Quilted Kittens

Good morning, my friends. It was my monthly pedicure day, and so there wasn't a lot of time left in the day for sewing. Still, I managed to finish up the quilting on the Kittens, and I had about 45 minutes to spend on the Lemurs...a good day, all in all. Starting with the Kittens, just the outer border remained.

It’s ready for binding now, but I haven’t cut any binding strips. I’m thinking I’ll use a dark brown…or some other dark color. Depends on what’s in my stash when I go looking. And, honestly, I can’t do this as long as I’m working on the lemurs. All my work space is devoted to them right now, and I don’t want to clean it all up just to get it all out again. 

Here’s a peek at the back, although it’s hard to see anything here.

After lunch, I had just enough time to spend on the lemurs. Smitty helped me with that.

Each time I return to them, I spend a little time making adjustments here and there. When I reached the end of my time, I had it this far.

Here’s the original image for comparison. I’m ready to start moving more to the left now. I’ll start with the largest piece…the body of the lemur at the bottom middle.

From there, I rushed off to my pedicure. The salon I’m going to is a part of a rather upscale hotel in our local area. The salon is like any other salon. I don’t know much about the hotel, except to say that their grounds are stunningly beautiful. It’s like a public garden. Even if you aren’t using any part of the hotel, it’s worth visiting the place just to stroll around and look at the beautiful landscaping. 

Getting out of my car, I was parked right in front of this. My phone tells me this is crepe myrtle.

Everything I’m showing you here was seen just in the 50 yards or so that I walked from the parking lot to the door of the hotel. These are roses, obviously.

My phone tells me this is panicled hydrangea. They have a lot of different varieties of hydrangeas that I haven’t seen anywhere else.

These are rose hips.

These were some potted flowers near the entrance.

My phone tells me this is globe hydrangea. These clusters were about the size of a volleyball.

So I got my pedicure and headed for home. There might have been time to work on the lemurs some more, but I decided it was okay to take a break from them for the rest of the afternoon. 

So, lemme show you Mike’s latest 3D design. Remember the new camera I bought last month? We’re getting along really well, and I’m happy with the camera. When I purchased it, I worried I’d be unhappy with the larger size. As it turns out, that’s all fine. Most of the time, I’m just using it around home. If we’re doing sight-seeing, I can add a neck strap and wear it around my neck. The only thing I don't like about this camera is that it requires a lens cap. I had the lens cap attached with the provided tether, but it kept hanging down in the frame of my pictures, and generally making a nuisance of itself. When I told that to Mike, he came up with an idea.

He designed and used his 3-D printer to make this new-fangled lens cap that attaches directly to the lens. It has a hinge that opens like a door. Cool! Perfect! He's been working at this and thinking about it for several days. He's still going to give it a little latch on the side opposite the hinge so that it can't come open accidentally.

Okay, so it’s going to be a mostly sewing day. I have one chore on my list of to-do’s. Yesterday we talked about taking our boat out on the Willamette River for a dinner cruise. It’s sitting in the driveway, hitched to the truck in preparation. I have some leftover chicken salad. I can make us a couple of sandwiches, and we can take a leftover tomato salad from a few days ago. It’ll be just the first time we’ve taken our boat out this summer. 

This morning, we’re reading about poor air quality “hazardous for sensitive people.” That would include people with asthma…in other words, it includes me. The sky has been gray and overcast as I’ve been writing, but the sun is starting to poke through. There’s an orange cast to the sky. So, we may decide not to go. Either way, there will be plenty of time for sewing. 

That’s all I know for now, and so  I’ll leave you to your day. Make it a good one, okay?