Rainy Days and Sundays

Good morning, my friends. We're pretty well back to what passes for normal around here. The outdoors is still looking pretty ratty, and I'm afraid that's going to take some time to set right. Knowing rain was coming, I thought Mike would just wait to start on the mowing. Silly me. I might have known he wouldn't be able to stand it, and so he went to work on Saturday trying to hack through the Amazon. 

Mowing almost always begins with first fixing something on the tractor or mower deck. It took him about an hour to get going, but then, he was hard at it.

Wanna know who else was hard at it? Mamma squirrel. She has at least four kits.

They're looking longingly at the annual pots, not yet planted. They're wondering when I'm going to plant some flowers for them to eat.

Also hard at it...the bees. They really love the chive blossoms.

Before the rain started up, I was out for a bit to see if anything new had bloomed. I didn't see any new flowers, but I noticed the Stargazer Lily is all budded up and ready to bloom. When it reached this point last year, some critter came along and relieved it of its flower buds. Hopefully, nothing will munch on it this year, and we'll get to see some flowers.

Back inside, my next couple of months are going to be devoted to these two books. 

In planning a trip to Alaska, I might as well be planning a trip to the moon. I know almost nothing about the place, although I follow several Facebook groups devoted to Alaska. From the folks there, I'm gleaning quite a bit of good information, mainly about road conditions, scenery, and places to see. Already I have a rough trip planned out from our pre-COVID trip planning. Studying up on these guides will help me finalize it. There's no rush, but a year can go by pretty fast.

Okay, and I had some time to spend in the sewing room yesterday afternoon. I first spent time making the template for my "Vintage" art quilt. I'm working from a photograph, and so I traced out the details on a sheet of plastic. You only get a peek. Sorry.

Maybe it will help to show you some of the fabrics I'll be using. I'll probably also pull some more reds from my red bin. For now, these are my selections.

Smitty was very happy to be back in the sewing room. He purred and purred.

Then he helped me sew the one seam I needed to make a back for the Whimsical Garden quilt. You might recall I found this fabric while we were traveling.

As a reminder, this is how the quilt top looks:

With that finished, I wasn't sure what to do next. I'm instituting the one hour rule on my art quilt, and I'd already spent more time than that. I couldn't remember what I'd done just before we left on our trip. As it turns out, I'd finished a second quilt top from my WIPs list, and I had two open slots on my WIPs dance card. It seemed like as good a time as any to decide what projects to fill in there.

Sadie helped me with that.

Do not...I repeat...do not choose anything that includes papurr piecing.

Well, the boss has spoken, and so I steered clear of any of those patterns. I wanted to do something scrappy, and so I settled on this one. I'm pretty sure I found this pattern for free at some point, but I can't find it now. Nevertheless, you can find a download for it right here.

I still needed something else, and I spent quite a lot of time looking through books, notebooks, Dropbox, and other places I store patterns. Most everything left me feeling kind of meh. I have a couple of cat patterns I'd like to start, but I'm already have two cat quilts in the works. Then, I remembered this block from when I made the Full Circle quilt. This is the Virginia Reel block. There's a tutorial for the block right here.

This is the block I made for my quilt. I liked the design so much, I wanted to make a whole quilt from it.

And so it shall be. I'm still mulling over what fabrics I'll use...whether to make it scrappy or not...and the other things one considers when embarking on a new project. I'll figure something out.

And that left me moving on to the next project. It seems I might as well start catching up on the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, and so I went to work making March's cat wearing purple pajamas.

The face was finished.

I was just getting started on the leg sections, when I decided to stop for the day.

As a reminder, these are the blocks I have for this quilt so far.

Okay, so that brings me to this morning. There was a hole in the sky this morning. For a while, it looked as if it might clear up for a bit.

As I've been writing, it's turned dark again. If there's a dry spell, I'll get out and pull some weeds. Eventually, I'll make my way to the sewing room. I'll spend an hour on my Vintage quilt, and then I'll get back to the Cats in Pajamas. 

We're expecting more rain over the next day or two, but things should start looking up by Wednesday. We're both itching to get outside and do some yard clean-up. For now, it's time for breakfast. Mike is waiting for me downstairs. Time to go save a life.

Home, Sweet Home!

Good morning, my friends. This morning's blog post is coming to you from the official stationary Three Cats Ranch. It's good to be home. I have a lot to tell you, so let's just get started, shall we?

We left Mt. Vernon, Oregon, early yesterday morning, ready for a drive of about 280 miles. It ended up seeming longer because we were making our way through winding mountain passes. As we got closer to the city of Portland, traffic was heavier. We were fortunate to miss the miles-long back-up going the other direction toward the end of our trip. 

We've driven this road west of the state park many times, and so there wasn't much that was new under the sun. We saw the usual assortment of barns in this ranching part of Oregon.

We drove alongside and crossed over the John Day River in a few places.

And we saw barns in all different shapes, sizes, and conditions.

Ordinarily, we would have stayed on the road we started, but we decided to head north a little earlier. The road took us toward John Day Fossil Beds National Monument and the Painted Hills. We've visited there before, and so we drove past the turn-off.

Beyond, we saw more barns.

The first city of any size we came to was the small town of Prineville, Oregon. Prineville was founded in 1877 when Monroe Hodges filed the original plat for the city. The post office for the community had been established with the name of Prine on April 13, 1871, but changed to Prineville on December 23, 1872. The city was incorporated by the Oregon Legislative Assembly on October 23, 1880, and obtained its first high school in 1902.

Long the major town in central Oregon, Prineville was snubbed in 1911 when the railroad tycoons James J. Hill and Edward H. Harriman bypassed the city as they laid track south from The Dalles. In a period when the presence of a railroad meant the difference between prosperity and an eventual fate as a ghost town, in a 1917 election, Prineville residents voted 355 to 1 to build their own railway, and raised the money to connect their town to the main line 19 miles (31 km) away. We passed by this old caboose situated at a major intersection.

Heading out of town, we passed under these tracks. I wasn't ready with my camera, but I found this image online, taken by Scott Anderson in 1977.

Prineville is also the county seat of Crook County. I tried to capture a picture of the courthouse as we drove by, but this is the best I could do.

Here's a better picture I found online.

(Image credit: "<div class='fn'> Crook County Courthouse, 

Prineville</div>" is licensed under CC BY 4.0.)

Continuing on, eventually the mountains came into view. This big tall guy is Mt. Jefferson.

Soon enough, we saw that harbinger of home, Mt. Hood.

We passed through the small town of Madras (pronounced MAD-druss). The original plat for Madras was filed on July 18, 1902, by Scandinavian immigrant John A. Palmehn, for whom the town was originally named "Palmain". The name was rejected by the U.S. Postal Service over its similarity to a post office named Parmen, and the name "Madras" was adopted, inspired by the cloth fabric of the same name, itself named for the city of Madras (now Chennai) in India.

It was good to see the mountains. We enjoyed views of Mt. Jefferson and Mt. Hood for most of the remainder of our drive.

Eventually, we drove alongside the Deschutes River.

Mt. Hood grew closer and larger with each passing mile until we drove around the bottom portion and into the town of Sandy, Oregon.

From there we were about an hour from home. It was mainly traffic and interstate freeway, and so I didn't take any more pictures until we made one of our final turns toward home. There, we saw an osprey nest that has been in use for at least a couple of years. 

I'm sorry I didn't get a better picture of it, but here's another photo of the same nest taken in April of 2021.

The kitties didn't hesitate for a second when we opened the door to the RV. They were down the steps and racing for that green, green grass of home. Mmm, mmm, mmm.

We missed a lot of the spring flowers, but there were still some pretties to greet us when we came home. There were plenty of chive blossoms for making chive blossom vinegar. You might remember the sage plant inundated the chives a few years back. Since that time, I've been able to revive them with some plants that Mae gave me.

This is the new peony I planted to replace the cruel peony. This one is called Lavender Whisper. It's mostly bloomed out, and I didn't see any new buds. I'm hoping if I deadhead these old flowers, it will continue to bloom for a little while longer.

This one is called "Joker."

This one is called "Coral Sunset."

There are still two more to bloom, and those are covered in buds. I haven't been outside yet this morning, but I might find some more flowers.

Also, the poppies at the front of the house have started to open. The ones near the greenhouse have buds, but no flowers yet. 

Three of the rhododendrons and the lilac are bloomed out already, but there were two more in full bloom.

Also, I noticed lots of little apples on our apple tree.

This is the Edda clematis. I've been babying it along for a couple of years. Now, it's grown fairly large and it has plenty of buds on it. I'm very happy to see this doing so well.

When it blooms, it will look like this:

There are cherries on our Black Tartarian cherry tree, but none on the Bing.

Likewise, there are no plums on the Italian prune plum tree. It seems something prevented the pollinators from doing their job when they had the chance.

Okay, so that brings us up to date. The sun is shining today, but rain is in the forecast for the next few days as an "atmospheric river" blows through the area. I'm going to try to get all my unpacking done today. Yard work will have to wait. As expected, the grass is knee hip-high and the weeds are partying hard. Fortunately, the weeds are the large and tall ones that are fairly easy to pull up, especially when the ground is wet. We'll save the yard work for when the rain passes. It'll take several days to get the place looking as if someone lives here, but there's no rush to finish anything. 

As for me, I've printed off all the items I've been saving for when we get home. I've also ordered several items on my wish list from Amazon. Guide books for next year's Alaska trip will be delivered today! We're also getting two new state maps...one will replace the current one on the fifth wheel. (Mike wants to put it in a different place where it can be more easily seen.) Also, we're going to add one to the side of our truck camper. If we're going to reach our 50th state next year while traveling with the truck camper, we surely need a map to document our achievement.

We'll be towing our Jeep Wrangler when we make our Alaska trip, and so I desperately needed one of these spare tire covers. I've seen them around, and I wanted one for our trip.

Obviously, we can't make the trip without it. I know you will agree with me.

The arrival of an atmospheric river is a perfect way to restart my sewing. There is plenty of fabric to put away, and I'm behind on my Rainbow Scrap project and the free stitchery from Jenny of Elefantz, "Joy in the Ordinary." I've kept a list of all the colors for the RSC project. These are the blocks I have so far.

You might recall that I was guessing on March's color. I guessed yellow, which was selected for April's color of the month. It means I'm only behind by March's actual color of purple, and May's pink. June's color is blue. My plan is to make the purple and pink blocks in June. Then, when July's color is announced, I'll make June and July together, which will have me caught up on that one. 

Also, I'll need to catch up on the blocks for Joy in the Ordinarily. These are the blocks I have for this quilt so far.

As of today, I'm four blocks behind on this one. I'll probably catch these up two per month as well.

Finally, I need to get a start on my art quilt for The Endeavourers art quilt group. The prompt for this month is "Vintage." There's a photograph I've been wanting to do for a long time, and its time has come. I can only give you a peek for now, but this will also be my goal project for June's

Here's the photo I'll be working from:

Any guesses? I know...mean. And the reveal isn't until August 1st, so I'll only be able to show a peek at the end of the month. If I'm able to finish it before the end of the month, you guys will just have to take my word for it. Would I lie?

Okay...I have miles to go before I sleep. Time to get a move on. I'll be taking a couple of days off from blogging while I pull myself together and return to what passes for normal here. It's very good to be home.