Not Just Yet....

The new tiller ("Mr. Easy," I'm calling him; this may change once I actually get to use him) is still sitting in Pop-Pop's shop, where I left him the day we brought him home. We've had a lot of rain this past couple of weeks, and it's been too muddy to do anything in the garden.  The spot where I planted carrot seeds has been under water the whole time, so I can probably cross that crop off my list.

Last night, Nanny invited us down for a slice of home-made German Chocolate Cake (she makes a mean one).  As soon as we walked through the back door, The Nephew held up two fingers.  "We've caught two things," he said, "a raccoon and a possum."  He was referring to the live trap he'd set in the edge of the woods closest to the garden.  I didn't ask what happened to the critters.

Pop-Pop said that the potatoes haven't sprouted yet.  "They've probably rotted after all this rain."  Lovely.  We might as well have let the raccoons dig them up and eat them. 

Since I haven't been able to do any gardening, I've had time to work on some of my quilting projects.  My sister's Iris quilt is ready.  When it came out of the quilting frame, I loaded my niece's Dresden Plate quilt.  I started that quilt nearly 10 years ago.  Work progressed smoothly for a while, but during the quilting phase, my hands gave out from carpal tunnel and arthritis, and I eventually abandoned the project and took down the quilting frame.  The quilt, completely hand-quilted except for the last 18", had been lying in a chair in my bedroom all this time, mocking me.  Though I hated to mix hand quilting with machine quilting, I figured it was better than not finishing it at all.  A couple of hours in the machine quilting frame did the trick.  

Once the Dresden Plate quilt was done, I finished the piecing on my brother's Whirling Star quilt and loaded it into the frame.  I'd only quilted a few inches of the first row when the machine (or, perhaps, the operator) malfunctioned and created a huge "thread monster" between the fabric and the feed dogs.  It took some doing to free the machine, pick the knots of thread out of the quilt, and untangle the thread from the bobbin case.  When I started to quilt again, the needle broke.  I inserted a new needle.  It broke, too.  I pulled the machine to the side to investigate and discovered that the bobbin race was out of time - I guess I'd gimped it up while trying to untangle the knots.  In any case, The Husband took the machine to the shop for me.  He brought it home last night and we set it back in place.  I should be able to get in a little quilting this evening before Margarita Hour rolls around!

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