Whooooosh

Yep, that was the sound of a long weekend flying past! I live for these 3-day weekends, but never seem to get done all that is on my to-do list. I say we should have 3-day weekends every week...either that or I shouldn't have to work at all!

So, more sunrises this week.
And just one of the many deer we see on our way to work. It drives the pups nuts when they go jumping out of the fields and across the road in front of us. There are a couple spots where they tend to cross, so we have at least learned to be on the look-out for them to avoid having a collision. In one spot there are a couple of does with fawns (one has twins) who still have their adorable spots who we see quite often, and in the other there are several bucks and does that cross. This is one of the does, but her fawn took off and I didn't get a picture of him.
K was at interviews this week. They went really well, and we expect follow-up to be coming soon. While he was away, I was home sweating in the heat and humidity doing chores alone. My parents were awesome and kept Bode & Lucky, so that Ardee & I hung out on the farm together. He is so good and easy to deal with (i.e. he eats well and doesn't run off), and I feel a bit more secure having him here...heck, he barked at the horses one night when I was trying to defend Chelse (the old horse) so she could eat all of her feed. He seemed to enjoy the special attention of getting to run the place on his own...he didn't even seem to care when K got home, while the other 2 smothered him. Poor middle child needed the extra attention! Here we are on our way into town one morning.
K has been letting the horses graze the lower field below the barn on weekends. They like the plentiful green grass, and it has slowed their hay eating a bit. Plus Chelse usually doesn't join them, and that means she gets to graze and drink and do whatever she pleases without them bothering her. When they get bored, then they start acting like goof balls...which ranges from running all over bucking and snorting, to exploring, and this is the indication that they need to be rounded up and returned to the fenced in pasture. Thus K usually sits out to watch over them, but this can be quite boring if they are behaving, because they may graze happily for hours. Saturday he decided to mow while he waited, since he'd still be able to monitor them. I was working on projects when he taps on the door and tells me I need to come outside. I walk out the walk-out basement, and look up the hill to find this:Yep, they had decided to explore the back yard. Now mind you that if you were riding or trying to lead them through the gates into said yard, they would have a fit! They left precious little 'piles' and then headed back on out and continued to explore until K finished the mowing.

So back to what whoooshing sound...there was a whole slew of projects I wanted to at least work on this weekend, but it just didn't happen. Luckily I scrapped Friday night, and I hope to work on a few more things tonight. But the project that I told myself I would spend exactly 1 day on? Well, it ended up consuming my entire weekend. Not that that is a bad thing...its almost done, but that means a whole lot of other things didn't get done. And this big project? My massive 120" x 120" rag quilt. I was thinking it would be a bit of motivation...I would spend 1 day working on it, hoping that I would get to strips of 4 squares at most, but then I would spend the other 2 days doing scrappy stuff. So I started Saturday morning, and by that night I had progressed until I had strips of 8 squares! Then yesterday I got up and decided that with 1 more day of work, I could probably have it all sewn together. And I would have too if the electric wouldn't have gone off at 10pm last night! But with a couple hours work this morning, it is all assembled. From the best I can tell, it's really pretty too! Now comes the oh so fun task of snipping all of the edges so that they will fray when it is washed. Guessing that one might take a few weeks...a person's hand gets rather tired snipping all of that fabric.

I set out with 14 different fabrics, and was hoping that I could, by random arrangement (I didn't want to have to plan it), end up with no 2 alike squares touching. After a whole lot of arranging and rearranging yesterday afternoon, I think I achieved that goal...at least close enough. I know I have some diagonal matching squares, but I'm pretty sure that would have required mapping them out from the beginning to avoid. Anywho, no finished pictures (since its not finished!), but here is one of the sets of 2 squares laid out so I could decide what combinations to put together for my strips of 4.And here is my helper this morning as I finished sewing the last of the rows on...I guess it has Serine's seal of approval!