Quilt Repaired and First Harvest...

Quote for the Day:

"I sometimes wonder if the manufacturers of foolproof items
keep a fool or two on their payroll to test things." 

~Alan Coren 

Today I finished repairing Paul & Trinity's wedding quilt.  It had developed holes in the outer border of the foot end where they had tucked it under the mattress and it rubbed against the bed frame.

The holes were scattered along one outer border, so I cut a strip wider than the border and sewed it down on the seam line.

I then flipped the fabric over so that it covered the area with the holes.  Since this is an outer border, I wrapped the fabric over the edge and then turned it under as a "binding".   To make it look like the rest of the quilt, I then extended the hand quilting lines into the new border.

I think it blends very nicely with the rest of the quilt.  The original fabric is not very faded considering the age of the quilt (7 years).  I'm very happy with the way it turned out.  :)

Today I picked the first blackberries of the season...

With the drought we'd been having up until about 2 weeks ago, we weren't sure if we were going to get any since we were a little late to the game with watering the plants.  We usually get enough rain that we don't have to water, so we kept expecting it to rain, and thus didn't water till it was almost too late.

They are very sweet and juicy but we definitely won't get the amount this year that we normally do.  

Now for a book review...

"No Biking in the House Without a Helmet", by Melissa Fay Greene.

When the two-time National Book Award finalist Melissa Fay Greene confided to friends that she and her husband planned to adopt a four-year-old boy from Bulgaria to add to their four children at home, the news threatened to place her, she writes, “among the greats: the Kennedys, the McCaughey septuplets, the von Trapp family singers, and perhaps even Mrs. Feodor Vassilyev, who, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, gave birth to sixty-nine children in eighteenth-century Russia.”

 

Greene is best known for her books on the civil rights movement and the African HIV/AIDS pandemic. She’s been praised for her “historian’s urge for accuracy,” her “sociologist’s sense of social nuance,” and her “writerly passion for the beauty of language.”

But Melissa and her husband have also pursued a more private vocation: parenthood. “We so loved raising our four children by birth, we didn’t want to stop. When the clock started to run down on the home team, we brought in ringers.”

When the number of children hit nine, Greene took a break from reporting. She trained her journalist’s eye upon events at home. Fisseha was riding a bike down the basement stairs; out on the porch, a squirrel was sitting on Jesse’s head; vulgar posters had erupted on bedroom walls; the insult niftam (the Amharic word for “snot”) had led to fistfights; and four non-native-English-speaking teenage boys were researching, on Mom’s computer, the subject of “saxing.”

 

“At first I thought one of our trombone players was considering a change of instrument,” writes Greene. “Then I remembered: they can’t spell.”

 

Using the tools of her trade, she uncovered the true subject of the “saxing” investigation, inspiring the chapter “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, but Couldn’t Spell.”

 

A celebration of parenthood; an ingathering of children, through birth and out of loss and bereavement; a relishing of moments hilarious and enlightening—No Biking in the House Without a Helmet is a loving portrait of a unique twenty first-century family as it wobbles between disaster and joy.

This book was captivating, funny, and heartwarming.  I thoroughly enjoyed and highly recommend it!  

Loretta