Slow Sunday....

After a whirlwind of a day yesterday, today is all about relaxing and for me that means sewing!

Emily really wanted a birthday party with friends.... so she invited her troop over. A few were able to make it and they had fun playing in the backyard. I have tons of Subway subs leftover.... so lunch and dinner are taken care of today... and tomorrow....! The house is actually clean so nothing to do but sew!

I will be playing with the machine to finish the last round of my log cabin blocks to make them 14.5 inches. Then.... I need to press and determine the setting layout. Always fun to throw the blocks on the floor and see what will happen! I plan to get them sewn into a top today and maybe.... pinned for quilting on Thursday. Bowling is done for the season and we had our banquet at Red Lobster Thursday so I have a full free day during the week while the kids are at school. It is a good thing....as once that one is done I need to 'start' the graduation quilt!

I'll need a break or two so will be hand stitching the final sashing to get the rows together on the Hand Pieced Quilt Along. I have them cut out and the stitching line drawn. I did have an oops, when I stitched 2 of the setting triangles they were put on the wrong way! They were picked out and reapplied the correct way on Friday. I hope to have this as a top tonight.... wish me luck. Guess I need one more 33 inch white strip before I can hand stitch this all together! I plan to hand quilt this one.... so hopefully that will be next week's post.

Linking up with the other turtle stitchers at Kathy's Quilts.

I was able to see this on my walk last week. This is the next street over from me - wild turkeys! Much better than the diamond back snake I saw last month on this street. It is right next to the forest.

Podcasts....

Ok, despite being a computer programmer I am terrible at picking up the new technologies until they have been out for a long time!

I finally broke down and started listening to a Podcast..... essentially the author in this case is reading the book to me! We have Spotify - which I listen to music when I walk. I did a quick search and found that The Friendship Album 1933 - is on Spotify! It is also on other mediums like iTunes, etc.

This book was mentioned in the Hand Pieced Quilt Along and the blocks were actually named after the ladies in the book. I admit I have been stitching while listening to the book in the car line at school as well as when I walk or even do dishes!  It is a wonderful 'read' about a group of diverse ladies who all joined a quilt group. Quilting is involved but it is a wonderful retelling of their lives and how they interact with each other and in the community. If you are looking for something to read or listen to, I highly recommend it.

The author is Frances ORoarke Dowell. The book - The Friendship Album 1933.

Teal Hexagons.....

I have been stitching the teal hexagon flowers this week. So far - 9 are done. I have 3 more prepped and need to cut some more black backgrounds to prep another 4. I did have to purchase more of the black.... boy - it was not fun walking through the store and trying to match the black. Turns out... I splurged and it was Kona black for the background. Now if I can remember that  the next time I am running out in a few months!

I'll link up Saturday with the RSC Challenge. Hopefully I can get a little more teal stitching in before then.

Slow Stitching..... hand pieced quilt along.

I'm adding the setting triangles to the hand pieced quilt along rows today. It is my relaxing time after my weekend with the girl scouts at camp this weekend. You can read about that here.

Linking up with Kathy's Quilts and the other slow stitchers.

Survived the weekend and a girl turns 10 today!

I got home around 11AM from a weekend at Camp Wildwood with 12 girls from our troops (mine (9) and my co-leaders daisy troop with 3 ). I'm happy to say we returned with the same amount and all are alive! Heck, I think they were even the same girls!

Saturday morning - after staying the night Friday with silly poses.

Turns out some really don't like the bugs and critters (something about a wee mouse that had created a house by the mattress on my bed when we checked in .... and a nice black spider on the ceiling in one of the girls rooms.... and the need of lifting the seat to check for frogs in the bathroom... where the little green tree frogs are all over the place! and mosquitos.... we were in the woods after all!) .

Mid Afternoon after our last rotation with thunder in the distance.

It was a fun filled day at our Elf Boot Camp. Our service project was making 40 blankets (2 pieces of felt then the girls tied the edge strips together) to donate and the older girls in high school helped make the bunk beds for the new cabins they are currently building on the property overlooking the lake they are 'reclaiming'.

Showing how to tie the edges together.

We got 6 blankets made!

There was a snowball fight (yes, in Florida. This is photos of the second group as I was getting pelted by them from the first group - I was the only adult participating and boy did I pay!),

package relay, decorate the leader like a xmas tree and other reindeer games, candy cane pick up with a candy cane in the mouth and no hands, cookie decorating, and archery.  I missed Em shooting but Ms. Shelby got some great shots of her. A big thank you to my co leaders Sarah, Jill and Shelby for the 2 troops.

Since the daisy (K-1) could not do archery we went to a nearby field and did red light, green light and simon says... as I was shuttling the girls back and forth it seems a popular one was 'Simon says chase Ms. Sarah (one of my co-leaders)'! Lots of hiking in the woods - with me getting 23,000 steps in yesterday on my fitbit!

We weathered a fast moving t-storm that broke off and didn't end up hitting us with any rain for over an hour before dinner yesterday - 137 girls in a main lodge where we eat and they all were great!

We finished off the night with Smores by the campfire and then the walk back to our cabin with our flash lights through the trails in the woods.

Now settling the girls last night.... I seem to have read a first chapter of a book on dolphins one of the girls brought to all 6 girls with us around 11:15 last night to finally settle them down to sleep. Well, one room of 3 anyway. The other room was wound and started to let their imaginations go wild with night noises so Ms.Deb got to drag her mattress into their room on the floor to sleep after that. Getting them moving to finish packing, clean the cabins and bathroom this morning.... sigh. They are all home now and I took off tomorrows meeting for a 'RECOVERY' day..... cause boy do I need it!

I did get to wake Ms. Emily up with a Happy Birthday this morning. She wakes up with a smile.... unlike some others in the troop. I might have threatened tickle torture for one of them to get up and moving this morning =). She was giggling under her covers before I even started, silly L.  Emily got sung Happy Birthday by a couple of the troops out where our section of camp is - we had 4 troops- 23 girls and 9 adults in our area of 4 cabins. I just hope they don't make me unit leader ever again... not hard but just one more thing to be responsible for on leaving morning - all chores done by girls and units cleaned for ranger inspection - ours was at 8:30AM.

Another year of encampment done. Until next year... where I hear the theme might be Halloween related!

Hand Pieced Quilt Along.... progress...

I did a little hand stitching while at the kids 90 minute soccer practice last night. It is very windy up at the sports complex so I went with jeans for the 74 degree weather.

The blocks are sewn into rows with a 1.5 inch white sashing .... I just need to cut and attach the setting triangles and then I can sew the rows together with a 1.5 inch white strip! We will see if it is done at that point.... or if it thinks it needs something else all around it. I am guessing it will be around 30 x 40 ish when done.

Tiny Tuesday

A green umbrella!

and another one! 

Teal is the color for April, now that I have caught up on all the greens from March.

 Another rainy morning drop off .... but hopefully the pick up line will be a non rainy one. Until then I'll be having spoonfuls of honey and worthers original's to try and help the sore throat that appeared yesterday evening.