halfway through…

How is it July already?!

But here it is, four days in, celebrating Independence Day, here in the good ol’ USA! Weather permitting, we (as in me and the Merkel crew) plan on taking the boat out for an afternoon of swimming and an evening of fireworks on the lake. Boom!

I’ve done some fun things this year. After signing on to be the 2nd VP of Programs for my guild, I decided it wasn’t as bad as I’d worried it would be. In fact, I really enjoyed getting speakers, managing programs, and writing blurbs for the newsletter and introductions. I was actually all set to volunteer to do it again for the next guild year, but the incoming president (who’s currently the 1st VP—a position which automatically rolls into President the following year) told me no. Or rather, she said she’d rather have me as her 1st VP. 😳 Needless to say, I sat on that for a hot minute, but in the end, I agreed. So here I am.  LOL! The position starts with close of our August meeting.

 

I took a very fun wool appliqué workshop with one very darling Vicki McCarty, of Calico Patch Designs. Each day we received four of the first sixteen blocks and worked on one block in particular. There were lots of goodies and door prizes, too—it was like going on retreat, but sleeping in my own bed! Loads of fun!

Our May program at guild was MJ Kinman. Our workshops coordinator was out of town, so I had the privilege of not only escorting MJ through the program, but the workshops as well. 

          

She was a fabulous speaker and teacher. Her classes were full both days and the inspiration level was high! I had planned on paying for both workshops, but since I had to coordinate, I didn’t have to pay…but it also means I had other duties that didn’t allow me to be fully present in her teaching. I did go home and make my topaz jewel!

Nine year old Edith (local granddaughter number three) decided she wanted to make a quilt. By hand. With my help.  She brought me a 5” charm pack of purples and asked. What could I say? I picked up a second pack and she laid them out the way she wanted. Six of the nine rows are stitched. 

 

She’s stitching the squares together and then I’ll machine stitch the rows together and add borders, to make it big enough for it to be a nice lap quilt for her. I’m thinking it would be the perfect quilt for hand tied quilting. We could do that together! With purple yarn, of course!

 

Twelve year old Olivia (California granddaughter number two) flew out with her mama for a wedding. It also happened to be Olivia’s birthday weekend and we were so pleased to be able to celebrate with her! 

Later in June I took a traveled north east to spend a long weekend with my sister and her local family, and then went on to Annapolis for a mini reunion with friend from high school. 

Same group I traveled to Charleston with last year. We had a really lovely time. It was so nostalgic and sweet, plus Annapolis is a hotbed of historical significance, which made being there in our country’s 250th year all the more exciting! And it was Plebe Week, which just added to the fun! I felt 16 again! Plus I got my fill of Maryland blue crabs:  steamed, crabcakes, cream of crab soup, crab puffs . . . ALL THE CRAB! We’re already making plans for next year. Quebec is at the top of our list!

My girls are doing great! 

 

 

They are definitely divas—but such fun and a complete comfort. I love them so much! Even when they are so bad.  LOL! And thank goodness they’re around—they save me from talking to myself! ;)

Happy 4th!!  :)

birthday hijinx . . .

Whew! What a wonderful birthday week/weekend it's been!!

It started when I got out some of my fall decor and decorated my front door . . .

I kinda miss having a front porch ... and the back patio really isn't big enough (or seen well) to do more than a bit for me.

Then I met my Cross Stitch group on Monday.  Remember how I'd made such great progress on my Lady Halloween piece?  I looked at it Sunday evening and realized I'd stitched two complete elements in the wrong place:

UGH!  Don't you hate it when that happens? Anyway, I spent my group time on Monday picking out all the inappropriate stitches. And then the rest of the week adding them back in the correct location (along with a few more) . . .

Then there were presents from my Affirmation Sisters . . .

Fun stitchy stuff!!

On Friday I had birthday dinner with Joc and the local crew . . .

Joc made me this beautiful Almond Joy birthday cake.  It was SOOO good!

And they gifted me with this beautiful blue enamel dutch oven, which was on my wish list!  I'm so excited to cook in it ... just in time for soup and chili season!

Saturday morning started early ... with Ezra's soccer game!

He scored the first goal of the game, and they won (although they don't really keep score officially, the parents do)!

After that, I headed to the Merkel's to watch the Alabama vs. Mizzou game.  It was a good (and close) game, but BAMA pulled it out!  Roll Tide!  When the game was over, I headed home to do some stitching.  I worked on the cute little Halloween stitchery that was gifted to me with the stitchable ort tray.  It's really cute!  

Someone had no interest in what I was doing . . .

And then someone was waaaaaay too interested . . . 

Sassy girl!

A quick look ahead . . . we've got LUKE Haynes coming in to speak for our guild program on Thursday evening, and then he's there for the next two days doing workshops.  

I'm taking his Friday workshop, Clothes to Quilts.  I'm really looking forward to it!

So that's it from me.  Celebrating all month long, though ... whoohoo!! Linking up last minute with Kathy's Quilts: Slow Sunday Stitching!

:)

sloooooowly stitching . . .

It was a relatively slow week, stitch-wise.  Our church's VBS started today, and I spent a lot of the preparing for that!  I did get some stitching in, though.  Almost finished up the standing pilgrim on my Coming to America piece . . . 

I have about 90 minutes of free time from my last VBS music rotation to the closing rally, so I'll take this project with me and work on it each night.  Maybe I'll have all *three* pilgrims on the boat finished by week's (or VBS's) end.  

I am still unpacking and organizing things from the move . . . especially Nook things.  In doing some of that, I came across this little snowflake embroidery that was ninety percent finished . . . 

What in the world?  I started this in December, 2019.  I know this because I blogged about it, sharing this photo . . .

I was flummoxed!  It was SO close to being done. I'd pulled up the blog photo to see exactly which metalic flossed I'd used.  Once I'd found that, I began to stitch up the remaining gold spires.  That's when I remembered.  I had used a new product—Sulky's Stick & Stitch Stablizer. The project got too close to a hot iron, and it shrunk the stabilizer, so the pattern wasn't right.  I pulled out my new stitches and soaked the embroidery to get rid of the stabilizer. I left it out overnight to dry . . .

Not terrible!  I'd lost the pattern, so I "winged" it. (Not to fear.  I contacted Mary Corbet of Needle 'n Thread, from whom I'd purchased it, and she emailed me the pattern file today.  Thanks, Mary!!) I hosted a stitcher's group for my Sassy girls on Saturday, and finished up the stitching on it then.

It's not great, because my winging it wasn't great, but I'm glad it's finished.  I don't remember what my original plans were, but I've got some great metalic Christmas fabrics that I think I'll frame it with!

Another thing I found was a bag of HST pieces from my Christmas quilt.  Those weren't quite as old as the embroidery, but still date back a couple of years or so.  I laid them out a couple of different ways to decide how I wanted to stitch them together.  I came up with Harlequin Christmas, Jack-in-the-Box Christmas, and Pinwheel Christmas:

I'm leaning toward the Pinwheels, but all three have eye interest. It's a mini piece ... about big enough for a center table mat.  

In other news . . . more important news . . . family news:  granddaughter Olivia graduated from elementary to middle school *and* was awarded Student of the Year!  Pictured here with my James:

So very proud of her!!  Isn't she just beautiful?!

And finally, because we all know what a sucker I am for a sunset, here was the view from my balcony on Friday evening . . . 

It was pretty brilliant there, but to the south it was soft pink and blue . . . cotton candy skies! The whole western horizon was glorious!

I'll spend the rest of the week singing and dancing all our Magnified VBS tunes. Crooning!

:)

yellowstone in thirty-eight . . .

So.  I'm back!  What a trip we had!  I took 1,557 photos over the course of our travels.  Shall I post them all? Hahaha! Just kidding! I'm going to share my favorite five hundred photos, in no particular order (and feel free to scroll to the bottom for my slow stitching report) . . .

We spotted this juvenile moose resting on a patch of snow, on our way up to Inspiration Point, at Jenny Lake.  It was our only moose sighting!

Queue mandantory Yellowstone National Park sign group photo!

My beautiful Jocelyn!

We caught this herd of bison on our first day.  Look at all the babies!

Old Faithful!

Other geyers on the Upper Geyser Basin.

Grand Prismatic Springs

Another at Grand Prismatic Springs.  I could have shared 38 photos just from this sight.

Our sweet cabin in West Yellowstone.  Or, as Ezra called it, our "Yellowstone Home".

Waterfalls!!

Falls coming down into the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.

Edith and I sharing a Huckleberry Float!

The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.  It was breathtaking!

This one and the one below are from Norris Geyser Basin.  The colors and patterns were surreal.  This was another spot I could've shared a ton of photos.

We saw bears of all types a number of times, but this was our best (and closest) encounter.  This grizzly was less than 15 yards away, above us on the road as we drove home the second night. 

Elk were most common in the valley along the road on the way out of the West gate.

There are several markers for the Continental Divide up/down this road, but this one is the highest elevation, and sits at the lake (pictured below) that flows both east (into the Atlantic) and west (into the Pacific).  Wonders, y'all!  I saw WONDERS!

Left Thumb of Yellowstone Lake

Geysers at the West Thumb.

Yellowstone Lake is H U G E!

Mud Volcano area was very, very sulphurous!

Probably 20% of my photos have these sweet faces included!!  They did ballet poses and funny faces and were so good to have three adults taking their pictures every other minute!  :)

Petrified Tree—just fascinating!

Mammoth Hot Springs. I wish these photos did it justice!

More of my fellow hikers!

Grand Tetons over Jenny Lake.

The falls were really rushing, due to all the snow melt.

Tower Falls was spectacular.

We had a late lunch/early supper at Dornan's Pizza Pasta Company.  This was our view!

The Snake River, pretty much from the spot where Ansel Adams based his famous portrait.

On our last night, we went back to Old Faithful (for a third or fourth time) and caught the most beautiful sunset!  And you know what a sucker I am for a glorious sunset photo!

All the kids did such a great job earning their Junior Ranger badges for both Yellowstone and The Grand Tetons, as well as their Young Scientist patch for Yellowstone!

I really only shared 38 pictures (only 2.4% of my total photos), which really isn't enough to capture the scope and breadth of all we saw.  Photos just don't do justice anyway.  The awe of it is such that words don't even do it justice.  I can understand all the famous painters and photographers, poets, and wordsmiths who have tried to capture it; have tried.  But there is something about standing in the middle of the grandness of it all that just puts words and photos to shame.  If you haven't been, I'd highly recommend adding the trip to your bucket list!

Every one of the Merkels had a down day (sprinkled throughout our week), due to a stomach bug.  I never caught it. I don't know why, but I sure am grateful!  Kids and younger adults bounce back from those things than senior citizens! I did manage to do every climb, hike, and walk that the group did, save one.  At Mammoth Hot Springs, I got to the level above the springs; Joc, Evey, and Ellie went to the tip-top, but Jason, Edith, Ezra and I stayed and did a lateral hike around the rock.  Joc said the view wasn't any better from the additional height, so I felt justified.  <grin>  Anyway, I averaged 13,500 steps a day, and sixish daily miles. Not bad, right?

I did very little stitching.  There really wasn't time . . . even though we spent at least 90 minutes or more a day in the vehicle.  When there's miles and miles of Yellowstone landscape to look at (not to mention scouring that landscape for moose, elk, bears, and whatnot), you just can't focus on handwork!  I took a couple dozen stitches on my Spring Quaker mini . . .

And, since I'd finished the patriotic wool felt project I'd prepped, I went looking for something to replace it.  I came across a Kathy Schmitz project I'd gotten for Christmas 2023, but it got lost in the shuffle of Todd's illness and death, and then my grief and move.  But I found it and it's so cute!

I worked January's and February's designs, and got started on April's little stitchery.  So the trip wasn't super productive, but it wasn't totally bereft of progress!

I still haven't responded to all of the comments from the last post, so I'm off to do that now.  After I go for a swim in the pool!  Have a fabulous first week of June . . . summer is here!

:)