52 Photos Project: Clouds

This is the last one, the last 52 Photos Project topic is Clouds.  Earlier this week it was very rainy, so a picture of clouds was a piece of cake.  Just what I needed, something simple that I could do from home.

I waited for a break in the rain & here it is, the view from our back yard:

52 Photos Project: Petals

It has been almost a year since I decided to join the 52 Photos Project & the second photo I posted was of a dandelion.  I decided that this time around, second from the last, for Petals, for symmetry, I would revisit the dandelion:

52 Photos Project: A Day In My Life

I am almost at the end of my year of following along with 52 Photos Project, only two more to go after this one.  I think.  This week it is a day in my life which is not particularly anything really, except I wanted to take all the pictures in an actual day & I am not in the habit of bringing my camera with me. 

Struggle number one:  remember to bring my camera when I walk out the door.  The assignment went up sometime Sunday, it was Thursday before I got my act together.  Maybe this is because Thursdays are more predictable than most as it is my usual on campus day.  But plenty of things happen before that.

The short version is I forgot my camera.  This seemed like an excellent opportunity to learn to use the camera on my phone.  I did take a few pictures of my workspace (nothing thrilling-almost the same as the pictures I took a few weeks ago, except would you believe another floor-to-ceiling cabinet has been added to that center row?), so there is no point in posting my less than spectacular new photos.

But I did manage to take a couple pictures of the work I am doing now (specifically matching old index cards wit wood specimens in drawers that are mostly in order...or were when they were last accessed which was mostly in the mid-80s. 

When I left the herbarium I felt like crap.  This is typical of herbarium days.  Between the chemicals to deter the bugs & the frigid temperature to preserve the specimens, I know I look ridiculous walking to the car.  It takes about that long to warm up & breathe clearly even in the tropics. 

But it turns out there was another reason I felt like crap.  By the time I got home, I could not stop shaking.  At 7:30, I had to go back to campus to pick up A.  I brought Sadie with me & we sat on the hill & watched to door to the loading dock until he came out & said her name.  She went nuts. 

I have been in bed (except when I have been "unwell") since Thursday night & got out jus in time to watch a college basketball game.  Which was an accident, really, that just happens to be when I got up.

So this is all I have to document my day.  It was, aside from being sick, a normal Thursday.

52 Photos Project: An Old Film Photo

Not that this has much to do with anything, but today is my almost fiftieth birthday (I am not a big birthday person, I usually have to do the math to remember what year; I have been rounding up for a couple years).   My companion in this photo will be almost fifty minus one year in one month minus one day.  Which makes this slide at least 40 years old. 

I am not sure where it was taken, exactly, either.  My best guess is somewhere on the Atlantic Ocean (I am actually sure of that) between Long Island & Acadia Island.  Given that I am wearing shorts, it may very well have been the height of summer.  My companion in jeans never wore shorts.

//interesting sidebar- he & our other brother once got reprimanded for showing up for a hike wearing jeans & not "appropriate hiking shorts".  My mother, who dropped them off, also got chewed on for this "parental oversight".  If memory serves, the rest of the troop got poison ivy. 

The 52 Photos Project prompt this week is An Old Photo, which this mostly is (like I said, it is a slide).  It is a bit damaged as you can see, but the colors are as bright as they were the very day. 

52 Photos Project: A present someone gave you, meaning me

In one of those "small world" things, 52 Photos Project this week is A Present Someone Gave Me & this month is our house birthday.  As in all the humans in the house have a birthday in March.  So we have been talking presents, new & old.  for the most part, we are ungiftable; we have what we want.  A few years ago A was anxious to upgrade my camera; he had given me one a year or three before & wanted to get he latest version.  It was lighter, more bells & whistles, etc.  But I liked this one & wouldn't give it up.   OKay, the real story is I started to cry when he tried to take it & I made the poor man eel terrible about trying to do something nice.  Also, there is no pleasing me. 

 

So this is the present someone gave me, that I am still using.  Weekly if not daily.  & I still don't want to upgrade.

52 Photos Project: Where I Would Take You

When 52 Photos Project put up "Where I Would Take You" I confess, I thought of one particular spot.  I pass it every time I go to the Union Street Farmer's Market (which has not been in Union Street for years now, feel free to interpret that as you will), because I cannot parallel park, I just cannot do it & so I park in the little metered lot at the west end of SE 1st Avenue.  & someday I ill take you there, but this morning I revised to a place I actually have taken people, if they have showed the slightest bit of interest or they are my mother:  The University of Florida Herbarium.

A herbarium, in broad strokes, is to plant specimens what a library is to books.  That's it really, the basic definition of an herbarium. 

I began by helping catalog already existing specimen for the synoptic collection.  Sometimes this cataloging meant removing the plants, roots, dirt & all from the newspaper the collector had placed them in, mounting them on cardstock with label (provided label-I never do identification).  Later, I would take all the mounted specimens & enter them into a very basic database.  The end result as a simple collection that could be used to train anyone on how to handle specimens (me included) & what to expect in general. 

Nowadays I log wood.  It is more exciting than you might think (it would have to be, I know).  But there isn't much to say about it really.  I pull out index cards (yes, index cards) double check the specimen (usually a block of wood) is there. If it is, I enter it into a database file (from which a searchable data base will be built....later) & go to the next card.  At the end of my shift, or whenever I start to feel cramped, I take the pile of cards with MIA specimens & go a-hunting.  The detail details are here, if you are really curious. 

As I do this, I am merging -in a data sort of way- several collections together.  They already co-exist in the room, but now it is possible to look at a list of all the specimens in a single searchable place.  This is a first for many of these, which include, among other things, woods from pre-Hiroshima Japan.  I have also been given general access to a lot of other material, & used them as quilt subjects.  Don't worry, the wood quilt is still on the drawing board but you can see the little gem magnolia, the Victoria water lily & a sampling from the Floristic Inventory of the Kanapaha Botanical Gardens, if you wish.

This is my (shared) work space at the herbarium.  It is very cramped but it turns out I am the opposite of claustrophobic.  No, not agoraphobic but I prefer close quarters.  High walls, narrow channels & the smell of old paper do not bother me one bit.  I wasn't kidding about the index cards, there is an hours worth of work sitting right there.  The mirror is so I can check drawers overhead without pulling them all the way out.  With a flashlight in my teeth, I can bounce light into the back of a cabinet another handy technique.  Drawers of wood specimens are very heavy & can be unwieldy & confirming the presence of a specimen without pulling everything over on myself is the best way (but not alas the only way).

Last of all, here are the cabinets themselves.  You can see the weight of the wood in them pulling them slowly apart. 

If you came here & wanted to see something you could not see anywhere else in the world (almost), this is where I would take you.

52 Photos Project: How I Start My Day

How I start my day has gone through a few changes in the past day or so (& will change back in another cycle, I hope).   It is Spring Break here, which makes no difference really except that A can travel without classes being disrupted.  Last night was the first night he was gone & I tried to have a normal evening, but the dogs kept getting up & barking every time a car drove by & around 3am I moved back out to the couch (A usually gets up around 4:30/5 so they would have been going nuts for breakfast soon enough). 

 

When I woke back up this morning, this was what greeted me.  Also my neck hurt, mostly because in addition to moving out to the couch, I put on headphones to listen to a book which I had found very funny before but it deals with what happens after a much loved wife dies unexpectedly in a plane crash.  & there you have the other reason I wasn't sleeping so well.  What was witty & heartfelt before my husband got on a plane has lost some of its humor.  The book is How To Talk To A Widower so it is not like I had any excuse for not knowing what it was about. 

In the old days, I did not exactly look forward to his leaving, I did enjoy thing that would make him crazy.  Cereal for dinner, late night quilting, hat kind of thing.  Now I want him to come home & not just so I can get some sleep. 

 

This photo is a bit deceptive.  It was taken with no flash & a long-ish exposure.  Lilly didn't move, I didn't move; it looks like a bright sunny day but it was really quite dark.  The sun was up & we were in a room with windows across three walls but the rain was pounding down.  She was not any more anxious to get out there than I was, but it had to be done.  This how we both started our day: completely frozen hoping no one else noticed we were awake & then racing to make it out into the yard to pee before the other dogs jumped on us.  Her, not me; peeing in the yard is not one of the things I enjoy when my husband goes out of town.  

52 Photos Project: Where People Gather

The 52 Photos Project prompt this month is Where People Gather.  The drop-dead truth is I generally avoid places people gather as the whole gather procedure is uncomfortable for me 

First of all, I cannot parallel park to save my own life, so unless there is adequate parking I just don't go.  Once I get there, there is the whole bumping into people & being bumped into thing.  I don't mean the casual visiting with people I know but was not expecting to see.  I mean actual bumping.  I am shorter than average & I have rarely made it through a farmer's market without at least one person looking clear over my head & walking into me as though I was not there.  I understand why this happens- your eyes latch onto where you want to go next & then you cut through the crowd; my head being below your eye level means I get shoved.  Let me be clear: I am not a 'little person", I'm just shorter than average.

So even if there is parking, even if milling around is limited or includes obstacles shorter than me (café seating or occasional tables), then there is the fact I don't actually like people all that much.  Please don't misunderstand me:  I have friends, I am not wholly anti-social.  But something has to be "worth it" for me to venture out. 

Mostly I arrange for social events to come to me, bookclub being a good example.  Or I prefer smaller one on one type situations.  Because two people is plenty gathered for me.  & when it gets warm again, this spot next to the coral vine will be my favorite spot.

52 Photos Project: Mint

It is week 44 over at 52 Photos Project & I am almost a little bit ready for week 52.  I feel rotten saying this; I know more than most how hard it is to come up with ideas that are broad enough to interest a lot of different people & narrow enough to have some underlying link.  It ain't easy. 

I think my ho-hummed ness has way-more to do with me than anything else.  Before I ever joined, when I first looked through the galleries I was struck by how often (maybe MAYBE twice a year) the prompt was a color & I confess I was kind of meh on that, but again I now how hard it is to  think up something new every time, year in year out.  You can see how people start going all avant-garde-art-fart with themes like Stillness & Bifocal (& to her credit I don't think 52 Photos Project has ever gone this far afield...although I do kind of want to see "bifocal" now that I have mocked it).

Then this week the word was "mint".  An image popped immediately into my head.  It was personal.  It was timely.  It had absolutely nothing to do with the color green.  So now what?  Do I go on a quest to take a green picture?  I live in Fladidah, it is almost always green in some way.  What about green accessories?  I had an irish last name, still have a first name that coupled with it is a bit of an ethnic joke & I grew up in the NY-Boston corridor-that bastion of Irish-Americanism.  It was decades before I could let green creep into my wardrobe.  My kitchen cabinets ARE green, but many people think they are gray.  The tv room is earth tones, including some green but do I really want to post pictures of the doorjambs?

Don't get me wrong, I like green.  Love it even.  Avocado & celery & lime & olive......& celadon & emerald & jade & malachite...& even mint.  But the fact is the word "mint" did not bring any shade of green to my mind (which is in itself absurd my yard is one big mint-hole right now as that is all that can survive the winter & the dogs together). 

What it did bring to mind was a box of nearly mint condition knitting patterns dating back to WWII my mother sent.  I thought about doing a color wash but that seemed silly as this picture is naturally mostly black & white.

& now that I look, I can see that skirt IS mint green.  So it's all good.  

52 Photos Project: Hearts

Quite some time ago (a year ago this month), I won the low volume hearts over on Block Lotto.  Despite my clear preference for in-your-face colors & patterns, I really enjoyed this block.  I liked making the foundation pieces, mixing up the strings in my string pile.  I really wanted to win because I knew exactly what I wanted to do with these hearts.  My plan was to divide them into pairs & to each pair add a heart I had made, making a set of three. Then I would sew them in a row & border them with a strip of fabric also used to frame the heart I had made & included in the set.  I visualized them as bricks & started fantasizing how I would arrange them.  This is how far I have gotten:

So here it is, my week 43 52 Photos Project entry, my oh-so-very sad tale of why I am donating my chances to Block Lotto for the foreseeable future & the lamest jump in on 15 Minutes of Play because I did not even make the hearts blocks I am posting.  Okay, I made a few.  Last year.  I accept that doesn't really count.

52 Photos Project: Crooked Line

I prefer machine quilting to hand quilting (you would have to look pretty hard to find an example of my hand quilting, in part because I usually disguise it with machine quilting).  My preferred method of machine quilting is not exactly free-motion & not exactly not-free motion.  It has been called -not by me, at least not originally- yoni quilting, but I usually call it free motion with walking foot.

Lately I have been working in sharper angles & aiming for nice straight lines.  I guess practice will make close-to-perfect, but in the meantime I still have plenty of crooked lines. 

This is the back of a old block lotto block quilt (the front will be revealed later this week).  I have taken to using plain white muslin for quick-backs.  It is well-sized, wears well, etc.  The only drawback is it shows every single mistake, so I am learning to live with them. 

52 Photos Project: All Dressed Up

Yes, I am one of those people.  It started when I went to visit my parents.  They live in CT & I brought my short-haired little dog who had always lived in Fladidah.  So I brought a sweater & she loved it.  She would beg to have it put on.  OKay I actually brought two sweaters, even that first time; I had sense enough to know they would get dirty or wet & need to be changed out.

My parents would put the sweater-not-being worn on the rack in their oven.  We (me & the dog) would come in, I would take off the wet sweater & put the warm sweater on her & she happily adjusted to being a sweater wearing dog.

Then came Hallowe'en.  I started with a little witches hat.  Then over the winter holidays I added in some jingle bell collars (with ankle bells, too) & an elf hat....and a reindeer hat. 


Nowadays they are all too often all dressed up.  I think maybe I have a problem. 

These two lovely geisha are usually very good about posing, but I think one of the adornments on her wig was tickling Lilly's ear.  Good thing Lola was there to check it out.

52 Photos Project: My Reflection

I almost sat out this week on 52 Photos Project, the prompt being My Reflection.  I have limited patience with what I think of as naval gazing (I know I am in the vast minority thinking that Eat, Pray, Love & that ilk are overrated.  I feel mean saying it, but on the other hand if a person is going to put this monologue out there, some dissension is to be expected. 

We are reading Traveling With Pomegranates for bookclub this month & I am having the same kind of problems (I am sorry you are depressed when you know you have so much to live for & feel guilty & ashamed about being depressed but I am just not all that interested).  My attitude towards introspection probably is not helping here.  I have been accused of being MASCULINE in my views about those things (that's right I said it); I sort of wonder if depression & fear & boredom are all different approaches to the same paralyzing state of mind & a certain amount of "snap out of it" is required on the part of the beholder.

Yea, yea depression is chemical & needs to be dealt with like a disease, because t is a disease.  But there is almost no cure of any disease that is aided by watching the world go by & not getting involved (OKay, maybe addiction, but I honestly cannot think of any other right now & I think we can agree getting involved with the world & avoiding what you are addicted to is what addiction cures are all about). 

Next I am bogged down with the whole not getting as much out of it as you might if you were not depressed being a first world problem.  Maybe this book will dissolve my prejudices....but not so far.  My other lack of enthusiasm re: My Reflection is I have been trying not to stage anything, photographically & let each 52 Photos Project photo happen in the now (yep, I said that too).  There is no natural occurring moment now when I might take a picture of myself (my passport is unused but up-to-date).  I barely look at myself (no this is not self loathing, I'm just busy). 

When in doubt, go semantic.  In addition to being an image or counterpart, a reflection is also a meditation.  Meditation I understand (if that seems in conflict to my lack of introspection let me remind you that meditation begins with nothing.  I am a big fan of things about nothing).

I give you my reflection, in that other sense of the word: 

Last summer when my little dog died, M****** gave me this rose "white pet" & we planted it near the door to the greenhouse (she is buried under stepping stones at the front).  It has been doing well, pretty, unremarkable.  There have been only a couple of blossoms

Enter winter.  It has been below freezing most nights this week (hey, I live in Florida, this is not usual).  I cover all the roses overnight & uncover them in the morning.  Most afternoons I snip a little shaggy rose. 

I have a suspicion it being banked by the greenhouse that is creating this little winter-free oasis.  I have been reflecting on it all week. 

52 Photos Project: Wide Open Spaces

This week at 52 Photos Project the prompt is Wide Open Spaces.  This is apparently not the first time Wide Open Spaces has been the theme.  while I am not exactly struggling with this one, I am not fully engaged either.  My life is a series of wide open spaces:  the view from the back gate across the pasture, the view from A's office across a vast parking lot, the view from the mezzanine at the library across a goodly mix of citizens from students to homeless & back again. 

So.  I have been bumbling around trying to think of a VISTA that I have not yet photographed.  & then it occurred to me "wide open spaces" is a matter of perspective. 

This chickadee is a regular at our feeder.  Probably.  They all look very much alike to me & we have quite a population.  They are especially fond of the millet mix I put in this tube feeder.  They fly in one end, eat their way thru & then zoom back out the other side.  I was taking pictures of that procedure & they didn't look like much (blurry little mounds inside a translucent tube).  Then this one stopped to watch me. 

52 Photos Project: Something Really Small

This week has been another month-long week here.  We have had weather (yes, I know everyone has weather) that required special prep & then, when it passed, special breakdown.  Not really adding to my pile, but certainly adding to our uh-oh levels, our next door neighbor was taken to the hospital on Monday.  She was moved out of ICU yesterday & I was able to visit, but she probably won't be home for a few days. 

Back to the weather.  I know two days with overnights below freezing (& at least a few daylight hours above) are not big deal to most people.  Here it is quite the headache, mostly because this kind of weather is so rare, there is no real long-term planning for it.  Let me give you a for instance:  three years ago we had a week of after dark freezes.  A friend of mine was living in a traditional cracker house.  Yes, there is such a thing & one of the primary characteristics is they have an empty gap between the round & the floorboards. which means no slab & more germane to this story no insulated plumbing.  this means turning off the water at the pump & draining the pipes before they freeze & not turning anything back on until the temperatures rise again.  V** has learned to live with the ice cold shows (no water in the water heater means no hot water), but in 2012 the thaws occurred after she had left for work, which didn't really matter as she would have had to drive home early to turn it drain the system & all off again before that night's freeze.  Not just no hot showers, but no showers period.  Also, no washing your hands, no flushing the toilet....you get the picture?  She too quite a few showers here & ate out a lot that winter.

I know it is popular to think people who live like this are too poor to live any other way & many of them are.  In V**'s case she is a legal secretary & not without options.  That same up off the ground characteristic meant she never had to deal with termites (the plague of wooden houses here), she had fewer concerns during flash floods (even just a few inches of standing water can destroy your house, but not hers) & her a/c bill was a fraction of anyone else's.  In short most years her house was better than ours, but not when it gets colder-than-average.

Enough about that, right?  We do not live in a traditional cracker house but our water pump is still exposed, as is some of the house plumbing & all the livestock tanks.  During a hard freeze, the challenge is to keep the pump running enough that it doesn't freeze up, ditto the floats in the stock tanks & generally make sure water continues to move more or less all night long.  We do this with a series of orchestrated drips at the outer reaches of each water line.  This is the biggest outside tank & the something really small that meant it continued to function.

52 Photos Project: One photo from the 1st day of 2014

This week's 52 Photos Project works nicely with my preferred photo....ethos?  Yep, ethos.  let's let that be the word for today ETHOS: shared fundamental traits. 

The assignment is one picture from yesterday, it being the first day of 2014.  & here is my first day picture.  I actually took three pictures of the same....subject, but this is the best one.

I bet you are wondering what kind of News Years Day we had: ever since we put in the new bigger water pump & tank our showers have been getting colder faster.  This is not recent, but it has recently gotten cold here & I want to take a hot-Hot-HOT shower.  So A said he would turn up the thermostat on the water heater.  Which meant he has to shut off the power to the water heater.  Which brings us to....

We had a our kitchen remodeled late 2012 & as a result of that there was some rewiring, codes having changed somewhat since the original wiring circa 1977.  We carried over the info from the old circuit breaker legend (also circa 1977 & pictured in that lovely photo to the right).  But it turns out it still wasn't quite right.  Specifically, some circuits had changed pre-kitchen remodel & not been recorded.  Some were always a bit strange (my sewing room, a handful of other outlets on the same side of the house & the exterior light by the front door are all on the same breaker). 

Just to make things a bit more exciting, it took us a little time to remember that on the original floor plan, my sewing room was the master bedroom (the room we use as a master bedroom was originally the worlds smallest bonus room that a previous owner carved up, creating the worlds smallest walk-in closet & a very small bathroom, but a small bathroom in which we can now have hot showers). 

In the end, I took the picture of the old moldy, damaged label & used the camera settings to highlight the notes & deemphasize the grime.  Then we flipped every switch & checked it, learning some new things we didn't know along the way.  During the kitchen remodel, we learned the range hood & the range in the kitchen was on the same circuit as the master bedroom closet.  Yesterday we learned that the range is on its own circuit (in compliance with current code), the microwave is now also on its own circuit & so forth. 

We found the water heater, turned it off, turned it up & turned it back on & now we have nice hot water.  Which was wonderful, because it was a chilly rainy day.  Last night while we were all happy & cozy, we discovered the roof is leaking.  Apparently 2014 is going to be the year of water. 

52 Photos Project: My Choice

52 Photos Project: Holiday Traditions

When I saw 52 Photos Project's Traditions, my first thought was holiday cards.   I loved them as a kid, I love them now.  I mostly stopped sending them because I stopped getting them & I didn't want to be the last dork...  But they are back & I am back sending them again & all is good.  I had thought I would take a picture of the cards that we have received so far, but watching Megyn Kelly clips on the Daily Show made me go through the old card file.

We sent these Santa cards X years ago (I honestly don't remember when because while I stopped sending holiday cards I never really stop-stopped sending them, I always send AT LEAST one holiday card to my mother).  I know it was after Obama was elected the first time (she's a big fan; this last visit I gave her all the swag I could lay my hands on & she seemed happy to have it), because I made an Santa 'bama reference in my note. 

Way-back-when I saw these cards in the Victorian Trading Company catalog (that I get this catalog & somehow order something often enough to keep it coming is hilarious in its own way).  They are called Santa Greengloves (look closely, he is indeed wearing green gloves) & I was immediately in love.  & I knew I had to have them & send them to my parents & I ordered them & sent them to my parents & a few other people besides & then I moved on.  Sidebar// in one of those the coincidences keep stacking up kind of things, I included this year's card Comfort & Joy in the picture on the left there.  I promise it was all picked out long before the last week's 52 Photos Project. 

I have no talent for still lifes.  I am told people who fail in still lifes tend to over compose, but I fail the other way.  this is a complete fail on my part:  it is where my quilts fail, my parties fail, etc.  I throw everything in there & get bored & wander off.  Anyway.  I took this still life so everyone could see this traditional Victorian Santa card & then I could talk about the Big Scandal visible in these traditional Victorian/Edwardian Christmas cards.

Look carefully.  Take your time.  Do you see it? 

That's right!  Santa used to wear green gloves!  Those monsters at the Coca-Cola company have been screwing with traditional Santa.  They are the ones who changed his complete ensemble to match their logo.  Last but not least, my mom will tell you those monsters at Coca Cola also ruined the song "I'd like to teach the world to sing".  I admit, I have a hard time blocking out I'd like to buy the world a coke verse. 

52 Photos Project: Comfort & Joy

Have you ever seen the movie Gregory's Girl?  Was it ever even in the theatres in the US?  I know Local Hero was.  Maybe you saw Housekeeping which actually took place in the US (unlike the others)?  Apparently you are more likely than I would have thought to see Gregory's Girl as it went out to a whole new audience during the London Olympics; I missed it entirely (the resurgence & the Olympics).

Whatever.  There is another Bill Forsyth movie you probably never saw...did I mention Bill Forsyth directed these & wrote most of them (not Housekeeping, which was a book by Marilynne Robinson, although I think he probably wrote the screenplay.  Let me check.  Yep, he did).  That would be his Christmas movie Comfort & Joy.  No, no not that Nancy McKeon Lifetime movie of the week thing, which may be quite charming, I wouldn't know as I have never seen it.  I mean Bill Forsyth's Comfort & Joy & good luck finding it as it sells on Amazon for $130+.  In a nutshell, a man with a public persona out of synch with his private self has some extra time on his hands in the few days before Christmas & ... stuff happens.  No, this is not the synopsis any movie database will give you, but there it is. 

So if you find yourself with time on YOUR hands this holiday season & you feel like breaking your heart into tiny little pieces, let me recommend the movies of Bill Forsyth.  Any of those above or any of the others, but most especially Comfort & Joy which you are never going to find, so good luck with that.

Oh oh I almost forgot:  this week at 52 Photos Project the theme is Comfort & Joy so I though about recreating of one of the scenes from the above mentioned movie.  A little unorthodox holiday decorating maybe, or mugging an ice cream vendor.  Instead I give you this:

This is Sadie.  She came to us as a foster dog after going to a small, poorly funded county shelter.  She was picked up by a rescue & placed with a family who gave her back after a few weeks.  Then she went into a many-dog foster situation while they figured out what went wrong & then she came here.  She is happy here.  This morning she went to the vet for her first ever dental cleaning.  I had to leave her; there is no other way to do a dental.  I handed her over to a very nice, gentle tech & Sadie wailed the whole time.  I picked her up this afternoon & she forgave me immediately. 

We are home now. 

52 Photos Project: Polka Dots

Did you know there is such a thing as fear of polka dots?  Or at least an overwhelming hatred of them.  I had a roommate who had this problem.  Seriously.  After daily observation of her obvious discomfort, I developed a theory.  There are polka dot patterns that make almost everyone who looks at them a little bit dizzy & just maybe some of us are more sensitive to a broader range of that repeating, monotonous pattern.

Don't get me wrong, I love polka dots.  I avoided wearing them whenever I spent time with A**.  After all, who wants to spend time with a person having a low-grade, drawn out panic attack even if you don't care about them?  But in my quilting life, old fashioned white-on-white dotted swiss is my go to background fabric.  Gray dots on white & white dots on gray were a huge part of the Bird Trap quilt. In fact, it was not until I made the Bird Trap quilt I realized how overboard for dots I am.

No this was not just an excuse to talk about the Bird Trap quilt (for what I am hoping will be the last time....this year...but I make no promises).  Over at 52 Photos Project the weekly assignment is polka dots.