Quiet Time

Hi! This has been a delightfully quiet week here at the beach. Much as I love the summer busy-ness and friends and family galore, I also relish some quiet time alone.

Do you ever feel that way?

These photos were taken on a quiet late afternoon walk. It's been an oddly cool summer and even though the afternoons are often hot, in the eighties, by early evening the breeze has cooled things down.

The beach is filled with the returning gulls and their big dark ugly babies. Mosy of these gulls are herring gulls.

My beach is professionally cleaned by our town, mornings and evenings. But a midday high tide can leave a trail of not-pretty flotsam along the tideline. The lines of black are tiny empty mussel shells. They'll be gone the next day, only to return next summer as they hatch or whatever they do out there.

Gully wannabee. He came up to my chair and WAH-Wah!!, begged.

I think this is the real Gully in the background.

Maybe this is his or her bad baby?
A little Gully-in-training?

Unknown shellseekers, below. I saved this photo, thinking it would make a wonderful painting. I love the lack of color, just shades of khaki and grey---maybe just a bright spot of color, the boy's board shorts, or a sandbucket?

Back home, on the deck, I've been eking out a half hour each evening to sew on my Eagle block. Does it look less like a goose now? I redrew the eagle's head. [the stars inside the wreath are not as white as shown in the photo. But I may have to go back with tea and a paintbrush and darken it up.]

I am teaching Mo to sit beside me in his own chair!

He has a special Kong thing so he can hold his chew sticks by himself.

Unfortunately so far he thinks the game is Throw the chewy down for mom to retrieve. Stitch, stitch, pick up the chewy. Stitch, stitch. And repeat.

The eagle is about 1/2 done. Then there are the stars to be done this month. I think I will do them with a whipstitch, my compromise between too hard needle turn [too slow, I mean] and machine sewing.

I prewashed the corner triangles' reds the other day, and rinsed them in Retayne. I'm glad I did because they ran a lot even with the Retayne. I rinsed them until they showed clear rinse water. I hope that fixed the red dye! (Or disaster looms!?).

Have a great weekend! Here's hoping my blog friend Hunter weathers the hurricanes okay, in Maui!

love

lizzy

gone to the beach......