Springing Along

A little walk around the house when the temperature was around 55 showed me that spring is coming along.

Spent a day watching The Wedding yesterday.  Today I was simply lazy, reading while watching house fix-up TV shows.  Now we're off to see "The Barber of Seville", Rossini's version.

Sara

Gratitudes:

I won a Thank You prize from Margaret's Hope Chest!
Pepperoni pizza with double green olives
Frogs jumping in the pond when I walk by

Lakes and Islands

I am asking my fellow member of the 15 Minute SCRAP Bee to make these blocks for me.  First they construct the green blocks form scraps and then they use the "water" fabric I sent them to make them into "Lake" and "Island" blocks.  I'm imagining this to be an airplane's view of the vacation lands of Minnesota, where I grew up,  and Michigan where I am now living.  I plan to put the Island blocks together into a great big lake in the middle of farm/forest lands.  Sort of like Lake Michigan.

Sara

Gratitudes:

Again survived the eye injection
Nap afterwards means I can get up early for THE Wedding
Great purchased lasagna for dinner [dear Charlie heated it up]

Wordless Wednesday

Red blocks with a white slash

Made these for the April SCRAP Bee collection.  A requirement of this Bee is that you start with "made" fabric.
And I get to design and receive the blocks for May -- so I am trying out some ideas, starting with these:

Tomorrow I'm going to cut into them. . . . wait and see!

Sara

Gratitudes:

Snow on Monday melted the same day
Baked sweet potato part of dinner
Afternoon nap

Spring, maybe?

Looking out the kitchen window, I'm glad to see the mini-daffodils are making a show, the grass is green, and maybe the willows are even starting to turn yellow.  Still pretty "brown" around here.  The deciduous trees are bare.
Makes it VERY hopeful to see the daffodils!


I had a four day visit with my friend Sue in Richmond, Virginia, and spring is much further along there.  The azaleas were popping their bright pink in many yards.  And the DOGWOODS!  Wow, everywhere.

I'm behind on learning the music for Women's Chorus, and we are singing five songs at our rehearsal church this Sunday.  So I'll be busy with thtat this week.

Sara

Gratitudes:

Got good help at the rehearsal last night
Sun is shining today
Kindle travels well

Orchid still in bloom

First bloom on January 8.  Only one has dropped so far, just as the last bud opened the day after we returned from Florida.  Wow!  I had no idea that orchids bloomed for such a long period of time.

Sara

Gratitudes:

Such a nice vacation
Safe travel
House survived our absence

On to Dunedin

Before leaving Ft. Myers we celebrated my 69th birthday.  My 'big' present is the Kindle I am holding in the photo, and the Mango Mango drink was a nice present also.

I put together a ZigZag center for a baby quilt before we left.  The fabric was a pile of similar left-overs I grabbed before leaving home and some muslin.

We have moved on to Dunedin, the spring training home of the Toronto Blue Jays, and the nearest town to beautiful Honeymoon beach.  The sand is white white and fine grained.  And there is a section set aside as a "Pet Beach".  No cats in evidence.

I have put the borders on the ZigZag quilt, after a visit to The Rainbow's End [quilt shop] for the bright border.  I used up all the remaining scraps for the backing.  However, actually QUILTING the top will wait until I get home. The "harp" of the Feather Weight machine is too small for quilting.

And here is a better shot of what we can see from the balcony: palm trees, Gulf water, islands, a white egret.  Occasionally private fishing boats go by and kayaks.  No manatees so far.

For lunch today we drove 20 minutes north to Tarpon Springs for a Greek lunch and a look at the sponge boats in their harbor.  The tan sponges are hanging on rope lines on the boat [to dry?].

We also spent about ten minutes inside the Greek Orthodox cathedral of St. Nicolas.  Big Greek community here!


Charlie's friend is arriving today for four ball games in four days with Charlie.  I'm going to just one, and will continue my sewing projects while the men are out in the bright sun for three hours at a time.

Sara

Gratitudes:
Interesting restaurant food for dinners
Reading Sandra Schneider's "Written That You May Believe"
Three days off from men's basketball

Fort Meyers

At the La Quinta motel for seven nights, so I set up my sewing area and had quickly made enough HSTs that I needed to sit in the doorway and cut off the extra corners, holding the waste basket between my legs to catch them.

We have been to two difference beaches in the mornings.  This beach goes along the road to the Sanibel Island causeway.  We find a place to settle in the shade, if possible, after a walk along the beach and we do some reading and gazing at the water and human activity.



Every other day there is a baseball game for at least one of us.

Here's Charlie outside the Twins' stadium.  There were lots of Minnesotans there and a few Mets fans as well. The "stars" played through the 6th inning and after the rookies were rotated onto the field a lot of the fans began to leave.

C is off to a Red Sox game on his own this afternoon and I have a new idea for using up scraps of pastel fabrics.

Sara

Gratitudes:
We are both happy with our chosen activities
Lovely salad and fish for lunch
warm air and light breezes!

Peacocks and surf

On our way south we spent a morning wandering around in Cochtaw County, Alabama looking for the places where Charlie had been 40 years ago registering voters during Holy Week.

This may be one of he Baptist churches where meetings were held.

This is the right TOWN.  When Charlie went into this Post Office the woman behind he counter said she remembered "those people" from when she was 7 years old.  She had followed C's friend Margot around while she lived there for a whole year working on the project.  Pretty amazing that the only person he had a chance to talk with remembered that long ago!


We stayed for two nights on Florida's "Forgotten Coast", the coast of Florida's panhandle.  We awoke in our cabin at the Sportsmen's Resort to find a peacock perched on our deck rail.

We drove around St. George's Island, enjoying the State Park at the eastern end for $6.  It was a gray day and quite windy.  Not many people out at the beach, but the campground was nearly full with enormous RVs from the north.

From there we visited Charlie's brother and sister-in-law in Jacksonville for two nights.

Now we are in Fort Myers for a week of warmth and three Spring Training baseball games.  Charlie has gone this afternoon to see he Twins and the Mets(?).  I am setting up the Featherweight sewing machine and an ironing station to play with some tropical fabric.

Sara

Gratitudes:

Moving Ash Wednesday and 1st Sunday of Lent services in strange to us places
Sunshine and warmth
La Quinta will let us leave our dog in the room when we go out

Kindle Cover

My new Kindle seemed to be crying out for a quilted cover.

I had a bit of this dirt-defying Robert Kaufmann print and simply quilted along the edges of the brown stripes, added a velcro closing flap to hold it shut, and "voila" it is made.

And even with the cover on it fits in to my smallish purse!  Very convenient for our trip to and from Florida.  I have downloaded Hillenbrand's "Unbroken" as a first treat.

Back to organizing clothes, sewing, knitting for the vacation!

Sara

Gratitudes:

We have the health for this trip
We have the time for this trip
We have the money for this trip