This Time

I haven't really been posting much these days because not much has been going on. Oh! I guess I am sewing. I'm putting together a couple of quilts, one using the Sunbonnet Sue blocks I made more than a year ago, one adding to the hexies quilt I started almost three years ago. My old Janome has been acting up (something with the tension that's going to require maintenance from a professional) so I pulled out the old Kenmore my mother gave me and I've been using that. It's way older than my Janome, but it has way more bells and whistles on it. It's got a touch screen for adjusting stitch height and width and way more stitch options (around 100 versus my Janome's 14). It's got an automatic needle down function and a locking stitch button and a needle threader (which I don't need just yet, but...). Anyway, I'm only using the straight stitch right now. Basic.

Here are some recent photos:

Dave took this photo of a fruit beetle on our patio.

This guy showed up to the party after Dave put a not great watermelon out for the birds and insects. Charles Darwin was quite fond of beetles and once told of being out beetle collecting. He picked up a beetle in one hand, then immediately saw another he wanted, so he picked that one up in his other hand. As soon as he did, he saw a third beetle he really wanted, so he popped the first beetle in his mouth. The beetle in his mouth apparently was able to release some noxious protective substance and it did so, at which point, Darwin spit it out and dropped the other beetles, losing all three. There's a good lesson what happens when one gets greedy, no?

This is not a beetle, this is a bumble bee that took shelter during a rainstorm on the bottom of a leaf on our bolted basil plants. It barely fit under the leaf, but I guess that was protection enough. I couldn't get a closer pic without getting wet and I have at least as much sense as a bumblebee.

This is the view from our front door of the sky during some of our recent cloudy, rainy days. I didn't really capture the drama of the sky and the mountains hidden behind the clouds that day but I tried. Anyway, it's perfectly clear today.

This is a photo of Gray Kitty who has discovered his way to the top of my new cutting table for the first time that afternoon. It's funny, he wouldn't get up on my sewing desk or on the ironing board, but something about the cutting table draws him in (I think it's because he can see out the window easily?) and I found him sleeping up there. He won't get onto the table while I'm watching even though I've since made it perfectly clear that he's welcome by putting a folded quilt for him to sleep on (he likes that) and giving him lots of pets up there when he wants them.

I think every cat owner knows that everything they own really belongs to the cat. Cats are not dogs. They take possession of things very quickly and it can't be trained out of them really. Dogs, you can train to stay off the furniture (while you're home and watching at least), but cats, no, not really. You can scare them or, like some awful people do, have them declawed, but at that point, why have a cat? (Really, those people don't deserve pets at all in my opinion.) The willful independence and sense of entitlement is one of the big reasons I love cats. 

 

Anyway, what else is going on? I had a final visit to the ENT today with a big soy latte after as a reward for adulting.  I binge watched a mini-series on Amazon Prime that my mother recommended called Wilderness. (It was good background while I was sewing.) We had a thunder and rainstorm yesterday, late, though both my mom and friend Grace sent photos of the aftermath of a hailstorm. (They live within a few miles of each other.) We did not get hail, but the thunder was enough to scare Chance, so I let him come in and sit on the rug while I was sewing, poor dog.

Okay, I've dawdled enough. Time to get back to sewing.