A Pictorial Guide of Recent Days

I'm back! I have been out of town and out of commission. Husband and I both have been sick (we're finally feeling better). My mother was back in the hospital, so I went to visit/help. She's doing better, also, with some lingering struggles. And then I attended a quilt retreat in a new-to-me location. Because I was still suffering from my lingering illness, I did not have the energy I usually have at retreats. Nevertheless I had fun and made some progress on a project.

Here is my photo guide of these recent activities:

On road to visit my mother, I captured these sunset shots.

Because I was sick, I was required to wear this mask while visiting my mom. (In my defense, I did delay my arrival there, in hopes that I was no longer contagious by the time I entered the hospital environment.) Notice that my 93-year-old mom looks better than I do! OTOH, please don't notice.

Then the quilt retreat:

This is my cousin who finished her lovely quilt top.

On the way home, some ice on a large lake:

Quilt Photography Here and There

Today I convened a Study in Quilts: Photographing Quilts in Nature.

Well.. it wasn't much of a study, and it was only one quilt. Husband and I drove around to some random spots not far from home, looking for fun places to photograph my quilt. This was inspired by Quiltdivajulie who recently photographed quilts of hers in some very unique places. I thought that was a great idea. Since we live not far from the Mississippi River, I decided to go in that direction and see what we could find.

Quilt at Home

Quilt on Fence (historic community near our home)

Quilt on Hammock, Quilt on Swing

Quilt on Old House - Edition 1,2,3,4 (doesn't this sound fancy??) haha.. these are historic buildings from the 1830s - before Minnesota was a state)

Quilt on Balcony (do you see the Fair Maiden?)

The Quilt Princess

Quilt at River

Quilt at Jail (it's an old one-room jail built in 1915)

Quilt on Dock

Quilt Under Willow Tree

This is the most-photographed quilt I own! (Its design was inspired by a crossword puzzle in the newspaper.)

Oh, look -- a spider web!

Catching Up with Myself

This is my attempt to catch up to photos of a variety of things I haven't yet shown you over the recent weeks. I got behind thanks to Christmas. Then MIL got sick, and we were all a bit distracted. She is doing MUCH better now, and from what I can tell is pretty much back to normal. Hopefully she'll be back home soon. She is "bored out of her gourd" sitting in the hospital.

Below you see the following: first is a table topper that I gave to Daughter for Christmas. You might have seen this before. I like the shape and size and found a new technique for making it, which is super easy. I have made several more like it, of various sizes, but they are not quilted yet.

The middle two pics are small quilt-beginnings I made from other people's blocks. I sent these beginnings to Tammy who will finish them off. She's a master at using people's half-created parts and turning them into beautiful quilts.

The last picture above is two house blocks I made for Beth over at Love Laugh Quilt blog. Once a year she collects house blocks and then shares them with two winners, plus makes a charity quilt from some of them. It's fun to see the neighborhood of houses she collects, and they all turn into such cute quilts. Last year I was a winner, and had a blast making the quilt. And Beth churned out a couple of really cute charity quilts.

Above: a quilt top I finished for Quilts Beyond Borders. And a beautiful sunset behind the St. Paul Cathedral, taken from the hospital while waiting for news of Mother-in-Law.

Above: a hat I finished recently; the woman in the background made the pom-pom for me. And our group completed three prayer shawls for our prayer shawl ministry at church.

Whew! I'm feeling better -- a little more caught up with myself.

Turtle!

Yesterday Hubby went outside to mow the lawn. He came back in and said "want to see a big turtle?" This big guy was in our lawn, up against the retaining wall. We have never seen turtles in our yard, ever. This is the first, and he's huge! I have never seen a turtle this big in this neighborhood at all. I was shocked! I thought it was so cool that this turtle graced our yard with its visit.


hubby's foot is there for scale


notice its big foot/claw against the wall? Wow!

Hubby went ahead and mowed the lawn, and Turtle sat there patiently. We went back inside the house and several hours later wondered what our turtle was up to. We went ouside to check. He had vanished! I'm so curious about where this thing lives and what it was doing in our yard. There is a lake nearby, but it is probably a quarter mile -- an awfully long walk for a turtle. We have seen turtles around the lake, but only tiny ones. And as I said, never in our yard or anywhere on our street.

Does anyone know anything about turtles? Is this a lake-dweller? I know absolutely nothing about what sort of habitat a turtle like this requires. Where does it spend its days?? I'm very curious. Time to do some research.

Edit -- I did some research and determined that this is a snapping turtle! It seemed extremely unaggressive yesterday, thankfully. Usually they have to eat while in/under water, so I'm not sure what it was doing so far from the lake. Now I'm going to be careful all summer long when going outside without my steel-toed boots!