Wordless Wednesday

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Barely Pink

I get so discouraged sometimes when I can't meet my own (sometimes ridiculous) deadlines. And yet, I need to celebrate what I -- what WE -- are able to accomplish, even if what I plan doesn't come to fruition. Lizard has been able to help me with some rock- and sand-moving in the backyard during the last week, and that's something he wasn't able to do at all last year. This truly is worth celebrating, not a reason to beat myself up for not squeezing everything I want to do into shorter (and cooler) days.

I'm still trying to finish a WIP quilt every month, and this quarter, my goal is to finish TWO WIPs each month (one is a November birthday present and two are Christmas presents). It may wind up that all I finish this quarter are the three gifts, and only because I will force myself to finish them. It may be that each of the gifts are finished after midnight the day they are to be presented. But for now, I'm still trying to cross six off my list by December 31.

This month's goal is Tickled Pink, the Sequel. Because this is October. I have two other WIPs that are ready to sandwich and load onto the longarm. But this is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. My second breast cancer-themed WIP list project has been waiting too long to earn my undivided attention. My first Tickled Pink quilt inspired this project back in 2014. (What a fun blog post to go back and re-read and re-live!) When I pulled the WIP from my project shelf, I discovered my self-cut charm squares (cut from scraps leftover a decade or more) for this project did not include the backing fabric for the original Tickled Pink as planned, which meant I had to dig into my pink stash to find a remnant somewhere.

This project includes the third mariner's compass I've ever crafted, also back in 2014. (Another fun blog post to go back and re-read, and my dear Lizard left a comment back then! He can't type now, so words cannot describe how wonderful it was to re-read his special comment!) Re-reading about the joy I experienced upon completing my first-ever nearly perfect compass REALLY makes me want to give another compass a try. I think I need to do one in green batik scraps. Blue snowflake leftovers would be awesome, too. And boy, is purple ever calling my name!

BUT!!!! No more new projects until I finish some of my WIPs!!! (Unless someone in the family announces a new baby or an engagement...)

End-of-the-month literally is just around the corner, and I'm never going to make it if I don't get off this computer!!!

In my own defense, I have been patchworking some almost pink... but not with fabric. My landscaping project has been on the WIP radar, too. I couldn't get anything done during the summer's heat, and some portions of the project must be completed before winter sets in.

I began this project three years ago with what started out as a rocky flying geese path.

Now I find myself hoping I can do a flagstone log cabin, and perhaps even a snowflake or mariner's compass! I tried to build a snowflake with red rocks in the garden the first year of my front yard garden, but my "flake" wasn't very big and didn't last very long.

I did a red rock windmill in the garden, too. It also didn't survive whatever I planted in the middle of it.

I've now finished the landing outside the back door, so we should be set for winter. Now I can get back to the real Pinktober goal for this month. I don't have a design wall, and this project is too big for the dining room floor. I don't have a spare bed to lay out the blocks right now, and placement is complicated. So I pinned all the blocks to an old curtain I made for one of my kids' bedrooms back in the 90s. Now I can work on the project whenever I have time without having to figure out the placement all over again. Charm square shadows are finally coming along!

Linking up with Alycia Quilts and Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

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Snowcatcher Mountains

I neglected to take a "before" photo, so I can't really show in detail why I built a mountain range, but I built my very own mountain range with our leftover flagstone!

The builders did not amend the soil in our neighborhood before building homes. The homes are built on clay. The front and back yards of each home (unless homeowners have amended) are clay. We have replaced about 18 inches of the clay in our front yard, and last year I terraced the steepest part of our backyard and coated it with dirt, landscape fabric, rocks and/or sand to prevent our basement from flooding. Mission so far accomplished!!! We have experienced no window well leaks since the dirt for the terraces was placed!

The back of the house had about a one-foot overhang, which my father-in-law said is often done to add square footage to (and thereby raise the price of) a home. That little overhang made a great hideout for snakes and skunks and other undesirable backyard pets. My neighbors helped me fill that overhang as best we could last fall with rocks. No critters can live in there anymore.

The porch on the front of the house has been slowly separating from the ground ever since we moved here. One evening, our neighbors informed us they saw something make a mad dash into that dark gap. They couldn't tell what it was, and it may have been just a bunny, but it put us on alert that we needed to act once again.

Many of our neighbors have dealt with this problem (the porch separating from the ground) by adding a wall of bricks, either curved or rectangular, around the front section of their porches, then filling the wall-to-porch opening with soil and flowers or xeriscaping. I thinned out my irises last year and shared them with neighbors who built such garden "boxes."

Some neighbors have piled rocks across their openings. A few are like us and haven't fixed the problem yet.

I had a bit of flagstone left over from my backyard project, which actually isn't done yet, but I can't do too much more on it until the rock shop opens on weekends again or until winter is mostly over. I decided the odd shapes of the remaining flagstone would make a great mountain range across our porch gap.

One day, we will have the driveway, steps and porch re-poured or stabilized because they need it. There are many home repairs awaiting our attention. They will happen as we can finish them. For now, I'm so tickled red rock with my newest artwork!

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Wordless Wednesday

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White Pocket

The plan was to car camp at the Wire Pass Trailhead the night before we ventured back into The Wave. I did some research to find out what hikes we could explore in Vermillion Cliffs National Monument the day before our hike. I found a treasure trove of photos and blog posts sharing the phenomena called White Pocket.

We hestitantly traversed the four-wheel-drive-only road 30-some-odd miles from the Wire Pass Trailhead and found, to our delight, beautiful rock formations every bit as photogenic as The Wave. And we had the entire place to ourselves the whole day!

After something like 600 photos and approximately four miles of hiking and rock scrambling, we headed back to the Wire Pass Trailhead, this time not quite as squeamish about the deep sand road, as our confidence strengthened during the morning drive.

Instead of car camping in a parking lot, we stayed the night at the Arizona State Line Campground, with real restrooms and picnic tables! This previously unknown (to us) gem is the finish line (or jumping off point, depending on direction of travel) for cyclists (and other trail enthusiasts) doing the AZT, or the Arizona Trail, the southwest version of our very own Colorado Trail back home.

The Colorado Trail encompasses about 500 miles from Waterton Canyon (just outside the Denver metro area) through the Rocky Mountains and skirting some of our famous fourteeners (mountains higher than 14,000 feet) to Durango.

The Arizona Trail is even longer, reaching from the Mexican border to the Utah border across more than 800 miles. It may not climb as high as the Colorado Trail, but it reaches the depths of the Grand Canyon!

We didn't see any hikers or cyclists finishing the epic trail during our brief stay, but it was quite energizing to know what kind of emotions must have been experienced right there, in our camp spot, the first one trail finishers would hit, as cross-country adventurers reached the end of a long, challenging journey.

We've been to The Wave twice now, and we're not done. I don't know if we'll do the advance lottery again, but we would like to go back, and next time, segments of that Arizona Trail might be explored as well! Returning to White Pocket would be awesome, too!

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