A Quilting girl

I have been spending a bit of time each day in the restoration of my antique heritage quilt.  My hands get somewhat painful if I work more than about an hour in all the hand stitching.  I really love doing it and am making progress!

The plaid shirts that I have been  buying at thrift shops have been cut into strips to go into this new quilt, called Dad's Plaids.  Yesterday, I finally got out the sewing machine, set it up on the tiny table, and turned the driver's seat around, and got to work sewing the strips together for this new quilt.  I was a bit worried that I would not get the strips sewn into a good pattern, but the pattern designer said to do a rotating pattern of light strips and dark strips.  She said to use the spread of the hand, stretched out widely to determine the rotation of the colors.  

The strips are sewn with a 1/4 inch seam allowance, so I set to work on the sewing.

I draped the sewn strips over the sewing machine for this photo, and in the photo you will be able to see that the strips are all different lengths and widths.

My dogs are lying on the sofa just adjacent to the sewing machine and the situation doesn't seem to scaring them at all!

They are enjoying a nap!

Maintenance duty

Yesterday I was ready to take trash to the dumpster, and found that my car battery was DEAD!  That is always a frustrating circumstance for me, because it means that I have to go through the struggle of getting out the battery charger, 

an extension cord, 

hook them up to my solar system

hook them up to the battery

 and WAIT.

Wait until the charger makes the battery something less than DEAD.  Wait until I can go to the dumpster with my trash bags, wait, wait, wait.  

All the items needed to wait until today because it was already late yesterday, and the sun was low in the sky, and would not be able to keep up with the electrical needs for the battery charger, so I decided to wait until today, so I would not be having to use my generator for hours to keep the battery charger working.

So this morning the above photos were taken as I got the battery charger out of my storage compartment, and then the extension cord out of another compartment, hooked them up and got the battery charging.  I'm hoping that later the car will start, I can go to the trash dumpster, and then to to a grocery store to get supplies.

The tempo

I have heard it said that we all have our own sense of timing.  I have always tried to respect that idea, and to be aware of others' timing.  I have also read that there are some people who feel that they should always be "fashionably late" and consider that to be "on time".  Then, I have read that actual human royalty consider that they are on their own time schedule!

Since I have had Power in my family, I have had the joy of watching his bubbly personality and having him be both eager to join into my life and my schedule, and terrifically patient when he is not invited to be with me.

Previous greyhounds have been either overly anxious when they couldn't be with me, or even a bit of counter surfers and either eaten any food on the kitchen counters, or diving into the cat's litter boxes to eat kitty snacks!  The anxious ones would sometimes jump on my dinette table to see out the window and then break it with their weight, or jump onto the dash of the motorhome to watch me, and thus cause havoc with the potted plants on the dash!  The rebellious ones would eat the loaf of bread on the counter, or the leftover pizza, etc.  One hound was a paper shredder whenever I was in the next room from the hound!  I realized that the more I left these particular hounds home when I was gone, that the mess when I returned would be upsetting to me, unless I crated the hounds.  So I did that but they were also very afraid of being left in the crates!  One male hound was very destructive to the crate and himself when left in his crate..several times he tore the crate apart in order to escape the confines.  All these hounds were basically perfect except for being left!

Fleur and Val with their bassett hound friend.

Now to talk about a new development:  Hera.  She is very different from all my previous hounds, and doesn't mind being left, she is not destructive in any way, shape or form!  She does not get anxious when I am out of sight or gone from the motorhome.  HOWEVER, she is very interesting in one aspect.  The royal reputation of being "royally late" is so very solidly embedded in her DNA that it is ludicrous!  She totally enjoys standing for looong periods of time before an open door before she deigns to pass through that portal!  No matter if she is letting rain in, heat out, wind break the door, or getting Mom ill with rain wetness, frigid wind, etc.  She will not be bribed, urged, scolded, pushed, pulled, or any other ...ed!

I have figured out that if I leave the doorway and go to the bedroom in the rear of the motorhome, that I MIGHT have success in getting her to walk on up the motorhome steps and come inside.  I think maybe she wants to see where I went, or maybe she thinks that I was in her space when I was standing in the doorway holding the door open and urging her to "come on, it's too cold to keep this door open!"  Sometimes after ten minutes or more I have to step outside and grab her collar and help her get started up the steps.

Hera's tempo is the royal tempo.