Iris instead

Okay, I've teased a couple of you with the promise of a video of me quilting. Tease, tease, tease.

Last night, Rob and I filmed it and for a first try, I'm very happy. Getting it uploaded has been another experience altogether. I kicked it off last night and it failed due to technical difficulties. I kicked it off again this morning at 5am and it still isn't finished. Okay. I'm flexible and as proud as I am of it, I can wait until tomorrow. I can. I can. I can I can I can!

So, I'll share a funny production story from the video shoot. Rob was my producer-director-cameraman-best boy and I'd told him what I wanted, where the camera should be aimed, what I was going to do and that no matter what, we were only going to take two shoots...we are such perfectionists that I worried that without that, we'd be at it all night. Anyway, we shot the first part about the tools. It went Great! Then, we shot the second part, where I quilt. I was on. It went perfect. I covered everything I wanted to cover with a minimum of "uhm..." Rob did closeups as I went through my schpiel. Unfortunately, the closeups of my quilting didn't work out too well as there were lots of blurry spots. I watched in horror because I was never going to be able to say all that again. I just knew it. He asked if I wanted to shoot it again and, primadonna that I am, I whined noooooo and went to the bedroom. I spent about 5 minutes building up my confidence again, came out of the bedroom and asked if we could shoot it again. He'd left the camera set up and ready. Guess he knew I'd be out. And, I sewed for a couple of minutes to bring me back into my zen. And, we did a second shoot that was as good as the first. He edited the tools and the quilting parts together for me and we were ready to go. And, the router crapped out at bedtime. No point in waiting for the router to reset and kicking the upload off again.

So, instead of quilting video (and a giveaway!) I'm showing you iris from the backyard.

My iris are a study in patience. I don't know where the first one came from, but right after we got together, Rob and I took a spring vacation to Boston and the Bostonians were clearing the overgrown iris out of their public gardens and throwing them on the compost heap. We collected as many as we could pack in a box, cut the tops off and flew them home in our luggage. Clearly pre-2001.

Since then, I've moved them around and moved them around and watched them die and fed them and watched what was left start to thrive and last year, I got my first bloom. Just one.

But, this year, they're finally starting to give me a good show. I don't seem to have managed to keep any of the yellow ones alive, but the purple ones are finally starting to do their thing.

Okay, ever the optimist, I'm going to invite you back tomorrow for a bit of the old vid of me quilting. And, I'm going to give away an extra copy of my favorite quilting book that I found in half price books last week. You're gonna want to come back just to see which book it is.

Take care and have a great Friday. Lane