Friday Morning Walk

Sue and I fully expected to walk in the rain yesterday...there was a 50% chance, after all. I was wearing my rain gear, just in case. We were lucky, however, and the rain never came. To my knowledge, it was dry all day. Here are some things we saw along the way.

The first picture I took was at the far end of our walk, just before turning around. It was our friendly red-winged blackbird. I think he must call this area home because he was perched in the same tree from when I photographed him last time. Or maybe he's just a camera hog, and he knew we were coming.

Just around the bend from where he was perched is our turn-around place. The trail is flooded here, and it only gets worse walking on. We could walk out into the grass to get around this area, but beyond, the trail passes under the road via a tunnel where the flooding is about ankle deep. This flooding is the work of beavers.

It was amusing to see some Canada geese here. Show me a body of water of any size, and I'll show you some Canada geese.

Our walk yesterday took us on a circuitous path, even though we've walked this trail hundreds of times. We've been starting at the opposite end because of the flooding, and we've found that various governmental bodies, both city and state and local parks and rec organizations, have been making a lot of improvements to the trail. It's been closed in places while work progresses.

Yesterday, we encountered a detour sign that took us to a dead end and then refused to point the way to continue. We walked back the way we came and found a route back to the trail. After we turned around and went back toward our starting point, we walked the old familiar way. Who knows why we were detoured because nothing seemed amiss. In any case, we discovered this new playground constructed from fallen trees and stumps.

The leafless trees are revealing lots of birds' nests. Here's just one we passed by.

Also...this cat.

And this bicycle shaped bike rack. I was thinking it might be possible to free motion quilt this shape on the right quilt. Connect the shapes with a little loop-de-loop (technical quilting term), and you've got yourself a bike-themed design.

As we neared the starting point, we spotted the fattest squirrel I've ever seen.

Hey! Who're you calling fat?!?

Below him, Mr. and Mrs. Duck out for a morning swim.

When I got home, I iced my knees. Miracle of miracles...it was a two-cats-in-the-lap day.

It's been a busy week, and I was tired when I got home. I didn't do any more on my current quilt, but I did get a start on the Let's RV Cross-stitch. This is what I did before I quit.

I'm realizing there's as much back stitch in this piece as there is cross stitch, and so it's a lot like regular embroidery. But here's something interesting. The red floss is from an old skein that was gifted to me last year. How long has it been since floss was 5 cents per skein? And you can see from the band on the right that is is a 6-strand skein. Aren't they all?

But check this out...

How many strands do you count? I can only think it's a manufacturing defect. I've never seen that before. It makes me wonder if I'll encounter some spot as I work through the skein where one strand ran out as this was being wound. Maybe I'll find it to be six strands as I work my way along.

So I'll get back to my sewing today. It's going to be a badly-needed quiet day at home. I've done no housework all week, and I've assigned myself a couple of tasks. Aside from that, it'll be NBS.