It’s been raining non stop but that’s ok, we’re enjoying our visit and are in the middle of a multi day 5 Crowns tournament! Does your family play games?

In between games, there are runs to the store, cooking, eating, napping (Keith), and reading! Even with all the rain we can sit on the porch and Mom and I carried our Kindles and quilts out there for a while this afternoon. Mom and I are both reading the CJ Box books featuring Joe Pickett – I think it was Nancy who recommended this series to me. I’m on book #8 of 22 but Mom is about 3 books ahead of me.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost 2 years since Mom came to visit and stay with me a while. The last time was in Oct 2019. I’m so looking forward to this time with her.

I don’t have photos from today but she arrived at dinner time along with my brother Kevin and his wife Hilary and she’ll stay for 3 weeks! My brother’s visit will be shorter … just 4 days but I’m glad to see him too.

And last night caught on camera … sometimes the cameras just catch a glimpse of an animal and I can’t tell what it is but luckily I have 3 cameras in the back and often an animal is picked up on all 3. I had just told Keith I hadn’t seen a fox in several months … and on the first two videos I couldn’t tell what this was but on the third, I could see it was a fox.

We had 6 wonderful years at the Tampa townhouse and now we’re ready to move on. After a stressful few months and several delays, the closing was today and the house is officially sold.

I can’t tell you what a relief this is to me and I’ve told Keith we’re never moving again … of course, by that I mean that if we need to live somewhere else for his job for a period of time I’m fine renting somewhere and keeping our home in Big Canoe. This is where we plan to end our days!

I love my raccoons! When we first installed the cameras last fall there were a pair of raccoons that showed up and I just knew one of them was pregnant. The last several months I’ve only seen one raccoon at any given time and I wondered what happened to its mate … and I never saw any babies … and look what showed up last night! Little ones! Keith just shakes his head at my enthusiasm for all the wildlife we see here.

My Log Cabin Hearts quilt is finished. Mom appliqued the set of hearts I used for this second one. She thought they were too busy (I asked for colored hearts and colored backgrounds) but I kind of like them! I’ve got one more set she appliqued and they’re all on neutral backgrounds so she’ll probably end up liking that one better when I get around to making it. Pantograph is Leafy Love

Are you tired of me telling you how great my workspaces are here? One thing I’ve really missed is having an open floor space to spread a quilt out to trim or to put borders on. I have that here in my sewing room.

And the views are great too, my sewing room windows look out on the back yard right at the stone steps! This baby still has his spots. According to most articles I’ve read they lose their spots at 3 to 4 months old … by October usually.

This Strips and Strings Log Cabin is ready for binding, another quilt is loaded on the longarm, all but 5 blocks for the Strips and Strings Rail fence quilt are made … and now I’m going to sit and crochet and listen to my audiobook.

My holiday weekend was great … time with Keith and Finn, hiking, kayaking, crochet, and sewing. We did miss seeing Chris and the girls but I filled the time with things I love. This afternoon, Keith helped me get the kayak in the water. It’s too heavy for me to lift off the rack and carry down to the water so he’s always nice about going with me to help and then coming back for me later.

When I got home, I went downstairs and started some rail fence blocks from my strips and strings bins. Stephane pulled “Honey Buns” from the hat for our precut for September and I don’t have any of those so I’m interpreting it as skinny strips. The rails have both thin and wider strips and the blocks measure 9 inches finished.

I have made one of these before and really liked how it turned out. I don’t think this one will have a border but we’ll see if I think it needs one when the blocks are done.

I didn’t make it to the sewing room at all today but that’s OK. Keith and I hiked Amicalola Falls and then just had a relaxing afternoon and evening. It was about 2 miles up … then about a mile and a half coming down. I find it a fairly strenuous hike so I’m always happy to make it to the base of the falls and then to the top of the falls, and finally, on up to the lodge at the top. Coming down is certainly easier than going up but the trail we take is very rough and requires a lot of attention to avoid stumbling on roots and rocks.

I didn’t take a photo today at the base of the falls because there were lots of people there taking photos and we did not join the crowd but I have many photos of the falls from all the years we’ve been visiting including these photos from a visit to the falls with Mom and my sisters in 2013. (They didn’t hike up, we drove up and there’s a parking lot and an access trail that is 0.3 miles to the base of the falls)

Someone commented a while back that Chesty used to show up on the blog more than Finn does and when I was going through old blog photos I realized they were probably right. That may be because Chesty spent all of his time with me in the sewing room and Finn spends part of his day with Keith. Anyway, I thought I’d share how he spent today …

The morning was spent in bed with Mom … no photos of that … the afternoon, he sat with Mom while she worked on her crochet blanket.

Then he went on a walk around the meadows – lots of things to sniff and smell.

Wondering why Mom wasn’t keeping up …

The dog park is right there at the meadows too so he got to run around off leash. He was so funny, Keith would throw the ball and Finn would run to it and then run back over to where the water dishes were even though he didn’t drink every time – it was like it was home base! He never picked up the ball either …

He ended his day with a bath! No photo of that either because I was sitting on the porch with a beer while Keith cleaned him up.

It’s been a while since I quilted so many HeartStrings quilts all in a row … the last 3 were group quilts and this one of mine was quilted today.

The pantograph is square spiral and it’s one I’ve always liked but it was too large for my machine before but now with my Pantovision, I can resize pantographs to fit my available quilting space. My machine is not computerized – I just follow the pattern from the front of the machine rather than the back.

I have two ready for binding now but tonight I’m going to start a new blanket.