THROUGH MY WINDOWS

BLOOMING ON OUR PATCH         With warmer temps at our house, we have lots of blooming going on. While Roger is busy outside I am busy inside. NOT doing Spring cleaning though. I have been digging into my older pile  of wips (works in progress) in my sewing room. I have several line-hangers to show you. "Hooterville" I did some years ago for my grandchildren. It just didn't get to the blooming stage. Now I am happy to say that it is sandwiched and quilted and in their possession.  The next couple of quilt tops are just about to the stage of flimsies (completed tops). This one just needs a top and bottom border and it will join the flimsy pile. It was just something I sewed together eons ago to use up "bricks" I had stockpiled. This next quilt needs to have some of the border chopped off of it to make it look balanced but I just love those butterflies. To me they are flitting all over the place trying to find some butterfly bushes to l

It's been a rough couple of days here trying to retrieve the disappearing photos from my blog posts. Whew-wee! I found out through internet research that I'm not the only one it's happened to and those hapless individuals were as mystified as myself. 'A glitch in the system' is the best anyone can come up with, but of course they don't use that phrase but a lot of technical mumbo jumbo to say the same thing. The worst part is finding in my albums the original pictures I used. REMEMBERING what I used! I have redone all of April's but know that I didn't always match up the text with the same photos I originally used. In the process of me searching my albums I came across some neat shore scenes and wrote a new post on the spot, so to speak, lol, about roughing it and gale force winds.  Yes, I feel like I have been doing a bit of roughing it here and need a 'good gale' to clear away the frustration of it all.  I have all of the March posts to do yet

The blanket is finished!  I hope Lynsey likes it. She picked out the colors and pattern the last time I saw her way back in January. We meet up tomorrow night to celebrate her birthday at a restaurant.  She's a tall girl and likes to snuggle while watching tv so this should do the job. It's 72 rows with 8 different colors in it. The first two rows are done with just a popcorn stitch straight across. The rest of the blanket was easy peasy. The granny ripple stitch. 

Since the decision to make the 12 hour trip north next month so that I might spend Mother's Day with my parents,  I  have been wondering how cold it's going to be on the Island when I get there. Ordinarily we thaw out from old man winter at least a month head of them down here in the eastern part of PA. However, they had a particularly harsh winter. My "NEST" as I like to call it was almost completely covered in snow! Hard for me to envision because all that goes through my mind is the damage to the roof and other sorts of troubles that much snow and ice could cause to the structure. After all, it's not meant to be an igloo, it's supposed to be traveling the highways and byways by people looking to enjoy their vacations in WARM climates. My mother has kept me updated on the NEST's snow levels in our weekly conversations. It didn't help that the person who plows "them out" ran out of places to put the snow and had to push it up against my NES

My husband, Roger, walks our dog, Mysti, everyday. It has to be pretty awful outside for them to miss their outing around the neighborhood. Mysti is pretty well insulated when she has her winter coat on. She knows that when he finishes feeding the deer they will be on their way. She paces relentlessly around the house and is tall enough to be able to look out most of the Windows. Our Easter bunny is being rained on! Today it's raining and cold. 40 degrees F. She will love it!  Roger also will embrace the opportunity to try and capture what's happening above his head if it should stop raining at all while they are gone.  Roger shares my love of photography with one exception. He loves to take pictures of the sky, exclusively. Clouds fascinate him and he has 100's of pictures of them on his phone. Occasionally I will look up and understand his amazement. Especially when a storm is brewing. Roger does capture some really great pictures of

Man, another breezy cool and damp day. Roger has been busy uncovering the strawberry patch from the leaves we dumped on it last Fall. I have been trying for years to develop a patch of big juicy and sweet Strawberries .  My first attempt was doomed from the getgo. Squirrels! The next year I tried fencing with a net over  the new plants. A big ole groundhog dug his home under   the patch. He was able to picnic on strawberry buds in his own back yard. The next year  I went with hanging  baskets inside the fenced in dog yard. I had to get up very early in the morning to beat the birds to the berries- not a very large yield either in the first year of strawberry growing. They don't start to really produce until the 2nd and 3rd years. So, anyway, out  of the hanging baskets they came and into a raised bed.  A little better luck. I was able to glean about a cereal bowl  of edible berries. Last year I thinned out the overgrowth and planted it in a fenced in area inside  the fenced in y

My family thinks that I am an impulsive person. Lord knows that's not always a good thing. There have been times in my life when I have looked back on situations that I have found myself in and felt like beating myself over the head with my impulsivity. I made a decision today that I will spend Mother's day with my 87 year old mother no matter what happens with my responsibilities here at home. The ocean is calling me and I must go. I have many loves. The love of Roger, my family, and....the ocean. I love to go back where I started from. The house in this picture is owned by Summer people but back in the day a little old lady we called "Aunt Lo" lived there and there was a pier in front of her house that had a building on the end of it. Her late husband's fishing "shop" where he would bring his lobster boat to load up his traps, etc.  Roger and I bought a 27 foot travel trailer (the English would call it a caravan) shortly after

BLOOMING is an interesting word for this time of year-don't you agree? Everywhere we look outside our windows, doors  and on our comings and goings there's new life bursting through, out and up!  I love to go poking around and exclaim to whoever will listen the wonder of it all, the beauty that will soon manifest itself out of the small shoots and closed buds. The colors! Oh, my, the colors that will soon be painted on our Spring canvas. We lost a lot of our dogwoods to bad storms and the hurricane, Sandy, in the recent past. All of these dogwoods were uprooted and destroyed. Our property seemed to take direct hits from the heavy snow and winds and rain while our neighbors suffered minor or no damage at all. We have lost at least 12 full grown magnificent trees. About 5 dogwoods and many of them huge pines that have been around close to a hundred years or more. Thankfully we still have our Magnolia trees. This is a picture from last year.

I am currently in the very beginnings of hooking a new doily pattern. 30 inch diameter so it will take awhile for sure since I have an afghan in the works and 2 partially finished quilts I would like to get to the next stage. I do have a finish to show. It is unblocked but lays pretty flat. The name of the pattern is Seashells. It was taken from a book of a collection of patterns, A YEAR OF DOILIES. I made it using a bright glittery white #10 thread. It is about 18" in diameter. This is not the first time I have worked this pattern and it was a fun one to do. Not hard and does up quickly. It was a miserable day weatherwise.  Cool and rainy. We did celebrate Logan's birthday. It was hard getting him to let me take his picture but I snuck in a couple. Here's one of him playing with Lucy. 10 years old on Sunday. A lazy dog A lazy cat Another lazy cat Blessings to you!

Wow, was there ever  a sig ht so beautiful  when only a month ago we were looking at this? What a difference a mo nth can make. We missed the last 2 east coast storms, had some very mild weather, lots of rain, some sunshine here and there, and voila! The robin's arrived, the juncos are migrating, the grass is greening, the flowers are blooming and the groundhog is awake,  looking for something to eat. As I write this the Cardinals are waking up with their morning's not so melodious warm up. The Robin is singing backup and doing a much better job.  I can hear a phoebe bird repeating it's name over and over. Later.... Today is turning out to be so warm and lovely.  I am stuck in the house because I have lots to do to get ready for a grandson's birthday. We are not eating here though just having cake and gifts here. The whole gang will be meeting at Golden Corral. I hope I spelled that right. As many times as I've been there I should

QUESS WHO CAME TO DINNER? Elijah or Mavis? Our neighbor's pet turkey, that's who. Man, is she a corker!! We heard some gobbling outside while we were eating breakfast. We looked out and this huge turkey was checking out the vehicles in our driveway. She decided Roger's truck looked tasty. She pecked away at it like it was a hard boiled egg. Roger went out to see if he could shoo her away but she just ran around the other side and started to peck on it. Then he took off his hat and waved it in the air. It all happened so fast that by the time I went in the house to get my camera I only managed to snap this picture before she was off and running, a blurry apparition, across the neighbor's field. I took a bunch of pics but they all came out blurry.  It didn't take long for her to disappear. I'm not sure where she lives. Roger knew of her owner and said she escapes over the fence occasionally. Hmmm, she better not get loose during turkey hunting season!