What to do, what to do?

Winter weather and workers interfere with backyard activities...and what's a gardener to do?  The obvious answer is to attend to an indoor hobby.....and happily, quilting fits the bill.  I am working to improve my machine-quilting skills on my home sewing machine.  It's essential to warm up before working on my current quilt, so I layer a small 'quilt sandwich'--backing, batting, and marked top--and spend a few minutes following lines or adding fill--which is the term for quilting that fills (and flattens) empty space, giving the quilt added texture and visual interest.

 A quilting blog named SewCalGal is featuring a machine-quilting tutorial every month of 2012.  The January instructional video showed a leaf motif.  I changed the design a little and worked on a small scale, filling a curved space.

This fill design is called 'Dianeshiko,' for Diane Gaudynski-- one of the gifted individuals who has raised machine quilting to (literally) an art.

 After a week or so of warm-up exercises, one has a small sampler like this!  The inevitable imperfections are less noticeable in the overall view.  To enlarge, click Ctrl + (Control plus).


Diane Gaudynski tells us that our quilting gets better every day.  Hope so!

Inching along in January

Ah, yes.  There were days when the weather did not cooperate, there were days with visible progress, there were days when no one showed up (or arrived late and left early.)  Even so, it's inevitable:  if you move just one inch a day, you still arrive!

 The new steps went in; the old pool liner went out.  Leak detection service found that three of the lines serving the pool jets were in need of replacement.  More digging and swearing ensued, especially after the contractor mistakenly hooked the old line back up. 

The soggy yard, under the stress of the heavy equipment, became impossible, so the muck was scraped up and piled to one side, and a new pathway of shale was created.  (We do hope this old live oak survives.)

 

And finally gravel base was ready, forms were in place, and concrete was being poured around the pool.  There was some disgruntlement on the part of the contractor, who did not care for the silver-gray concrete color we selected...so he poured a darker color that he preferred!  (I still can't believe anyone would be so dense, so contrary, and so lacking in business sense that he would do something like that.  The current plan is for the contractor to use a tinted sealer that will lighten the color considerably.  We shall see.  Right now, hen it's wet the pool deck is jet black.
           In general, this bunch seems oblivious to customer satisfaction.  We understood that there would be damage to the (weed-patch) lawn and the margins of the project, but they've managed to mangle areas of the yard they had no business to go.  Add tossing trash into my flower beds, garden boxes, and the empty pool, backing into the ivy beds on the side of the house, and breaking limbs on the live oak that shades the pool, and you have a partial list of offenses.  I am curious about how their own yards look, you know?  

Here's the pool filled to the winter level; once the concrete is sealed, the cover can be put on the pool for the remaining cold months.  

The yard guy is supposed to start on the landscape restoration tomorrow.  At least we know this guy very well--reliable, honest, hard-working, respectful, and always interested in a happy customer.  Refreshing!