Too Hot for Outside

 We are having a very hot and dry summer. We are trying to establish a new lawn this year, which is virtually impossible during a raging drought. But at least we are not in a fire zone (knock on wood). We just see hazy skies from fires in Canada. I hope everyone near the fires will be safe.

I am tired of the heat and mostly stay inside. I have been working on this for the last couple of days:

Before that I put finishing touches on a few other quilt tops:

Made from fabrics my sister gave me,

and the pattern is from a member of my online group;

we named the pattern Doris. I bet you can guess why.

using some orphan blocks, Lotto blocks, and random stuff

an idea I copied from an unknown quilter; I added the HST borders

another one made from leftovers and extras

Still needs borders added.

This pattern is called Horizon and was found at this blog:

https://kleinmeisjequilts.blogspot.com/

It is super fast and easy; I have made 3 of these so far.

My online group, Sunshine Quilts, had a QAL (quilt along) day

when a bunch of us talked on Zoom and spent the day

sewing Horizon quilts. We have made about 18 of them so far!

New ones keep popping up in our feed.

I will have to share this info with kleinmeisje.. I bet she has no idea

what a quilt avalanche she started!

Amazing accomplishment in the middle

of a drought! 😍

Here are my previous two Horizons. One has been finished so far.

Our Son Returned

Our son, who has been working in South Korea for four years, has returned home to stay! We are so happy! During those four years, I kept thinking we should go to Korea and visit, but we never managed to do so. We did send our daughter there for Christmas a year ago. I guess that's the best we could manage.

He flew home on Friday, March 1. Here he is at the airport.

He was shocked (and disgusted) at how much snow we have here. Where he came from in Korea the weather was just turning nicer and had gotten up to about 50 degrees F. Here it is still the depths of winter. We have soooo much snow. It is kind of unbelievable. The snow piles are so high, it is hard to shovel and get the snow up over the piles; it's that high. And this week has been cold... below zero at night and single digit day time highs (F). Well, it will warm up a bit next week, and spring will eventually come. It always does.

Here he is showing the amazing amount of snow. The piles in our front yard are huge (he is 6'2" tall)!

Can You Hate Something That You Think Is Beautiful?

Isn't this beautiful? I think so. I can still enjoy its beauty. I wouldn't say I hate it, but I am really tired of snow. This and more fell on April 3. *sigh* We had to shovel about 8 inches off our driveway. But I don't hate it, because it's so pretty!

I really am wondering... are the people who really hate this recent spring snowfall not able to enjoy its beauty?

Sewing When I Can

Life has gotten busy again. It seems to be a normal occurrence for Fall. The leaves have been just beautiful. Sadly, I have not ventured out of the city too much to see great expanses of beauty, for example along a river or lakeshore. I did enjoy the beautiful colors along the freeway as I drove to my Wednesday sewing group. It's about 30 miles from home, so I had plenty of time to drink in the gorgeous fall colors. I'm trying to memorize them for enjoyment in my mind through the next few months of white and gray.

I have been trying to keep up with work on my weather quilt. It depicts the high temperature for every day of 2016. I have January-July sewn together. August-most of October is weighing down and distorting the top part in this picture, because they're not attached except with pins right now. When I finish August-December I will sew them all together. It's starting to show the return to blues and purples that will come with November and December. I think it'll be a pretty quilt when it's all done.

This week I attended an interpreter conference which was excellent. I do love my job; how lucky I was to "fall" into it so many years ago! I complain about having to attend workshops, but when they are well done it rejuvenates me and encourages me to be a better interpreter. Though I only work about five hours per week, I should strive to be the best I can during those five hours.

I'm in the middle of reading an excellent book and look forward to telling you about it soon.

Last History Lesson - All Caught Up!

Want to see some beautiful quilts? Feast your eyes! The women in this guild are so talented. I am sometimes intimidated but am determined to just be who I am and make what I can. I'll never reach the level some of these quilters have attained. This first picture -- the woman decided to work with fibers and bought a sewing machine one year ago. OMG - REALLY?? Anyway, I repeat -- I am determined to be who I am. I like what I make; they're going to be slept under and will never hang in museums or art galleries.

Below: Roscoe. It's a tiny Minnesota town, population 102. My dad's name was Roscoe. When I was about 8 years old, we drove through the town, stopped and took a picture of Mom and us four kids by this sign. I remember my brother (14 at the time) worried about what passing drivers would think of us nerds. I liked it! This time I tried to get a selfie with this sign, but it was way too tall to get both it and me. The town is not thriving, as you can see from this building on Roscoe's main street. The death of small towns makes me sad.

National Night Out: we had a fun event at church. I put a bunch of extra books out by the Little Free Library; several people picked up books to read (= happy me). The fire department and police came to visit, which the kids loved. Lots of neighbors turned out. It was quite fun.

Last weekend we had a fun family picnic which was our official party welcoming our son home from South Korea. The cake got smushed, but it's still cute. My little Buddy, Mr. Baby, made a cameo appearance, and everyone fell in love with him.

Last photo above is our daughter with her 96-year-old grandfather out on the dock. Can you tell that we picked a gorgeous day for our picnic? Nice breeze kept bugs away, and it wasn't hot. Beautiful!

Yesterday I finished this quilt top. It is made of charm packs and mini-charm packs. I love it!

Guess what! I'm all caught up to the present! I'm sad today that I completely forgot to go to a funeral at church. A young woman died of breast cancer. I didn't know her well but wanted to honor her parents and friends. Kicking myself...

Glorious Summer Days

Tuesday was a wonderful day! The weather was perfect -- comfortable, not humid, beautiful and pleasant. B and K and I met at a Minneapolis restaurant that I had never heard of: Wise Acre Eatery. Anyone in the Twin Cities reading this blog: go there! The food was fabulous! I had this salad which I think was the Wise Acre Salad:

So Yummy!!! I also had a fresh, home-made cookie with the chocolate still melty-fresh from the oven. YUM! They use fresh ingredients from their own garden in Plato, Minnesota. And everything is made-from-scratch delicious! We had a perfect, outside table in a corner, in soft shade, with sweet little butterflies flitting around while we chatted. I felt like I was in a novel.

The three of us did an experiment (for us as an impromptu group)- we each made a block and then the others added to it. Tuesday was our day to meet and return them to their owners.
K and hers

B and hers

me and mine

After lunch I discovered this museum: The Museum of Russian Art. B's two kids are adopted from Russia.. though she was no longer with me, I decided to stop in. Here's the museum. It used to be a Congregational Church which was built in this Texas mission style because its first pastor had done some work in Texas and loved that style. It's very unusual for church architecture in Minnesota. Inside, there were two exhibits going on. One exhibit was Soviet painters (most done between 1920 and 1960) and the other was a Ukrainian American who made his way to Minnesota after WWII and painted many beautiful Minnesota scenes as well as others. I loved them both!

Here's a sampling of some of the art. Click on any of the photos to get a bigger, closer look.

All the paintings below are by O. Bulavitsky. This is the poster of his exhibit:

Below, the South Minneapolis neighborhood Bulavitsky saw from his upstairs window:

After all this wonderfulness, I went to visit my Little Free Library (at church), pulled out a lawn chair, and sat down in the lawn to read. It was such a perfect day to be outside reading.

All in all, it was a glorious summer day, and a great way to spend my time.
P.S. Today is another equally glorious day! Fabulous!

Almost Perfect Again

Saturday was another perfect day. What glorious weather we have enjoyed this week!

Well... my first event wasn't perfect. I had to attend a funeral..a church friend's husband died of Alzheimers. Sad, but it was a lovely service.

Then I went to a park in Minneapolis to attend the first-ever Little Free Library event. They had books to share, people building LFLs, music, people reciting poetry, free haircuts with free books, and lots of other activities that I probably overlooked. I picked up a few good books for our LFL at church. And I bumped into D. who works at the Little Free Library organization, and I also knew her when she was in high school, and I worked at her school.

and beautiful Minnehaha Falls.

I walked all over the park, enjoyed a good lunch from a food truck, and walked even more to get to and from my car. I had parked ridiculously far away, but the exercise was good for me.

After all that, I went over to the LFL that I steward, added the new books I picked up at the park event, and set up these chairs and the plant. I hope they don't "walk off." I'm putting my faith in my fellow human beings.