Progress of the elephant

Hello, everyone.

There is, for the first time in days, progress on the elephant.

The colors here are planned to be the theme throughout the piece.

A photo from the Camino Portugues

Hello, everyone.

As we're coming up on the 100th anniversary of the visions at Fatima, a picture of the older basilica from 2015:

Detail of the Rosary mysteries on the wall behind those columns

This n that: pictures

Hello, everyone.

I've been coasting on Easter and doing honey-dos around the house.

A couple of pictures from before Easter:

The day we got out late to walk, because it looked like rain, and discovered that the wildlife had stayed in bed too. (At the Hike n Bike it had been raining.)

It was after 9 in the morning, and we really hadn't expected to see anything in the way of wildlife. Apparently this herd of javelinas had been staying in until the rain ended.

User tip for the Hike n Bike: at some parts there is levee above the level of the path, and sometimes the dirt surface of the levee is bare of plants. If it rains, the mud runs down onto the asphalt path and makes it slick. A word to the wise and all that!

This was growing along the Hike n Bike trail. I'm pretty sure it's a clover of some kind.

Happy Easter

Hello, everyone.

A painting for today:

"And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week they went to the tomb when the sun had risen. And they were saying to one another, "Who will roll away the stone for us from the door of the tomb?" And looking up, they saw that the stone was rolled back--it was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe; and they were amazed. And he said to them, "Do not be amazed; you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen, he is not here; see the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee...."  Matthew 16: 1-7

Besides the blazingly obvious, that this is from the account in the Gospel of Matthew of the discovery that the Lord had risen, another thing occurs to me. Did y'all notice that *every* Mary has a surname or other descriptor to tell the reader which Mary we are talking about now? That says to me that Mary was one of those bog-standard names that appeared in so many families that you couldn't walk without tripping over a gal named Mary. Mary of Magdala is not Mary of Bethany (sister of Lazarus?) is not Mary the wife of Cleophas is not Mary the mother of Jesus. And that's just the Marys that I can roll off the top of my head.

Sometimes when I read spiritual meditations or Bible commentaries it seems like the writer has it in their head that there are only maybe 2 ladies named Mary in the entire Holy Land of Jesus' time. But it is there in the text, if one reads with attention, that there are LOTS of Marys. Also there appear to be lots of men named Jesus--why else does Jesus have a surname?--and lots of James and Jude and Simon as well. Possibly other given names in the Gospels give evidence that their holders had fairly common names. Having advanced the thought, I will leave it to the interested readers to explore for themselves.

This painting of the Resurrection of Christ was in a Portuguese church, but without digging a lot into the things from a couple of years back I can't remember which one. It was after Coimbra, I think. And certainly before Tui in Spain.

Elephant, assembled

Hello, everyone.

The elephant block is now assembled, in a gray/red/white colorway.

A slightly-scrappy Texas Tech elephant!

The plan for this quilt is looking like the elephant in the middle, surrounded by lots and lots of rail fence block rows in reds, blacks, grays and whites. Probably not a whole bed size, more likely a lap quilt/wall hanging kind of size.

Other than this, I'm thinking he'd be great in a baby quilt, or an animal-lover's quilt. Possibly even as the center of a table runner.

An elephant quilt block

Hello, everyone.

Someone who really likes elephants inspired me to do this design for a pieced elephant block.

As usual, it required both typing in Word (to work out order of sewing) and tallying in Excel (to count up all the needed pieces) to get my mind wrapped around it! The inspiration was, in part, to make a "school" themed elephant. To that end, the blanket will be in a licensed Texas Tech print. Colors: dark gray for most of him, lighter gray for his ear, red accents at the corners.

It hasn't been made yet, but I'm hoping it will come out okay. Probably going to frame the block in black to get a 12 inch block instead of the 10 inches the initial sketch worked out to be. 12 inches is more usable with 4 inch or six inch blocks around it.

New hiking socks!

Hello, everyone.

The Birthday Angels sent me a new pair of socks to walk in.

I had such good results walking in Injinji socks in 2015 that I'm sticking to them. They got their first walk this morning--4 miles on the Hike and Bike, with weight. They feel great!

Thank you Birthday Angels!

A pretty butterfly

Hello,  everyone.
Today the Resin Daisies were being attended by a group of these butterflies.

Also, the Purple Martins are back again and their little apartment house is almost full. It's peaceful to sit and watch them fly overhead in the afternoon.

Bottling day

Hello, everyone.
Today the long-watched carboy of grapefruit wine was decanted and bottled. (Beginning another long wait.)
We had to rearrange all the bottles to make room for the newest batch. Here they are lined up on the table and ready for storage:

Banana in front, new grapefruit at the back.

A Sunday bird

Hello, everyone.

I'm still head-down on making the backpack duffels. (2 down, 1 to go, and it's 3/4 done. Yay!)

This little fellow was at Bentsen the last time we were there.

Tropic kingbird? Well, some kind of kingbird. He eats insects. Isn't he handsome?