Emancipated!

Well, kids, it's all open water from here. I officially did my last work as an attorney on July 31, and as of August 1 I am retired. I knew I would feel relieved,  but I had no idea of the weight I would immediately feel lifted. 

 And the Emancipation Period has started off with great fun. My college friend Moe (whom you may remember from her helping me move from California to Washington) came up for a visit, and we ferried over to Port Townsend to visit some other college friends. We celebrated my "graduation" (as one friend kept calling it), took long walks, ate mexican food, and binge-watched Ted Lasso which one had never seen. Such fun, and I kept realizing that I didn't have the worry about work lingering in the background. When one is used to carrying a load, however tidy, it does feel good to put it down.

Moe and I returned home and yesterday headed off to Deception Pass State Park at the north end of Whidbey Island. It is truly one of the most beautiful places you could ever see. 

 

There are miles of hiking trails on both sides of the water, and one led us to a spot beneath the bridge. You can see Moe on the lower left, which shows the scale of this impressive structure.

 

 

We had lunch on the other side of the bridge, at a local institution called The Shrimp Shack. 

We highly recommend the popcorn shrimp.

From there, we roamed around the town of La Connor for a bit, which quilters know as the home of the Pacific Northwest Fiber Arts Museum. We did not have a lot of time, so skipped that in favor of a stroll through town and a bit of poking around in shops.

But our ultimate destination was back to Deception Pass for a boat tour, hosted by Deception Pass Tours. (I am well aware that taking a commercial tour in a state park is a very "retiree" thing to do -- but it was fantastic.) It was a perfect day for a boat outing, as it was unusually hot but clear and calm. 

Oh, the blue water and blue sky.

We saw a lot of wildlife, even from our distance. Harbor seals swimming along...

 Basking on the shore (look closely, they blend in with the rocks) ...

 

Even napping on a marker buoy. 

 

 We saw porpoises leaping, salmon jumping, and bald eagles perched in the pines just watching us go by.

Our tour guide pointed out an egg yolk jellyfish. I'd never heard of them, let alone seen one. 

It was perfect summer adventure. And on a random Wednesday!

I think I am going to have a hard time remembering what day it is. That might be a very pleasant problem to have. 

I hope your summer is going swimmingly, friends.

July Bits and Bobs

 

Hello, friends! I thought I'd pop in with a mid-July update. It has been a lovely summer here on Whidbey Island so far. A bit of rain in June, although less than last year, and gorgeous sunny, warm-but-not-too-hot days in July. (Sorry, California friends.) It's quite perfect, to my taste.

I can hardly believe it is the middle of July already. But July flying by is especially good news for me because I officially retire from practicing law as of July 31! I've practiced law since 1985 -- almost 40 years! Yikes! I have enjoyed it overall -- sometimes more, sometimes less. The variety, the intellectual problems to solve, the writing, have all been a good fit. I have been really fortunate to work with excellent lawyers and to have been trained as a young lawyer by ethical, smart people who valued courtesy and honesty. I've been able to create a flexible work situation that allowed me to do what I liked best and avoid the parts that did not suit. But it is time to stop. I'm just done.

Plus, I have SO many other things I want to do! I am not sure how I will celebrate, other than a whole lot of sewing and quilting and indulging in (gasp) daytime reading. I already have signed up for an online sketching workshop in September, some online lessons in machine embroidery so I can finally master the embroidery function on my machine, and a return to my usual Bishop's Ranch quilt retreat in October. I have a lot of exploring to do, both on and off the island. I am quite certain that I will not be bored.

Speaking of quilting, I was happily quilting away on a summery quilt when my longarm machine started shredding thread no matter how many adjustments I made. Turns out that the checkspring, a little wire hook in the thread path that contributes to keeping the tension even, had broken. The circled item below is the checkspring.

So, my Bernina dealer sent a technician over and within 45 minutes, it was all fixed, cleaned, oiled, and running perfectly. So now I can get back to this fun quilt, from a pattern called Lighthearted by Thimble Blossoms.

 

With my longarm ability interrupted, I had quite a piecing binge over the 4th of July weekend. I'd stumbled on a pattern that just looked like fireworks to me, so I spent the weekend getting this top together. (Side note: why do I cringe when quilters call a quilt top a "flimsy?" Am I the only one?)

It is from a quilt kit called "Holiday Americana Merry Making Quilt" from JK Quilts. I don't usually do kits, but this was half off at some point and was just so summer-festive that I could not resist. I'm looking forward to quilting it, and found some perfect fireworks fabric for the back.

Having finished that top, I have been sewing 2.5 inch strips to make a large, summery, scrappy Trip Around the World quilt. I love how fast and easy they are, and with light fabrics mixed in they look so fresh and light. They are so easy to make - great instructions here, from Bonnie Hunter, and here from Alli at Woodberry Way. I am following Alli's version, which uses whites in between printed strips, uses 21" strips, and makes a bigger block. No pictures yet as all I have is bundles of strips and a stack of blocks, but I'll be putting them up on the design wall soon. 

For cuteness purposes, here are Caroline's cats Kaya and Maybel. I had piled some things in the upstairs hallway before putting them away, and they quickly made themselves comfortable. As cats do.

All of a sudden, a bunch of books I've had on hold at the library have come in, just in time for retired life. I am ready for some serious deck and/or beach reading! I'm most excited to read Marisa de los Santos' most recent novel, Watch Us Shine. 

This is the fourth in a series with a common thread of family members and friends, with each novel focusing on a different character. I was so excited that I decided to reread the first in the series, Love Walked In, which I loved just as much as the first time. And that caused me to race through books two and three, Belong to Me and I'll Be Your Blue Sky, again. Yes, just as good as before, too. So I'm ready for #4.

 

Local Rainier cherries have appeared at the farmer's market, so I've been buying a steady supply and we've been eating cherries every day. At yesterday's market I bought a flat of local raspberries, and they are just gorgeous. A burst of summer flavor, truly.

In other exciting news, I ordered a new couch for our family room. This was quite an accomplishment, as it has been quite a hunt for something NOT beige, brown or gray. I have loved my red leather couch (shown here in a staging photo from my Healdsburg house) but it is just too big and too dark for the new family room. Plus, I'm ready for a new look.

After a lot of hunting, I found a blue and white pinstriped couch, in a store where I could actually sit on it and feel it -- how do people buy a couch online? But it will not be here for something like 3 months, so I have time to address the other pieces in the room. The red couch, which I still adore, will move out to the workshop room so I can sit and relax while sorting through all of the stuff in storage there.

I actually have some work to finish today, so I will close this this picture of yesterday's late afternoon summer sky.

Maybe it's just me, but the skies seem unusually beautiful here.

Adventures at Cottontail Cottage

 

Feeling summery? That little quilt part was a collaged hat that I made long ago for one of those art quilt group projects where each person stated a subject and 2 colors and then everyone made something meeting those requirements.  I think this was “hat” and orange and yellow. Frankly the blocks were so varied in each set that I thought the resulting quilts (for those who assembled them) were pretty strange. But I did like this little block and the challenge was fun. Anyway, it says summer to me, so here you go. 

It's been another one of those odd months. No surprise, really, after losing my dad... so much emotion to process, so many tasks to handle, plus work and life and all. But summer is here on Whidbey Island, and I'm enjoying remembering summer - the early morning bell from the summer camp across the lake, the distant sound of children playing, the very long dusky summer evenings. 

I have made yet another discovery about life here on the island. I've written about the abundance of bunnies on the south end of the island, and there are quite a few that hop around my yard in the early morning. Well, between my several trips to California and his own travels, my lawn mower guy (“the Lawn Ranger”) and I were not able to connect and as a result my lawn has grown and grown and grown. It is now more a wildflower/grass prairie. Quite pretty in its own way. Here is Rosie roaming in the grass.

 

 

But a few days ago, Rosie came to me with something in her mouth. I thought it was a pinecone. No, it was a teeny baby bunny. ACK! Luckily Rosie is a gentle soul and retrievers have notoriously soft mouths -- so she didn't bite or maul it, and it was obviously alive but so newborn that its eyes weren't open yet. I carefully scooped it up and off I went to see if I could find the nest.

 

I did not take this picture and this is not my nest, but I post it here to show what one looks like.

It took a lot of hunting, but I finally found the spot I think it might have been -- there were some tufts of fur around a burrow sort of hole, so I placed the baby in there, bent some grass over it, and hoped for the best.

When I checked the next morning, there were no bunnies in sight and the burrow was empty. So I hoped that mama came and found her baby and took it to safety. 

Unfortunately, later that day, after I'd restricted the dogs to another area of the yard, Rosie came to me with that look in her eye.... which means something in her mouth. Yep, another baby. Also alive. I did not know where it came from but took it back to the original burrow, hoping, hoping.

 

 

 

I've now put stakes around the bunny area and am keeping the dogs on leash in the yard at all times. Research tells me that babies become independent in about 3 weeks, so I will hope that by then the dogs can roam freely without finding any surprises. 

Big lesson learned? Keep the lawn mowed down SHORT at this time of year, so the bunnies will nest elsewhere. Incidentally, when I read up on bunny nests, one expert said that they often nest in yards of homes with big dogs -- because the mama knows it is safer and there are less likely to be more dangerous predators like cats and raccoons. Smart mommy bunny, eh?

I really do enjoy seeing the bunnies about and have thought that I'm living in a Cottontail Cottage, but the possibility of the dogs disrupting babies in their nest is not something I want to do every summer.

 

 

Meanwhile, there was this. In May, when I was on my way to California to see my dad, I stopped to get breakfast -- and I tripped and fell in a parking lot. I had what I now know is, in medical terms, a FOOSH -- "fall on out-stretched hands." My hands were scraped and definitely sore but I felt around and nothing felt seriously hurt, no sense of anything broken, so I cleaned myself off and continued on my way. Once I got to California, my sister and I were absorbed with my dad and his care, so I just took advil and did some icing from time to time. Well, fast-forward to two weeks later when, back home, my dr suggested xrays of both hands and wrists. Turns out I have a small fracture in one hand and a bone bruise and soft tissue injury in the other. I came away with a splint on one and instructions to wrap the other wrist when it was sore.

 

So - good news was nothing serious, no surgery needed, nothing displaced, etc. (Yes, friends, you are right, I broke my wrist LAST March in a similar FOOSH fall. But that was way worse.) This has mainly been inconvenient -- and I have learned that having something wrapped on BOTH hands makes me very very cranky. VERY CRANKY. I am at the tail end of healing, so that is good. But sheesh. I know that both falls (last year and this) were when I was seriously tired and distracted and stressed, and probably paying less attention to my feet than I should have been, but I'm still boosting my vitamin D and have a bone density test scheduled for next month. I don't want to do this any more. 

 

 The other good news is that with the left hand pretty functional, I was able to resume quilting on my longarm!

One more random thing making me happy. I was in a Barnes and Noble in California and came upon this insulated metal tumbler from Rifle Paper company. I love their pretty patterns so it came home with me. It keeps my morning coffee very hot so I can linger on the deck, and it makes me happy every day.

What’s making you happy these days?