Ditty Bag

Getting a sewing kit ready for an overnight trip made me realize a couple of things. I haven't been sewing much and I rarely leave home!
 

It's okay, of course. Enthusiasm for projects will always wax and wane a bit and it was a brief two weeks of dormancy. I have started sewing again on a machine pieced quilt top and the little ditty bag has components for another four Rose Star blocks. I'll have more time now as my work schedule has just dropped back to one day a week. 

In the meantime, I was able to waste time on some reading and TV, crossword and Sudoku puzzles and make some feeble progress on the spring gardening. A friend pulled weeds furiously last week and claimed nine 5 gallon buckets in two days. My count is about four for the season. I'm a fair weather gardener, at best.

Twenty Five Blocks

It sort of feels like I am running out of fabric so maybe it is a good time for a break in production. I have used up three packs of Kaffe Fassett charm squares but still have a fair amount of yardage in the pile. The photo mosaic gives a pretty good preview of how the blocks look together. Each block seems to stitch up pretty quickly. I think it needs more red. And I do like the polka dots.

On Monday, I go back to work for another two or three weeks. It has been a nice week off - we saw Blast! in Bellingham on Thursday and tomorrow we are going to Seattle to see the Gauguin exhibit.  Oh, so cultured!!

When Johnny Comes Marching Home

Tunes get stuck in my head. This week, the tune in my head is an orchestral arrangement of "When Johnny Comes Marching Home", thanks to the joint performances of two local youth symphonies, playing together twice on successive Saturdays. The younger kids played the crowd pleasing pieces, the march, Hungarian Rhapsody and The Pink Panther. Ray's group played Scheherazade, a pretty piece with haunting melodies and a wicked backstory. He also had a concert with his school band so we heard a lot of music in some nice theaters. Some of it goes on a bit too long but it is just what parents do, and we were grateful to get past the soccer and track meet parents standing out in the rain and the wind and into our velvet seats.

I have watched enough basketball over the last couple weeks that I'm lucky not to have "One Shining Moment" stuck in my head. College ball in high definition - I love it! I've continued to make Rose Star quilt blocks, we've had visitors from Alaska and returning snowbirds to welcome home, and I have resumed, for the most part, the habit (chore) of daily exercise but, mostly, it seems, I have been working. A nurse at our clinic quit and I stepped up to work full time until another person could be hired and trained. It takes awhile, which is not surprising, but an experienced medical assistant has accepted the job and I will begin training her on Monday. 


Working five days a week has given me a different view of my clinic job and I have enjoyed the depth and breadth that comes with being there every single day. When someone calls or comes in with a problem, likely I know something about it already, because I was there last week or last month when it first started. I know so much more about the people - the everyday stuff and the exotic. There is heart disease and depression, sore knees and sore shoulders, can't lose weight, can't gain weight, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and high blood sugar. There are many stories I can't tell but being involved in the intimacies of lives is a privilege and a pleasure, and it is a pretty good job.


And the puppies! Katie's boyfriend's dog had 10 puppies and they were a block away from the clinic and we got to visit at lunchtime - 10 puppies, ten, TEN - five black, three red, two blond - puppies are pure pleasure and great medicine. Man, if I could bottle that...

Rose Star Block 22

Three More

I have been making more Rose Star Blocks over the past few weeks and am currently working on the 19th one. I have been keeping up with the picture taking and the posting on Flickr but am lagging on the blog posts. There is a Flickr group just for this project; it's fun to see other versions of the same pattern. A few people have worked out background fabric and how they are joining up their blocks so they are ahead of me there. I will just continue to produce blocks for now and will stop when I seem to have enough. Likely I will need to make some half blocks as well, but, again, haven't yet worked that out.

 

Dolly Sweater and Hat

A friend at work has a daughter who is REALLY into American Girl dolls. Jewell said Leila would love, love, love some knitted or sewn clothes for her dolls. One of the dollies (Samantha is not a favorite, apparently) came home with me for a week and got a sweater and hat set to wear home. 

I didn't really like the yarn; it is kind of scratchy and loose so I won't be buying any more Froehlich Wolle Die tolle Wolle, (like I would be able to remember the name anyway). The sweater pattern is Poppy Cardigan and the hat was just a hat that came off the needles on its own, no pattern necessary.

Goodbye to the Cabin at Chilkat Lake

We sold our Alaska cabin last fall. It was a tough decision as Chilkat Lake is such a great spot and building on our land was the focus of our lives for years. But it is 1600 miles away from where we live and we were only going to be up there for a few weeks each year.  We also thought it might take forever to sell. Many of the cabins for sale up there have been on the market for years.


It is an isolated place, with no road access, which enhances the appeal but also greatly reduces the number of possible buyers. But, as they say in real estate, it only takes one, and someone came along with an offer. A deal was reached and the last part of it was that we make a trip in to the lake in the winter to remove our personal belongings.

Dave went alone as Ray was in school and I was working. He took the ferry up from Bellingham to Haines to avoid the snow and ice on the Canadian highways. It was boring, sort of, and more expensive than driving but it is a relaxing way to travel and is certainly safer. Also, there is gravy for dinner every night, if you want. It really wasn't hard to decide.

Dave thought about going up last fall but a trip then would have involved borrowing back both of the boats we just sold and running the river on the shortest days of the year. He decided to wait until he could go in by snowmachine when the lake would be frozen and loads could be hauled at night, if necessary. We still had our machine, and if a breakdown occurred, it wouldn't be on equipment we no longer owned.

Our neighbors were a big help. Jon and Mary and Louie all helped with towing sleds to the truck, feeding Dave and toasting the achievements in the evenings with appropriate adult beverages. 

The lake conditions were ideal and it wasn't even that cold for the season, reportedly. It looks pretty cold.  Dave took a lot of pretty pictures.

The truck filled up fast and Dave needed to have some of our stuff shipped down on the barge. It was snowing hard while he waited for the ferry south. It's good to have him home again but we will all miss the cabin.

More Rose Star Blocks

Here are the first nine blocks. There are two more that are finished but they didn't fit nicely into the mosaic. I'll make another mosaic with a 3x4 grid once I finish number twelve.

I have been working full time the past few weeks, which is cutting into my hours for stitching (and blogging!). Work does create some opportunities, though, as folks at the clinic can be good customers. One nurse pal wants some knitted clothes for her daughter's American Girl dolls and a woman in the business office was commenting on how hard it is to find fingerless gloves. I sure appreciate having somewhere for my stuff to go. It isn't very satisfying to have it sit in a box on a shelf.