Hot enough out for quilting

 It's sooo hot here.  So hot that by 10am, I'm inside and ready for a shower.  It's time for inside work.  I spent both afternoons this weekend at the Bernina, quilting on the HST quilt, which should be called something like "Endurance" (but it won't be).  I'm ready to work on something else and have decided it's time to finish this one.  

One thing I noticed as I sat there was a feeling that I should be up doing something more important.  That's very different than a couple years ago when it would have been 'I have to get up and do something else...no, I really have to...I'm getting up.  See me getting up?  I'm moving like the wind'...and yet I'd just keep quilting.  It felt good to say 'no, I really don't have anything more important to do.'

I decided I wanted to quilt a spiral in this quilt, from the center out to the edge, then fill in the corners by echoing the spiral.  It was a mess and I tried a couple times and messed with it and picked quilting out of it and tried other things, but I always kept coming back to that spiral.  And, I got discouraged and filled with 'I can't do this' thoughts.  Then, I remembered that my old theory of quilting was that if I could see the mistakes, there wasn't enough quilting.  This is it, next to my machine.  I love looking over and seeing how the perspective on the triangles changes as the quilt moves.

I used the spiral that I'd managed to put in badly and added a feather along one side.  The spiral is continuous, so the feather fills the space and hides how "off" the spiral is.  I've been toying with going around it again to add an echo.  I'll decide if it needs it when I'm done.  The gray 100wt silk thread I'm using disappears in the piecing, so the feathers are not a distraction like I was afraid they'd be.  It was hard to get them to show up in a photo.  I'm finally excited about the quilt again and am hoping I can power through it.  I really would like to get to something else.  Something smaller and quicker to finish.  I miss piecing, but part of my change in attitude about quilting was to stop making new pieces until some of what I've got started gets finished.  

A couple years ago, when we had our first 7* freeze that lasted several days, I cracked or broke all three birdbaths.  What did I know about that kind of freezing weather in the south.  Two concrete ones still held water but dripped and I replaced the glass one.  I decided to repair the two concrete ones and looked on the internet and found an idea that sounded good and executed it...and the birds stopped coming to my yard.  The solution was to spray it with prune and seal like a cut tree limb.  But, don't.  That becomes a sticky, stinky oily mess when there's water in the bath and soon as I'd done it, the birds put up a "bad water" sign on my yard and all went away.  

This weekend, we replaced both baths.  One, we had to buy a new pedestal for, but the other we put on an existing pedestal.  The one with the gnome may have to be moved.  I may have put it in too sunny a spot where it will get too hot, but I'll find a place.  Next, I need to trick the birds into coming back to the yard.  

This is a picture of the greenhouse with the shade cloth hung in it.  Rob has started assembling shelves and we're going to be moved back in here before you know it.  

The Beagle is still beagling and the ride is a roller-coaster.  We measure days on a scale of 1-10.  After a couple of 7s in a row, Friday was a 9, Saturday was a 3 and Sunday was an 8.  When she feels good, she feels very good.  And, sometimes, that's the best any of us can hope for, me included.  It's taking a toll on Rob, but in the main, he's enjoying the good times with her.  But I hate to see him low on the bad days.  Here she is, trying to con Sydney out of some cooked chicken one morning.  Bella follows along because we can't give a treat to just one of them, and she knows it.  

Okay, that's it for me today.  Enjoy the week.  Enjoy the people and things you love.  Smile every time you get a chance.  It means something to people when you do.  

Lane