Friday catch upo

It's another Friday off.  I could really get into this as a permanent thing, if we could afford it.  But, today I'll mostly be home because we are having a new deck built and someone needs to be here to keep the dogs from just standing at the back door and barking all day. 

We wanted to build a deck.  But that's a lot of work to do it right, and over time, we decided we didn't want to build  a deck.  We have plenty of other home repairs that we can spend our time on that don't take days to finish and don't require all that heavy lifting and post hole digging. 

In 1974, my Papaw, the contractor, would have said we've got more money than sense.  And, I'm glad of that.  And, so is my back.

Our contractor is an older gentleman.  And, we assumed he works a crew of younger men.  But, we were wrong.  The first day, he showed up with a slightly younger gentleman than himself and, like two old men will do, spent a LOT of time talking.  So much talking that early in the day, I was worried that this was going to take forever.  But, they plodded at a steady pace and by the end of the day, the old deck was deconstructed, cut into 2 foot board lengths and packed into two pickups for hauling off.  Yesterday, the contractor brought a much younger and stronger helper and they got the ground leveled off so that we wouldn't have a standing puddle (otherwise known as a  mosquito nursery) under it anymore.  And, they got started digging post holes and building the frame. 

Yay!!  I can't wait to see it finished.  When I moved into the house 17 years ago, there was a deck and an extension had been added.  I didn't like it, so I took the extension apart and rebuilt it as a large rectangle, added to the original deck.  I actually did a pretty good job for an amateur.  My framing still looked good.  But, over the last couple years, the decking had started to rot.  And, once that started, it seemed to go really fast. 

But, in a few days, we'll have a brand new place to sit.  And, since I like to take a featherweight out there and sit at the table and sew, I hope to be able to get back to some of that. 

I finished my first needlepoint pillow last night. 

Another parallelogram, but now that I've blocked one of those out, I know I can do this one.  And, this one isn't nearly as distorted as the last one was.

Okay, so now to get up from here and get something done.  I want to quilt.  I want to work around the house.  I want to continue to clean up in the sewing room.  I want, I want, I want.  But, what will I do? 

Probably just quilt. 

Lane