Settling In

It was a welcome day of slow yesterday: slow getting up, slow getting dressed, slow getting around, slow stitching.... You get the idea. We'd planned a grocery shopping trip, but then realized that on a Saturday, the place would be extra busy. We just picked up a few items from the produce section for dinner last night, and decided to get the rest on a week day when there would be fewer customers inside the store. That's the theory anyway...and you'll have to admit, it's a genius way to get out of grocery shopping for a few days. Instead, we headed back to the RV for naps...because every grocery store trip requires a nap to gain closure. 

We hung the bird feeders to the side window of the RV the first night we arrived. Sadly, the seed feeder fell to the ground during the night and broke. Right now it's rubber banded together, and we have a replacement on order. It should arrive on Tuesday. For now, the birds don't seem to mind eating in a literal dive.

Unfortunately, this side of the RV is in shade all day, and the bright white RV of our neighbor is going to render any pictures in silhouette. This bird happens to be a house finch like the ones we saw in Arizona on our Rainbirds trip last year. Here's one from that trip so you can get an idea what it looks like:

We have a plan to move both feeders to the back window when the replacement comes in order to see the birds better. Nevertheless, I did get this photo of an Anna's hummingbird while I was outside. As expected, they found the feeder right away. I'm participating in the 365 Picture Today challenge for now. Yesterday's prompt was "Kindness," and this was my shot:

It was my first chance at slow stitching this trip. I've finished the bottom half of my piece now, and I'll start working on the top half today. It's been slow going since I'm having to limit the time I spend on it.

This being Sunday, I'll be linking up to:

It was nice to get out for a little walk yesterday. It seemed like as good a time as any to try one of the photography challenges from my book. The first challenge was to choose any color, and then just take pictures of that color. The camera was mounted with a macro lens, and so I decided to stick with that lens for the challenge. (I read a challenge once that suggested sticking with the same lens, whatever it might be, and then attempting to use it for everything.) And so the macro lens was a good choice for the first color I saw...these blue rosemary-looking things. I remember these from our visit here last year. The look a lot like rosemary, but I don't think they are. Whatever they are, the bees love them. 

And since blue was the first color I saw, "Blue" was my color choice. Then, I just walked through the park taking pictures of all the blue things I saw. To-wit:

The point of the challenge is to spark creativity, and compose and crop in a way that makes it interesting. These aren't intended to be award-winning images...ha...as if...but instead, to be thought of as photography experimentation. So this blue umbrella caught my eye. 

This next image is the same, but cropped differently. Those folds in the canvas look like hooded figures to me.

Moving on...this blue bike rack...

The blue tile roof of the park office.

These next two images are from the same photo...just cropped differently.

Yipes, stripes!

This is the logo on Mike's electric bike.

And the book suggests putting some of the images in a collage. I can do this with Google Photos, but I don't like this nine-patch arrangement. I'd like to find a collage-maker that will allow me to adjust size and positioning. That will require some dinking around on the computer. 

Eventually, I'll try this again, choosing a different color.

When I got back from my photography outing, I found this lout sitting on our patio. He should get up and do some all-day driving, don't you think?

I put him to work walking the cat. Smitty was so brave. He actually walked around a little bit, maintaining his composure, even when some people walked by. He stayed out for about five minutes, and then wanted back in.

Of course, such courage is always rewarded with treats of valor.

While they were walking, I was busy getting a head start on dinner. We had lasagna and a salad, and then a cherry pie for two for dessert. Yum.

Sadie has become proficient at fashioning little kitty nests for herself out of the many quilts we brought along.

Smitty has claimed the window perches for the time being. Last year, these were in the morning sun, but this year...nothing but cold, cruel, shade.

It takes a woman cat to realize that if one sleeps on the sofa, one can still catch those morning rays.

So we're still catching up on our lazy hours today. I'm going to do some laundry, which is a small job when done in an RV washer/dryer combo. While I'm working at that, I'm going to get busy tracing out the "stitched inchies" piece for 2021. This is Meg Hawkey's stitch-along from Crabapple Hill Studios. I've done this project the past two years...here's my little quilt from 2019:

That one was so much fun, I did last year's project too:

This year's project is intended to be done over stretched canvas. You can see it right here. I'm not at all excited about the stretched canvas, and so I'll probably do something different with mine. I need to get it out and look at it before I'm settled on what to do. I have an idea to cut the stitcheries into individual blocks and make a doll quilt from them. More on that when I make up my mind.

So that's the news from Camp Rain-be-gone. We're enjoying this warmth and sunshine.