Ruminations

Constantly.

We returned from Nashville a week ago Sunday and we’re happy to be home, but…in our absence, weeds went wild, some of our garden veggies tanked, the beautiful cedar tree in our front yard died, and then there’s this:

This is the lot that is adjacent to ours on the north side. The owner of the property (Billy the Builder) has been excavating dirt from one lot to another and he decided to use this particular lot and three others north of it to purge. He started digging a couple of days before we left on our trip and as of yesterday, this is what the lot looks like:

See that huge drop off? Yep, that’s our house. A conversation is coming. 

Last year he dug up dirt from the lots on the street east of ours and moved it to the three lots on the south side of our lot. Basically, he added enough dirt to make those lots almost level to ours. The lots across the street from ours are getting leveled, too, and I told the Hubs this week that the only reason I could come up with was that Billy the Builder was trying to make the unsold lots more attractive to potential buyers. For over a year the only home built in the subdivision was not built by Billy. He is now building three homes on the aforementioned street that is east of ours. I’m monitoring building permit information from our city planner’s office to see if and when he hits our street to build again. We’re thinking he can’t do a thing with the lot that he just obliterated next to ours, but we will see.

Our formerly beautiful Blue Atlas Cedar tree

Leveled lots across the street from ours

In spite of all the above, we had a good trip and had lots of snuggles with our great-grandson and fun visits with the rest of the Nashville family. We’re hoping to see them all sometime in the fall. 

But I am also reaching that “let’s turn off the world” phase for some good quilting time. 

The baby quilt became a flimsy last Monday, and I finished the quilting Thursday. I took the quilt to Vicki’s house Friday and she and I spent a few hours burying the knots. I finished it yesterday and Vicki picked it up later that afternoon. I will have a “Finally Finished” post up soon about it. 

Time to bury some knots!

While in Nashville, I checked out a few area quilt shops. I have some thoughts about each of the shops (including which ones I would not return to and those I would), and I may share them in a future post. I did buy a pattern to make our great-grandson’s next quilt— Foxes in Flannels by Elizabeth Hartman and it’s adorable. I don’t know that I’ll actually do it in flannels, but we’ll see. The fabric recommendation for the jeans on the foxes is light washed denim. Hubs blew out an old pair of denim shorts and I’ll utilize as much of it as I can for the quilt; I think I also have a worn out pair of my own jeans I could use. Other purchases included sewing machine needles and 3D-printed items to protect the knobs and bobbin winder on The Beaut. 

I also took the counted cross stitch project with me to Nashville. After ripping out my mistakes four times, I finally got going in the right direction and I have been enjoying working on it during TV time. 

And this is also the time of year when I think about breaking up with my previously announced plan of attack which, of course, has already happened, and something from the list always gets sacrificed to satisfy my desire for something new and shiny. I have the backing ready to go for the Pumpkin Pie quilt; but I really, really, really want to start something new and I think I know what it will be, and it’s not on this year’s list—it will be the second breakaway project, but it’s for a friend and her birthday is in October, so let’s see if I can meet that deadline! 

But don’t think I have completely forsaken this year’s plan—Katrina sent me a photo of the Antelope Canyon quilt quilted, off the longarm and trimmed! And she has the Girl Gang DIY Sampler on the longarm! When it’s done, I’ll schedule a trip to pick them up. When those two quilts are bound and labeled, I think that gets me halfway through my planned projects for this year—woohoo! 

Katrina's photo of Antelope Canyon after quilting

Thanks for reading, and I hope you’re keeping cool and hydrated—go make!