Picture This

There was nothing more accomplished on the quilting front yesterday. It's probably just as well. My broken shoulder has been bothering me, and there is a sore muscle on the other side of my rib cage as well. I can make it hurt worse if I move in a twisting motion. It's the sort of motion I'd make while moving the quilt around on my machine, and so I'm suspicious I've quilted my way to some sore muscles. Quilting: it's blood sport, I'm telling you. Actually, I'm not sure how to account for the sore muscles, but it makes sense. 

It was a good excuse to pick up a couple of wine shipments and combine it with a picture-taking expedition to work out how to use my new camera. It was gray and overcast, and not a great day for taking pictures, but no matter. I don't need good light in order to learn to use the camera. 

We stopped off at the post office first, so that I could mail the Peruvian Sunflowers quilt off to my friend Kathy. While there, I spotted this blooming Oregon grape. It's Oregon's state flower.

After it blooms, it gets purple berries on it. They are inedible...too bitter...although I'm told they can make good jam if one adds enough sugar. I've never tried it.

The first winery was closed, except for curbside pick-ups. Fortunately, someone was there to give us our shipment. They had some nice things blooming. I liked these little mini daffodils. The center is about thimble-sized.

Their azaleas were blooming. Their colors are so soft, it's almost as if they aren't really there, but just an illusion.

Here was a single tulip. At my house, the deer would have eaten it already.

I know the name of these next ones, but it won't come to me. Something makes me think it starts with an "A". I've Googled common flower names with "A," and still can't find it. One of you will know, and then I'll smack my forehead and yell, "OF COURSE!!!" (Maybe I just need to drink more coffee.)

This next one is hellebore, and it gives me a chance to point out something that has always bugged me about my old Nikon camera. The new camera gives me some options for fixing this problem of autofocus focusing on something other than the subject. If you look at the image below, you can see the flower on the left is in sharp focus, while the one on the right is slightly blurred. It's because I'm shooting very close (macro), and the depth of field is very short.

In this next image, you can see that the background is in focus, but the flower is not. That's because the camera decided to autofocus on the background, and not on the flower. With the old camera, I was frustrated by this because the only way to manually focus was too onerous to make it worth the trouble.

The new camera has a "control ring" around its fixed lens. I can assign a job to the control ring, and I've decided to make it a manual focusing ring. So, when I wanted to focus on this grape hyacinth, I could just turn the ring to bring it into focus. YAHOO!!!

If I had a penny for every close-up shot I'd missed because it was out of focus, I'd be a wealthy woman.

Moving on to the next winery, I wanted to test out how well it did with a larger landscape. This is the view from the winery tasting room.

As an aside, I was noticing the bands of color in that image, and thinking how wavy-line piecing could create a pretty art quilt. Maybe sometime I'll try that, but you know how it is: so many quilt ideas, so little time.

They had pansies in their flower boxes.

We had this one at our previous home. We called it "candy tufts."

After picking up our wine shipments, we had lunch at a restaurant we like in McMinnville. Along the way, I snapped this image of the shelter where we got our Sadie. The name of the shelter is "Homeward Bound."

At the restaurant, there were more pansies.

There were blooming shrubs in the parking lot...I think this is laurel.

On the way home, I caught this image of one of the winery barns.

Back home, I took another picture of the flowering plum trees. They are so pretty right now, and they are blooming all over the Pacific Northwest.

Here's one of our yellow daffodils. There are lots more daffodils coming, and a few tulips, assuming the deer don't get to them first.

My little buddy walked around with me while I filled the bird feeders.

I was testing out the zoom function on the camera when I took this picture of a crow under the bird feeders. I was standing in the living room, shooting through the window. It isn't in sharp focus, but it's not bad.

The only sewing I did yesterday was slow-stitching. I filled my hoop again. 

That took me back to the right side of the piece. It's hard to see in the image below, but there's just a clock left to stitch at the top. I'd estimate it's about 3/4 finished now. I expect to finish it off in the next couple of days.

Depending on how my shoulder feels, I might decide to take another day off from quilting. If I do, I have a couple of ideas about what I can do instead: I can trace out the center panel for the Heartland Barns quilt, or I can start sewing together the Blackwork Baskets into a quilt top.

I'm kind of excited about the latter because I have some very pretty fabrics to use with this one. My guess is that it will win out if I have to choose something other than quilting. As for the quilting, I'm still trying to get through a row per day. Since I finished two rows in a single day, I'm still on track with my goal...not that anyone cares.

I like a day like this...plenty of choices, and all of them good ones.