Yes, please

You Are Sunrise

You enjoy living a slow, fulfilling life. You enjoy living every moment, no matter how ordinary. You are a person of reflection and meditation. You start and end every day by looking inward. Caring and giving, you enjoy making people happy. You're often cooking for friends or buying them gifts. All in all, you know how to love life for what it is - not for how it should be.

What Time Of Day Are You?

Just keep movin' on...

Well, I'm not tickled with July's bead journal page, but I've decided I'm doing a swell job for someone with a full time job, a mother recovering from a stroke, a teenager and assorted other "diversions". (Let's call them "diversions". It makes it sound so much nicer.)

What I've realized is that I'm experimenting with bead embroidery with the mind of a quilter. I was going to bead more of this piece of hand-dyed fabric and then realized that I'd be heartbroken if nobody could see the pretty fabric. The flash washed out a lot of the color--it's really dark green, blending into a dark lapis blue. It reminded me so much of my week at the lake.

I know what I'm going to be doing for the August piece and since my mom will hopefully going back to her room in assisted living pretty soon, I'll hopefully have two whole weekend days each week to work.

By the way, the title of this post is from a song by Eric Bibb, a blues/folk artist I've just discovered. He's definitely worth a listen

Doodling with thread

Since I'm doing a 5 hour car trip every Saturday to visit my mother in Walla Walla, I don't have a whole lot of time to play. I've been working on catching up with the Bead Journal Project when I have five minutes here or there, but I couldn't resist making a postcard tonight. I bought the most beautiful thread in primary colors and just felt like doodling. No great art, but a great deal of fun.

Finished June, in the middle of July and starting August

I realized, finally, if I read three books at a time, I might as well bead three pieces at once. I finished the beading for June last month, but didn't finish the page until last week. I'm not happy with it, but what I see when I look at it is the chaos that has been our lives the last couple of weeks. Still, I am proud of my emotions so they might as well be dressed up for company...

Empty nest syndrome

Sorry it's a fuzzy image, but I was trying to keep out of the way of the adult quail while they were feeding. As you can see, while I was on vacation, the quail hatched and flew the proverbial coop! I haven't seen the babies yet, but my son saw them while I was in Walla Walla today and said that they were amazingly cute and they were being attended by three adults--one female and two male. Not sure why, but with that many kids, it's great to have a "manny", I'd imagine.

While I was on vacation my mother had a "mini-stroke", recovered mostly from that, but now she's in the care center of her retirement home. She's still pretty weak but I'm determined to start beading and sewing again this week. I'll go down and visit her one day next weekend, again, but I'm going to start making better use of my evenings. (It is hereby resolved.)

The lake was incredible. Beautiful, warm, calming as always. I'll post pictures of that and the amazing parasailing adventure when I have time to reduce the size of the pictures.

Not yet!

Well, the quail is still sitting on her nest, so I'm hoping that the eggs will hatch this week while I'm gone. The dogs and the cat won't bother her, and the house sitter knows not to disturb her, so my ideal situation is that they hatch this weekend and she has a good week to get them going before we come back and mess up her life. (Albeit unintentionally.)

I haven't done anything on my bead journal project in the last two weeks. My 85 year old mother was hospitalized in Walla Walla (2.5 hours away) for three days last week, so I'm behind on everything. I'm hoping that things will settle down after vacation.

And I'm armed for the lake (Priest Lake in the northern part of Idaho) with a host of lovely books. One as yet unpublished book I'm reading as an early reviewer on LibraryThing (www.librarything.com), One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson, My Latest Grievance by Elinor Lipman, and Charms for the Easy Life by Kay Gibbons. I'm also going to take small bites of The Quantum Zoo because I've heard it's possible to understand *some* of quantum theory. (I'm sort of doubting it.)

And when I get back, I'm sure I'll be all rev'd again for sewing and beading. I am now, actually, but I need a little non-doing time. Have a good week!

The nest!

Here it is--our beautiful quail's nest. The mom was out for a bite to eat, I think. She's a very dutiful mom, though, and stays still on that nest no matter what.