Me, pretending to be the captain of the Coast Guard ice breaker Mackinaw

And a busy summer it was…  As you can see, I even tried my hand at captaining the ice breaker Mackinaw for the Coast Guard!  Just kidding.  Ice breakers are BIG, and I certainly wouldn’t want to try to drive one.  But it was fun to sit in the captain’s chair and pretend.  Here’s the view from the top:

The view from the captain's seat -- 65 feet up! You get a good view from up there!

My kitchen remodel STILL didn’t get done.  Sigh.  But we did manage to transform a double window into a set of French doors.  We absolutely love them.  It made it so easy to eat outside all summer long.  I still may get some painting done yet, but I’m running out of summer.  Next year?  I can only hope!

The tall ships the Pride of Baltimore II and the Lynx came to Marquette, too.  We got to tour both of them.  Here’s a shot of the Pride of Baltimore shooting her cannons in the Lower Harbor, with the Lynx in the background:

The Pride of Baltimore II with the Lynx in the background in the Lower Harbor in Marquette, MI

My biggest news, though, is that my daughter Sarah, and her husband Jared, along with my four grandsons, moved to California this month!  A great job opened up out there, and Jared couldn’t turn it down.  They had planned to move out of their tiny house in MN since it was pretty crowded with four boys in there.  But nobody expected their new home to be in California!

They’re in the Bay area, south of San Francisco.  I’ve never been to CA, but now I guess I’ll be going one of these days.  They’re in a little town that’s pretty close to the ocean, so maybe it’ll be a little like Marquette (riiiiight!).

Yesterday was really hot, but today is in the 60′s, and they’re calling for frost Thursday night.  Tomorrow I need to get out and pick what I want from our little garden, and decide what I want to cover up on Thursday night.

Fall is nearly upon us, and winter’s not far off.  Maybe then I’ll have some time to do some quilting and get my Union loom, warped up!

What’s been going on with you all this summer?  Leave a comment, and let’s all get caught up.

This is one of my favorite Simon’s Cat videos. My grandsons and I watched it over and over when I was down there visiting at Thanksgiving, and I still laugh every time I see it. So if you’ve had too much snow lately, this one’s for you!

Sock yarn on left, and recycled peach yarn on right

Wound a new warp onto my rigid heddle loom Monday afternoon.  I used a peach acrylic I recycled from a thrift store sweater that called to me until I went back to get it.

Got a wild hair and decided to weave it with a strand of variegated sock yarn in the weft.  You can see that it has lime green, lilac, and white in it, as well as peach.

Wow, this shawl is really coming out great.  It would have been pretty by itself, but the sock yarn is really bringing it to life.  It has a real tropical feel to it that brightens up a gray winter day.

Also weighed my warp with a couple of pop bottles with water in them when I wound it on.  That made a huge difference.  I struggled with tension problems and loose threads with the purple shawl.  Plus it was a somewhat fuzzy yarn, which caused a sticky shed.  This one is weaving up so much easier and faster.

Peach shawl on loom

Here’s a shot of the weaving in progress.  The bright sock yarn is muted by the peach, but it still shows up.

Finished unraveling another sweater last night.  My old yarn ball winder died the other day after a long and useful life.  I’ve been limping by on one I bought at a yard sale a while back, but I ordered an electric one the other day.  It’s been shipped already, so I’m looking forward to seeing how that one works!

My sweet precious Molly. Rest in peace, sweetheart.

Molly has been gone for two days now, and we’re slowly adjusting to her not being here any more.  The shock of her death is beginning to lessen.

What happened?  We don’t really know.  I came home from shopping on Tuesday afternoon, and Molly greeted us as usual, asking to be fed.  After eating, she wandered off, as she always did.

Later that evening, I heard a strange noise.  Wondering what the kitty was doing, I went to investigate, but couldn’t find her.  A few minutes later, I heard the noise again.  Again, I went to investigate, but this time Molly met me in the hallway, hissing and growling at me.  I told her to knock it off, but she got more and more agitated.  I realized that she was going to attack me.

I ran into the living room with her hot on my heels, to grab my spray bottle.  Andrew yelled at her, which slowed her down, although she did manage to get a claw or two into me.  I sprayed her with water, and backed her into a bedroom, where we shut the door to keep her in there.

An hour later, Andrew let her out, thinking she was over whatever her problem was.  But she wasn’t.  She stalked around the kitchen and finally settled in the hallway where she glared at me nonstop.  She acted like she was going to race into the living room to attack me again.  I showed her the spray bottle, which kept her in check.  Andrew finally was able to get her into the basement.  She spent the night on the steps, clawing at the door, and howling.  We both hated it, but we were afraid she would attack us in our sleep if we let her out.

The next morning Andrew let her out of the basement (because that’s where her cat case was) and lured her into the front room again.  He shut the door, but it didn’t catch, and she got out.  I was in the kitchen, headed for the basement, but Andrew was afraid she was going to come after me again.  My wonderful husband put himself in harm’s way to protect me, and put her back in the bedroom.  She clawed him and bit him on the thumb, but he got the door closed this time.

I already knew we were going to have to have her put down.  Even if she was normal in the morning, I would always wonder when it was going to happen again.  But now I knew we would have to get help to get her into the case.  I called the city animal control officer.  He came right out, and had to use the stick with the loop on the end of it to catch her.  But he got her in there.  I had already called the vet and made an appointment.

When we got to the vet, they wanted to know if Molly had ever had a rabies shot.  She hadn’t.  She had always been an indoor cat, so I thought she didn’t need it.  So the upshot was that they would have to send her head down to Lansing to be tested for rabies.  We could have quarantined her for ten days, but with her violent, out-of-control, aggressive behavior, that wasn’t an option.

I had wanted to bring her home from the vet and bury her in a snowbank til spring.  Then I had planned to bury her near the pine trees in the back yard.  But it wasn’t to be.  I think that hurt the worst.  For some reason she had completely turned on me.  She was a one-person cat, even though she liked Andrew well enough.  But I was her person, so to have this happen was devastating.  I couldn’t hold her or pet her or say goodbye.  I could only look at her in the case, while she glared at me, hissing and growling.  My Molly was already gone.  I looked her in the eyes and told her I loved her.

It was so hard to walk away and leave her there, knowing what was going to happen to her.  Andrew and I were just devastated.  And then there was the worry that he might need to take the rabies shots.  The vet said it was highly unlikely that it was rabies.  He thought she might have a brain tumor, or something else wrong.  And the vet was right.  The country health department called today with the news that the rabies test on Molly came back negative.  So that’s a relief, to know that Andrew won’t have to go through the rabies shots.

Looking back, I can see that Molly had been having problems for at least a month.  She had always been a very dominant cat who would have happily run the household if I had allowed it.  She often nipped me for no good reason, although she always got sprayed with water when she did.  And she never did like strangers.  So it was easy to overlook a few things.

She had been off her food for a day or two several times in the past month or so.  And she got very aggressive toward one of Andrew’s friends.  When we came back home after Thanksgiving, she didn’t come out to meet us.  She hid under the bed and hissed and growled at us when we coaxed her out.  We thought it was odd, but she seemed OK once she knew it was us.  Looking back, I can see these things, but hindsight is always 20-20.

I do miss her.  I don’t have to cover up my loom to keep my kitty off my weaving any more.  I don’t have to make sure the closet door in the bathroom is propped open so she can get to her litter box.  I don’t have to remember to put up my pin cushion and thread so she can’t play with it.  There are so many things I don’t have to do anymore, but I never minded doing them, and I sure wish I was still doing all those things.  But I don’t have any regrets.  She had a wonderful life with us, even though it was too short.  I’m so sorry that her last hours were so horrible, and that’s still hard for me to deal with.

All I can say is that life is so fragile, and you never know when it’s going to end.  Love your husband, or your wife.  Love your kids.  Love your friends, and your pets.  You never know what today will bring.

Goodbye, my friend.

Good bye, Molly, my friend.  I’m so sorry things had to end like this.  If there was any way to change it, I would.  It was so hard to see you at the vet’s this morning in that cage.  And it hurt when you hissed at me with no recognition in your eyes.  It hurts to know what happened to you.  It hurts, and it sucks big time.

You were my sweetie, and my constant companion.  Wherever I was, you were right there.  You followed me around the house, and you would find me outside and sit and watch me out the window.  I came home from a walk one time, and I could see you sitting in the living room window, looking for me.

I did love you, sweetheart.  I will miss you.  There’s a hole here now, where you used to be.  I expect to see you lurking around the corner, waiting to jump up and grab my hand in the dark.  I miss seeing you curled up on the bed.  I’ll miss you in my lap at night, watching TV, and taking up too much of the bed at night.  I’ll miss your head butts.  I’ll miss all your help when I’m sewing.  I’m so sorry it had to end like this.  You were too young to leave so suddenly, like this.

I can’t write anymore right now.  I’ll write about what happened in a few days, but I just can’t right now.

The big news for today is that Brody made his appearance yesterday afternoon!  Sorry, don’t know what time he was born, but mommy and baby are both doing great.  Andrew had hoped to be there in time for the birth, but the trip took longer than he expected, and he wound up staying over in a motel north of Indianapolis.  I talked him into it, since I could tell how tired he was when he called from the road on Tuesday night.

And the quilts I sent along were a big success.  Nora was happily playing on hers when Andrew left for the hospital, and Elise, Brody’s two-year-old big sister, wrapped herself up in Brody’s quilt and in general acted cute.  So all the work last weekend to get those two quilts done was more than worth it!  I love knowing that they’ll be well used.

Can’t send any pictures of what I’m working on, since the camera is in TN!  But I’ve been working on a rail fence quilt.  Basically I sewed a dark and a light 2-1/2″ strip together, and cut them into 4-1/2″ squares.  Then I laid them out, alternating them, so that the dark/light was horizontal in the first block, and vertical in the second.  It’s pretty fast and easy.  I should finish piecing it this morning.  That will give me two more quilts to machine quilt, so I’ll work on coming up with backings for both quilts this afternoon.  Hopefully I’ll get them both quilted in the next couple of days.  After a trip though the washer and dryer, they’ll be on their way to the Hopes and Dreams ALS Quilt Challenge.

I’ve been looking through a couple of library books, Reverse Applique With No Brakez, by Jan Mullen, and Nature’s Studio, by Joan Colvin.  I’m intrigued with the idea of reverse applique, and I want to do something with it for my next AAQI quilt.  Jude Hill has some amazing ideas for reverse applique on her blog, what if.  So all these ideas are spinning around in my head right now…

I’ve also ordered some books interlibrary loan.  I can do it all online, which is very cool.  I have the original Liberated Quiltmaking and Liberated String Quilts, both by Gwen Marston,  and Fusing Fun! Fast Fearless Art Quilts, by Laura Wasilowski, on the way.  Don’t know when they’ll turn up since they’re all coming from libraries downstate, but that’s part of the fun.  It’ll be like Christmas when they do show up!

I’ll close with this video.  Nellie from Nellie’s Needles sent it to me cuz I have a kitty. It was so cute I just had to share it with you!  The scratched up bedframe and the kitty toys scattered hither and yon look a lot like it does around here!