From the back porch - 4/27/2018

It is 1:30 on a Friday afternoon.  I am sitting on my back porch, eating a bite of lunch.  To my right, attached to the living room window, is a birdhouse full of baby birds that hatched last weekend.  It's hard to tell how many babies are in there.  The sun hits the birdhouse this time of day, and I think the babies are hot, because a couple of them have their heads poked out of the nest, and their mouths are open, like they're panting.  Or maybe they're just trying to be first in line for the next feeding.  Wonder how the parents keep straight on who has eaten and who has not?  Do they say, in bird language, "I'll feed Bryan and Margaret.  You get Jeff and Nancy."?

We have a skunk in the neighborhood.  I saw him earlier this week, sauntering down the tree line between us and our neighbor.  I guess it's best to just leave him be, and not challenge his territory.  A couple of years ago, one was perfuming the neighborhood a couple of times a week, and the elderly folks on the hill concurred that he needed to go.  Nanny saw him walking across the bottom one day, and grabbed a shotgun from behind the back door, thrust it into The Husband's hands, and told him to shoot it.  But he missed, and missed a couple more times, and every time he'd fire, so would the skunk.  The sun was just right, and I could see a puff of mist behind the skunk every time the gun went off.  It looked plumb involuntary, like a sneeze or a grunt.

Anyway....

To my left, outside the porch, there is an upside-down Power Wheels Jeep and an upside-down pink Power Wheels Escalade.  I turned them over last fall so that they would not get filled up with leaves and such.  Now, I hear something thumping under one of them.

I hope it's not the skunk.

Kenzie's Quilt - 4/14/18

Greetings.

The macrame project discussed in my previous post remains unfinished.  (Act surprised.) 

The actual macrame part is finished, but the finishing is not finished.  Here's the deal: 

The instructions suggested un-twisting the long, dangling ends of the cords.  I liked the look, so I pulled a chair up to the project and picked up a cord - one of the short ones, about 6" long.  To my surprise, I discovered that the cotton rope I had used was actually braided, not twisted, over a nylon cord.  I was able to un-braid it with a tiny crochet hook.  As you might imagine, this took a while, and I pondered whether or not I had the staying power to do all the ropes.  I liked the look of the un-braided strings, though, and decided to go for it.  I snipped out the nylon cord and moved to the next braid.  To cut to the chase, this un-braiding process created a myriad of problems.  The longest cords (of which there are many) are LONG; they don't un-braid in a minute, like the short ones do.  The nylon core "stumps" that remain in the knotted part cause problems; some of them slid out on their own initiative, while others stubbornedly refused to budge. 

The project remains half-un-braided, and draped over a chair (with a bunch of other junk) in a spare bedroom.  It can be salvaged, I think, but I am not in the mood to fool with it. 

Besides, I have another project I need to do.

I must make quilts for two granddaughters.

Granddaughter McKenzie's quilt is up next.  I took her to the fabric store and asked her to pick ONE fabric for her quilt.  She picked a bold neon stripe on a black background.  Since then, I have been pondering how to use it.  Inspiration struck Thursday afternoon.  I shopped for complementary fabrics yesterday.  The fabrics have been washed, dried, starched and iron.  Let the sewing begin!