2014 February

February Garden 2014

February 28, 2014 5 Comments

Just getting in a quick post on my monthly garden. It’s finally raining here in Southern California! No photos of the rain, but I took a few during the month. After visiting a local nursery, guess who came home with me? I think our dog Hiro is not convinced. He eyed the newcomers with suspicion… but I have always wanted kitschy pink flamingos, and I am happy to say that I finally got them!

After multiple irrigation system repairs and our dear passion fruit vine being choked out, we finally had the banana trees removed. I replaced them with several varieties of lavender, a pygmy date palm, and a few other plants I forgot the names of. It looks sparse right now, but the yard seems to have opened up, and we can see the mountains in the distance again from our family room windows. Oh, and I was able to find another passion fruit vine – yay!

Row By Row Quilt Exchange

February 22, 2014 2 Comments

Boy, time does fly. It seems ages since I last posted. Well, I have been keeping very busy with one thing or another.

One of the quilt groups I belong to is doing a row by row quilt exchange. We each picked a theme, created one row, and passed it on to the others to complete. It is a challenge since many of us have very differing tastes, and we have to create rows we would ordinarily not choose for ourselves. I chose the theme “houses, flowers, & blocks”. I made my rows from blocks found in the book Applique Quilt Revival. Can you tell I’m into ’30s vintage?

And here is a row I did for my friend Donna. Actually, I did two rows, since I wanted to incorporate the vintage Santa Panel I had. Donna chose the theme Vintage Christmas. I loved how the rows came out. I found another vintage Santa panel on Ebay, so I can make a similar quilt for myself one day – another quilt added to my long list of “want to make” quilts.