More Busy Uneventful Days

As I mentioned previously, our days are filled with little random events, none of which are particularly noteworthy, but all of which add up to a pretty wonderful life.  And that’s certainly been true the last few days.

DD has classes Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday so that means some regular T-time.  Her Monday and Wednesday classes are evening classes, so my assignment is to get them to swim practice until DSIL gets off work.  Her Tuesday class is an afternoon class, so I usually stick around afterwards for some fun before we all  head off to the Tuesday evening swim meet. 

And speaking of Tuesday swim meets, this past Tuesday’s meet was certainly a memorable one.  Rain was in the forecast for the entire evening, but thankfully it held off – but only for about an hour.  After that, there was a steady rain, fairly heavy at times.  It didn’t matter to most of the swimmers as they were already plenty wet from their times in the pool … but there were still a few who insisted on carrying umbrellas as they waited between their events.    It wasn’t until the relays (the last events of the meet) that we heard thunder, so they called off the rest of the meet.    T#1 won all his events and came within a second of breaking the swim team’s record for the 50 Fly (he is determined to break it, and I know he will).  He made the local newspaper again.  Forgive the quality … DD texted me the picture she took with her iPhone.  T#2 swam and did well, considering that she isn’t able to dive off the block and that her arm is in a cast.  I’ll throw another umbrella or two in my bag this evening as there’s rain in the forecast for tonight, too.

I did get some time spent with my needle and thread these last few days.  I have a total of 46 bow tie blocks finished and have been basting more pieces.  I finally calculated how many blocks I’d like to try to make … my goal is to make 121 blocks, setting them 11x11.  Since these are 4” blocks, the quilt will finish at 44” square – perfect for a wall quilt.  Today I plan to get back to the quilting on my Kiss quilt.  I confess to feeling a little overwhelmed by how slowly this is going … I know it’s a king-sized quilt, but I'm feeling like I’m getting nowhere fast.  It doesn’t help that there are no clearly defined blocks, once it’s put together so I can’t keep track of how many blocks I’ve got quilted or count down how many left to go. <sigh>

For those of you who quilt, do you have trouble with your ruler slipping and sliding when rotary cutting … even a little?  I do (of course, it doesn’t help that I’m short and have little arm strength), so I was thrilled when Pat Speth shared this tip with us at our guild’s retreat.  She recommended cutting a small piece of inexpensive shelf liner and inserting it between the fabric and the ruler.  It doesn’t take much to do the job … and if you place it to the side, it won’t interfere with lining the ruler up with the fabric.  The only small downside is that you can’t slide the ruler around as you line it up.  But it didn’t take me long to learn how to lift the ruler, ever so slightly, to get it positioned properly.  Pat gave us a small piece during her workshop, which worked fine when using our small rulers to trim up our blocks.  I bought a roll (at Walmart) so I could have some larger pieces for using with my larger rulers. 
I’ve learned, since then, that there are so many more uses for shelf liner … a small piece can be placed on the dash or console of your car to keep your cell phone from sliding around or you can use a piece to open jars when those lids are on too tight to name just a couple.  Maybe you all already knew this … but I didn’t and thought I’d share in case someone else was behind the times like me. 

Yesterday, I got to spend my morning with my head inside the dryer.  Yes, you read that right … but it wasn’t with the dryer going, thankfully.  I confess that I’m not always as diligent about checking pockets when doing laundry, but then with just the two of us and both of us being adults, I didn’t think I’d have to.  But evidently I do as DH left a ballpoint pen in his shirt pocket … and that pen left a mess inside my dryer.  I tried several things to try to clean the dryer – hair spray, Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, etc.  Finally I decided to Google how to remove ink from inside a dryer (how did we manage back in the day?) … and voila! nail polish remover!  Thankfully I had a nice big bottle of it, because it took almost all of it to get the ink removed.  I should  have taken a picture … you wouldn’t believe what a mess a single pen can make.    And yes, I shared with DH what happens when he doesn’t empty his pockets before putting his clothes in the hamper.  ha! 

We are checking our garden every day … our baby cucumbers don’t seem to be growing much, and my tomato plants seem to be growing more horizontally than vertically. 

There are baby robins in the nest in our dogwood.  We see mama robin making multiple trips to/from the nest, we see her feeding her babies … and this morning we saw their little heads bobbing about while they were waiting for mama to bring them breakfast.  I tried to get a photo … the best vantage point would be looking out our kitchen window, but the babies blended in too much with the nest.  Maybe a more skilled photographer with a better-quality camera could have gotten good pictures, but alas I’m not that skilled, and my best camera is just a simple point and shoot. 

I hope that whatever you have planned for today includes a little something that brings you joy ... have a great day!
Kathy