Every Little Thing in the Desert

Good morning, my friends. It was another quiet day here. My day started as it usually does...with slow-stitching. I took the first stitches on Block 7 for the Snowmen & Reindeer project.

Later, we were incensed to discover that our new neighbors include four cats. And that's not all. They have a woofie too! Well. There goes the neighborhood. To quote The Big Lebowski, "This aggression will not stand, Man."

It's a good thing we're leaving tomorrow. I'm not sure we can take the outrage. Smitty is downright apoplectic, as you can plainly see.

It seemed like a good morning to get outside with my DSLR and macro lens. The desert is fairly uniform here...mostly rocks and creosote bushes. I first walked around to the flowers near the office. These are some I showed a few days ago, although closer up this time.

This is some red lantana.

Some more purple lantana.

African daisies.

This is a red flaming Katy.

My phone tells me this is a pincushion flower, but I don't think that's right.

My phone says this is a flame violet.

Not sure what this is, and it hasn't bloomed yet.

This is a kind of succulent: mesembryanthemum cordifolium if you want to know its snotty botanical name.

The bees liked it.

Here's our friend, the desert sunflower.

This next one is a common stork's-bill. The flowers were tiny.

This is a seed head from a creosote bush.

This next one is called a London rocket. These are growing everywhere...a weed.

Here is a flower bud from a creosote bush.

Outside our RV, I picked up this pine cone.

This is the butt end of the same pine cone.

And this is the top end of the same pine cone.

The pine cones come from the tree with the bark you see below.

Out in the desert, this flat red weed caught my eye.

This is the "bark" of a creosote bush.

This is just some old dried and rotting wood. I just liked the shape of it.

I dearly wanted to get closer to this guy. I took several pictures, just hoping I could get something. My phone tells me this is a common side-blotched lizard.

His skin is so pretty. I found a better image in the public domain.

(Image credit: "Common Side Blotched Lizard" by gtrwndr87 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.)

This is just some weedy grass that caught my eye.

This is my favorite image of the group. This is a White-lined Sphinx Moth. They look like a tiny hummingbird (about half the size), and they flit from flower to flower just like a hummingbird would. I've only seen a sphinx moth one other time when we were in Breckenridge, Colorado, but I wasn't able to get a picture that time.

So that was my photography outing for the day. 

Our trip is winding down. Today is our last day in Pahrump. We're still planning to spend a few days in Death Valley, but from there we'll head for home. I haven't yet worked out our route. We're waiting to see what road conditions are. I've read several times that we're likely to see a superbloom of wildflowers on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada mountains, but a lot of snow was dumped there last week, and so we're watching to see what the road conditions are. If we need to, we can back track to Nevada and go north that way, but we're really hoping we can head up US 395 in California. 

As for today's activities, Mike made waffles for breakfast. That’s lways a good way to start the day. We need to get some fuel. Diesel fuel will be very expensive in Death Valley, and so we want to fill our tank here in Pahrump. We'll also pick up whatever groceries are on our shopping list. Happily, we have enough food to get us through our days in Death Valley. (I might have said "Death Valley Days," but then I'd be dating myself.) 

With all that going on today, packing up, and getting ready to go tomorrow, I'll take tomorrow off from blogging. There was a time when I couldn't blog in Death Valley because there was no wi-fi, nor any cell phone signal. I don't know if any of that has changed since our last visit, but it doesn't matter. Our Starlink system has set us free from the need for either. As long as we have a clear view of the sky, we have internet. And all of that to say that I'll be back to check in with you on Saturday morning. 

Stitching Fast and Slow

Good morning, my friends. It was all sewing all the time yesterday...except for the three loads of laundry I did. Aside from that sewing, and more sewing. I had just one more kit that I brought from home...this "Carrot Top" kit.

It's a free pattern from The Sewing Loft. Okay, well just now I went to link to the free pattern, but it hasn't been free since 2019. You can purchase it right here. I forget when I came by it, but apparently it was sometime before 2019. I probably saw it on Pinterest. It's intended to be a single block for a larger quilt, but I liked it just the way it is.

It was a pretty simple block to sew together. I started by sewing together six strips.

Those were cut into two pieces. Those will make up the edible part of the carrot.

From there, I added some corners to make the carrot shape.

Then, I made four half square triangles. These were trimmed to two inches.

And then, I made two flying geese.

I added a piece to each end of the flying geese. This will be the tippy top of the carrot.

And then I sewed the 2-inch HST's to the rest of the carrot greenery.

Then those two pieces were sewn together to make the top of the carrot.

And then I sewed the tops to the bottoms.

And then, just one more seam to finish it off. There are two sizes for this block. Mine finishes at 12-1/2 inches square. I'm calling this little quilt "Bunny Bait."

When we get home, I'll give it a border and quilt it and make a little table topper or a wall-hanging from it. 

The only machine sewing I have left are some huge zip-lock bags of bonus triangles and cut-off bits, bobs, and orphan blocks.

Possibly, I'll start on these before we leave Pahrump, but probably not. I'm thinking of starting to sew them together as leaders and enders. I've never actually done leaders and enders, but it might be a good way to lay waste to all these pieces. I'm also thinking of instituting the one-hour rule when we get home, and spend an hour each day sewing them together. For now, I sewed together the four that were generated from this Bunny Bait project. Gotta start somewhere, right?

There were some other smaller triangles generated by this project, but if they're less than about two inches, I toss them.

When I had everything packed up again. I went to work on my slow-stitching. I needed to finish the bird house below.

From there, I moved my hoop down and finished the last of it. This is Block 6: Snowman with Mittens.

Here are the six blocks I have for this quilt so far.

So, I started this project on February 3rd. Now half the blocks are stitched. It looks like I'll still be working on them by the time we reach home. We can all breathe a sigh of relief that there will be no stitching emergency.

Okay, so I traced out the next two. Tomorrow is our last day in Pahrump. We'll move on to Death Valley on Friday, and we will not have electricity there. Since I won't be able to use my light wafer there, I decided to trace the next two blocks, and these should keep me busy for the duration of our stay in Death Valley.

Block 7 is "Reindeer behind Tree."

Block 8 is "Smiling Snowmen."

So I'll start with Block 7 this morning, and I'll probably get out for another walk today. Aside from that, I have no plans for the day. It's getting warmer with each passing day. It seems like a good day to take my DSLR out into the desert with a macro lens attached and see what kind of close-ups I can get. It'll give me a good reason to charge my battery too because I expect we're going to see some wildflowers in Death Valley. Certainly, I want a fully-charged battery for that.

There was a pretty sunset last night. Sunsets (and sunrises) are pretty here in Nevada...big, somehow.  The image below was taken from the steps of our RV.

Moving a little to my left, it looked like this:

That's it from me today. Slow-stitching awaits.

More Yard Art

Good morning, my friends. It was another lazy day here at the Traveling Three Cats Ranch. I spent some more time on my embroidery, filling in most of my hoop.

There's just a little left to do at the bottom, but I'll start here with the bird house this morning.

We got out for a walk. On this morning, we walked in one of the neighborhoods to the south of us. I was instantly taken with this tall palm. I love the pattern of their trunks.

This prickly pear cactus almost looks fake, but it is real.

Apparently, it's yellow's time to shine on the wildflower calendar. We're seeing the desert sunflowers in bloom virtually everywhere.

Yesterday I noticed one of the creosote bushes in bloom. The flower is yellow, just as I thought.

Here's a really beautiful Joshua Tree. Look up there at the tippy top and in the middle, and you can see it's getting ready to bloom.

In the fake plants category, this aloe plant. I'm not sure why you'd want a fake one when the real ones grow beautifully here. It's true it doesn't need water, however. It kind of fits with the astroturf lawns we're seeing around.

In this same yard, there were some potted fake flowers.

I love these frogs. Makes me think of our Portland frogs back home, fighting for truth, justice, and the American way

.

Here was another frog. I had to mess with the saturation on this one to make the frog visible.

Also...turtles. Turtles are popular in yard art it seems. This one is made of wood.

What I couldn't see from that angle is that the chicken has a duck friend.

But here are some more turtles.

I thought this was another frog, but it's actually a warty toad.

Here's a saguaro cactus made from horseshoes.

To its right was this life-sized mule.

Walking back, we noticed this skeleton of a saguaro. My grandmother used to pick up the "bones" of cacti in the desert. We had a lamp she'd made from one.

Our shadow selves were hungry for lunch by then, and so we went back to the RV.

The seed-eating birds have discovered our seed feeder. The only one I've seen is a house finch. Having never seen one quite this close-up, I noticed the red stripe on his back between his wings.

I was trying to get a picture of his red breast, but my camera focused on the tree behind.

Here's a better image I found in the public domain. Pretty, huh?

(Image credit: "Roselin familier / House finch" by Eric Bégin is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.)

They'd like to drive Sadie crazy.

After lunch, Smitty's shadow self wanted to go out for a walk, and so my shadow self went out with him.

And wonder of wonders, we found some grass growing in a drainage ditch right here in the Paw-hrump desert.

So we had an early and light dinner of charcuterie and a bottle of wine at the Charleston Peak Winery, here at the RV park. The cheese choices could have been a little more imaginative, but it all tasted good, and we enjoyed it. 

The days get warmer and warmer. I expect it’ll be warm enough today to be out without a jacket. I’ll probably get out for another walk, but I’d also like to get in at least one more day of sewing. It’s early as I’m writing. It’s anybody’s guess what the day will hold.