Almost September

Summer has just flown by!

I love working 4 hours a day at the community club.  Ok, you know me, it turns out to be longer but I am having fun.  Who would have thought that my volunteer job there would turn into a paying job!  And I get to keep it while I am away. 

I am the only one in the office so I do everything from opening the mail, showing the hall, writing the specifications for the washroom renovations, dealing with the contractors, accepting and counting sports equipment returns, to typing letters for the President of the Board.

Two days a week, I also volunteer at th hospital early in the morning (early for me now - 8:00).  I am even teaching one of the long time patients to quilt.  

Blaine is still working at the golf course and since his boss was fired recently, he will be learning more of the open and close procedures, which will keep him working a bit longer.  

I love having two cars again (a Zoom Zoom Mazda6).  I still ride my bike to the club and hospital but it is nice to have the other car in case it is raining or windy.  And I dream of the extra room we will have when we go south (or better yet when we come home - lol).  Since we don't have our companion with us this year, we plan on making a few stops along the way.  First to Dallas as Blaine is a JFK buff and then to Corpus Christie to see the USS Lexington aircraft carrier.  We saw it once in Florida many years ago, but we wanted to see it again. 

 

  

Lovely laces

If you are in the market for some delicious colourful,, reasonably priced laces, check out Nicki Lee's blog at:

http://cqnickilee.blogspot.com/

She is having a give away to celebrate her new ETSY store.  How exciting.  Check out her shop here:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/ravioleedreams


 

Quilt group and our park

We have such a great quilt group down here in Texas, so willing to share and teach.

We had our wind up lunch on Friday and one of the gals made spool ladies for each of us.  They were sitting on our wine goblets.  How special are we?

By a process of elimination, I was made the secretary on next year's executive.  That means I take minutes, write the articles for the park's newsletter, etc. 

Someone wrote the other day and thought we were in a small trailer park.  Quite the opposite, there are over 1000 cottage homes, sea cottages (3 story homes), very expensive RVs, and some smaller ones as well.    Quite a mixture.  Many people live here year round. 

It is not classified as a 'retirement' village, in fact the owners of our place are in their early 40's.  They bought it as an investment (selling now for $240,000) and use it as a summer cottage.

But most of the people that are here in the winter are retired or like us, semi-retired.  If you are bored here, you will be bored anywhere! 
 

Fabric bowls

On Friday, Peg taught the quilters how to make fabric bowls. 

We only had about an hour to work on it as we were having our wind up lunch that day but I was able to finish.  I am not too happy with the result, as I put the end on the handle and it is noticable, but I wanted to ensure I knew all the steps.  They are so fun to make.

 

Missing my dawg

I woke up this morning missing Benson so much.  

Rio Grande Quilt Show

We went to the quilt show a few week-ends ago and I picked up a few neat things.

The first is a kit for a stain glass dove.









I bought a CD on how to do the High Tech Tucks quilt. I bought the pattern last year but work best seeing it done. I also bought a Caryl Bryer Fallert CD on machine quilting. She won the highest award in Paduckah this year and her quilts can fetch up to $34,000. Maybe just an ounce of creativity will rub off.









And I bought some more hand dyes, black sateen for the High Tech Tucks, more white sateen for extra doves and some Amish black (as black as can be).

I also found my favorite notion so had to buy another. It is called a needle dome. You can thread all the needles for your bindings and they won't get tangled. Pull one out and when done, stick the empty needle back in.

Go Jeff, go!

This is so cool. I am sitting here watching Jeff Stoughton curl for the provincial championship..