Off the Clock

  This big girl showed up on June 10.  She is quite large, with her shell being easily over a foot long.  I watched her move around the back of the meadow where she must have come up from the river.  She finally settled in one spot and on closer inspection I realized she was laying eggs!  In the above pic she has one leg digging in the dirt to bury the eggs as she laid them.   The next day one of her relatives showed up and this time I had the idea to get out a yardstick.  These are big turtles!  If this second one laid a nest I didn't see it happen. After doing some Google research it looks like the eggs should be hatching by late August or early September.  I've marked the site so that we don't run it over with the lawn tractor and pack the dirt down any more than it already is.  Some folks will make a cage to cover and protect a turtle nest but my concern was if they hatch and I'm not around to set them free, would they cook under the...

Once again a long time has gone by since my last post.  My life has been very busy, but in a nutshell I've sold my house, moved in with my mother while my new house was being built and have now moved into the new house.  During all of this the covid 19 pandemic hit, which added layers of challenges to be able to do all that needed to be done.  It has been a double edged sword though as being confined to the house has given me time to get organized.  I've never been as far along that road so quickly after a move. Anyway I am going to try and document much of the wildlife I encounter at my new home, both flora and fauna.  If nothing else it may help me remember the names and nature of things that I look up along the way.  I will start with the deer. It took a long time before I actually saw any deer.  I constantly ran across their tracks across the building site but even though I was living next door I never actually saw any until living in the house....

We've been away camping for much of the last few weeks.  When we got home Thor got very sick again requiring another emergency surgery.  This was the third time for him and he wasn't able to recover this time.  He is such a beloved dog, and we know there will never be another like him.  He is very sadly missed.   In other news, my daughter and granddaughters recently came down for a visit.  I decided that their dolls, Katie and Baby, needed dresses to match their own new dresses .  Katie also got a new circle skirt.  Up until now she has only had her winter outfit including a winter coat, and everyone needs some comfortable summer clothes, don't they?! While we were camping in the Bruce Peninsula we got some long overdue visits in with my inlaws.  I've been wanting to make a walking stick and they gave me a nice piece of cedar (I think) stick.  I sanded it down, sprayed it with varathane, added a wrap handle and rubber foot...

I have been really busy this last few weeks.  Further to my post the other day, I finished up the second sundress for granddaughters and made the two pens for my inlaws.   Mom had some labels made up for us a few years ago and I just ran across them.  Seemed like the perfect way to easily show which side is the back.  This was a really fun project.  The pink dress was sewn on the Brother.  I set the stitch length to 3.5 and increased the tension to 5.  Then the Brother broke down on me and is in for repair.  I tried using the Pfaff for the blue one but no matter what I tried I couldn't get any tension on the elastic.  So I pulled out Black Betty (the Janome heavy duty mechanical machine), set the stitch length and tension the same as I did for the Brother and it did a beautiful job. The brown pen is made from a maple burl.  That one is for my brother-in-law who does a lot of woodworking.  My sister-in-law is very connected...

Just a little "catch up" post on some things I've been working on. I began quilting by taking a class at my local quilting store.  This was a year ago but I never posted a pic of my finished project, so here you go: It is a lap sized quilt and I've been using it for sitting outside on cool evenings when camping.  Speaking of camping, I also wanted to make a quilt for the trailer.  I needed to protect the couch from Thor and also just to have an extra blanket on hand.  Well, Thor got very sick after our last camping trip and we lost him while I was working on this quilt.  I sewed in the sunroom keeping him company while he tried to recover from his surgery.  Somehow that makes the quilt even more meaningful for me.  I've got the quilt pieced and am ready to make the backing, sandwich and quilt it. I used a package of Northcott's Stonehenge strips and embroidered wolves, bears and other wildlife on alternating squares.  I used up every s...

After my father passed away his wood lathe came to live at my house.  A couple of years ago I took a pen-making seminar and really enjoyed it.  I was a little reluctant to make more on my own because, like all hobbies, it needs new equipment and a financial outlay.  Even though I have the lathe I would still need to buy a mandrel, bushings, finishing products, etc. on top of the actual materials for each pen.  The cheap b@stard in me was reluctant to do so.  It's like buying pins and tape measures and seam rippers and scissors and everything else just to make a set of napkins.  You are reluctant to make that initial investment.  Just before this past Christmas I started talking about biting the bullet and getting into it anyway.  Life is too short.  I went ahead and ordered a starter kit and J took that as a signal to stock up on blanks for me as a wonderful Christmas gift.  And for the last week I have been having so much fun playi...

I started this quilt about a year and a half ago to use in the sunroom.  It was just going to be a cheapie quilt to learn some new techniques on.  I used cottons I found at Lens Mills in Woodstock and I used cheap polyester batting.  I have a metal dragonfly on the wall and one of my fabrics has dragonflies in it, hence the name.  I found a dragonfly template that you pat with chalk to give you an outline to follow.  Sounds great in theory but it brushes off as you are sewing so it is hard to follow.       So some of the quilt was quilted with dragonflies and the rest was a sampler for learning free-motion quilting. The quilt began as a lap blanket but I added another row and then I added a border and then I added another border... you see where this is going.  It now fits over my queen bed.  The blues are for the pool and one of the blue fabrics has fish on it.  The oranges and yellows are for sunny days which...