It's our Anniversary!

When I think back over my life, I can hardly remember life before Brian. It seems like we've been a couple forever. Well, officially, we've been a couple for 30 years -- a married couple, that is. Happy Anniversary, darling!

Spread Eagle and Milwaukee

We're back in toasty Texas, trying to keep alive the vague memories of cool, green Wisconsin. Kind of hard to do when the daytime temperatures here are over 100 degrees. Sometimes I feel like this saguaro:
Actually, that picture was taken in Milwaukee, in the Mitchell Domes Arid exhibit. Kinda felt like home in there!

We're just back from our vacation. We spent the first 6 days visiting friends who have a house in Northern Wisconsin, on the Spread Eagle chain of lakes. We spent our days boating, skiing, tubing, fishing and just generally have a very cool time.

Carolyn and Elena are 10 and 7 (almost 8) now. They are growing up so fast!

We reluctantly left Spread Eagle and headed to Milwaukee, where we met up with Brian's dad and brother. Brian's dad spent World War Two as an Army Air Corps radio school instructor at Truax Field in Madison, and has always wanted to revisit the area. So we persuaded him to travel from New Jersey and spend a week in Milwaukee/Madison with us. We also persuaded Brian's brother to join us (he lives in Maryland). It was fabulous having the whole family together -- we had a great time.

Of course our trip included a Brewers' game. Brian is a big fan of the sausage race, and I couldn't resist snapping this picture of him with two of the contestants:

We spent a day in Madison. Truax Field is still there:

The Boerner Botanic Gardens in Milwaukee are fabulous. The roses were at their peak:

All in all, it was a wonderful trip. We got to spend time with our best friends as well as our family. The perfect vacation!

Wisconsin

Ahhh. So peaceful! We're in Wisconsin, spending time with friends in a house on the Spread Eagle chain of lakes. It's blissfully cool, scenic and wonderful to be with Janet and Erik. Heaven!

Rain!

It's raining! According to Brian's new rain gauge, we've had 2.36 inches since 7 pm last night. A rather violent storm blew through here yesterday evening, with some very high wind and drenching rain. We had a little more last night, and it is still drizzling. Beautiful, wonderful, cool, wet rain. Can you tell I like rain? I love it -- almost as much as my garden does!

That brings our June total to 4.1 inches. Hooray!

Round Robin revealing!

studio Q met yesterday and exchanged the round robin quilt tops we have been working on this year. They were all fantastic, but I really really love mine! I started the exchange with this block:

And ended up with this:

Wow! I love the colors, the shapes, the textures and the 3 dimensional pieces. The area covered by the pinned note is also 3 dimensional. I will twist it after the quilt is quilted.

As I said, they were all great. Every single one of them! And they made an impressive display:

As always, there were some exciting projects that were shown. Susan has just finished piecing a really cool log cabin for the quilt show challenge:

We are such a talented group!

A Weekend in Pipe Creek

I spent last weekend in Pipe Creek, Texas, just west of San Antonio at a workshop taught by Susie Monday. As always, I had a fabulous time and learned a great deal.

Susie's house is perched on a hill. The view from her deck is amazing:

The workshop focused on adding text to our work. Here, Laurie and Pat are batiking with soy wax and procion mx dyes:

The weather was fabulous, so we managed to do some sun printing:

One wall in Susie's studio was hung with some amazing pieces incorporating text into the design:

Gloria shows her nearly finished collage piece. We used text cut from magazines as well as stamped text:

I made many sample pieces during the workshop, but my favorite by far is this silk scarf batiked using Susie's incredible arsenal of kitchen implements to transfer the wax:

All in all, an inspiring weekend. I came home refreshed and eager to get started on some new pieces. But first, I have to get caught up on my client quilting.

Although, I did take one day this week to dye 11 yards of cotton. I am ready to start piecing again!

Daylily Parade!

Late May and early June are the height of the daylily season in my Texas garden. Brian and I are wild about daylilies and have planted a few varieties in every sunny garden bed. We plant them all -- singles, doubles, ruffled, spiders. I don't know what it is about them, but I love the exotic looking spider flowers the best.

This is a new one, planted this spring, called "Web Browser":

We transplanted this one from our Houston garden:

This is also a new addition:



This a new one, planted outside our bedroom window along with an aster and agastache "Heather Queen":

Another spider, with huge banana shaped buds. We call it "Banana Girl", but that isn't it's real name: