Good Day Sunshine

It was a gorgeous day yesterday...the first sunny day in a couple of weeks. We're really needing it here in Portland. The weather will hold until the weekend, which is kind of a bummer for working people. These will be our warmest temperatures of the year so far, and the first time we've hit the 70's. Lovely.

Yesterday was my day to run around. First, there were eggs to pick up from our CSA farmers. While there, I could see the farmers out working their field. The weather has been so wet that they're two weeks behind where they were last year at this time. At day's end they posted a picture of the field where they'd been planting onions. It was kind of fun to see them out there on such a beautiful day.

It seemed like a good day to hunt down the supplies I still needed for my class at the end of April. There is a Michael's not too far away from the farm, and so I headed up there. It was in one of those "shopping neighborhoods". Not a strip mall, not a mall, not really a "shopping center", but sort of like a residential area with all its own roads, only everything there is some kind of big box store. 

So, the Michael's only had one thing I needed. What I really needed were different kinds of pens, pencils, and erasers. Michael's had every paint pen known to humanity, but none of the ones that you might use to write with. I asked if there was a Staples or an Office Depot or an Office Max close by. There was...directly across the street. Nice. I needed a good mechanical pencil, and I got some refill leads while I was at it. Also, different colors of highlighters, and a good eraser. Query: Why is it that erasers are sold in packs of three? Hmmmm? How many Pink Pearls can a person go through in a single lifetime? And since there was a Ross next door, I took the opportunity to purchase some new sheets for the bed.

When I got home, I was pretty wiped out and spent the rest of the afternoon sitting in the chair like a gelatinous blob...emphasis on the gelatinous part. Eventually, I did a little quilting. Mike came home early, and so only a few more lines were added. 

Perhaps some of you with sharp and critical eyes noticed that one of the lines in the center of yesterday's image (below) was too close to its neighbor. 

My eyes noticed it too, and I was going to leave it. This isn't a showpiece, and so I wasn't gonna get all weird, nervous, and thirsty about it. Then, when I returned to the quilt, it really started to bug me. Because the lines are broken up by the cats, I've been stitching around the cats and continuing the lines on the other side. That means that I'm not doing them one line after another, but in a this-one-here, that-one-there fashion. As it turns out, this is a mistake because when they meet up in the middle, the spacing isn't always quite right. Anyway...I ended up taking that one out and splitting the difference. It looks better to my eye now. You'd probably have to measure with a ruler to see that they aren't precisely spaced. Just so you know, that's a good way to get your hands smacked into next week. 

After Mike got home, we ended up spending the rest of the daylight hours outside with the kitties. Although the fresh catnip has been growing for about a month, Smitty only seemed to notice it yesterday and spent a good 20 minutes or so chowing down before commencing to roll in it.

And Maggie is such a fan of catnip, we kept trying to coax her over to the catnip garden. Nothing doing. She's still in hidey hole mode, moving from one bush to another. She's getting better, however. We're not comfortable letting her out unattended because she hasn't demonstrated that she knows how to use the kitty door yet. Until she can do that, she requires a catsitter.

While we were out, I took a little stroll around. We're loving seeing the heather alive with honeybees.

The clematis is covered with buds now. With warm weather heading our way, I'm hopeful it will be in bloom before the weekend is up.

We bought this lilac from some people in a parking lot on Mother's Day a few years back. It finally seems to be established, and I'm looking for it to put on quite a show soon.

And lookie there...white tulips. 

White is the only flavor I can grow because white is the only flavor the deer won't eat.

Speaking of tulips. The Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival is going on in Woodburn right now. Tomorrow, I'm heading down there to take some pictures. Here are a few I took at the festival several years ago.

It's always fun to walk through fields and fields of tulips, and it'll be a good way to accumulate my 10k steps for the day.

This morning, I finished stitching the "star quilt" on the Written in Thread piece. 

And that meant I could move my hoop to stitch the last of it. This is where I'll pick it up tomorrow. There should be enough time before leaving for the tulip festival to finish this off.

Then I'll just have this little piece to do.

So this morning I'm going to spend a little more time quilting the Mom Cats, and then I'm going to get outside and do some weeding and yard clean-up. Let me tell you, it desperately needs it.