Don't Be Fooled

Good morning, my friends, and welcome to April Fool's Day. Be very careful today, my friends. There are pranksters around every corner. I, myself, am guarding against any pranksters at the grocery store who will try to make me believe grocery prices have come down. Yeah, and eggs are 10 cents a piece. And I didn't just fall off the turnip truck, so there's that. Okay then. Having established all of that, it's probably safe to go grocery shopping. I'm no fool. (Looks over her shoulder to see if anyone is laughing and pointing.)

It was a typical spring day here yesterday with both rain and sunshine. We ended up going out for dinner last night. We can become so reclusive at times that we fear becoming domestically feral. It's good to get out into the world on occasion. My day started by filling the bird feeders. These days, I'm getting out during the rain breaks. While I was out, I noticed more blooming things. I believe this is one of the new ones we planted in 2023. It's known as Emerald Kiss. It doesn't show well in the image below, but it has a slight green tinge to it.

We have lots of the traditional yellows now, and more colors are coming.

The heather has been blooming for some time.

And the lilac is forming flowers.

When I looked at this one a few days ago, I knew it was a hyacinth, but I wasn't sure what kind. Turns out it's a grape hyacinth.

And the flowering plums are in full bloom now.

Back inside, I finished quilting all the blocks for Jericho Walls. When I'd finished all the blocks and setting triangles, I took it off the machine and spread it out on the floor. It's almost impossible to see the quilting in this light.

Here's a little closer look. That green in the lower left was the last block quilted.

I was curious to see how the quilting looked from the back. With this busy backing fabric, it's almost impossible to see the quilting, even standing right next to it.

Okay, so now just the border is left. I quilted an ellipse at the corner and left it needle down here. Probably, I'll end up doing these one side at a time. If I think my wrist can take it, I might get two rows done. We'll all just have to wait until tomorrow to see, although I'll admit that I'll know before you do.

From there, I traced out two more blocks for the Raggedy & Friends quilt. I'll finish the last two of these today, and then I'll be ready to make up a sewing kit to take along when we head for Alaska.

This was Sadie's contribution. She took a nap beside me.

And then I went back to work on the borders for The Story of My Day. It seemed advisable to start sewing together the scraps I'd cut and see how much length I had. As it turns out, I had about three times as much as I needed. I cut the two borders from the full length. The rest will go back into one of my scrap bins. I'll use it in a scrap quilt eventually.

And then I sewed them to the quilt top...

And to the left side. I wish I'd started with the wider border for the bottom and the right. If I'd cut the strips wider from the get-go, I could have trimmed them narrower. Duh. Oh well. I'll start working on those today. I still have lots of scraps.

Heading upstairs, I found Smitty preparing himself for a good sunbath. It's a good time of year to be a cat.

Okay, so we're going to do our grocery shopping today. I'm going to put on my tin foil hat as an extra precaution against pranksters. That wouldn't be weird, right? Y'all be careful out there today.