I wiped away the weeds & foam. / I fetched my sea-born treasures home... Ralph Waldo Emerson







Tuesday, March 8, 2016

All Is Not Perfect at The Beach (but not all bad either...]




Hi everyone! Remember I told you the weatherman says we'll have 70* temps this week? Beach days? Ha! Not sure what the weather guys are smoking but  43 with a 25 mph wind is not my idea of a balmy spring day. More March, business as usual. Cold and icky.


And then my kitchen flooded. Maybe not exactly a flood, I guess---but water water everywhere, under the sink and cupboard floors, invisible to the naked eye but detected  by the evidence of wet socks. The floor tiles are dry but the grout is soaked. Missed the Flower Show waiting for the emergency plumber, but at least he came on a Sunday afternoon. The dad of a friend of a friend.

The good news is : Look what I found when I emptied out the sink cabinet! I don't look under there often because I am terrified of bugs. So I found a few cute crocks and these cool pitchers. All are chipped from living under the sink, poor things. I think except for the white ironstone, English, c. 1900?, they are TJ Maxx finds.



The white giant pitcher/ ewer has pretty wheat sheaves motifs.


The flag pitcher will be so cute for flags on the 4th of July.


And this is wonderful, it actually may be vintage, I have no idea. It will go great with my blue and orange Wild Geese quilt, for Fall, in a few years.


Then when I was rearranging my jelly cupboard to store the pitchers more carefully, I found this [in my humble opinion] beautiful table runner, never used. Made back when I used my own imagination and love of antique fabrics in my quilt designs, instead of relying on patterns for inspiration.






It had some shell and turquoise bead work which I removed so it can be washed and so Mo won't eat the beads. It is a seashell toile with antique Japanese indigo fabrics.


This past weekend I made my March block for Barbara Brackman's Westering Women. It's called Indian, in a shrug to political correctness. I used fabrics inspired by my small collection of Native American / Indian silver pawn jewelry. Turquoise and coral red.


The bad news is despite every effort the block is not exactly 12 1/2 " square. This is a problem I encountered years ago with a pieced sampler BOM. I can have good points or exact measurements but not both. You can see the 1/2" of the February block showing behind Indian. I suppose I will have to add frames to make the blocks fit or if I feel really patient this week I will try again, and make a new block.


Pokeberry is together except for the stripey borders.





I had allocated January and February to finishing this project, then March and April for finishing Summertime [Spring Break]. Obviously I missed my self imposed deadline and I'm annoyed about that.






Mo has spring fever! But he hasn't run away recently. If the wind is less tomorrow, I plan to take him to the park.



Thanks for listening! I do know--things could be much worse! Every cloud has a silver lining. And so on.

love

lizzy

gone to the beach

PS oh yeah, and my Kindle needs an update or it will no longer function. I'm not terrible with computer-y stuff but this has me stumped! Anyone else? None of the prompts in the fix's directions show up on my Kindle's menu. Son or daughter to the rescue, I hope. [I suppose Amazon wants me to buy a new Kindle, is that what the real story is?]

Here's some ''sunshine'' to brighten our day: