Paul wrote in stone about Natalie and her friends going to the Austin City Limits music festival this weekend. It has been raining and they came home at midnight covered in mud from head to toe.
Turner and I didn't go this year but we took a walk down the Rabb Road and could hear the music. Even at the house we could hear a muffled beat via the greenbelt valley.
Last Spring I took a really fun course in Beginning Sewing, because except for a Persephone goddess costume I made in a panic for Nat when she was about 9, I hadn't really sewed since that peasant blouse we all made in HomeEc at Russell Junior High.
Check out this skirt I just made for Natalie. I started with a simple pattern. It sat at the natural waist. But that is so not the style. Everyone knows that it needs to sit below the belly button! Even though the waistband had already been installed, we just slashed through that and started sketching in panels with scrap fabric, with a basting stitch. The skirt started getting more flowey. Nat started to like it. When it fit her just right, I stitched in the panels. Then I sewed in a double stitchline at the waist and now you can't even tell the waistband is fragmented. Since the panels were scraps and too short for a hem, I finished with bias tape, a trick I learned in my sewing class.
The other thing, it called for a button at the waist. No way. I put in a couple of snaps. The skirt in no way resembles the pattern now. But that's art, right?
Yes Mom, it has been quite awhile since we've posted here at 3lastnames. Things have been busy! Sewing sidled in as all-time favorite idle-time activity so blogging is now chopped liver. However, as I sit here at home on a Wednesday afternoon preparing for tomorrow's colonoscopy (I know, I know, TMI...), I thought I'd post a few Compound pictures from May when our temporary Compounders Kelsey and Jules put on a juggling show for us in the driveway. It was just awesome! But now K and J have moved on, probably to escape the summer heat which is projected to reach 104 for the next four days running (this July has been the hottest in Austin recorded history so far...). Here are some of the shots, completely at random for your viewing pleasure! (Do click on each of them for a better look.)
Natalie and her pals finished their last finals Friday. On Saturday we brought all her stuff home, then Sunday morning at 6:00 a.m. I said good bye to her at security and she headed to the gate to fly to Dallas to meet her friend Danye, who was on a different outbound flight. From Dallas they proceeded to Toyko, then Hong Kong, and finally to Shenzhen, where she is staying with Danye and her family for the next 3 weeks. Luckily there is an internet and I was able to receive the following message from her after her 23 hour and 15 minute trip:
Hey I got to Danye's house and met her parents. They are very nice and I am having fun. It was a super long flight and I am very very tired so I'm going to make this short. Just wanted to let you know I made it here safely and dont worry haha. I dont know if facebook is going to work here...we will see. ♥ -nat
Mom and I just returned from a bike trip on Maryland's Eastern Shore, hosted by WomanTours, the company that designed the trip cousin Kathy invited me on for her 50th birthday.
This was Mom's 50th birthday present to me, and I turned 51 on the trip, sharing a birthday with Pam, another rider on the trip, who turned 71. I hope I am still doing things like this when I am Pam and Mom's age!
We had a wonderful time. This is a quick shot of us after my shoelaces got stuck in my pedals and I fell down on the gravel and skinned my knee.
You can see the remains of the fine willow and the rather slight damage it did to the fence of the tennis court. By the time Tony and Dave had taken down all the broken limbs there wasn't enough to save--it would have been pretty ugly! So Corey came over to help and the three of them took it down and now it's all cleaned up.
Now the question is--what to do with the stump?
To be continued...
Well, here is how the big willow looked after the snow had melted. Pretty sad. Earlier this month Tony and Dave cleaned up all the branches which had been on the ground since the big ice storm in December.
Once the dead and broken limbs were trimmed, it became clear that the willow couldn't be saved. With grandson Corey's help, Tony and Dave took it down. The rounds were put out by the fire pit used for Farm Fest, as chairs. It was a pretty big clean-up job and the stump required much bigger saws than they had.
So on Tuesday of this week came two young guys with their equipment.
They set right to work on a cool, sunny day. It didn't seem to me that their equipment was even as big as ours, but . . .
The next thing I knew, they seemed to have a friend out there with them.
That looks like a nest!
Mama's looking good!
Uh, oh. Who's that?
Mama's keeping alert, but bears would certainly like a small eaglet for lunch.
Continue reading "What happened to the willow...a story by Mom" »
Last night we went up to Leonard's mom Louise's house to pick up Jeanne. Louise lives in Sun City, Austin's premier retirement community. For those of you who are through with children, this is your dream come true, as you are only allowed to live there if you are 55+.
Louise is so cool. She took this picture of us with her iphone and showed me her swimming schedule. She swims one mile at a time, three times a week and has a goal to swim 1700 miles before her 85th birthday. Or was it 2000 miles? And get this, she didn't start swimming until she turned 70!
Cousin Kathy is visiting from Boston, where it is about to snow 12 more inches. In the meantime, we just returned via a hike through the greenbelt from the annual kite festival down in Zilker Park. Check out the photo album on the right for more...
