First Full Day of Summer

Good morning, my friends, and welcome to Summer...that is, if you're here in the northern hemisphere. Sorry about you southern hemisphere folks. On the other hand, maybe you're happy for some cooler weather. In any case, James Taylor...you take it from here.

Summer's here, I'm for that

I got my rubber sandals, got my straw hat

I got my cold beer, I'm just glad that I'm here

Summer's here, that suits me fine

It may rain today 'cause I don't mind

It's my favorite time of the year and I'm glad that it's here.

We had such a good day yesterday. Allow me to start with my favorite picture from the day. I spent a good part of the day baking a Lemon Meringue Tart for last night's dessert. The guys have really gotten into this little mini blow torch thing, and so I let them use it to toast the meringue.

Backing up to earlier in the day, Mike was served his favorite Eggs Benedict for breakfast. It's a nice way to start a celebratory day.

By then, I'd already started some steaks marinating for dinner, and I'd made a crust for the Lemon Meringue Tart. It needed to go into the freezer for 30 minutes before I could bake it. Then...Eggs Benedict. And then, finally, I could sit with my feet up and do a little slow stitching. 

I'm making progress. The flowers will take some time, but it probably isn't too soon to start thinking about the next one.

The next one will be Block 8 for Le Jardin. These are the blocks I have for this quilt so far.

Matthew and Mike were busy talking about AI thing...I'll say more in a minute. I interrupted them for the toasting of the meringue.

Looks pretty good, huh?

The only thing left for me to do dinner-wise was to bake some potatoes and chop up some chives. That gave me some time to get back to my quilting. Using the variegated blue thread...

I quilted Winter's block: this Nordic Star. I just gave it some swirly stuff.

From there, I switched to this variegated orangey-brown thread. Such a pretty thread. (Thank you, Ila.)

Autumn's block is this Maple Leaf. I just quilted some veins into the leaf for this.

Finishing up the pieced blocks, I chose this hot pink for Spring's tulip block.

And then I just filled with some wavy lines. And when you're just a sort of intermediate quilter, as I am, wavy lines are almost foolproof. ("Fool." That would be me.)

And that brought me to my final thread change for this quilt. The remaining sunflower fabric will be quilted following the spiky petals of the sunflower design. It's almost impossible to see the quilting front or back, which is just fine by me. I quilted one of these "spacer" panels, and then left it needle down at the next one. There are four of these...three to go...and then the outer border. When that's finished, it'll be ready for binding. 

Probably I won't finish it today. Remember that my wrists demand just one hour of quilting at a time, and I think it will take longer than that. Tomorrow seems more likely.

And since I hadn't been outside all day, I took a little walk around. The only thing new I noticed is that flowers are forming on the echinacea. The bees love it when these bloom.

After filling the birdfeeders, I spent some time top-stitching The Yoder Sisters. Again, I'm starting with black thread since there is more black on these ladies than anything else. I'll stitch all their black aprons, hats, and boots before switching to other colors. Hard to see here, but I had all her black sections top-stitched when I took this picture.

Matthew and Smitty joined me for a while.

With Matthew in the house, Sadie spent most of her day hiding out in her clubhouse. She visited briefly, but kept eyeing the door to the sewing room nervously.

It was getting to be time to start the potatoes by then. I got a start on the green girl's apron, and then left it needle down. I'll pick it up there this afternoon.

From there, we enjoyed our steaks and baked potatoes. It was a truly enjoyable day, and I was happy Matthew came up to spend the day with his dad. On one of our walks, Matthew was discussing how difficult it is to buy gifts or anything for parents, and especially for days like Mother's Day and Father's Day. I told him then that we don't want gifts. What we really want is time with him, and he took it to heart. After dinner, we enjoyed that Lemon Meringue Tart. Matthew gave me those pretty raspberry dessert plates for Christmas one year.

Erik and Mae are off on a camping trip, but they sent us a photo of the egg and pancake breakfast they made on the Blackstone grill with a Happy Father's Day message. They're having fun with their new van.

So, let me just say a little here about this whole AI lesson Matthew and Mike were embarking on. Most people are familiar with the AI generated images appearing everywhere on social media. Our family is in agreement that AI shouldn't be used to create art. Just our opinion...no agreement required. Art should be created by nature and people. In any case, AI has more capability than just that. And rather than go off on some long-winded explanation, a practical application for Mike would be to ask it to create "models" that he can print on his 3D printer. It will be able to do anything he could do with his brain a lot easier and faster than he can do it. For fun and learning though, this is what they did yesterday. (And Mike, who is not easily impressed, was blown away by its capabilities.)

First, Mike asked it to make a 2001 Corvette. It's first attempt was kind of a failure, but when he gave it instructions in a different way, it came up with this:

Okay, so not too impressive. What impressed him was that it used the photographs provided, turning them over and over, in order to pick up details before it created the image you see above.

Hours later, they were having more fun with it. They asked it to create the image below by telling it to "create a picture of a duck, very scary looking, but soft and cuddly, on the moon, and something interesting is doing to happen." Here's what it created:

Finally, he showed me the image below last night. For this one, he told it to "create an image of a 2001 Corvette convertible, flying, with Oregon license plate with the letters SO YELO." (That's his license plate.)

Okay, so that was our Father's Day...very enjoyable. 

And what could be better than following a good day with the first full day of summer. I have in mind to get out and hoe the garden this morning. We're expecting hot weather for the next couple of days. Possibly I'll put it off for a day or two. It didn't seem too bad when I was out yesterday. As I'm writing this, I'm thinking it depends on how much energy I have for that. 

Happily, the next couple of days are free of most obligations...no housekeeping...no grocery shopping...no nothing. I should be able to get in some good sewing time. I have as goals to get the Seasons quilt to binding stage. Also, I'd like to finish the top-stitching on the Yoder Sisters. I've selected a back for it, and I'll be readying it for quilting down the road. 

That will bring me back to the "Small Quilts for Quilting" section of my white board. Next up will be to quilt the Hawksbill Honu quilt.

The quilting should be kept to a minimum for this, I think. I'll probably quilt some reeds using a matching blue thread, and maybe some bubbles around the turtle...just a little bit. And then I'll do something in the border. I haven't decided yet. 

Right now, I'm off to do some slow-stitching. The rest of the day will happen as it happens. It's nice to feel free of obligations after the busy past couple of weeks. The weather is lovely here today. I hope you're getting some nice weather for this first day of summer too.