So far, I have the top almost half quilted, but for one reason or another, have not been able to post. If it’s not the computer, it’s the camera, or else my ineptitude or crazy schedule. These pics are from last week.

There is actually a little more done, than shows here.

Saturday I enjoyed a road trip with friends to a nearby town to visit museums and galleries and enjoy lunch together. Our weather has turned nice again and it was a gorgeous day to be out. I took some photos I wanted to share, but cannot figure out how to get them from the phone to the computer. I know— you say that is easy— but for me it is not working!

Sunday the weather was still beautiful and I spent most of the afternoon outside trimming and pulling weeds to get a head start on Spring. The whole week is supposed to be lovely. Perhaps too nice to stay inside and quilt!

I am just trying again to post a centered photo and it looks good right now.  Will it stay when I hit “publish”?

Yes!  It looks like it worked. Thanks Derry, I don’t know what you did but it worked!!

This photo is of my Hellebores taken last May.  They bloom in March, I think and I checked on their progress earlier in the month.  There were lots of leaves and buds, but a few days ago I looked again and something has eaten everything.  All that is left is stubs, so there will probably be no blooms this year. I put a wire cage around but don’t know if it will put forth new buds this late.

In late April, I started having trouble getting online. When the provider found out that my husband had ordered an upgrade they would not help with the old system at all so for a week I was totally offline. When the scheduled day arrived for them to come and install the new system it was snowing. Hard. In May.

So they canceled and we had to wait to be rescheduled. When we were finally back online I discovered that AOL no longer worked. There went another few days as I worked with my “new best friend” in India who called me every day at 4 for 3 or 4 days. I got to where I could understand him pretty good and now things are seemingly back to normal. Knock on wood.

During that time I was pretty busy though. Maybe tomorrow I will show you. You will be surprised!

Yesterday I taught a Picture Piecing workshop in Topeka, that ended at 3 o’clock, which is exactly the time that my very first great grandson’s first birthday party started. Everyone was kind enough to hold up the important parts til I could get there. I am not at all sure this will work, but maybe— I tried to take a few photos with my new iPhone  (because I forgot the camera AGAIN)  but I don’t know what I’m doing and I got videos instead!  Nope, sorry, that didn’t work, I don’t know how to post videos. Why would I even think I could?

On a brighter note, I was able to get a good start on the Keynote program and some other computer glitches are getting worked out.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Yesterday I settled in to get serious about learning to do a Keynote presentation on my new MacBook Pro. It is so different from using a keyboard and quite frustrating! A couple of hours in, I got a weird error message that I couldn’t take care of myself, so, having paid for support, I called the Geek Squad number. My impression of the lady who answered was that she didn’t know about Macs as she insisted that my installer should return and take care of it. That is scheduled for Wednesday so I can’t do much til then.

So we went to town and got a couple of books that should be helpful when I do get back to working on Keynote!

And 10 more bags of mulch which I AM qualified to work with!! For the past two nights we have had frost so have been covering certain things that I am especially concerned about. Most things, however have to fend for themselves. The new peach tree has ONE peach – I hope it survives!

Quilt Inspirations has featured “Don’t Piss Of The Fairies” as a humorous quilt. I love what they have written about it! Check it out!

Yesterday I finished the quilting on “In The Bleak Midwinter” – I was unsatisfied with the sky – skies are hard!- so spent much of the day before picking out the stitches so I could redo it.  With a little luck I’ll get the binding done today and a picture for you tomorrow!

Then we went to town and bought a MacBook, I’m determined to be able to do Keynote programs and since the iPad didn’t work out for me I think this is the way to go.  Remember though, that I am one of the world’s most technologically challenged people so I expect some bumps in the road.

Things are looking up! My computer is back to where it was before I tried to upgrade it. I can now use my QuickBooks and Photoshop again, and that is a great relief. I am a truly technologically challenged person and rely on my trusty repair people to keep me going. Unfortunately they have grown to the point they really don’t want to be bothered by small jobs like mine and their prices reflect that.

In the meantime, March was a busy month that somehow seems to have gotten away from me. I had two guild programs to do and with two more this month, things aren’t getting any easier! I have been doing lots of garden work, planting, weeding, mulching, trimming as we have had some lovely weather this spring. I decided a small orchard would be nice so we planted another apple tree, two plums and a peach.

I am now in the midst of quilting “In The Bleak Midwinter”.

I made this piece for the Kansas Art Quilter’s exhibit, “RED”. We have these sunsets where just a streak of red gives the snow that rosy glow, and even in the bleakest of times there is really much color to be seen if only you look for it! The sky is from  a wonderful piece of hand dye that I got from Linda Frost and I also used a piece of hand dye painted fabric that I did years ago for the distant snow. The rest is commercially printed fabric.

It’s good to be back!

Well, I haven’t been doing so well lately with this blog!

I recently decided that I should get an iPad – it sounded easy – NOT!! Turns out my computer operating system was not right, so I upgraded it. Then had to upgrade other programs, til I came to one that said I needed another operating system upgrade! That’s when I took the iPad back and returned it. It wasn’t til a few days later that I discover QuickBooks with all my company data wouldn’t open in the new system and I can’t upgrade QB without an Intel processor, which of course I don’t have! Now this morning I discover that I can no longer access Photoshop!!

So I can’t show you what I’m working on.

The new Vinca quilt has been finished for a few days – finished unless I decide to add some beading to the centers! It’s only 10.75″ square, so how long could it take! It looks appliqued, but it is pieced. There are two different backgrounds, they give the look I wanted,  but they are too similar to each other. The fabrics in this are mostly hand dyes with a couple of batiks added.  I liked the hand dyed blue for the flowers because of the shadings in it even though it is not the proper periwinkle color.  It was not necessary to finish the edges as they are going to mount it behind a mat with an 8″ opening, but I  just couldn’t let it go unfinished like that. I hope they don’t mind!

My previous problem with posting was due to my own technologically challenged status and I guess I have been procrastinating trying to post again, lest I prove my incapacity. But – it went well, as predicted by my wonderful web masters at Gloderworks!

In the meantime I have been keeping busy catching up on other things, like doing the books in order to get the sales tax in on time, entries and general decluttering. Considering the things I have been doing, it occurred to me this morning that what I was REALLY doing was avoiding facing this blog photo thing.  So now that is behind us, we can move on!

I think replacing the lighter background with this darker grass helps to make the fawn stand out better.  I was able to use several of the hand dyes that I made last month, in the sky. It’s hard to find leaves on sky color and sky colors to coordinate with the leaves that I DO find!

I was very flattered to be nominated for ‘Kreativ Blogger’ recently, but unfortunately don’t have the time to try to figure it out, technologically challenged as I am! I did have the computer guru out to calibrate the color in my monitor so that is hopefully better now.  I have not found the time to change any of the pictures in my website yet, though.

Christmas cards are starting to come in and I have not even started yet! Can it be that Christmas is less than three weeks away?  I guess my blog is about a year old as I was in the throes of last year’s shopping when I started it. All I need is more time, like everyone else!