This and That

This morning I spent quite a bit of time hand sewing.  I'm getting close to finishing the larger of the two stitcheries I'm working on for the Gardener's Journal quilt.  Also, I got a fair amount done on the Plain and Simple binding.  After that, I quit to go do my Curves workout and then came home to do some machine sewing.

I fixed the Bad Water block from the Mulligan Stew hobo quilt I started yesterday (lower right corner).  These are the five blocks I have so far.

I want to add some more colors when I pick this up again.  I note that the quilt as pictured in the book has greens and blues in addition to the reds, tans, and golds.  I'm using scraps from my stash for these blocks.

Also, I read some of the reviews on Amazon.com and discovered that some readers have been successful contacting the publisher and gaining an errata sheet for this book.  It wasn't easy because the publisher was bought by another publishing company in 2002.  Still, the copyright on the book is 2010, so I wrote to an email address I found, and we'll just see what happens.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained.  Right?

After that, I started on another NewFO that I've been wanting to start for a while.  April Mae Designs has started a Hello Moon QAL.  Since I was sad about finishing up the fun blocks for the Hello Sun BOM, I was very glad to see this one start up.

Today I sewed together nine strips of gray fabrics from my stash.  These will be used to make the moon appliques.  See that second strip from the right?  I'm thinking the Man in the Moon must have a cat.

And I cut the squares for the backgrounds.  I decided to use this black and gold polka dot.  It sort of reminded me of a starry sky.

That's as far as I got with that one before quitting for the day.  Tomorrow I'll start on the blocks, and I hope to finish the first four.  

Here's what came in the mail yesterday, and I was so happy to receive it.  It's the 12th and final block for the Vintage Miniature Sewing Machines BOM.  I was starting to wonder if I would ever receive this last block.  The last sewing machine is the "Princess".  This block doesn't really tell me what the machine looked like, and I wasn't successful in finding an image of it online.  Maybe one of you will have better luck.  

In any case, I'll start on this one when I finish the stitcheries for the Gardner's Journal quilt.

Then today, these came!

Now you know when I start gathering up tour books it can only mean one thing:  there is an RV trip in our future.  Mike came home and announced that his boss said there would be time for him to take a few weeks off this summer.  Mike is a contract engineer, and so when he's working on a contract, he generally works until the job is finished.  We weren't expecting to take a vacation this year, but there you go.  And there we go!

So we've decided to make a trek over to Rocky Mountain National Park.  Neither of us has ever been to the national park, and so we're kind of excited about it.  We'll make stops in Stanley Basin, Idaho.  We tried to go there on our last trip, but the smoke from fires kept us away.  

After that we'll head over to Rocky Mountain National Park.  Then, on to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park.  (Mike has been, but I never have.)  Then on to Zion National Park.  We have both been to Zion, but never to do more than drive through.  We have been itching to go back and do some hiking there.  From there, we'll make a trip to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.  We've wanted to do that for a long time as well, but the weather is always too cold, and the North Rim is always closed when we're in the vicinity.  There are some other things I'd like to see in Northern Arizona as well.  

We will have three weeks, and so if we haven't used up all of our time doing those things, we might head over to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in California.  It all depends on how much time we spend at the other locations.  We'll be making this trip right after Labor Day if all goes well.

So that's all the news I have.  Time to get going on dinner if we're going to eat anything tonight, and I think my fuzzy friends will be looking for their dinner too.

How did your Tuesday go?