Assorted-ness

As many of you know, we moved into our brand new house in June, 2012. The landscaping here, while attractive, was pretty dull, standard issue. Last August, we hired landscapers, who pulled out everything, and started over with new stuff - European fan palm; Bismarck palm; Hawaiian Ty; allamanda; Mexican petunia; hybiscus; holly trees; variegated ginger; and bottle brush. The bottle brush is predominantly across the back of the house, along the lanai, to eventually offer privacy. Well, imagine our surprise when neighbors behind us hired landscapers too, and went all out to make it attractive, not only for themselves, but us! 

See that twin palm?! It's two Sylvester palms. I'm pretty sure we have a much better view of these than even they do! 

This photo was taken through the lanai screen. There's landscaping along the ground too, and on opposite ends of the backyard, they planted two orange trees! While I would have liked a citrus tree too, we were warned away from planting them because they supposedly attract fruit rats. It will be interesting to see what develops. In any case, we approve of what they did and are thoroughly appreciating it!

We recently had Iowa visitors. Ann and Larry are friends from church, Lutheran Church of Hope. We were in Bible study together, and Ann and I sat next to each other in the alto section of Adoration Choir. It was great to see them again as we picked up just as though we'd seen each other a week ago, rather than the 19 months ago it really was!

They really enjoyed The Villages, and we're almost positive we'll be seeing them here again. Yay!

Along the doc at Lake Sumter Landing

Quilting friend Anne, in Colorado, is a talented designer whose SpringLeafStudios blog I follow. When I saw Anne's Kite Tails quilt that was in the January/February issue of Generation Q magazine, I needed the mag... and bought the March/April issue at the same time.

Sunday afternoon I sat down to browse through them. Imagine my surprise, when looking through the March/April issue, to find my own words in print! Apparently when I responded to the GenQ blog post about 2013 finished projects they chose to print what I said!

Here's the sewing happening in my sewing room. 

I'm cutting fabric and basting papers for the Geta Grama "Flower Ball" quilt. Check out the gorgeous domestic machine quilting Patricia, in the UK, is doing on her own nearly-finished Flower Ball quilt.

I started another quilt that is cut from 90 different rectangle-shaped prints, and strips of Kona Snow. Using the Quick Curve rulers to cut curves, I then did lots and lots of curved piecing.

Each rectangle in this tall stack now needs trimming.

I also started cutting fabrics to make a 54" X 60" quilt of my own design. It will be my teaching quilt for Beyond First Time Quiltmaking starting in June. Most of the quilt is diagonal piecing - Churn Dash block, Pinwheel block, Flying Geese, and half-square triangles.

On the finished end of things is this 12-1/2" Spider Web block, ready to mail to Cindy. She's our Mid Century Modern Bee queen for March and asked for a text-y center and solids. 

We're to send along a little label too. 

Last week, MQX (Machine Quilter's Expo) let me know that my quilt, Bloom, has been juried into the New Hampshire show, April 9-12. This is exciting news!

Heading now to get it shipped for arrival by the end of the week. Linda