surf's up!

You can't go wrong with a little surfing action while in Hawaii!  Our resort is on the south side of Kauai and is on a section of beach that is popular with surfers.  So we get to watch their efforts, and imagine that we are out there on the boards!  Actually, the pounding waves are pretty foreign to someone like me, and I am in awe of the people who seem so at ease with the sea.

We see quite a few chickens running around the island, but, they aren't near as noisy as the ones we got to know in Vieques, Puerto Rico!

These guys are pretty low key, and kinda pretty!

on an adventure

Last May, we (Bob and I) observed a significant event.  Our 40th wedding anniversary!  Trying to think back to the 21-year-old minds that embarked on this marriage adventure, we had no way of knowing what would come our way.  The ups and downs always enter into the picture along the way, but we tend to let the memories of the good outweigh the bad, so it's good to be where we are today!

We are vacationing on the island of Kauai, in the Hawaiian Islands, and loving it!  We had a long day of travel to get here, I was starting to go a little stir-crazy towards the end of the flight!  But Bob's a good travel buddy, and even though I hate that he can sleep sitting upright and I can't get even a cat nap, we made it to Lihue in one piece!

Yesterday we did some driving and exploring around the south and west sides of the island.  We were like the typical tourists, amazed by the views of the ocean and mountains around every turn!  And since we were on midwest time, we were up and on the road long before most locals!

We stopped at several little towns for breakfast and just walking around.  I'm enjoying the fact that there isn't much "city" life around here.  In the little town of Hanapepe, we saw this little swinging bridge.  I'm not a fan of hanging suspended over anything, even on a good day!  And just a day or so ago I saw a video about a similar-looking footbridge that collapsed, and there was no way I was going beyond a few feet out there!  Bob, on the contrary, doesn't mind going out there and even bounces on purpose!  He's crazy!

After surviving that, we drove up a steep and winding road to Waimea Canyon State Park, known as sort of a tropical Grand Canyon.  This is a setting for quite a few adventure movies.  There's a beautiful waterfall barely visible in the shadows on the left of my picture.

The drive back down got my motion sickness meter going bonkers, so we had to stop and let that settle down!  We stopped at a spice company and a coffee company, then back to our resort to enjoy the beach, the pool, and a nap!  Some good reading time, too.  Yes, we live exciting lives!  Actually, I already finished one book before we got here!  I had been waiting for the chance to read this one---

and I got started on it before we left home.  This is the 4th book in a series that I really liked, called the Millenium series, by Steig Larsson.  Larsson died after the 3rd book, but supposedly had plans for more.  Now the 4th has been released, by another guy carrying on with what had been started.  I was excited to read more about the girl, Lisbeth Salander, who is the center of the stories.  I have to say that the first half of the book did not have enough Lisbeth in it to keep me happy, but that did improve.  Not saying any more than that to give away anything!

I also spent some time tracking down my suitcase yesterday, because it didn't arrive in Lihue with me.  Found out that it went to Paris without me!  So I made do with Bob's gym shorts and tshirts, and found a Walmart for underwear and a swimsuit and toothbrush!  Keeping my fingers crossed that the suitcase will show up later today!

grandkids are the best!

I'm really showing a great deal of restraint here, I could have 10 times these pictures of our grandsons to show you, but I'm giving you just a smattering!

walking on the beach and playing in the waves at Hunting Island State Park in South Carolina

playing in the waves the first time at Charleston, NC

surprise face

happy face

mad face

silly face with great grandma

I can tell he's thinking of something important!

my boys touring around the house
(no lawn mower blades were running and speed was at a crawl!  I'm overly cautious as a former trauma nurse!)

The beach pictures are the most recent of these, taken while we were on full-time childcare duty while their mom and dad were away.  We decided to venture out from Charlotte and go to the oceanside.  It was a fun trip!

The other pictures were from their visit to MN in August for 2 whole weeks!  We took in a lot of activities while they were here.  And had a lot of cuddles!

some hokey pokey (that's what it's all about!)

Sometimes, as you possibly know, finishing up a DIY project of anything bigger than a breadbox can seem to take f-o-r-e-v-e-r!  I just looked back to my first post about our work on the loft area, and it was February 12!  Wow!  I did not think it was actually that long ago!  No wonder it seems like forever!  Well, we are now back to living in that space (mostly) and I love getting everything back in its place!  I wanted to add a little more desk space, but haven't found the right piece of furniture for that yet.  Then I remembered an old table stored in the rafters of the garage for many years, and decided to explore the possibility of using that.  It turned out to be the right size to fit in the space, although it is higher than a standard desktop.  It will work for now.  I'm not sure of the history of this table, I thought it belonged to my mother-in-law, Ruth, but turns out I am wrong about that.  It is maybe from the 50's?  It was in a sorry state of filth when we got it down to look at it, but after some vigorous scrubbing, it cleaned up pretty good!  When I first saw those yucky dirty metal legs, I wasn't sure this would make it.  But look at the 2 on the left, after scrubbing with a brush and SoftScrub.  Nice and shiny!

While working away on this out on the patio, I completely forgot about the fact that the cleanser has bleach in it.  Well, my t-shirt came away looking like I had dribbled bleach all over it!  Now it is my cleaning and paint shirt!  The table top has only a couple little divots, so pretty good shape!  The little strip of turquoise trim that goes around the edge is partially broken off, but that side is up against the wall so it is OK!  It would be good to replace that, but in my little bit of googling to find a source, I have come up empty.

Another finish for my English Paper Piecing projects for my Paper Pizzazz class at Bear Patch--

This is a project that I designed for my English paper piecing monthly class at Bear Patch.  It is made to exactly fit my small rotating cutting mat and a few other essentials.  The cover sports a rogue Lucy Boston block, a type of block from an antique quilt that definitely did not include the pirate skull and crossbones!  I just was playing around a little bit and wanted to do something far removed from the prim and proper traditional fabrics in that quilt.  The red fabric in the clear vinyl pocket is my pocket design wall!  It's a layer of batting sewn to the red cotton and there are 4 squares of stiff interfacing (timtex) sewn into it.  It is about 12" square, so makes a good surface to lay my little pieces on for these English paper piecing projects.  And it can be folded up with them enclosed.

When I saw this picture on Facebook, I had a good laugh!  It reminds me of indoor recess (due to rain or snow) during grade school at the Excelsior Elementary School building.  We had some rousing Hokey Pokey dances!
Here's to good memories!

Out of "Hibernation"

I've been sort of hibernating from this blog lately, just finding a whole lot of summer fun and not finding my muse for writing!  But I can show you some fun things that have happened while "the frayed edge" sat here taking a break.  Be prepared for a bunch of pictures!  Here are some things I have made (or started) lately:

I started working on a set of Christmas stockings.  This pattern is called Stopping by a Woods from Fiberworks in Billings, MT.  This is only #1 of 6 stockings, I have some of the others underway, too.  The background is a lightweight linen, all of the pieces are fused in place and I stitch all around them.  Takes awhile!

I've been trying real hard to stay focused on the positive and turning away from negative.  This book is interesting, considering the direction I am moving.

This is the Fat Quarter Pop-Up by the Fat Quarter Gypsy.  It has a heavy coiled wire that holds it upright, and can be compressed flat if needed.

I did some easy quilting on this quilt that my mom made.  It is made from my dad's shirts combined with a light colored background fabric.  It's good to see those shirts again!  It's the disappearing 4 patch block.

I finished this machine embroidered book for the grandsons.  It can be viewed with 3D glasses for a whole different experience!  R Is For Robot by OESD.

I made this pillow cover for my son, it features vintage pictures of Glacier Park and Whitefish, MT (where he resides).  The pictures came from American Quilt Blocks and I put them together with fabric from my stash in a design that I made up.  It fits a large 20" pillow.

Playing around with some Christmas pennants.  These were printed on a fabric panel and leftover from last year.  They might be just the right thing this year!  They were made by Riley Blake, and they have some directions along with a great free download of block letters and numbers if you want to add words to the pennants.

Working on a challenging quilting job for a customer.  It is all hand embroidered and shaded with colors (crayons).  I've been a very bad procrastinator in getting this done, but the end is in sight!  I think I was intimidated by it.  But we've become friends now!  Pattern is Gardener's Alphabet by Crabapple Hill.  The shading created with crayons adds to the embroidery.  The process is explained on the Crabapple Hill website.

So that's the fibery update from here.  Stay tuned for more!

summer days

Hi!  I have some summertime pictures to share with you--

Last weekend I got to spend some time with my mom.  July 3rd was my dad's birthday, so it was good to be there for one of those "firsts" after his death last January.  We did some fun stuff and some work stuff.  There were some overgrown plants and weeds that we mostly worked on, so the yard is looking fine.

And we took a little excursion north into Minnesota to the little town of Round Lake.  It's maybe 10 miles (I'm guessing) and we found the Round Lake Vineyards and Winery.  I never knew this place existed before, but we think we would go back again.  We tasted some of their products, and enjoyed the beautifully landscaped area just off the lake shore.  And we brought a few souvenir bottles home, too!

We also went to see Barefoot in the Park at the Okoboji Summer Theater, and enjoyed a Sunday morning pancake breakfast Mini-Wakan State Park on Spirit Lake.

We needed to do some watering at my brother and sister-in-law's place while they were away, so we puttered around out there awhile, checking on the dog and cats, too.  The original old barn still stands, but is being overtaken by vegetation!

My mom's house looks westward over the lake, and this picture was taken in the evening before sunset.  It was much redder in person, due to the smoke from the large wildfires burning up in Alberta and a few in Manitoba.  Iowa is a long ways from either area, so this smoke really travels.

Back on the home front, check out these cute bicycle cookies!  

We went to a fundraiser for some friends who are doing the Red Ribbon Ride next week, and these cookies were part of the treats.  We wish them luck as they work to complete their fundraising and training.  If you have any inclination to make a donation, you can find Terry and Sue Robinson on the website and show your support.

And the upstairs renovation project is nearing completion, with some electrical work done to install some new lights and change some plug-ins.  These fixtures are from IKEA, and I like the sorta industrial look with all of the wood in the house.

Yesterday I spent a lot of time working on finishing woodwork.  I filled in nooks and crannies of the wood floor butting up to the logs with some wood filler, and that turned out well.  Then, I chipped out a lot of old nail hole filler that was originally done with a filler that was the wrong color, but has been ignored for years and years.  I decided this was as good a time as any to correct that problem, since we have sawdust and crap all over everything anyway!  So I chipped out the old stuff from 100 or more holes (seems like 1,000!) and sanded each to remove any traces of the old stuff.  Now I will dab on a little stain to cover the sanded area, and then polyurethane, and then refill the holes with a better color.

But aside from the woodwork stuff, I did put together this cute little pincushion.  It stands up on little legs, and looks like a tiny ottoman or Miss Muffet's Tuffet!  Read more about it on the Bear Blog.