Progress

I'm not sure if you want to call what I'm doing "progress" or quilting myself into a corner.  When I make a visual list of everything I'm working on/want to work on, it's kind of overwhelming. I actually left 2 other quilt projects out of this post, and will talk more about them later.  This is enough even for me.
Last week I drove about 45 minutes into Sacramento to visit the Quilters Corner fabric store.  I don't get there very often but when I do, you can bet I make it worth my while. I bought some neutral backgrounds, a few Karen Kay Buckley tools, 2 Quiltmania magazines, a handful of fat quarters to feed the stash and a Kaffe Fassett bundle (last picture). They didn't carry a lot of modern quilting fabric, it was heavy on the reproductions and batiks, but they had some fun classes going on, awesome samples hanging up, a large supply of Aurifil thread and other notions, even wool for applique. It was a great couple of hours spent by myself, and I stopped on the way home for an iced tea and a sushi roll from Mikuni's (I love their Marilyn Monroll, yum!)

The snowball quilt now measures about 27 x 29 and I think I'm going to add a border of flying geese next. I'll just keep going until it feels like it's done. The dark blue fabric was pulled because I want to make an indigo quilt, maybe with some sashiko stitching.  I'm still dreaming about that one.
I also received 2 little hangers from Temecula Quilt Co.  They're perfect for mini quilts.

Sadly the Killdeer eggs from my garden disappeared 2 days after I posted about them.  I'm not surprised, since the nest was sitting out in the open, unprotected.  There are a lot of cats, hawks and raccoons around here, and I discovered a hole in the ground just a few feet from the nest (snake?) Could have been any of them. There wasn't an egg shell or feather left behind.  Just, Poof! Gone.

So today it's going to be 97 degrees, and like usual, I'm trying to outrun the heat. Everything has been watered early this morning, and I just finished vacuuming and mopping floors. Soon the air conditioner will kick in, and that's my signal to start sewing. I've got lots to do, some of it I like, some of it I don't.  I'm not complaining.  It could be worse.  I could have been born as a Killdeer egg.

Garden visitor

Right now a big section of my garden looks like this....

But beyond the green lies an area where we used to keep the chickens.   I've been slowly cleaning it up to add more plants, maybe grapes or an orange tree.  It looks like this....

But wait, let's zoom in a bit.

Do you see the eggs?
They belong to a Killdeer.  And Mrs. Killdeer was not happy that I was walking around her nest. If you want to call it a nest.  More like a shallow depression in the dirt.    She was quite nervous and wanted me to follow her away from her babies.

So she pulled the broken wing act, like on the Discovery Channel.

Not going to work on me lady.  I saw that episode.
Nevertheless she continued the fake job.

After a few minutes of me standing perfectly still, except for the sweat dripping down my face, she cautiously came back to hover over her eggs.  I was about 12 feet away, on the other side of a fence.

I left her alone at this point.  Probably enough torture for one day.  Looks like I won't be gardening in this part of the yard until those eggs hatch.
Meanwhile I sewed all these little snowballs together and now I'm just staring at it. I don't know what to do. Wait for some inspiration or just quilt it and sew on a binding and call it done.  Hmmmm.