onward

hoping that tomorrow is the end of the "never-ending quilt", after adopting the mantra of "not perfect... but FINISHED, completed, done and over with".  it's been really hard to stick with this project and not just dump it in the UFO pile.  i really love the front of it, but there have been so many detours due to not planning out the next steps before i just dove in and cut/stitched/ added/subtracted.  i've become afraid of cutting or stitching without re-re-recalculating, measuring, thinkin' about it.  but tomorrow i will stitch on the SECOND back, which means requilting it.  even basted the damn thing on, even tho i never baste anything.  photos tomorrow....

have harvested the first big, ripe juicy tomato from my garden, which means that i've had my first BLT of the season... ah, bliss!  and there are several more tomatoes getting really close to pickable.  no doubt why this is my favorite season of the year.

made the first zucchini fritters of the season using the Cretan recipe from our cooking class with Koula in Vamos.  love those things even tho it is so labor intensive.  thinking i'll fry some up for the twisted sister spin-in on sunday.

quilt photos tomorrow..... then on to the next project.  there are so many running around in my head, must bring them into reality.

Tasha&Meika

Tasha&Meika, a photo by twistin on Flickr.

Meika - beloved Siberian Husky.

feeling the need to guard food when other dogs are here.

today was a very sad day here at dome central..
Meika was 4 days short of her 13th birthday, which is a quite long life for a husky, but it's never long enough.

so tonight is Meika's.

 she loved her "bear" and often gave it a bath before resting her chin on it.

forming a heart with Tasha.  Meika was always the "alpha", tho Tasha did often challenge that status.

she was very ashamed after she stole 1/3 of Jim's birthday carrot cake off the table while we were in the tv room.  she ate most of it before we discovered what that noise was.

one of her favorite sleep/rest positions... on her back close up to the wall.

with their xmas scarves.  they don't really look overjoyed to be wearing them.... and having to pose.

this is a fairly recent photo.  such a beautiful dog in all ways and she will be mightily missed.  i can't seem to stop crying.

and p.s. i don't want to hear any shit about a rainbow bridge.

limoncello

i declared the aging process to be finished and bottled up the limoncello.... after a taste test, of course!  it is delicious.  i got 2 bottles this size ... and i just realized that there is nothing else in this photo for size comparison, so i'm guessing it's about 1/2 of a fifth of liquor, or about 350 ml.

i'm thinking the next batch will be with orange rind rather than lemon. i've heard that it's also delicious!

as i posted earlier, you can find recipes for this by googling or binging
on the interwebs.

messy? naw!

this just says it all!

Sisters' Quilt Show and Sunriver

on thursday, Linda and i went over to Sunriver, OR and stayed in one of our VI time share condos, which was wonderful!  since 2 bikes come with the unit, we decided to do some riding on the paved trails.  that came to a quick end for me because i was just too wobbly to be comfortable out where there were other bikes and people walking.  i'd have been a hazard to other living beings!  so we spent time sitting on the balcony reading, snacking (lots!), spinning, knitting and just generally relaxing and enjoying the beautiful days.

on Sat. we went to Sisters for the annual outdoor quilt show which is such a big deal that they shut down the main street (which is also a major highway) and several other streets and have quilts displayed all over the place... outside and inside, and a wonderful and inspiring day it is!  we planned to get there when the show opened at 9a.m., as did hundreds of other people it seems.  about 2 miles outside of Sisters the traffic came to a standstill, then became a scene of creeping along til we finally got there and tried to find a place to park... HA... that took some driving around for awhile before we found a place.  we were early enough that we beat the heat and the heaviest of the crowds and had a thoroughly wonderful time wandering about and admiring the quilts.  these first few photos were from a display based on the book,  The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick (i ordered the book today!!) and it  was all fascinating!  these are all done with stitching/thread, tho there were some gears and clock and watch parts attached to the surface of the pieces.  it looks like a really interesting book... check it out on amazon to see what it's about.

ETA - i ordered the book, received it and it is wonderful!  will now order it for my grandboy!

lots of inspiration in the teacher's tent.  this one was fascinating for me!!

i was especially drawn to the quilts that featured applique and were whimsical.

and then there were the chicken quilts!  i'm in the early process of planning a chicken quilt, inspired by our plan to add a few chickens to my queendom.  these seem to have been inspired by Gwen Marston's "liberated quilting".

a very enjoyable weekend it was!

making Limoncello

i had my first taste of limoncello while in Crete.. and it was love at first sip!  Jim felt the same and was ready to buy a bunch of it.  however, the people we were with told us how very easy it is to make at home, so i set out to make a batch soon after we got home!

i looked on the internet and found many many recipes, each with a variation on the theme.  so here's what i did:  bought 4 organic lemons and scrubbed them well, used a vegetable peeler to take off just the very outside of the skin... none of the white part.  put the peels into a big glass jar and poured in about 1 1/2 cups of raki and 3 cups of 100 proof vodka, shook it up a bit, capped it tightly and set it in the dark in the pantry to age and flavor the alcohol.  after 3 weeks... today i boiled 2 cups H2O and 1 1/2 cups sugar, cooled that to room temp, then poured it into the lemon/alcohol, stirred, tasted and decided it needs a couple more weeks of aging.  wasn't quite lemony enough for my taste... otherwise, wow and yummy!!  the recipes i looked at all said to remove the lemon peels when you decide that it's ready, put into bottles and put in the freezer until you are ready for a treat.  if you want to make this concoction, i suggest that you google it, look at the various recipes and decide which looks the best for you.


the dogs looked so cute tonight lying in the kitchen waiting for a treat... so here they are!  Tasha was kind of grabbing a little nap while Meika kept a hopeful eye on what i was doing.  Meika will be 13 years old this month... that's about 2 years past the usual life expectancy of Siberian Huskies, and it's really obvious that she is almost out of time.  a couple of weeks ago she had stopped eating and spent a lot of time trying to get herself up from the floor after her hind legs slipped out from under her and she did a belly flop on the floor.  it's heartbreaking to watch that kind of thing.  so, i cooked up some hamburger for her and got some canned dog food from trader joe's (she was refusing the ordinary thriftway brand), she started eating, we made an appt. with the vet and came home with prednisone, which is a miracle drug in my opinion!!  after just 2 doses, she regained muscle control, continued eating if it was the special stuff, and was able to make it thru about half the normal distance of the morning walk with Jim and Tasha.  don't know how long the prednisone will continue helping, but Steve the vet said he'd make a home visit when it's time.  damn, that will be a hard decision, but i think she will let us know when that time comes.

saga of the bird nest i found

when we returned home after 6 weeks away, the first outstanding change we saw was the amount of
growth of weeds, bushes,  flowers in glorious bloom (the flowers were the good part!)  So, i started the clean-up/clear out of the area around the trellis next to the house so i could get the hanging baskets up.  big surprise.... there was a bird nest on a cross piece of the trellis about 3 feet above the ground... and a gorgeous work of art this nest was.  covered in moss with a smooth dirt and weed interior... and 4 eggs.  so, i stopped with the clean up and did no more pruning around there.  later, i found a place i could see the nest from a distance so i wouldn't disturb the mama.  and did she ever give me the beady stink eye but i used telephoto lens to get her photo.

when i could see she wasn't on the nest, i'd sneak a peek at what was going on.  i looked on the interwebs for info on what type of bird this is and think it might be a house sparrow.  if anyone has any other knowledge or guesses, please let me know.

looks like 2 babies hatched - scrawny looking, big bulge where there will be eyes

after a few days there was a downy pre-feather covering.  and still just 2 hatchlings

after another few days they had feathers, eyes and beaks and were waiting to be fed.

i wish i'd kept track of the days between when they hatched and the
last day when i looked at them for the last time in their nest.
it surely does not look big enough to make it on its own, but there it
was standing on the edge of the nest and now
they have both left the nest.  there is one egg left in the
nest... maybe the 4th one got pushed out or ?