Feast of the Snapdragons

The other evening, I caught this little bee making a feast for itself from my snapdragons. I took the photos with my iPhone, so they turned out surprisingly okay. I have tried to take other photos of a bee buzzing my flowers this summer and couldn't ever get a clear photo.

The most interesting part, at least to me, was the fact that once the bee landed on the snapdragon, he would crawl ALL the way inside the flower.

There were a couple moments where I couldn't even see the bee at all and didn't take any photos of that because I figured it was pointless.   I think if you click on the photo above, you can see a larger image with my captioning.

Off to Grandmother's House

Ha!  Not really (unfortunately all of my grandmother's have since passed on...).  I did make a pillowcase with my Little Red Riding Hood fabric:

I really do love this pillowcase!  It makes me feel so young at heart.  I still have a lot of this fabric left and I'm trying to decide what I will make with it.  I thought a little outfit for my niece might be cute.

The only other crafting I have done in the last two weeks is to make myself a hair towel... you know like those Turby Twist type hair towels.  My hair is thick and down to the top-ish of my shoulders, maybe a bit longer, so I always need to use a separate towel for my hair.  I have a bunch of purchased hair towels, but saw some bright green terrycloth at JoAnn Fabrics, so I bought a yard.  I just used one of the towels I have to cut a pattern off of.  It turned out pretty well:

The only thing I would really do differently is to use a wider strip of elastic (I only had 1/4" or something much wider...so I went with the 1/4").  I think that probably 3/8" would be perfect, and I wouldn't cut my piece quite so long. 

When I showed my husband the hair towel, he said, "Great!  Now, do you have enough to keep in both bathrooms?" 

Me:  "Honey, I only shower in the bathroom in our bedroom."

Husband:  "I know, but you are always hollering at me to bring you a hair towel."

(I always fix my hair and such in the bathroom in the hall...so that is where the hair towel comes off and typically gets left....)

Me:  "I know, I sometimes forget to get it before I get in the shower."

Husband:  "Well, now, maybe you can just have some in each bathroom."

Me:  "Yeah, but sometimes I don't remember until I'm already in the shower and then I don't want to track water all over the bathroom..."

(Note:  He didn't seem to get that point, of course)

Anyway, I'm thinking that I might make some of these hair towels as Christmas gifts for some of my family.  They would be a nice gift, right?

Some Fabulous Giveaways!

As we all know, it seems like there are always tons of giveaways going on out there in the blogosphere!  A lot of times a person can usually earn extra entries by posting about said giveaways on their own blog.  I usually just do one entry and figure that if I am meant to win, one entry will do it.

I must be feeling industrious today because I wanted to let you know about several giveaways.

1)  Mommy's Nap Time - 100th post giveaway   ... Emedoodle is giving away some super cute stuff...a handmade pincushion, some quilt patterns, some fabric, and she is also giving away the supplies to make your own quilted cards!  Maybe I will be the lucky winner!

2) A La Mode Fabric - Pattern Giveaway  ...Heather is hosting a giveaway for some really cool patterns for stitching and for quilting...  I just recently discovered her blog....  You have to go over there and check it out, but do it quick because this giveaway only lasts until Sunday, August 15th!

Go!  Run!  Get Entered!

It's THAT Time Again

Yep, THAT time...time for school to start...and all I feel liking doing is hiding in the bushes:

Our institute day is on the 17th.  After that, I will pretty much be back at work full-force. Never mind the fact that I have been answering e-mails from the audiologist that I am forced to deal with takes care of equipment for my students, and went in to work for two hours yesterday morning.  I'll probably work a half day on Monday, too.  Soon I will be a raving lunatic, or at least feel like one.

To console myself, I made two fabric orders this week.  Both times I ordered from Hawthorne Threads.  I have ordered from them once before and they ship orders out so unbelievably fast.  My first order should be arriving today (I ordered it on Wednesday morning!).  I can't wait since I ordered some cute Little Red Riding Hood fabric (I see is it out of stock now) and I think that I am going to make myself another pillowcase with part of it.

I'm just trying to decide what projects I'm going to finish or make in my last couple days of freedom. 

A Gray/Grey Day

Really, I prefer to spell grey with an "e", but I think that gray is also accurate....  Anyway, we've been having lots of rain here lately.  Mostly it comes in the form of a thunderstorm in the wee hours of the morning.  I think that we've gotten a total of something like 7 inches of rain in the last week. 

Mostly, I've been staying inside....which I probably certainly would have been doing anyway.  I have about two weeks and then it is back to school....so I've been doing as little as possible outside of the house. 

I've slowly been working on this quilt top for about the last week, I think...a little bit here and there. This is what I finished with:

It's not the best photo in the world (I know I say that a lot....probably because I really wish I were a better photographer...), especially taken inside at night...  You can get the idea though.  I didn't measure it so I'm not exactly sure what the size is.  I'd call it lap/throw size, I suppose. 

I have no plans for this quilt, yet.  I didn't make it with anyone in mind...just bought the fabric because I really liked it and the quilt shop was having a bit of a sale.  I may just keep it for us to use even though definitely does not match any of my living room "decor".  I can't wait until it is completely finished.  I just have to decide how I'm going to quilt it.

Stitching to Send!

Today I finished two baby blankets to send to a friend (she has twin little girls).  I know she will love these.  I sent her photos of the fabrics I had on hand and she chose the ones that she wanted.  I chose the binding colors.

I try to match the binding more to the main color of the fabric and then use a brighter color on the stitching.  However, these greens were really hard to match and I couldn't find any that made me happy, so I had to go with the brighter colored binding.  I hope that my friend likes the finished product. 

Usually, I just do two rows of zig-zag stitching to attach the binding.  This time I also put a decorative row of stitching in between the two rows of zig-zags.  I doubt that you can tell from the photos...but I think that it turned out nice.  The decorative stitching seemed like it took forever, though.