Odds and Ends...

My china hutch has finally been dusted/polished. No, not the quick, outside type cleaning, but the inside. Everything came out, mirrored back and glass shelved cleaned with glass cleaner, wood with wood cleaner, all items dusted/polished/cleaned as needed and put back inside. Door glass cleaned inside and out. It has needed this for a long time, and is now very sparkly! At least I've done one productive thing today. And this chore should not need to be done for hopefully another year!!

Last night, my hubby and I attended a very nice wedding. The bride was beautiful, and the groom was dashing. Both were warm and cordial to all the guests. We had a great time, and wish them both a wonderful marriage!

Molly update: She still does not like to be touched. Well let me rephrase that... She begs to be loved, "but don't touch me". It is taking us 15 minutes to catch her to go somewhere, and I think that is setting her back a little. We now are leaving her leash on, as it makes it a little easier to catch her. But we will take it off tonight, so she does not get into trouble while we are sleeping! We are watching her pretty closely with the leash on her. She is such a smart dog, but then she would have had to be to survive 5 weeks in the cold. She seems to like to collect things - bubble wrap, the bare floor brush for the vacuum, dad's shoes and socks, Jenny's food bowl as well as her own food bowl, plastic bags... well you get the idea. OH, the best thing, (and the one she did not want to let go of) was she managed to get a meat can out of the recycle bin. Oh, that was a prize. We played tease mom with it for about 5 minutes. Today I took her on a walk, and maybe she will get another walk before the evening. -- Jeff, she rivals KD, maybe even more so!!

Oh, and funny! We can't get our fence installed until June. So we have a temporary fence up so Molly could have a little freedom outside. Today, I was on the other side of the temp fence, doing things in the yard, and Molly was in the fenced area. I went around the house and in the other door. Looking through the window, I could see the fence was really sagging next to the house. Sure enough, I went outside, and Molly was looking at me from the outside of the fence. D***. I quickly went back through the house to head out the other door, but something made me turn around and look back. Molly was now inside the door, give me a "now where are you going" look. Just too funny. And very good to know that she didn't take off. I think she likes it here, she just doesn't feel totally safe with us yet. Yes, we secured the fence back up. Hopefully it will hold her until the real fence is in.

Molly

Just want to share a couple of pictures of Molly. She is making great strides in being a puppy. He is a pic of Molly and Jenny. The two of them were being silly as I came into the house from church. There were moving around so fast that I only got this one good picture of the two of them. Note that Molly's tail is UP! Finally! Every so often she forgets that she is scared of everything thing, and acts like a puppy. They I reach out to pet her, and she shy's away.


Tonight, Molly managed to crawl under the lower rungs of the chair. She really does feel safer when she is under stuff. It was funny tho that her behind was sticking out the other side. Hubby went over and pet her - once in a while we can get a chance to love her.

Oh, and puppy stuff... she picked up the kleenix box and I caught her carrying it across the room. Later I heard a "funny" noise... she had hubby's shoe and was just starting to chew on it. No damage, and it was his old shoes for painting, etc. And a pair of socks were in the same area. And just a little while ago, I caught her trying to pick up the paper scissors off the coffee table. (Not my sewing scissors!) Why these were interesting, I don't know. She is so gentle when she picks things up. I can just look at her and say "NO Molly" in a firm voice, and she stops what she is doing. She always acts so surprised that I catch her. She is really smart, and is learning to "talk" from Jenny.

Introducing Molly!

I'd like to introduce Molly to you. But first you need to know a little about Molly's story. She is currently about 7 months old. When Molly was about 4 month old, she had been abandoned. We know this because she was sighted in various places around town. But no one could catch her. This was in early March. There was still quilt a bit of snow on the ground, and it was below freezing every night and probably in the 40's during the days.

Still Molly survived. People caught sight of her as she ate road kill beside the highways. She is very scared of everything. For the last 5 weeks, she has been living with Lori, a foster parent. Lori tells us for the first two weeks, Molly would stay inside her kennel. Molly had been given toys, and at night Molly would sneak out and gather her toys and put them in her kennel, so that became a game to get Molly to come out. Then they took the top off the kennel so she couldn't hide all the time.

Several people came to see Molly. But no one wanted the puppy who would not come play, and who would run away from them. We saw her picture around town, and thought about her. Then decided we would like to see her. She wouldn't come to see us either. But after an hour, we finally picked her up and held her.

But we have Jenny. Jenny is now 14 years old, and we got her when she was a year old for our son Chris. Jenny has her own issues, the biggest is separation anxiety. We brought Jenny in to see Molly. We were told that Molly growls at the neighbor dog, and Lori was not sure what Molly would do. Jenny sniffed at Molly a little, but was more interested in the house (we were in the kitchen!) Molly seemed to be fine with Jenny, and Jenny was good with Molly. ( I guess because neither one was jumping on the other). So we decided to bring Molly home. So here is Molly:

Yes, this is one of Molly's favorite spots, under the kitchen table, between the chairs. She seems to feel safe there. She will now sometimes let us pet her, but is still very afraid. She does not like outside very well, but does better when it is dark. Last night Steve held her and pet her, trying to make her feel safe. As she sat there, I noticed she was watching the TV. As the weatherman reached his hand out to point to areas on the weather map, Molly would shy away. She really was confused when people walked out the side of the TV and disappeared! She finally gave up on the TV, and went to sleep in Steve's lap.

She had another trauma today as she NEEDED a bath. She now smells good, and got a greenie tooth cleaning bone as a reward for being so good in the tub. (Mom only got half soaked.) She seems to watch Jenny and take cues from her as to what is good and what is not. So far the two dogs have been fine together.

I'll keep you updated on Molly's progress as we go along.


So here is the finished Horse Quilt. The top three water lines were done with a white glittery thread. I also used that thread to outline the horse. The bottom two water lines (one is in the darker blue water) is a verigated blue that is a little glittery. I was very pleased with how this turned out, and so was my secret sister! We had our gift sharing at a resturant, and the tables on either side of us wanted to see the quilt also. I'm glad it turned out so well.

And a final picture of my String X flimsy for my charity quilt group. It is 6 blocks by 6 blocks. For you non-quilters, a flimsy is the quilt top, before it is layered. This is now at church, waiting to be layered next week.

Bits of Progress

I need to make the blocks and sew on one more row to the bottom of this quilt. Then I'm going to call it ready for batting and backing! The reason the last row is not done, is that I will take it to my neighborhood quilt group tomorrow morning (Monday). I want to show them how I add the yellow corners on each block, then how I trim the blocks. One of the other ladies was just given THREE kitchen trash bags FULL of scraps. So we think this will be an appropriate quilt to demo tomorrow. I have enjoyed making this quilt, and think it is really pretty. Just don't look at my seams! They don't always meet correctly, and I really didn't care as I sewed it together.


Then I also made a little progress on my horse quilt. I have permanently set all the fusible, and added the border "frame". next, I will pillowcase it, and then quilt it. I'm going to first try sewing a small sleeve to the back before putting the front and back together. I'll keep the sleeve in the border, as I don't plan to quilt in that area. I'm pretty happy with this too.

But I need to get to bed, so I can think tomorrow at the neighborhood quilt group. Have a great day tomorrow!!

Quilt Progress and Train Ride

I now have all the "horse pieces" fixed down to my background. I took these pictures at night, so I'm showing you both the picture with flash that is very washed out, and the picture without flash that is pretty dark. Now that I added white socks on the horse, I wish I'd chosen darker "water" fabric, but it is what it is. Also on the left side of the picture you can see the wood-grain fabric that I will be using to make the picture frame. I'm thinking I will miter the corners, like a real picture frame.

On this second picture, you can see the socks and the hoofs a little better. In doing my research, I learned that horses with white socks or legs have a light rosy tan color hoofs. And black legs have light grey hoofs. I always thought horses had shiny black hoofs.

Now to show you a picture I snapped from the train ride we had today. The Grand Canyon Railroad was celebrating National Train day with rides on the train pulled by a steam engine. They don't run this steam engine very often anymore, because it is not very eco-friendly. But they have improved matters by switching to reclaimed cooking oil. (It doesn't smell like diesel, but does not smell like french fries either!!)

There were also several N-gauge model trains set up, one group was from Tucson! The kids could even hop on a bicycle that had been converted to generate power to run a "Thomas the Tank" layout.

Garden Report: Sorry, I didn't get any pictures taken today of the garden. But the tomatoes and cabbage are doing pretty good, and the radishes have sprouted. I'm still waiting on the onions and carrot seeds. We are starting to see several weeds popping up too, and are pulling several every day. But I have to be careful, because I don't know what the baby carrots and onions will look like. The neighbors are probably very happy we are finally moving the leftover rock we used to make the sidewalks out of the front yard. Hubby used some of it to make a path from the back patio to the back of the driveway. Well, he is 3/4 the way to the drive way. But there is more rock, so we will be able to finish that path, plus make some others. Plus the sugar snap peas have sprouted in their "little greenhouse" I have inside the house. We need to make a bed for them along the back fence. These will need to be fenced in also.

Oh, one more picture I took several days ago. Below you can see most of the dozen "breast cancer awareness" tulips I planted. But if you look close, just below the rock, and to the right of the rock, you can see two tulip plants that are totally wilted. Actually the one below the rock has a couple good leaves. Where the rock is was also a tulip that wilted. They were fine one day, and totally wilted the next day.

So what happened? Under the rock is the hole I dug, checking that bulb. I dug down, and tada! NO BULB! but just below where the bulb should have been, a vole tunnel. (Voles are like small gophers!!) Yep, they ate my tulip bulbs. So it is all out war. Down the hole went gopher poison. Now, don't get me wrong, I hate killing animals, BUT these little voles are destroying my gardens. My main flower garden in front of the house, that I've had for three years, they have totally tunnelled, and piled dirt on top of plants that should have come back this year. So it is WAR! I'm going to have to save the plants in that garden the voles did not destroy, then totally take the dirt out, line the bed with a wire mesh smaller than the voles, then put the dirt back. What a pain!! If you have any methods of getting rid of voles or gophers, please let me know.

Amazing what you can do when you can't sleep!

OK, to be honest, the multi-colored center sections were already done. But I've cut the two yellows, and made the first 4 rows of six. (yep, there is one block on the fifth row.) Still need to sew the blocks together, but I think it will look pretty nice. This is a charity quilt. I'm using up scraps.


This is a pattern from Bonnie Hunter's site called String-X Quilt. You can get the directions here: http://www.quiltville.com/stringx.shtml If you haven't already been to her site, take some time to look around. It's great.

Current quilt - Horse picture...

I want to share one of the current quilts I'm working on. It is a gift for a "secret sister" who loves horses and rides a black horse. I've never seen this horse, but I'm hoping this will look a little bit like the horse she rides.

As you might be able to tell, I have the water reflection and the head bonded to the background. I have the legs just laid out of the fabric. Trying to decide if I like the black and white figured fabric that is in the legs. I had this fabric for the main layer of the head, but the details did not show on it. So not sure what I want to do, but I need to decide soon. I have one week before I need to give this to her. Yep, cutting it close again!!

Any horse people out there? should his hoofs be grey (the pattern has grey hoofs for a tan horse) or should they be black?

Thanks for the thoughts.