hill rose.  Only the bottom rung needs to be fixed on this side.

I also discovered that under the fence is a line of pavers.  So I need to strim along the fence and probably power-wash them.

I also finished grafting the scions onto the apple trees!  I've been using a couple of cut up yogurt cups to mark each grafted variety:

And I finished just in time, too, since with the nice weather we've been having, the apples are starting to break dormancy!

A Day of Accomplishment

Yesterday I forced myself to accomplish things until it became a habit.

I stitched together two Crown of Thorns blocks in the morning.  Then I opened the box of roses I'd ordered from David Austin roses.  I am IMPRESSED!  They're bare root roses, but they're huge!  When I soaked the bare root fruit trees, all three fit inside our five-gallon bucket.  ONE of the David Austin roses fit in the bucket.  Good roots!

Leaving that rosebush soaking, I took the boys with me to Home Depot and got rose food, fruit tree food spikes, soil acidifier for the blueberry plants, three bags of bark mulch, two French lavender plants, and a bare root Chrysler Imperial rose.  (o/~ and a partridge in a pear tree~)  As a reward for good behavior, we did McDonald's drive-thru on the way home.

After lunch was fully consumed, I set to work on the little garden bed along the backside of our propane tank.  I pulled out all the grass and weeds I'd missed the first time around, and also dug up the two ugly unknown bushes on either side of the center mystery rosebush.  I replaced them with the two lavenders (which shouldn't get more than 18" high or wide), and then put the Ferdinand Pilchard rose and the Chrysler Imperial rose to either side of them.  The boys helped me dig the holes!

And we collected all the rocks we dug up.  Four holes' worth of rocks filled one of the gallon pots the lavenders came in.

I left the daffodils in place, as well as the azalea that's around the corner on the north end of the bed.  Then I mulched and watered in.  It took all three bags of mulch (so, six cubic feet) to finish the task.  But that bed looks downright respectable now!  All it needs is the grass around the edges strimmed, and the fence and propane tank behind it to be pressure-washed, and it'll be done done done.

I failed to get Jazzy to nap today.  I gave up after half an hour and I went with my mother to the co-op pick up, which was not in the Civic Center as usual, but rather in the playground shelter outside.  And the parking lot was closed off.  But I got my mushrooms and my rhubarb crowns without encountering another person, so that was good.

While my mother made her delicious spaghetti for dinner, I returned to work outdoors.  I set two more of the roses soaking, then cleared off the paved area off the deck, moved the two planters that had come with the house there, weeded and churned them, and planted the first dozen of the bare root strawberries I'd gotten yesterday.

After cleaning up the debris of my gardening spree, I came inside, and stitched two more blocks.  Sixteen done, two more laid out, then I'll need to cut more pieces.

St. Patty's Day

Ugh.  Creative progress stalled.  Haven't even pressed any pieces.

I did get some running around done yesterday, though.  I went to Wilco for their sale day and purchased blueberry plants to go along the back fence.  I forgot, however, to pick up some soil acidifier, and by the time I walked back in from the parking lot, the line was to the back of the store.  So I turned around and will go to Home Depot today or tomorrow instead.

I also went to the grocery store.  The only thing on my list that was completely gone was eggs.

For St. Patrick's Day, I made corned beef and cabbage, with Irish soda bread and green jello for the little ones.  For the adults, I made a pumpkin pie from the co-op pumpkins I've been roasting and puree'ing before they went to mush.  I need to find my potato ricer or buy a mill for a smoother texture, and the pie could have stood another ten minutes in the over, but overall, not a bad experiment.  My sister and niece joined us, for a full table of eight.  And my sister managed to find a five-dozen of eggs at the store, which we split.  Win!

Perfunctory Post

Not much got accomplished yesterday.  Well.  I got two varieties (Pendragon and Cinnamon Spice) grafted to one of the apple trees.  I moved the next set of Crown of Thorns blocks on a step.  I made chicken sabzi for dinner.  I wrote the first scene of chapter 16 of Scenes.

Today, I venture out of isolation to go to Wilco and hopefully get blueberry bushes, to go to the store for groceries, and then I come home and make Irish soda bread and corned beef and cabbage for dinner.  But first, I suppose, I should coerce little boys into getting dressed....

Sunday to Monday

Well, unfortunately, I found out that all three varieties of pear that I grafted onto the quince tree are unlikely to take.  They don't like quince rootstock, and if I'd known better, I should have also purchased some of the varieties of pear that do like quince, and done an interstem graft, buffering the two from each other.  Ah well.  Live and learn.  Next year, I guess.  But now that I've got some practice under my belt, I need to tackle grafting the apple scions onto the apple trees.

Not much is happening on the sewing front.  I'm slowly stitching up another set of six Crown of Thorn blocks, but sewing happens more slowly when children are at home.  As they will be today!  Because the governor is calling off all gatherings over X size, starting immediately.  We got an emergency automated call about it from the school district last night, at 8:30pm or so.

However, I did finally manage to write the next chapter of one of my (many) fanfiction works-in-progress.  I need to get Wonderful Husband to beta it, then I can post chapter fifteen of Scenes From The Life And Death Of Jackson Overland Frost.  It's only been six and a half years since I posted chapter fourteen!

And, finally, my parents are up here visiting and (sorta) house hunting.  For dinner last night I pulled out some minced goat, carrots, and shiitake mushrooms, all from the co-op, and made my mother-in-law's Shepherd's Pie.  It was delish!

Grafting and Pi Day

Yesterday I pruned the apple trees a bit more.  Still not done, though.

AND!  I grafted the pears onto the quince tree!  Two of the scions were long enough to subdivide.  So if they all take (*knocks on wood*), I'll have two Bosc pear branches, one Seckel, and two Butirra Rosata Morettini branches!

I also celebrated Pi Day (3/14).

The top circle is bacon/leek/elephant garlic/mushroom/cheese quiche, and the bottom circle is blackberry pie, made from some of those gallons of blackberries I picked and froze in August.

Today it's supposed to be clear and dry again, so hopefully I'll get around to grafting some of the apple scions, and planting the roses that arrived on Friday.  Plus my parents are arriving to stay with us today, and my dad hasn't seen our house yet!

Thrifted Treasures!

Yesterday was kind of a not good day.  I have fairly bad periods, and that combined with a cold, rainy day and staring down six weeks of no school left me in a not-good place.  It was not helped by trying to go to Costco midday, and just turning around in the parking lot because there was no point.  There was no parking.  UGH.  And I received an e-mail letting me know the Quilters By The Bay meeting later this month is cancelled.  I ended up falling asleep with Jazzy at his naptime, and that helped a bit.

So!  I mentioned the other day going to the thrift store, which is probably not going to happen again for a while, so I thought I'd show off my treasures!  I ended up with a really really good haul this time, which doesn't always happen.  A lot of times I go and walk away completely empty-handed.  I just don't blog about those trips since they're kind of null experiences.

This time I ended up going to two thrift stores.  The first was the St. Vincent de Paul up in Bremerton, which I don't go to as often because it's farther away.  But I was up there anyway to shop at Winco, and it's fairly close to there.  Then I went to the St. Vincent de Paul in Port Orchard on the way home.  And, making me sad, the 1920 house that I drive by every time I go to that shop was being torn down that day.  I want to adopt old neglected houses and fix them; seeing them destroyed makes me sad.

So!  Onto cheerier thoughts.  I purchased two quilting magazines for a quarter each.  The one on the right, I didn't realize until I got it home, is so new it's still on the newstands!  The canning jars were also a quarter each, plus ten cents more for the pint jar.  The little blue bowl was $.75 and the copper and blue glass decoration $1.50.  It's not balanced correctly to spin; I need to take a look at it and use my jewelry pliers, probably.  The baskets were $1.25 and $3.50.

St. Vincent de Paul in Port Orchard also had a plethora of donated cross-stitch kits and patterns.  I dug through them and picked out the ones that spoke to me.  There were all ten cents, except for the leftmost one, which is a complete kit that cost $2.

Linens were 25% off!  I grabbed these five pillowcases for $.19 each!  The top two are so soft, and the three on the bottom are hand-embroidered!

I also got these two hand-embroidered table runners.  One was marked as a pillowcase ($.19 again) and the other was $.94.  No holes or spots on any of these things.

And, finally, a bit of vintage fabric for $.75 that I grabbed mainly because I'm pretty sure I have some vintage quilt tops that may need a bit of similar-age fabric for patches.

And, amusing to me at least, the $500 not-included-in-any-sales seven-drawer Singer 66 treadle machine was now priced at $90, and marked as being part of the linen department.  So it, too, was 25% off.  If I didn't already have a seven-drawer treadle I need to figure out a place for, I'd have been sincerely tempted....

Extra Long Spring Vacay, Imminent

Due to coronavirus in the area, the governor has made the decision to close the local schools starting on Tuesday.  And today is a day off for the boys anyway.

The closure, we are told, is going to be a minimum of SIX WEEKS.

At least, I am repeating on mantra, the weather is warmer now so playing outdoors will be a part of each day.

I did get grocery shopping done yesterday (and a thrift store visit as well), and went to the Peninsula Fruit Club.  I really enjoyed that... the members in attendance seemed like people with my sense of humor.  It skewed about as old as quilt guilds do (I, in my 40s, was in the minority), but the gender ratio was about 50/50.  I did, however, very deliberately not accept any of the fig or persimmon scions that were brought in and offered around.  I would LOVE a persimmon tree, but I'm having to very carefully curate what fruit trees I add to the property, mostly on the qualification of size.

And, to amuse, I finally got a couple more pieces of art hung up:

The Toothless cross-stitch was made by my very talented sister-in-law, and when my sister gave the sign to Wonderful Husband for his birthday, we knew the two pieces had to go together.  They are now hung at the bottom of our staircase, where they can't be missed. ^_^

Sticks with Potential

Yesterday I unpacked the fruit trees from their box, plunked them in a bucket of water to soak their roots for a few hours, then, in the afternoon, when the sun was shining, I dug holes in the ground and planted them.

Here is the plum tree, with our two apple trees behind it and the quince/pear tree to the right:

There are actually FIVE varieties of plum on the tree!  Green Gage, Seneca, Schoolhouse, Victoria, and Mt. Royal.

And here is the Vandalay cherry, which hasn't branched out any yet:

And the Montmorency pie cherry:

Our property is on a slight slope, so you can see that for all three trees I used the moss/grass I dug up, as well as all the rocks, to make a berm on the downward side of the slope so that water will stay with the trees and not just run off.

Guild, Gardening

Guild last night was relatively small... only 42 members showed up.  Coronavirus on everyone's minds, I guess, especially as we're just across the water from King County, one of the hotspots in the US.  Myself, I just keep thinking about how this phenomenon is unprecedented in my recall.  A global health scare where whole countries just shut down?  On one hand it's a bit scary, on the other hand, wow, the modern global interconnection and its results are amazing.  Schools aren't yet closed where we are, but if they need to be, I'm lucky we're in a position where I can take care of the kids, and that we're relatively well stocked.  (The only thing I'd worry about, grocery-wise, is milk.)

Backing up briefly to the quilt guild, I showed off the Double Irish Chain quilt as well as the Cloverleaf quilt, which I really need to mail off now.  There were only five blocks entered in Block of the month, but fortunately I didn't win them!  I did, however, make some nice headway on my embroidery project.

I had picked up a spade, some compost, and some mulch at Home Depot yesterday.  I alllllso took a gander at the roses they had on offer.  Mr. Lincoln and Chrysler Imperial (both Gamble Fragrance Award winners) both caught my eye, as did Scentimental (I'm a sucker for striped roses), but I was strong!  None of them came home with me.  (They didn't have any Double Delight; if they had, I might not have been able to remain strong.)  And about when I got home, the box from Raintree Nursery with my two cherries and one European plum trees arrived.  I've opened it this morning, and they're all soaking their roots in a bucket on the patio for a few hours until I can plant them.

Chains, Thorns, and Sea Glass

Whee!  Quilt guild tonight!  Also, theoretically, the three fruit trees I ordered arriving today, so I'm off to Home Depot in a bit to get a spade.  Meantime, here's the finished Double Irish Chain quilt laying atop the guest bed:

It is actually on top of my bright tumblers quilt as well.  Because one can never have too many quilts, or something.  (Squiddle currently sleeps under three.  And sometimes his blanket on top as well.  You'd think we don't have central heating.)

Last night I stitched up another half-dozen Thorns blocks (five of them in pieces in the stacks below).  And while I was cutting for those, I pulled all the scraps from the Blueberry Park collection and cut those into 2.5" half-square triangles as well.

Don't they look a bit like sea glass here?

I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing with them, so for now I'm using them as leader/enders and stitching them into squares....

Thorns

Yesterday morning I had these 2.5" squares and half-square triangles (some not yet pressed!) laid out on my sewing desk:

As well as a couple more pieces under the needle, from where I'd stopped the night before:

By bedtime, I'd transformed them into these 10.5" blocks:

The block is called Single Wedding Ring, or Crown of Thorns.  Or possibly a dozen other names, but those are the two I know.  It's been a while since I've made this block (as a block of the month, IIRC), so I've now figured out the trick to having the seams nest: press all seams to the dark fabric.  I'll remember that for the next set.

I was initially thinking I'd take all these sea colored fabrics and work on an Ocean Waves quilt, but I'm still just a touch intimidated by that pattern.  So many half-square triangles!  (As opposed to this pattern, which has "only" thirty-two HSTs out of forty-one pieces. :/)  Baby steps!  Work up to that goal!

The second blue from the right is kind of meh, but I like all the other fabrics quite a bit.  The "white" is unbleached muslin.  I don't know what I want to do with these blocks yet.  A baby quilt?  Something for one of the boys?  A gift for an adult?  I figure I'll just keep making blocks until I decide.  I do have that whole basket of sea colors to try to use up!  For the next set I cut, though, I think I'll try to add in some more greenish colors, because currently that third-from-the-left green batik is standing out a bit.

Hacking and Whacking

Inspired by the pear and apple scions resting in my fridge, I went out into the yard today with the hand shears, the pruning loppers, and some determination.  I decided to have at the quince tree first, since it's about six feet tall, not twenty-five feet tall.  I think I did okay, pruning out the dead wood (including a major dead branch Wonderful Husband used the saw on for me), anything growing into the center, the tiny low branches, and a few that crossed or rubbed.  And, hey, I found an old "Anjou Pear" tag at the base, so my suspicion that it was originally a pear tree seems to be accurate!

Then I turned to the apple trees.

On the tree nearer the house, I think I'm pleased with what I did of what I could reach.  I'll probably try some more pruning tomorrow, with a ladder.  That said, I discovered the tree has a lot of lesions that worry me (disease?), and a sort of cup in the crotch that holds water, which even I know might lead to problems down the line.

The farther tree is a bit more tangled, and what to prune out less obvious to my eyes.  I'll be looking at that one more tomorrow as well.

I've also decided that I'm going to the Peninsula Fruit Club's meeting Thursday night, and joining.  It'll be a good resource, a chance to make more like-minded friends, and... potentially a chance to see if someone would be willing to come and offer the newbie some critique on this whole pruning and grafting thing.

Meanwhile, out of the mouths of babes last night, post-bedtime:

Me: "You can save up all your questions and ask them to me in the morning."

Squiddle: "I can't keep them all stranded in my head for years."

Hustle, Bustle!

I did a great deal of running about yesterday with two little boys in tow.  Thrift stores, garden center, lunch, pick up prescriptions, grocery shopping.  Ugh.  by the end of it I was quite run down, and didn't really get my mojo back until late evening when I tried another sorting of the basket of sea colors.

This time I worked by strip width.  All the 2.5" strips and strip bits got pulled out, and anything narrower than that went in the separate basket for string piecing.  I also found a bunch of neutral scraps in the garage and pressed them as well.  This morning I started cutting them up, and got three sets for 10" Crown of Thorns/Single Wedding Ring blocks done before we went out and about.

Out and abouting involved a Pokemon Go EX raid that we failed at, since no one else showed up for it, then lunch at Dickey's Barbeque, then finally going to the Peninsula Fruit Club's Spring Grafting Show.  It was much more my speed than the boys' (or even Wonderful Husband's), but I watched some demonstrations of grafting, and purchased a grafting knife and eight scions for $2 each.  I got three pear, and five apple.  One apple one is "Huntsman's Favorite"... well, that's my maiden name.  I couldn't just pass it up!  I also got an apple called "Pendragon" which has red flesh. ^_^

Tonight, I'm probably going to watch a ton of Youtube tutorials on grafting, and then try my hand at it either tomorrow or Monday, when it's not raining off-and-on.  For now, though, I'm going to cut out some more blocks while Jazzy is napping with Wonderful Husband, and Squiddle is entertaining himself.

(Side note: I find it amusing that two of my neighbors are all "Oh, I'd love to garden, but I have a black thumb" and "I'd love to have a garden, but we just don't have a space for it."  Whereas I am all like "I'm gonna try and graft my own fruit trees, just try and stop me! and "How much of the front and back lawn can I gradually get away with planting before Wonderful Husband complains?"  They could both do it, they just don't want to as much as they think they want to.)

Flowers and Floundering

Ugh, sore today because of gardening yesterday.  I pruned the rosebush and yanked all the weeds out of the bed by the propane tank, then went in among the rhododendrons by the front door and chopped out the dead branches that have been bothering me for months, then went to the massively overgrown (a running theme on this property) thorny hedge at the end of the driveway and managed to take out maybe a quarter of that before the yard waste bin was full.

Sometimes I feel like my personal theme is "lots of work, for little visible progress."

All this gardening was prompted by my having bitten the bullet and ordered some roses from David Austin roses: two Claire Austin and two Strawberry Hill climbing roses to go over the two trellises on the property, as well as a Ferdinand Pichard rose for... somewhere.  All of them strongly scented, because what's the point of weak fragrance on roses?

I also finally got around to starting some seeds: Black Krim tomatoes, habeneros, jalepenos, cucumbers, Swiss chard, asparagus, zinnias, California poppies, and snapdragons.

Additionally, I auditioned fabrics.  Out of curiosity I put this backing fabric behind some of the nine-patches:

It's kind of meh.  Maybe a shaded strata, like this?

I'm still not sure.  But I did cut up a tiny tiny fraction of that basket of teals to sew a block of the month for quilt guild on Tuesday.  So, one thing done!

Chasing a Squirrel Down a Rabbit Hole

After finishing the Double Irish Chain quilt yesterday and tossing it into the wash, I went back upstairs to look at the teal fabrics and see if I could cogitate a plan of attack.  These caught my eye:

Two completed 4.5" nine-patches, and some extra bits.  Why not finish them, I thought to myself.  Maybe they'll be the center of something.  So I trimmed and sewed bits together and pulled my 2" strips bin in from the garage to get more black, and I ended up with fifteen blocks, some scrappier than others.

Four and a half inch nine-patches, I thought to myself.  Why, I have a bunch of those from the Ugly Fabrics block exchange I ran for the Orange County Quilters Guild.  I even know where they are.  I wonder if I could combine the two sets?  I should count them!

140 nine-patches of various fabrics.  155 when I combine the sets.  Well, 144 makes a nice 12x12 set, and if I put them on point, that'd be about sixty-eight inches square.  If I add ten inches of border on either side, that's a bed-sized quilt.  What, thought I, if I used those extra eleven squares in the border?  Make one more, and I could do three per corner, and use them all up.  I grabbed my pen and the nearest blank surface (the back of the David Austin Roses catalog) and started sketching out an idea:

I'm not sure what color I want for the alternate squares, or if I want it all the same fabric or concentric rings, shades of the same color.  As Pooh bear says, "Think think.  Think think think."

Turning Corners

I'm determined to be good and not start anything new until I've finished the piece I'm working on.  Which means pedal to the metal on stitching this binding down!

I turned the third corner last night and am now about halfway down the last side.  I should be able to finish this quilt today, and then toss it in the wash with some color catchers tonight.

Tomorrow, I'll hopefully make up the block of the month for next week's quilt guild meeting, and get seeds started.