Bear Family

Good morning, my friends. It's the last day of April. All along I've been thinking something along the lines of "When May arrives, then we'll have to get serious about..." And here it is. Time to get serious about our trip. As I'm writing, Mike is downstairs working with a small Canon printer I used when we made our trip around the USA Perimeter in 2017. I'm trying to think of a good comparison for size, but nothing is coming to me. Let's just say it's about the size of the average hardback book.

For that trip, I was participating in "The Sketchbook Project." The project began in 2006 in Atlanta, Georgia, and moved to New York City in 2009. A small organization grew into a worldwide community of more than 70,000 artists. For my part, I registered my book at The Sketchbook Project website. My sketchbook was entitled, "One Word Wonders." It included photographs of natural and man-made wonders that we saw on our trip around the Perimeter of the USA in 2017-18. I chose one word to describe each image, which turned out to be more difficult than you might think. The website and the project are shut down now, but, if you're on Facebook, you can see my sketchbook right here. (If you have any interest in backing up and following that trip as we went, the first post starts right here. Just keep hitting newer post, and you can follow the whole 7 months of it, if you dare.) 

And all of that to say it's kind of an ingenious and nifty device. It'll print a 4 x 6 picture. I was using it to print pictures for my sketchbook, but I could also use it to print picture postcards from my own photos. I purchased a whole roll of "forever" postcard stamps, and I still have a good part of the roll of stamps left. So, last night I told Mike I was going to send more picture postcards on this trip, if for no other reason than to use up those stamps. He reminded me of the printer, and so we got it out this morning to see if it still worked...and if we needed paper...or toner...or anything. We plugged it in, and that baby printed out a test page first try with no problems at all. So, that's another waypoint. The printer is ready, but we're not.

Backing up to yesterday morning, I had some time for slow-stitching before we needed to do our grocery shopping. I'm nearing the end of the most densely-stitched portion.

It's about 2/3 of the way finished.

Now, I've moved my hoop to encompass the last of it. I expect there's about three more days of stitching to finish it off.

When we got home from the grocery store and had everything put away, I ventured out to fill the bird feeders. Smitty kept me company while simultaneously harassing the squirrels. (He's very talented that way.)

I noticed some small flowers appearing on the lithodora. These are tiny flowers...no bigger than a dime. Eventually, this will be a carpet of bright blue.

Walking past the poppy, I checked again for signs of any buds. And lookie there! I found one!

Oooh! And look! Here's another one! We'll probably miss them when they bloom. I'm just happy to see buds for now. 

Speaking of buds, this peony is teasing me. Look at all those buds just waiting to burst open. It's going to warm up today and tomorrow. Maybe the warmer temperatures will put it over the top.

While we were out yesterday, we bought some small tomato cages to prop up the dahlias. I intentionally chose varieties that wouldn't get too tall, but they still get tall enough to require staking. We've learned the hard way, however, that just staking them isn't enough. They grow heavy with foliage, flower, and water, and then fall over, pulling the stake over with them. So for this year's crop, we're trying tomato cages, barely visible in the image below. 

The pots also have wire fencing over the tops to keep the squirrels from digging. There is new growth on all four plants now, but the left-most one and the one third from the left are just barely getting started, and those GD squirrels got into both pots through the small opening that allows for plant growth and dug around anyway. So now I've place some wire baskets there just until the plants can grow a little larger and block their own entrance from the squirrels. (I hope that makes sense.) The baskets are just sitting there. When the plants grow a little taller, I'll remove them.

Okay so with that done, I could spend some time in the sewing room. Sadie was shocked...shocked, I tell you...to see that bears had moved into the sewing room.

I tried to convince her they were harmless, but she fled the room anyway. She wants nothing to do with any bears. So, I continued on my way with this bear family. I gave them ears.

And then snouts, noses, and paws. Cute, huh?

If there's time for sewing today, I'll do all the top-stitching. I'll also be stitching in details for the closed eyelids and the noses. Fusing the applique took the whole of my afternoon yesterday. I expect the top-stitching will take a while too.

But before there's time for anything else, I'm going to do a little planting and weeding. While we were picking out tomato cages, I purchased some thyme (mine is nearly dead), some rosemary (which is an annual in these parts), and some catnip (obvi). With the catnip, I'm going to re-establish the Gracie Memorial Catnip Garden. We also have some wild catnip returning from last year, and so the kitties will be well stocked with nip.

Okay, so enjoy what's left of April. Tomorrow we'll be on the downhill side of our preparations, and I'm afraid the time will begin to move faster and faster from here. Oh yes, and tomorrow is the reveal for the "Circus" quilt. I can't wait to show it.