Rabbit War!

Last year the rabbits did virtually no harm except to one vine out front, this year they have chosen to eat everything especially with seasonings on top.  Lillies with peppers, all my dill plants!  I am now considering some kind of chicken wire boxes over the garden area most certainly.  We have had rain rain rain and more rain the last while, I was out in the flower beds today trying to accomplish something, I left the garden area 4 inches higher due to the lovely gumbo mud that we are blessed with.  I have dumped in more bags of sand and peat moss but it is still not great.  I decided to then prune the trees that required some cutting back, it was going quite well until the long pole popped back and snapped me in the left cheek leaving a nice little cut, thanks, I was about finished with that job anyways!
The only thing I can say is that after planting the garden all this rain is certainly good to get things germinating well.  More rain is in the forecast again tomorrow, fine because I am going into work anyways for a break!
The sun is supposed to make an appearance sometime on Thursday, it will probably bring out all the mosquitoes lying in wait in the grasses.  Nice!  hello summer.

does it get any busier?

OK, so it has been over a month since I last made any entries, probably due to the fact that I have been outside slaving away, digging and digging. . . .I have some weeds that were left to run wild when we moved here, so for the last 2 summers (the first summer I wanted to see what came up that was worth keeping, turned out nothing).  Weeds that multiply underground and look like parsnips, if u leave even a hair of a root it is like blowing a fluffy dandelion into your garden.  I am very popular with the robins though, they always hang around when I'm out there with my pitch fork!!
I am happy to say that almost all  of the perennials that I planted last summer have made another appearance!  I was very concerned, every day out there looking, poking and prodding  (all my retirement gift money is in those beds).
Last year after having my 4 raised garden beds made and filled with earth, I rushed my planting before the May long weekend and lost plants to frost, this year I waited, and I still have had to cover the plants twice already!!

So, lets get back to the perennials, the lilies have for some reason become a favorite food this year for the rabbits, I even got the cayenne pepper out, I may have some Mexican rabbits because they just gobbled them down!

I had my little helper here the other day, oh what fun did we have in the garden!  "Gettin dirty with Grandma 2012" was the caption, not sure why it didn't come through.  The time in the garden ended up with flinging of dirt after the chant 1-2-3 you're it!!  it was bath time after that!

So, this is why I still haven't finished my quilt.  

The get together for the summer is June 11th and the top has to be completed so I'd better get my act together sooner than later.

The days are getting much longer and that sun streams through our bedroom window, very early and because I still haven't made any darker curtains for that room, we are up with the birds.

So many things to do!  I had a good idea using palets for my strawberry plants, they are almost finished and then I can move the entire bed of strawberries to their new location (they have taken up an entire 4X8 bed. So I will post a pic of how that turned out as soon as I get the back on them!

Days fly by and it has been quite cold this past week, as well the mosquitoes have made an appearance in the grass.  We were spoiled by a virtually mosquito free summer last year so I am sure we are going to be annoyed this year.  

Well, that's it for now.  Cheers and carry on gardening or quilting or whatever your passions take you, have fun.

The Nickle Challenge (did I mention that I liked to quilt?)

The Nickel Challenge Quilt

These are some of the prints I chose as my part of the challenge.

OK, not like I have enough to do, but I thought I'd like to take part in the Assiniboine Quilters Guild, nickel challenge quilt, you know the kind where you end up with 144 pieces of 5" squares and are to come up with a nice quilt.  The top has to be completed June and completely quilted in Dec (lots of time).  The members who jumped on it right away brought in their beautiful quilts amazingly soon after we started.  Well, there were mostly quilts done with triangles, of course I wanted something different!

Here is a pic of some of the squares we collected together.  I thought about it for some time, thinking that maybe a Amish type of quilt, simple with a black background to pop out the colours.  One thing led to another and before I knew it, I had a plan.  I went through my stash and added the number of squares that I thought would give me the required size for the challenge.  I cut all of the squares in half, then I decided that I wanted to have some play with the fabric, something to give it life.  So I ironed each piece in half and sewed a 1/4inch pleat down the centre, I did this which was fun, I had materials hanging in the bathroom, on hangers

Then I started laying everything out on the floor, (duplicates together).

I started putting out the squares in a graduated color scheme, something I didn't want to play with because I know nothing about it, however I just went with what was pleasing to my eye.  Because I have duplicate squares, my plan was to reflect them in the other half of the quilt.  Above is half of the quilt.

This is how it looks layed out.  I think it has a nice flow, I just reversed the rows placing the first column upside down on the far side and continued to the middle.  I wasn't sure how it was going to look because the middle rows would be so close, but I like it!!

Now getting back to the fabric manipulation, I thought I would run a multicoloured metallic  thread up and down each row to create a wave effect.  So I started doing that.

It's hard to see but each row has a wave to it!

I am now in the process of joining each row together, starting with the two middle rows as the wave peaks there into a larger wave.  I expect I will just border with a nice black.

I will post a pic of the completed top soon (at least of the wave action part) as I want to get this completed to I can get back to the other projects I haven't completed.

Ahead of my time?

For years people have poked fun at me and my repurposing issues, especially around my jar collection.  I always keep and reuse them for all kinds of things, now that Pintrest is here I am amazed that it is now "cool" to do so!!  They have  repurposed jars into almost everything, of course I probably got this from my Grandfather who was also "ahead of his time" with all his nuts and bolts and screws and stuff all organized in the garage with the lids secured on shelves so all you had to do is look up  and see where the heck a particular item was, hold the jar and twist off.   So, hats off to to my grandfather, who was always waaaay ahead of his time, thanks Grandpa, I love you and miss you lots. xo
And to all of you who poked fun at me, think about it.  Our ancestors repurposed almost everything out of necessity, and now it's not out of necessity that we are doing this but that it is just cool to do so.  We can all do our part in saving the earth, as I said "think green, do green, save the earth".  We can all do our little part, especially when it's just plain "cool".

Back to the Drawing Board.

I still have the original kitchen curtains hanging, for 2 years now I could not pick a colour I wanted to go with, finally I made a decision.  The next ordeal was to actually find the right colour mix, I have been everywhere, called fabric stores, called fabric outlets, nothing.  I went to a sewing store this morning with the hopes of finding the right colour match as the outlet said they deliver a lot of batiks there.  Not so much!  I ended up purchasing the end of a bolt of material on sale, it wasn't exactly what I was looking for but it did include the colour of my tiles.  I was skeptical, and when you feel that way, you should just walk away, got the material home and it looks ghastly.  It is waaaay too dark and not the colour I wanted, so I called the store.  I did not think they would let me return the fabric but as luck would have it, they did make an exception for me as I had purchased the bolt end.  Lucky me, sometimes you catch a break.
Now I'll be on the hunt once again, I should check the bedding, sometimes they have awesome colour patterns, I could just buy a couple flat sheets and go to it!!  Probably would be much more cost effective as well,   Oh well, back to the drawing board!!

Some days are just like that!

Some days are just chaotic.  A couple days ago there was so much miscommunication going on I'm not sure how we got through it in one piece.  It ended with my husband in a pickle.  I asked him if he could put the clothes line back up (one of those round ones), he has a love/hate thing with the clothesline.  He folded it down last winter for easier access to snow removal.  Our granddaughter was sleeping over and we were occupied in the tub with squeals of delight as she squirted me with Myrtle the turtle.  Then we went looking for Grandpa, I finally spied him through the kitchen window with his hand caught in the clothesline.  He said he had been calling and throwing things at the window for some time!  I ran out but everytime I touched anything, it bit down harder on his hand, so I fled to the neighbour (A girls gotta know her limitations!) in my socks through the puddles and muck and rang the doorbell with the frenzy of a 9year old coming to a birthday party.  Our dear neighbour bolted over and saved the day.  An ice pack later and a few glasses of wine with our friends and all was well.  Some days are just like that!

"The Big Girl Bed"

I wanted to buy a versatile bed for my little granddaughter that would take her from her current munchkin size to teen.  I saw this one in the Calgary Ikea in 2 years ago and so when I was there last month visiting my sister, I bought it, not knowing how the heck I was going to get it home as I flew there.  You cannot order it from the catalogue and the Ikea here in Winnipeg is not slated to open till this fall.  To make a long story short, my friend Bev's son brought it back for me!!  We were all so excited to get it set up, at one point my daughter, granddaughter and 2 dogs were sitting in the inside of the frame, lol I should have taken a pic (I always have my camera handy).  We also ran into a problem with the base, in our hurry to get everything in Calgary we grabbed the wrong length wooden slats, so off to the lumber store I went.  This bed extends from the length of a crib mattress to a full length bed.  I now have butterflies and more pillows decorating (paint, ballet slipper pink is sitting here, waiting to be applied).  I love pink and so does she.  Next, find a rug to match!