Another quilt done!

Once again, OPAM has saved me a from a guilt inducing pile of fabric!!  My one finish this week was a Christmas quilt I had started a few years ago.

Not what one would consider a difficult or time consuming quilt!  Mostly, it used up pieces from previous holiday projects.  There is even an extra block from pillowcases I made the kids one year. You can see it in the upper center right.  The batting was even patched together from trimming other quilts.  Waste not, want not. I had pieced the top 4 years ago, I think, and basted it a year ago.  And then it got "put away".  Now it is put away on my sofa, and in a few days I'll put it up wit the holiday decorations.  But for now, I like the feeling of getting something done!

The time that wasn't spent on finishing this was spent outside.  The weather was very sunny or very wet.  It changed every 30 minutes or so, in true PNW fashion!  When the sun came out, I went out, when the rain came, I quilted!  But our balckberry and ivy war may be over! The last blackberry has been dug out!!!!

view from the alley

 When we bought the house, it was early spring.  We had no idea what we were getting for a yard.  Turned out, it was blackberries and ivy.  They actually covered the garage wall, and we couldn't walk between the wall and the fence. 

view from driveway

They grew into the alley, and people had to drive around the bushes.  It was embarrassing! And it started a family tradition.  Every spring we were out there- hacking, whacking, and digging.  The neighbors were even commenting on our "family time", LOL!

But now!  Now it is like a blank canvas!!!!  And I have no idea what to do with it!  I don't want just grass, but I don't want it to be too maintenance heavy.  It is the farthest point in our property, and the hose just isn't going that far.  It has good sun and shade, and the dirt is pretty amazing.  A century of leaves dying off and composting did wonders for the dirt!  But I have no idea what to put back there! 

We have SUN!!!!!

So I only finished one "inside" project this week.  I knew if I stayed inside the sun would go away and I would never get any outside stuff done.  So my lone indoor project is a cowl for D1.

Ooh, this was nice yarn to work with! A silk/bamboo blend.  And real wood buttons.  She hasn't seen it yet, it'll be a surprise the next time she is up from her mom's.  I am pretty sure I will never use this pattern again. It is lovely, but I have a fondness for simplicity, and this had a 3 different stitch patterns 5 areas. Yeah, if anyone wants this pattern, let me know.  I'll mail it.

Because it was so sunny and warm, we made progress in the backyard.  When we first bought our house, the ivy behind the garages COVERED them. I wish had pictures so I could actually see the difference.  The fact that I can now walk behind the garages is a victory.  Over the 4 or 5 years we've lived here, I have gone on crazy insane kill the ivy sprees.  Over the course of this last weekend, the backyard went form this:

 to this:

 There is still tons of work to do, including painting and replacing the chain link with something not ugly. Both neighbors have dogs, so tearing it out before I have something to put up isn't an option.  I will say pulling out the stupid privacy slats made a huge improvement.  Weeds love dark, warm, and wet.  So all the sun they got yesterday started killing them off before we started weeding.  YAY!! Less work for me!!

And DH brought home a present for me.  A supermarket display shelf that the store manager was going to throw away.  Please ignore the mess of my garage.  We are slowly getting it cleaned out.  I am not sure what they used it for,  he even scored a lcd picture viewer that he has loaded with his photo references for drawing.  I really WANTED to be mad at him for bring home another "thing", but this has so much potential, I just could not summon any of my usual "you brought home what?!?" indignation.  I am really hoping to get to play with it this week, I have 100 ideas of what to do with it, but I need to start with covering/removing that branding and logos.

Well, there's an information overload, and the sun is here again today, so I am off to go do something not in the house!

We had some sun!!!

We had some beautiful weather this week, so I spent a great deal of time outdoors.  Most of the garden beds are weeded, the trellis is up for beans, the rotted out stairs along the side of the house are gone, and the yard bins are full of ivy.  Random fact of the day: English Ivy is a non-native invasive species and can be found on the noxious weeds lists of both Washington and Oregon.  And I have ivy growing everywhere!!!  But I did manage to get a bunch of roots dug out, so that should help. I do wish we lived out of town though, so I could burn them.  The city doesn't want it in the yard debris, and I don't want it in my compost.  We have a brilliant plan in our locale where they charge you to pick up yard waste and then you can buy the "compost material" that they make from the yard waste.  GRRR!  I'll continue with my own compost pile, thank you.   Anyways.....the only sewing I got done this week where some more stars.  These follow a red/white/blue theme. Oh, and two "normal" stars.  15 total.  I am going to have to come up with something to do with these sooner instead of later.

I am quite happy to say that expect for a few other sets of stars that are cut, I have NO MORE r/w/b fabric in my house!!!  Now, I think this means that I should get new fabric, but that does seem to defeat the purpose of the whole exercise.  

***Update: Over the last few months, we have seen a huge amount of image searches for Tuck Everlasting dioramas.  After the amount of work D2 put in on hers, and knowing that she did not do searches to get ideas, I have decided to remove the photo. I am glad people liked it, but I would hate to see it used as a shortcut for someone else's assignment (cheating?). Thank you for understanding.***

Also, D2's Tuck Everlasting diorama came home from school. She got a "B" on it.  

It is the scene where they are breaking Mae out of jail.  She is pretty happy with it, and would love to do more projects like this at school!  

Well, I have no idea what the weather will be like this week, but I have a quilt to finish and beans and peas to plant, so SOMETHING should get done.