Ms Grundy again

My toe hurts. I might have broken it this morning kicking an armadillo's butt. No, really, I really did kick an armadi llo. My dog kept barking at an armadillo. I saw it turn and chase her. When I went out, it came onto my patio toward me!! I shouted and threw things. I was so mad, when it turned around, I kicked its rear. Three of them were just meandering around my house, annoying my dog. I threw rocks and pieces of fallen tree limbs. I could tell I hit one good, because it ricocheted up in the air the way they do, and I almost expected to hear the chimes of a pinball score. When I had kicked the 'dillo, it didn't move or budge at all. So I guess I learned that lesson - GOLF, not SOCCER! My other dog, Mischief, killed an armadillo in our yard once. She barked, startled it, and it  jumped straight up in the air about 3 feet. But when it landed, it missed the garden area  and fell down onto the lower story patio about ten feet below. It remained motionless, and  ...

Fireworks and concert at Jolly Mill tonight were fantastic. Our house is above most of the smoke, but about half the "blossoms" were behind our trees. Because of the shape of our valley, the noise is incredible, your heart thudders in your chest, and the pets are truly hysterical. If the wind is right (wrong), the cinders and ashes fall on our house. My hubs made frozen wild blackberry yogurt with stevia instead of sugar. Yummmm ! (My granddaughter helped pick the berries.) My grands gave me colored-ink pens and food-shaped puzzle erasers, and my daughter took me out for Chinese food. In about an hour Thursday, Jer and I and Zoe n Zac picked over 18 pounds of blueberries. Before we started, Zac wouldn't taste them. He said he didn't like blueberries. Later, he discovered he did. Most of us ate almost as much as we put in the buckets - including Zac.

So, can you see progress? I can only work on this in the daylight, because the dress is white, beige, pale gray, and cream on ecru.

These are the first three blocks (~16") for my granddaughter's cat quilt. Someday there will be little cat faces to match each cat.

I took 6 (only 6!!) of my husband's old work shirts. They had a logo, and his name and title embroidered on them. Since he's retired, he won't be using them, and he can't give them to a co-worker, either. This quilt top (sewn in columns, but rows not stitched yet) is the result. It is currently snuggle-sized, but will get larger - I still have plenty of fabric from the original 6 shirts - navy, khaki, 2 light blues, 2 dark greens...

I have seen that people are saving old thread on wooden spools.  They use the thread to make a shadowbox of memories of some ancestor they loved who used to sew . I still have some thread on wooden spools. But I won't be using the thread. Not because it is a memento of a loved one. Because I BOUGHT IT MYSELF. And if I haven't wanted something made in that color in 45 years, the chances are good that I won't want it now, either.

On May 4 1970, "they" did. The National guard - on the campus of Kent State University - 13 shot - 4 demonstrating students dead. Or maybe some of them demonstrating, some just there, caught at really the wrong place at the wrong time. A university name famous (infamous?) forever, "Kent State" refers to only one thing in the last 35 years: - 13 bodies on the pavement, bleeding. --for exercising their right - guaranteed by the constitution, to meet and to express their opinion. 67 shots fired in 13 seconds - 13 wounded - four dead Neil Young, of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young echoed the despair of a generation with the haunting echo "Four dead in Ohio." I was walking down the sidewalk after a class, when a friend approached me, all upset, angry, telling me about the shooting. I argued with her - "You must be mistaken. The students must have been doing SOMETHING. The guardsmen wouldn't have shot without a REASON." But I was wrong.  The...