Sunday Sundry 10-22-17

Let's see if I remember how to do this blogging thing.  Were you wondering whether I'd R-U-N-N-O-F-T?  Nope, still hanging in there.  It's been a pretty nice couple of months, actually, what with hugging all the goodness out of summer and all.  I don't even know if that is a meaningful metaphor, but you get the idea.

(Beautiful bike trail.)

There have been birthdays to celebrate, a wedding, a retirement, a funeral, pretty much the full gamut of life's milestones.

(An early fall boat tour.)

Art galleries and museums to visit.  Bike trails, waterways, and nature to explore and enjoy.

(My sister, in red, and my niece at the Kirsty Mitchell "Wonderland" exhibit.)

(My sister and I on a lovely September day at The Paine Art Center and Gardens.)

Recipes to try and flavors to savor.

(New gluten-free, dairy-free pumpkin pie recipe was a winner!)

There's been some sewing, too.  Not a whole lot, but some.  I finished the string quilt top I'd started piecing in August.

(My String-X)

Friend and fellow quilter Marei and I did a two-person quilt along.  We love Bonnie Hunter's quilts, and you may recall we did a similar thing a couple years ago when we each made a Scrappy Mountain Majesties quilt.  That one is currently on my bed, in fact, at this in-between time of year.  We've had a mild fall so far, and sometimes the AC still comes on; other times it's a little chilly in the house.

Anyway, Marei let me pick the pattern we were going to make this time, and I chose String-X.  Above is my flimsy in the fall colors, and below is Marei's.  I really like her background fabrics!

(Marei's String-X)

It always feels good to use up some of those scraps and strings.  When it came time for the border on my String-X, Marei happened to have just bought some lovely fabrics and offered to share a piece.  And that gorgeous green and purple batik looked marvelous!

Now I'm working on a baby quilt for my niece, a herringbone pattern made with half-square triangles.  It went up on the design wall this week. 

(Baby quilt on design wall.)

I procrastinated on starting it a little too long, because, as it happened, the baby arrived a bit early.  All is well, though, and I'm hoping to finish it up soon.

Lastly, here's a funny sight from along a bike trail a couple weeks ago. (And no, they're not mine!)

I bet there's a good story there, don't you think? ;)

Out of the Weeds

It looks like I've let the weeds grow here on the blog over the last six weeks.  Hopefully not as bad as they've grown in real life in my dad's garden this summer.  They are ruling the world over there, let me tell you.  More about that in a bit, but for now I'm here with virtual hoe in hand to make amends for this neglected space on the Interweb. 

Working on machine applique.

Behind the hedges, so to speak, I've been doing a few things.  Finished a quilt, made a bag, fixed some "not-shoes" that my niece is going to wear for her wedding, and started a string quilt. 

Hobo bag commissioned by my niece.

Quilt finish - made from bonus Christmas fabric HSTs.

String-X quilt pieces, string pieced on phone book pages.

I've also been enjoying the summer in other ways—biking, walking, reading, etc.  

One of the many bike rides we've enjoyed.

I would add gardening, but that's been a bit of a failure, it seems.  Turns out gardens are a lot of work. Not just requiring outright sweaty labor, but consistency.  I'm not able to get over there daily and tend it, and I swear it knows.  It knows.  Nature knows the shopkeeper isn't minding the till(er). 

Dad has been the master gardener in the family through the years, until the present one.  But he's still laid up with his broken ankle from January and some healing complications from that.  So with the help of a couple other family members, we got his garden planted (in some pretty boggy soil), but the crops haven't done very well.  The radishes and parsnips washed out.  About a third of the onions came up, about a dozen beets are still thinking about it, and a handful of green bean plants are struggling to push out some pods.  The peppers, nada.  The tomatoes?  They may be okay eventually, barring an early frost.

Wildflowers (grown by Nature, not me)

The weeds, however, are THRIVING.

If you can't beat 'em - eat 'em?

After whacking at the thousandth specimen of one weed, in particular, I got curious about it.  So I asked Google what the heck it was and ultimately identified it as purslane.  That's not what Dad called it, but we won't go there.

Purslane

A little more investigating revealed it was edible.  Not only edible but very nutritious and supposedly good tasting.  Apparently, various cultures actually enjoy eating the stuff and even pay money for it!

And here it was in spades.  I won't go so far as to say manna from heaven, but Nature's gift, at any rate, or consolation prize.  A veritable and vegetative "participation trophy" for us amateurs.

You think you can grow peppers?  Not this year, lady.  But have some purslane.

So I ate it.  And it was good!

It tastes like baby spinach, only better.  Brighter tasting, a little lemony.  I chopped some up and sprinkled it in a salad.  I added it to soft tacos for a tasty crunch. 

I didn't eat a ton of it—you never know when my touchy stomach will decide that everything must go—but I gave it a fair shot and enjoyed it, and it didn't cause me any grief.  So there's that.

What kind of adventures have you had this summer—gardening, gastronomic, or otherwise?

Sunday Sundry 7-9-17

I'm back home with my feet up after spending a couple hours on a beautiful bike trail earlier today.  Should really have some ice on my knees, but I guess that can wait a bit longer.

It was as close to perfect a summer day as there can be, and I'm glad we were able to get out and enjoy it.

We've had a good amount of rain so far this summer, and everything is looking lush and green.  The tiger lilies were in bloom along the trail.

Marsh asters and Queen Anne's lace.  Afterwards, we had a picnic by the river.  A very picturesque little spot.

I have a thing for water lilies.

Which is why I picked up a water lily art print at the thrift store last weekend.  It joins, on the wall, my other thrifted water lily print found a few years ago.

 These are signed and numbered prints and professionally framed.  I don't think either one cost me more than five bucks.  Wish I knew more about the artists. 

Last week's bike trail ride was cut short due to Norm getting a flat tire.  Since it was a holiday weekend, the bike shop was closed.

The thrift store, however, was not!  It had been a while since we went junkin', as I'm more of a mind to get rid of excess than accumulate it these days.  But I have a place or purpose for all of the things I brought home.

I've been needing a lasagna pan since my old stoneware one cracked last year and I had to toss it.  I found a large 13x10-inch (or thereabouts) Corning Ware baking dish that will do just fine.

Zippers are always handy to have in the stash.  I used up a lot of my supply when I was making gift zipper pouches last year.

The Love Letters book might not have been a necessity, but at 69 cents, it was worth it for the beautiful illustrations and words.  And that's my very first "barn quilt" for the porch, from a local store that had them on clearance for half off, can you believe it?  It's a 12-inch metal Thistle Bloom block.

I did get a quilt basted yesterday.  This one's from bonus half-square triangles from a Christmas quilt I made last fall from an Aspen Frost layer cake.

The flimsy has been done for a while but I wasn't in a mood to work on it until now.  My HSTs only went so far, so I added a wide border all the way around to get it to lap quilt size. The blue thing at the bottom of the picture is a foam gardening mat from the dollar store.  It's a knee saver!

Inspector Gadget

Guys and gals, I've been dropped.  At least my blog has been, from my own Feedly reader feed.  The nerve!

I have been investigating, but turning up very few clues as to why.  I unfollowed my blog, then added it back.  Still can't see the latest post.  It shows up as a blog I follow, but isn't updated by Feedly to current.  I tried adding it to the "Favorites" list within Feedly, and it appeared (and current) for a brief few minutes, then disappeared again!

Then I started to wonder about all the many quilt (and other) blogs I follow.  Could it be that I have not been seeing their updates in Feedly either?  So I started looking closer, and although Feedly was telling me some hadn't updated in months, if I clicked through to the blog itself, they were, in fact, staying current.  Curiouser and curiouser.

I began to wonder how many people might be having the same issue with Feedly, and may assume I dropped out of the blogosphere?

I learned that the free version of Feedly (which is what I use) is now limiting new users to 100 blogs.  Any more than that and you have to pay a monthly fee to upgrade to unlimited.  Free Feedly didn't used to be limited, and I've followed hundreds of blogs (not that I get around to reading them all).  But I wonder if some internal metric now determines which of those I get to see in the Feedly reader free version?  

I hadn't updated my own blog in over 30 days.  Perhaps 30 days is a metric by which the blog "falls off"?  In the meantime, however, I've added blogs without an issue, and I'm seeing those people's posts in Feedly; hence, I conclude they're not truly limiting me from adding new ones above the 100 mark (perhaps I'm grandfathered in?).  But maybe, instead, the less active blogs (mine included) are falling off the radar (or reader) and not showing up as having posted anything new?


Many questions, a few hunches, but no definitive answers that I've found thus far.  Guess I'll see if this post all of a sudden shows up in my Feedly feed like nothing ever happened.  Maybe the previous post exceeded some parameter (like overall size...there were a lot of pictures in the last post).  I'll let you know.  (Edited to add:  Okay, so I see this post in Feedly...that's good, but it's still weird about the previous post.  I still have questions.)

In the process of investigating and looking into options, I've started to get reacquainted with Bloglovin'.  I'm still not thrilled with it—the layout seems a bit overwhelming and less informative to me, for starters—but at least I seem to be seeing in Bloglovin' all the blogs I follow.  Things have changed since I last used it on a regular basis, and it'll take some time to get used to again.  Also, I'm having to sort through the blogs I had been following in Feedly and add them to Bloglovin'.  Good thing it's been a holiday week with available down time, ha.

In going through the Feedly blog listing one by one—wow, a lot of people I used to follow have stopped blogging.  Maybe they are connecting on a different platform (Instagram, etc.).  But I miss you guys!  It's sad to realize the extent of the exodus, and it feels like losing friends, even though most of us have never met in real life.

Has hobby blogging become a thing of the past, do you think?  I don't know, there seems to be a different vibe than just a couple short years ago.  Not sure whether readership has increased or decreased, but it seems like people commented more.  Myself included.  Just an observation.  Speaking personally, it seems sometimes like things reach a level when you just can't possibly keep up (maybe after 100 blogs? he-he), so you give up trying and just pop in here or there with a comment when you can.  Yet reading and somewhat keeping track of where people are in their lives, feels like a true connection, even if you don't engage or comment, so when those people go away, there's that pang of loss.  Still, I totally get that there are various reasons people move on, and I wish them all the best.  It may well be that I decide to do the same someday.

Anyway, back to the story.  Along the way, I decided to subscribe to my own email list.  Why I had never done that before, I don't know.  Come to find out that in the last post, the email version doesn't have the YouTube videos embedded.  Just dead space where there was something to see in the actual post.  Good to know.  I'll keep that in mind for the future.  Also, I'm not sure I like the look of the email version, but that seems beyond my grasp of how to fix at this point.

(By the way, the music in the last post under "Listening" was by Jason Isbell, and "Watching" was the Netflix series GLOW.  Maybe in the future, I'll just link versus embed stuff like that.)

Here's a question about Bloglovin':  I've been getting periodic email notifications that read, "Bloglover is now following your blog."  After about the third or fourth identical notification, I assumed this was a tactic Bloglovin' used to get users to log in after a period of time and use the site.  A kind of solicitation, like the emails Pinterest sends to get you to click over.  But I see now, in looking at my Bloglovin' followers, that there are indeed numerous "Bloglovers."  Hence, I wonder if this is how it appears if someone follows you anonymously, i.e. the generic name "Bloglover"?

I probably sound really green about this stuff, and I apologize for the technical nature of this post.  Maybe your experiences can help this dog learn some new tricks.  Do you have any insights or observations to share on the subject of your favorite feed reader?  Or on blog reading and/or commenting in general?  Do you follow your own blog to stay on top of technical issues and/or see it from a different perspective?  Do share.

Going Fourth

I hope those of you in the States are having a magnificent 4th of July! It's been a pretty low key holiday for us, and that's just fine.  We did do a little grilling at suppertime, since the weather was not just cooperative but spectacular.  After I get done with this post, I'm looking forward to taking a walk at sunset and enjoying the beautiful evening.

Are you a cloud watcher?  I sure am.  Is there a better word for someone who likes looking at the changing sky?  (No, not an airhead or space cadet, thanks brain.)  We live in a fairly level area but with some gently rolling hills.  My favorite walking route takes me up a couple small hills that are great vantage points for cloud watching or sky-gazing, and, in the fall, noticing the changing colors of foliage.  It's a highlight of my day, strolling along, feeling the breeze or the humidity, as the case may be, the warmth of the sun as it sinks toward the horizon.  Listening to an audiobook or sometimes just the birds...or barking dogs...or the highway...or the lawnmowers...or the Med-Flight helicopter...

Although I haven't blogged for a month, I have taken a lot of pictures.  In general, there hasn't been a whole lot of quilting and sewing, though there has been some.  There are plenty of other things to engage and distract me this time of year.  Here are a few of June's highlights—in alphabetical order, how about that.

Backing - Baking (with Beets!) - Biking - Bird-watching:

Family (Father's Day) - Flora:

Listening:


Mini-Making - Mural Marveling:

 

Planting - Picking:

Quilting:

Reading - Relaxing:

 Watching (Wrestling!):