My best friend!

Sunday mid-morning I found my dog in the tall grass unable to get up. I immediately rushed him to the vet and they started an IV and kept him. Vet said he had a severe case of food poisoning. He is home now and I am just able to start him on soft food ...2 Tablespoons at a time and still giving him an antibiotic. He is VERY weak.

It's driving us crazy to know what caused it and have searched the property. This is a dog that is not only extremely particular about his food, he wants it cut up in small pieces to boot. Our female dog will eat anything yukky but NOT Fritz... We do have one neighbor I suspect of putting out poisoned bait for the coyotes (which are my friends) but can't imagine how it could get to our farm... Big mystery. His first night home he slept against my back with his nose tucked under the small of my neck. He couldn't get any closer if he tried. He's on the mend now because today he barked at the vacuum cleaner....

Black- Intense, quick and cheap!

I was the last person to work on Simona's block in the Beaded RR. She had used black in the block foundation and I felt some black motif butterflies would tie the block together. My experience with trying to dye something black had been disappointing so I experimented with an ordinary permanent black Sharpie marker. The lace butterflies soaked up the ink and I was thrilled with the intensity of the black...

Recycled Table

I found a octagonal table at a thrift store perfect for a game/card table that a friend was anxious to have. The table had seen better days but she sanded and primed it. Over the last 2 days she had me paint a large joker (about 2' tall) in the center of the table. Not quite done as there's still gold detailing to do. Now she's going to do an elaborate border with decoupaged antique playing cards. Should be a great OOAK conversation piece when done...

Magic moment for Cobi!!!

I'm almost done with this tree of life on one of Cobi's Magic Moments RR blocks.. A couple seams and maybe a stylized cat sleeping at the base of the tree! I was able to use a face from a push mold and also some tiny MOP birds that I have had FOREVER, The gold cording was a special buy from the CO retreat. Everytime I use something I bought on that trip it brings back fun memories!

Fan RR

When I joined the Fabulous Fans RR everyone came up with unique interpetation of fan blocks except me. I was the ONLY person who did boring traditional, sane-quilt fan blocks. Doing something different never even occurred to me. It's this creative approach by others that continues to amaze and excite me. Below is Jo Newsham's solution to a series of fan blocks. Jo requested the random fan shapes be the focus and embellished and any work on the background remain neutral .

Cathy and Bonnie worked their magic on these fans. Beautiful seams and ribbonwork.... These are only 6" blocks so the fans are really quite small...

Then along came Leslie Erhlich who always thinks outside the box. I LOVE following her as everything she does inspires me. When the blocks arrived at my house I couldn't stop looking at it. I still love looking at it. Traditional fans often had landscape scenes painted on them but it never occurred to me to do it with embroidery. Bravo Leslie!!!