Thrift Store Hopping

 Four friends from church and I had a girl day and went thrift shop hopping in Palm Coast.  What a nice time we enjoyed!  I am always on the hunt for these wooden collector's boxes.  This one is large at 24" square.  (Nice find, right Sharon?!)

And I bought this for the pool game-you float the green in the pool while you chip at the flag from the deck.  Bill and I both missed a lot in the beginning but he soon improved out of my league-we will have fun with it if we can keep the balls away from the felines!

A Full Day

 It was so much fun to make these string pieced quilt blocks, that I made 8 more this morning and will be turning them into a tote.........stay tuned!

 Out by the pool, the shrimp plants are in bloom and resting against their neighbor, the cactus roses!

 Another day lily is in bloom........incredible!

 All the color got my color juices going and I decided to use up the dyes left over from the silk dyeing Mom and I did in March.   I decided to try a different approach in the dyeing....I divided the roving visually and dyed a third of each a different color.  This will give me a long repeat of each color in one skein of yarn. 

 I have a plan for these two hanks of roving!  I think they are going to be hats....or mitts.

 I finished another garterlac dishcloth and have the second one on the needles. 

 I cast on for a differnt kind of summer sweater-more on this later.

The two rovings are all dried and ready for some spinning which will happen another day as I have run out of time!

Time to join the cats in their favorite activity, well second fav activity (the first is eating!) and go to sleep!

Wool Rematched

 I started right in on the newly dyed roving and got the yarn all done by afternoon's end.

 I wound it into a ball and did some knitting-I didn't have as far to go as I had thought but whether it was 2 inches or 2 miles-I was out of yarn!  I finished up the knitting and set it aside to spend time with my visiting sons!

 This morning I finished the crochet bind off, soaked the shawl and set it out to block.  Lace knitting looks awful until you block it out.

 See what I mean?!  It blocked out to 54" wide and 34" at center.  I even have enough yarn left for a pair of socks!  The color is a perfect match-the variations really work on this shawl-it is Haruni by KnitPicks.

 We have some new visitors since  we have been feeding the sandhill cranes out front.  The leftover crumbs have been picked up by this crow couple.  They call and ask for more and of course, we accomodate them!

 They do a better job of picking up every last crumb of bread or cereal than the cranes.  We used to put all our scraps out on a table behind our barn and feed our crow regulars when we lived in NY and are glad it is going to be a routine here, too.

 Speaking of the sandhill cranes, they are still visiting every day-the baby is measurably bigger every day and starting to get his/her pin feathers.

 He is so cute and not as tentative as he was his first week.

 He has learned to come running when we call, "Bread!" just like his parents!

Look at his drumsticks!  He is almost as tall as his mom but much scrawnier than they are.  (They stand about 4' tall)

Resurrection Sunday

He has indeed.........

Have a wonderful day, love to my family and friends.

We Interrupt this Knitting

 I ran out of yarn 20 rows short of finished............so I pulled out some roving, dye mixes and

 dyed a new batch!  I will spin this up tomorrow and hopefully be knitting in the evening!

 This month's Fiber Binder was llama-just so soft, luxurious really!  I have never spun fiber like this before-it was a real treat!  (30 yards of fingering weight yarn)

 The pool area is awash with flowers-all my African Irises are doing their thing......

 they are so delicate and would make a nice colorway for another dyeing day!

How is this for gorgeous-it is a daylily.  Enjoy it , for it's a brief visitor!

                               

Talk about inspiration for dyeing.....just look at this caladium leaf-it is about 15" long!

                           
The morning glories are stretching up to cover the trellis-just so beautiful. 
We are not lacking for flowers and that is one of the blessings of living where we do- flowers are year round!

Ship Ahoy!

 David gets the full use of a boat-he is everywhere!

 Abigail was very brave this year, she enjoyed it much more as the ride unfolded.

David is a natural as he is for most activities!

 Nice to relax together!

There were plenty of gators to make the search fast, furious and fun!

 We lunched at our favorite boating destination!  (Corky Bells)

 The water averaged 76F and was less brackish than later in the summer.

 The Corky Bell Gator was in his usual resting place-he has grown from last year-up to 2 1/2" now!

 Here is another sun-bather!

It is always exciting to see one on the move!

 Abigail usually hides out in the cabin but only went here for a break from the wind a few times.

 She spent a lot of time out here enjoying the view with the rest of us!

 The view as we leave Dunn's Creek for Crescent Lake.

 This tree was just floating along-this is why you have to be diligent at all times while boating-it was right in the path we took 2 hours earlier!

Pretty enough for a puzzle, isn't it?!  Sun kissed and ready for the pool-what  a great boat trip!

Two Legged Visitors!

 We have two couples of the sandhill cranes that regularly visit-see what one of them brought to us for a visit?!  The baby caught on very quickly when we threw the bread!

He is so downy, fluffy and cute!

The uncles came for the weekend to help celebrate David's  9th birthday.

David also had two friends from our church come over to join in the fun!

Abigail got in the birthday fun, too!  (Her birthday was last month!)

Rapunzel is one of her favorites right now!

Marsel even found some time to decorate a cake!

Having the uncles is the best gift!

Go , David, Go!

The warm temps has made for some great pool time-we linger long in the water that is 88-90*!

Abigail is very relaxed in the pool this year-so nice to see her imagination at work no matter what she is involved in!

Marsel and I got to spend some time in the sewing room-she made this birthday pj set for David.

These are the four blocks we made for our participation in the Margaret's Hope Chest quilting charity.  We will revisit this pattern, string piecing-we did one set of blocks orderly and symmetrical and then pushed ourselves to make the other set of four 6 1/2" blocks randomly-it was so hard!  The request was for blocks in blue, green and yellow so we dug through our scraps for these colors and had a great time!