What's a poor girl to do when the cat steals your bed????  And isn't even sorry about it?

I think I found the way I'm going to put the last Mystery Quilt together.  Someone else posted a picture of theirs that they rearranged the blocks a bit, and I really like how it looks with my blocks. 

For comparison, here are the other two mock-ups I did: 

I found a super quick and cute coaster pattern - it makes up in minutes and takes just five 5" square pieces of fabric - definitely a scrap-buster!  The pattern is here: Coasters and it's super easy!  A quick little project for when I have the sewing equivalent of writer's block. For me, it's often more of a "decisions, decisions" thing - when I finish up a project, which one do I jump into next?   

 I had offered to quilt a quilt top for a friend's mom, and I had to make myself do it before I quilted anything for me, or it would have sat there forever!  I could never be a professional quilter.  I'd rather work on my stuff!  But, once I finished it and before I jumped into the next project, I tried this little pattern out.  Now, on to the next project - quilting the baby frog quilt - the baby shower is less than 2 weeks away!!
 

This is what happens when you are folding the last load of laundry and get sidetracked.  When you get back, half the towels are unfolded or on the floor, stacks of towels are knocked over, and there's a black cat sleeping on the nest that they made for themselves. 

Allison's Day Program had a field trip on Friday to the local Aquatic Center (which I still refer to as the Plunge, making me instantly recognizable as having lived in Redding way too many years!  The Plunge was taken out and remade into the Aquatic Center in 1998 - AJ did his first swim lessons there, and when Alli and I did Mommy and Me classes, they were at the Enterprise High School.)  The day didn't start out well, but Alli evidently had a blast once she got to the Center!  

First, Alli's routine was off because she didn't go to the Day Program in the morning, but we followed our normal routine because I still had to go to work.  She was a bit agitated once she was ready to go and we didn't actually go anywhere until 9:45, but settled down a bit, watching TV.  Then, on my drive in, I got a text from the program manager - "Call me"....never a good sign. Turns out they had changed the time the group was supposed to be there but failed to tell her - a bit awkward I would say.  Bless Feather's heart, she can pivot on a penny, much less a dime.  Pizza was already ordered and they were going to eat lunch in the park before they went swimming, I just had to change the drop off location.  Alli had so much fun that she didn't want to leave when Cindy picked her up.  She actually refused to leave, not walking...  Cindy finally got her moving, and needless to say, she had an early evening - 3 hours outside in our heat, much less swimming and she was exhausted. 

 Summer is here.....and I'm done!  Bring on September!! 

AJ got a new paddle board so he could go out with me, and we took it for a test drive last night.  Whiskeytown Lake was beautiful, and it felt a lot cooler!  It was 105 in the parking lot when we got there, according to my watch, but getting a little wet and sitting in the water, it was perfect!  I didn't even go involuntarily swimming this time!  Of course, I didn't do a lot of stand-up paddling either. 

AJ's way of paddle boarding.....

We had a couple of ducks come see if we had anything to feed them.  They came straight at us - on a mission!!

They swam around us for bit, came in to visit and left empty-handed.

Here's the Sapphire Gem that's broody.  She sits in the coop - after she's moved the fake eggs into her cubby - as much as she can.  AJ and I take turns going out and moving her off the nest so she can get some water.  Every morning, I put three fake eggs in each cubby.  Every day she moves most of them so she can sit on them.

 

 

 A couple more cat blocks done on the "Summer Reading" quilt. 

I was vacuuming, and when I turned around, "someone" had knocked one of my plants onto the floor.  I have no idea which :someone" it was, but I have my suspicions! 

 

I finished the top for a baby quilt - it is adorable!!  Carolyn D's baby shower is in a couple of weeks, so I need to get it quilted pretty quickly, but the top turn out great!  I had a few issues - mainly remembering which green I was supposed to using.  I had to "unsew" quite a few places where I had the wrong green in, or worse, flipped the wrong way.  (One cheek of the frog did not want to play nice - I had it in wrong twice!).  The pattern is available through Etsy Etsy shop - Counted Quilts 

We are back to or normal summer temps now - nothing under 105 forecast for this next week - ugh!  Not my favorite time of year, but at least it waited until August to do that.  A couple of years ago we started in June with the 105+ days.  

One of my new chickens has become broody - odd for such a young hen.  It's my Sapphire Gem (a beautiful blue/gray) and she's just six months old and only been laying for a month.  I keep fake eggs in the nest to discourage the hens from pecking the real eggs, and she is gathering all the fake eggs to sit on.  Now she's staying on the nest as much as we'll let her.  We go out frequently during the day and move her, just to make sure she's drinking, and find her sitting on a dozen plus eggs.  She puffs up and growls at us when we move her and it takes her a while to get "unpuffed".  She looks so funny stomping around, all fluffed up.  Luckily all she does is growl at us.  (I have memories of being pecked by chickens when I gathered eggs as a kid.)

One of the Easter Eggers is laying double yolk eggs - the eggs are extra long.  Both are laying green eggs, so I hvae a nice collection of green and brown eggs this year.

Decisions, decisions!  The "reveal" is out for my mystery quilt, and I like both options!  I think I'm leaning toward the second quilt, dark spirals in the center.  I like the layout of options #3 and #4, but I don't like how the color of the background fabric on the side is highlighted.  You don't notice as much on options #1 and #2 that the background fabric is different (there are three different background fabrics and five different brown fabrics).  I'll leave it up for a while and see if I still like it after a week.  (And, after I finish up other projects - I have a few!)

 

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.