Rolling Along

What a week!  Last week Tuesday and Wednesday it rained.  And rained.  AND RAINED!!  Somewhere between 11" and 12".  Our little town was flooded.  The water was 5" deep on the lawn.  The water seeped through the windows into the basement.  Not a lot of water, it just trickled in and oozed across parts of the basement floor.  Ours is not a finished basement so it just made a mess.  I was at the camper and had to wait until the water went down enough (many roads were closed) to drive home.  Ken and I did the "great fling".  Ken hauled 35 large black garbage bags outside for garbage pickup.  Nothing of any real value.  A suitcase with very old photos (pre1940) got wet, I was able to spread them out and dry them.  Only a couple photos were lost. 

Much of this section of South Dakota is still flooded.   The James River near Gayville SD has overflowed its banks 7 miles.  South Dakota is flat, there are no places to drain the water.  Many major roads are still closed, a part of I90 has one lane traffic through water.  

My right arm is still giving me lots of pain.  What's a girl to do when she can't sew?  YOU SHOP!!!  I bought a new sewing machine--

Brother RXR3240

Not an expensive machine, I ordered it through Amazon.  I wanted a machine to do decorative stitches. This machine has 130 stitches and it sews a very accurate 1/4" stitch.  Its lightweight, so I can pack it to travel with.  I tried the first 99 stitches so far.  What don't I like?  Its noisy.  I prefer a knee pedal but this is a portable machine so no knee pedal.  The old Singers hum quietly when they run.  Like many things in our lives this is a "throw away" item.  Use it until it quits and if its out of warranty--toss it.  I am hoping to use the decorative stitches to machine bind my donation quilts, hand binding might be something I simply cannot do anymore.  

I wanted to try out the machine with some simple piecing.  I had Uneven 9 patch blocks started using this method--Susies Scraps.  So Wednesday I slowly worked on finishing the last seams (they had been pinned ready to sew for a couple months).

 The book by Lynn Roddy Brown sparked this scrappy project--

The cover photo is my inspiration.  The blocks reverse the dark/light sections.  Set on point it makes a great scrappy quilt. 

Its a beautiful day today, the sun is shining and there's a slight breeze.  Time to enjoy the last days of summer.

~Lori1R in Nebraska~

Design Wall Tuesday and a few pics

Nothing on my design wall but I did visit Lorri2Rs, she made a couple of these blocks while I was there---

They are small blocks--4" finished?  2Rs has a bunch of these blocks--but she probably needs +70 more to make even a small quilt.  She enjoys making them.  I would turn them into quilted coasters!

The potted garden is producing--

The zucchini are happy in a laundry basket pot.  Tomatoes are OK with a tree pot for a home.  Picked a small bucket of tomatoes last night.  Tomato sandwiches will be on the menu.

I had a couple of apples on the counter so I made a crostata--

It was ok, I used a new recipe and it has a bit too much lemon juice and zest for me.  But it was fun to make.

This morning in the Visitor Center we had a bat.  I'm not scared of bats, we use heavy leather gloves to handle them.  He was one cranky bat, I could feel him attempting to bite me.

He's a Little Brown Bat--please read about him here.  I hung him outside on a tree branch, he looks a knot on the branch.  

It a beautiful sunny day in Nebraska, 81F,  I ate my lunch outside.  

~Lori1R in Nebraska~

 

He's a dork!

Don't be fooled by my husband, he is NOT the quiet serious person you think he is!  

~Lori1R in Nebraska~

Catching Up

A lot of life has happened in the last few weeks.  Ken's mother died.  

The last few years were hard for her.  She took care of her husband who had Alzheimers.  After he died she did okay for a while, but gradually her health deteriorated.  She moved from her house to a duplex, to an assisted living, to rehab facility, to nursing home.  Ken's sister Jo says she died of a broken heart, she missed Marvin terribly. She was 85yo and they were married 63 years. 

Ken and I got new phones.  Somehow in all the switching my August photos were lost.  We had taken family pictures after the funeral as everyone was there.  (I hope Jo has some to share with me.)  First I chose a Motorola phone, it was nice but I wanted a better camera.  I switched it out for a Samsung A50.  Here is the first picture we really noticed the difference in the photo quality--

We noticed the detail on the coin and on the tiny bat skull.  Capturing photo details on small shiny objects is hard.  Today we took pictures of a cicada--

Note the detail in the pic, the color was exceptional, we had not noticed how "green" he was until we saw the photo.  (He's on my hand.) Even his eyes were a shade of green!  Next we moved him to his natural habitat--a dead branch--

See how well he blends in?  Then I took a normal picture--

He has almost disappeared!  I only cropped the pictures, no editing of color.  

Mason and Ken had birthdays, Mason turned 11yo and Ken, well, we didn't put candles on his cake because it was a fire hazard!

During all this Ken and I had bad coughs/colds/sinus infections.  Unfortunately I shared mine with Karla.  I'm sorry Karla!  

I'm happy with my garden in pots--

13 big tomatoes on this big plant--its a Brandywine, an heirloom variety.  The flavor is spectacular, not mushy and flavorless.  A tomato should taste like a tomato!

The Fuchsia plant has some exotic beautiful flowers.

This Canna surprised me in the best way, I had forgotten what color I had planted, love the orange/yellow splashy pattern.  These last three photos required no editing for color/light, all I did was crop and add text.  The A50 camera is that good!

Tomorrow I hope to go to Lorri2Rs and sew a little.  Its time for a break, my soul needs feeding!

The weather is absolutely beautiful.  Its hard to stay inside.

~Lori1R in Nebraska~