AN INTERESTING SHRUB

Before The Dear One had his Garden Centre, I would have called this a "bush" but now that I know it's a "shrub" it's kind of hard to say "bush."  Leave that for "W".

I call it a "Purple Flower Bush" oops, Shrub.  It has a botanical name, but I don't know what that is.  It's very pretty.  The picture doesn't really do it justice.  And very interesting: Every day it is covered with these pretty purple flowers.  At night it drops them and the next day it produces a whole new crop.  How does it do that?

JUST A LITTLE QUICK PROJECT

Last Saturday my friend Marcy and I were in the sewing room when a realtor we know stopped by and delivered several (lots and lots) of boxes and very large garbage bags full of materials.  She had listed a home here in the village of a woman who had entered a care facility.  I don't know how that woman stored all of this fabric.  Marcy and I called Joan and she came over to the sewing room.  The three of us worked all morning sorting the fabrics.  Quite a few were good for quilting, but there were also a lot that we sent on to Goodwill.  By a lot I mean that Joan and John's car was STUFFED with boxes and bags of fabric.

Thursday is our regular quilting day.  When I arrived at the sewing room Joan was busy sorting another fabric donation.  She and I worked until 12:30 that day, sorting and putting away more and more and more fabric.   From this donation we are sending 6 large cardboard boxes and 4 large garbage bags of fabric to Goodwill. There were also some half finished projects.  I took two of those home with me and last night I was going to finish one of them.

This is fabric that is already quilted.  I just needed to apply some binding.  That didn't go without problems, though.  There was some deep pink double fold binding with the project and I began applying that to the edge.  It was going well.  This wasn't going to take much time at all!  And then, slightly past half-way the binding ran out.  Awww!  I went to the sewing room in the Community Center to see if there was any more of that binding in the last bag of "give away."  No luck.  But I did find some other, slightly light pink binding and took that home with me.

This afternoon I ripped off the deep pink binding--yes, literally ripped it off.  Then I applied the new binding, finishing it nicely with a bias seam to join the ends.  Of course, if you do a 45º angle seam on bias binding, you are no longer on the bias but on the straight grain.  It turned out well, I thought.  It will be useful to someone.

When I put the finished quilt back in the bag it came in I found an unopened package of the deep pink binding.  Oops!  Could have finished it last night if I realized there was more of the binding in the bag.

Then I started on the second second-hand project.  This was a little more complicated.  It was a 40" x 42" quilt top of strips, serged together.  I pressed all the seams carefully in one direction.  There was a piece of backing just the right size.  I went to the Sewing Room and picked up a piece of left-over batting that just fit this project.  But there was no binding for this project, so I finished it another way:  I spray basted the batting to the backing and then laid the quilt top on the backing, right sides together.  I pinned it carefully all around the edges to keep it from shifting and sewed all but about 12" on one side, turned the quilt right side out and stitched the 12" shut by hand.

This needs to be machine quilted, but I don't have the right thread here.  I'll have to go back to the sewing room tomorrow and see what thread there is for machine quilting it.  I'll post a picture of that quilt as soon as it's finished.

So, two quick easy finishes in just a few days.  These will go to the "Love House"--a local shelter for abused and abandoned children.

TWO FINISHES

Last Friday at Art Group I finished the basket of fruit picture.  I guess I'm satisfied with it. It was a "lesson" picture in a workbook.  I did change it just a bit, especially in that I gave it a background.  The original was also very light.

And just now I completed and hung up in the second bedroom the quilt I started the middle of August when DD#2 and the two wonderful grandkids left after a week's visit.

That was originally a paper piecing pattern for a placemat.  I drafted it up a whole lot and then took fabrics from my stash to create it.  The red is a bought fabric.  There just wasn't an appropriate fabric in the stash.  I'm calling it "Autumn" because of the colours and because the original pattern is called "Tessellated Leaves."  I had intended the background to gradually become darker from upper left to lower right, but one of the fabrics does not fall in the right order for that.  It was discovered too late to remedy, so I decided to just accept the way it is.

When I made it I had no idea where it would end up, but after buying the new (second-hand but in prime condition) sofa bed I realized that "Autumn" should grace the wall above the sofa.  All in all, I'm pretty happy with it.

I have another finished painting from last year that needs to be framed and hung in that room also.  I do love handmade things!

WHAT'S FOR DINNER?

Well, let's look in the fridge and see what's there.  Hmmm, some lovely Steelhead Trout.  Let's thaw that and use it.  What else?  Oh, here are three yellow zucchini that are getting rather past their best-before.  Let's use them.  Oh, and this bit of left-over broccoli.  What else?

As usual there are some mushrooms, some onions (red this time), red peppers--all the usual.  

First let's mix together 1/4 cup Quinoa and 1/4 cup Basmati rice and get that started.  The last 10 minutes we'll sauté the trout fillets in a little bit of water with some Club House la Grille Vegetable Seasonings.  And the last five minutes we'll heat up a bit of Canola in a large frying pan and quickly stir fry the vegetables.  Sprinkle them with a little garlic powder and some more of the Vegetable Seasonings and top with some sliced green onions.

It turned out to look quite attractive and was positively delicious.

NOT GOING ANYWHERE

We learned something about living in Arizona yesterday.  Something about car batteries and high temperatures that we weren't aware of.

Our church has three services on the weekend,  Saturday evening, 8:30 a.m. Sunday morning and 10:30 a.m. Sunday morning.  Usually Chancel Choir sings at one service on Sunday morning and Celebration Choir sings at the other service.  The first two Sundays of the month it's Chancel Choir's turn to take the 8:30 service and the last two Sundays of the month Chancel takes the 10:30 service.  Of course, Celebration Choir's schedule is the opposite.  If there is a fifth Sunday, one of the choirs takes an extra turn or there is other "special" music.  Because not all our "snowbirds" are back yet, the two choirs are now
combined and yesterday the combined choir took both services.

We arrived at church just before 8 a.m. because the choir reviews its music before the service.  We were ready to leave close to noon, and were one of the last cars in the parking lot.  It was scorching hot there--the temperature was in the high 90's and that meant in the full sun on a paved parking lot, things were really roasting.

I turned the key and heard just that ominous "clicking" sound that means the battery has died.  Oh, oh, what to do?  I went back into the church to find someone, anyone, who could help us.  It turns out that the most knowledgeable person around is the senior pastor, Pastor Steve.  Fortunately he was still there--pastors are generally about the last person to leave the church!

He came over with his car and jump cables and gave us a boost that got the car running.  Thank you so much!!!  I said, "There's a sermon illustration in there!" meaning something about being dead and needing life power from some other source.  Wonder if he'll use that.

That afternoon Jim took the car to Walmart, bought a new battery, had the oil changed and the tires looked at.  They take care of tires free if you have bought them at any Walmart.  And by any, I mean any--U.S. or Canada.  They will rotate and balance them free for the life of the tires.

We were very, very grateful for the boost, and now know that batteries do not last long in a hot climate.  I don't know why, but it is evidently true.  I'm just thankful it happened yesterday when people were around to help and not this morning when I went to practice organ.

SINCE THE LAST TIME

The day after my last post we left for AZ.  It takes us three days, two nights to get here.  And the trip was true to form: it rained in Salt Lake City, not as hard as last year, and actually a little bit north of SLC.  Can't quite figure that out.  Why does it always rain during the hour we are driving through SLC?  Other than that, it was a good trip, and we do enjoy taking the shortcut around Las Vegas.  We actually went through that area Sunday morning, and then heard on the t.v. on Monday about the horrendous shooting there.  How discouraging this whole trend is, more and more of these terrible happenings!

We had decided to replace the sofa bed that came with the condo, which we bought furnished.  None of our guests have actually managed to sleep on it; instead they've hauled the mattress off every night and slept on it on the floor.  I wasn't looking forward to the shopping involved in finding a new, good sofa bed.  

While we were at the pool on Thursday I went to look at the residents' bulletin board where we may post ads for selling or renting condos, vehicles, furniture, etc.  And there was an ad for a sofa bed, in great condition, asking only $125.  I called and went to see it. It was in absolutely new condition, offered by someone who had bought a home here and didn't want the sofa bed.  So I was thrilled!  No shopping, no hassle and about 10% of the new price.  It's due to be delivered here anytime.  He said late morning, but I know how that goes when you're trying to get a lot of things accomplished.

In the meantime Jim hauled the old sofa bed out onto the patio in preparation for receiving the new one.  Then he had an idea:  why not enjoy the comfort on the patio. 

 Works great for him!  But we are still going to get rid of it.  Maybe the next thing we'll look for is some comfortable patio furniture.  What we have now are two of the wicker chairs that I bought two years ago for $5. each, painted them and made cushions.  But they are not the most comfortable seating and really don't compare with a sofa  --  or, what I'd like to get now is a comfortable love seat and two chairs, or maybe just two nice lounge chairs.  We'll see what turns up.

This past week was busy: three big grocery runs to stock up on everything.  Need a few more things yet.  The condo needed cleaning--dust builds up over the months.  I also had the treat of going to orchestra (Wednesday morning), church choir (Wednesday afternoon), quilting (Thursday morning) and art group (Friday morning).  I finished a "lesson" painting of a basket of fruit--although I might do a little "adjusting" on it yet.

It's on a stand on the kitchen counter.  Jim commented that it was awfully light, but that is the way the lesson was.  Still, I think the lemon in the left front side should have the colour deepend, and the apple? next to it needs to have a little more work done.

We both were very happy to attend the Evangelical Lutheran church that we belong to here this Sunday.  Such good preaching, such a good liturgical service, such wonderful music!  In the evening we went to a candlelight service on the Sun Village patio, to pray for the victims of the summer floods, fires and the shooting in Las Vegas.  It was very touching.  Part of it was the singing of "Let There be Peace on Earth"--words by Saint Francis of Assisi.  It was very touching.