More Butterfly pictures and a project

Yesterday I made a Christmas gift - can't say what it is or whom it's for but I will show this much. It's 100% Wool and I want one for myself as well. I will have to include specific care instructions so that it doesn't shrink to Barbie size and hope the receiver reads them. I had enough yarn left to make myself a delightful little wool coaster for my coffee mug to set on at my desk. Perhaps my coffee will stay hot longer while sitting on this; my desk is metal and it seems to zap the heat right out of my mugs.














Yesterday I was able to catch a few photos of one of the black butterflies that visit my lantana by the lamp post. This one looks like it's had quite a few close calls with birds; it's wings were looking pretty raggedy. I absolutely love the delayed shutter control on our little camera. These didn't turn out as well as the previous ones as this butterfly did NOT like the added attention it was getting. I need to set a chair up out there that I could just sit and wait for them so that they would get used to my presence... perhaps I could even catch a picture of some of the tiny hummingbirds that visit.

What have I been up to???? You wonder....

Well I've been sewing some quilt blocks for a swap. The block is called "Turning Four - T" or the "Temperance" block... the instructions I found on the Web have been giving me a bit of trouble. Each one has turned out a different size - not sure whats going on but I'm pushing forward. Mine is the green T's and the blue T's will go to an on-line quilting friend in Illinois.














I've also been working on my next Round Robin (RR) Center that will start going around the Earth soon to the other quilter's in the group to add a row. I chose Halloween as my "Holiday RR" center. I found the perfect coloring page that I turned around and made into a transfer that I could embroider. Then I added a border to make it about 12" square (the starting size for this RR).



I've also crocheted a sweater and beanie hat set to go into my Etsy box. As soon as I get it full of goodies I will open my shop and announce the opening on here with a link. Bear with me... I feel like I'm standing on the edge of a cliff and afraid to jump on this one. (Just being honest).

Today I cleaned out the gutter that runs along the front of our garage as we are hoping for rain this weekend and I didn't want the garage to flood. I also swept a good portion of the driveway so that we won't walk in a bunch of leaf debris; at least for a little while. I put all the leaves into my 3-bin composter in the back yard and turned the stuff that was in the other two bins into the same bin as the leaves and layered it all so hopefully it will break down quickly. Our garden REALLY needs a bunch of nice organic material added so that next Springs garden will be FANTASTIC. Doing all that I earned myself a really nice deep blister on my left thumb... OUCH!

OH before all that I cleaned out the two bird feeders and filled them with sunflower seeds as we have had quite a few birds checking the feeders out lately. We are thinking with the drought conditions they may be having trouble finding things to eat as well as the water issue. I refilled the birdbath this morning also. I truly hope that we do get some rain this weekend.

I better get the rest of my dinner made - the fella's will be home soon and HUNGRY!

A bit of Nature's Beauty

I had a delightful visitor today on the Lantana out front. There was also a large Black Butterfly with yellow spots along it's wings but it wouldn't stay feeding long enough for me to catch any pictures. But this one was so beautiful I just had to take as many photos as I could while it was there. Perhaps tomorrow afternoon I will be able to catch some photos of the black butterfly.

Another Week has Begun...

It's Monday morning once again - the weekends pass entirely too quickly. Greg just left for his job at the DMH - Department of Mental Health; he works as a supply clerk there. Scott is waiting for his first phone interview to start at 8 AM here at home; then he will go to work and take another one while there. We have all our fingers and toes crossed that one of these will be a "winner" and he will once again have a job with benefits.

Today is my house cleaning day so I will start working on that as soon as I finish this post. Once the house is clean I can start sewing on some quilt blocks I need to get completed for some swaps that I am in with my on-line quilting group. A full day for me here at home as well.

I turned the A/C off this morning and have a few windows open so we can enjoy the songs of the birds as they get their day started as well. One has just spotted Nicolas on the front porch - sounds like a ray gun of sorts - must be a Mocking bird.

HAPPY MONDAY~

A New Perspective

This morning we decided to cross over the Blossom Street Bridge into Columbia and enter the Three River Green-way next to the USC Baseball Stadium to see how far we could walk out into the river without getting our feet too wet - we will definitely look into getting some water shoes so we can just walk on in and not worry about stepping on fish hooks, broken glass or other foot damaging oddities. The BEST thing we saw I could not capture with the camera and that was quite a large Barred Owl. It looked right at us several times. He looked so wise spinning his head around to see us. Absolutely magnificent! It was just so exciting to watch it go from tree to tree above us. It's definitely a different perspective on that side of the river in so many ways. In the one photo where you can see an old doll stroller to the right there is a mangled car; Scott believes it to be a 1950's model.

"TOO-KERS" = FEET

At least to Scott's Aunt Mary Etta - she would call her cats feet; Too-kers. Here are "our" too-kers as we settled in for the night yesterday...

A Wonderful Walk and a LONG Nap

This morning I was up about 6 AM - could have slept in as we didn't have to be up at that hour but my body had other ideas. Scott got up about 8ish - we ate breakfast and then headed over to walk by the River and just relax. We walked from the end of the walk in Riverland Park to the boardwalk just before the Cayce/West Columbia border fence/gate. The river is so low right now we can walk quite a ways out into it and get some GREAT picture's of the Gervais Strret bridge in the distance. We found a piece of one of the really old lanterns that used to light one of the bridges, several bi-valves among the river smoothed rocks and some "sea weed". There were also bits of railroad parts and old bricks from the old brickyard. Carolina Adventures had a group of Kayaker's going down the river and we got to watch several flocks of geese flying over. The flowers and bugs were also putting on a good show today. I especially like the picture of the butterfly. All in all it was a GREAT walk. When we came home we ate a lunch of leftover's from the frig and then we both succumbed to the "nap lures" and laid down for a "short" nap - got back up at nearly 4 PM. I guess we were just exhausted.