Once again - new "it's official" news - I'm turning in my resignation -aka retirement - letter today.  My tentative last day at work will be September 18th.  I say tentative because I'm leaving room to train my replacement.  If they replace me earlier, I can leave earlier, but I can also stay longer to train.  The bank and my team have been good to me and I don't want to abandon them.  It's been a wild ride.....but I'm looking forward to the next chapter.

 

I took Monday off as a vacation day and took myself to Mt.Lassen for a walk to Bumpass Hell.  It was a beautiful day for a walk - the weather was perfect (mid 70's and a light breeze) and the butterflies are migrating through the park.  There were butterflies in the air everywhere!  They weren't landing anywhere so I didn't get any good photos of them.  They are small butterflies (California Tortoiseshell).  This Instagram link has some good photos of them from a couple of days before I was at the park. (https://www.instagram.com/reel/DbLoLyGgaQp/) 

 

You can hear the eruption: 

One baby quilt completed!  Andrea and family welcomed a baby boy to their family a couple of weeks ago, so I need to get this shopped off soon.  I really like how this turned out .

 

And it's official - I'm old.....I was just approved for Medicare..... 

Week 3 of the Surf's Up Mystery Quilt is complete. 

 

Here are week 1 and 2 - I'm liking the colors, even though brown is not my usual pick for colors, which is why I got this kit.  I'm trying to change up my colors a bit more.
 

And the 2026 RBD Challenge quilt top is finished!  I started it in January, and got the last set of instructions at the end of May, so not too bad (for me)!  It's 60 inches square, so a nice size quilt.

More progress on the RBD Challenge quilt. I have all of the blue and white pieces for the center made.  Now, I "just" need to sew them together into strips of 7, sew those strips to the big quilt blocks, and then, sew the whole thing together.  We won't talk about quilting it yet - that's a whole different project. My Bernina machine is still in the shop, so I'm sewing with my Allegra - my "quilting machine".  I'm not going to switch back and forth between sewing and quilting on that machine - I keep forgetting a setting, which has been a bit disastrous at least once already.  

If you forget to raise the feed dogs, which are dropped for quilting, the fabric won't feed through the machine, needed for sewing - it made a bit of a mess....and that was just one of the things I forgot.  It took me forever to figure out why I couldn't do a zigzag stitch on it!

On the way home from my nail appointment this week, a family of quail wondered across the street in front of me - the babies are soooo cute!  It took them forever to cross the road with mom and dad running back and forth to keep them all together.. 

 

Progress on the 2026 Riley Blake Design Challenge - still a lot of parts to put together, but I'm getting there! 

 

I've started a new quilt - I know, what a shock!  This is the newest Mystery Five-O quilt, Surf's Up, and my fabric this time is in shades of brown.  These are weeks 1 and 2 of the quilt.  

All the chickens are now laying - I'm getting 4 eggs a day (most days).  Of course, some of the "new" eggs are a bit small, but they are all laying.  The Easter Egger and Sapphire Gem just started, and the Easter Egger egg is almost a blue.  

Now to get them to go to bed where they are supposed to.  Every night I have to go out and shoo them off the roof of the coop cover and put them in the coop.  I keep reminding them of what happened to the other Sapphire (went missing in the middle of the night, only  feathers left) but they insist on roosting outside of the coop....

 

 

 

My Baskets and Blooms quilt is done!  I took it out to take a picture, and realized I forgot to bring  the clamps with me that I us to pin it to the pool fence.  Luckily, as I started back inside, "the tall one" (aka AJ) wandered outside and offered to hold it up for me. 

I like how the border turned out - I was very indecisive on what to do, and I think the meander pattern I used for the rest of the quilt worked out well. 

What a difference a week makes with the UV filter - now you can see the fish!  We couldn't see the dark gray one at all unless they came up tot he surface to eat.