One of My Better Ideas!

It's almost here! The unveiling of the rug exhibit that I proposed to my hooking group last summer - many people have been working very hard at making it a reality and we have about 31/32 mats to display during the Grand Re-enactment Weekend celebrations in July. We hope to have it travel around to other sites afterwards but here are the details of our initial display, along with the pictures of the first rugs submitted. Thank you Linda for your great pictures and thanks to Timothy for getting them on-line. And most of all thanks to Marian for loving my idea and doing so much of the organizational work!

Spring is Sprung

Well sort of. It's hard to accept that Spring arrived 2 weeks ago when everything still has a couple of feet of snow on it. But, I saw geese, I saw a robin so it must be Spring.

This looks like a very busy next couple of months - baby shower for Kris and Chris, baby arriving (Isla - May 1st or so), wedding for Kate and Kevin on May 17th, maybe someone will have a shower for them too, Wayne retires May 23rd, then off to Nova Scotia more or less permanently. We're fixing up stuff in our townhouse here - Bob is moving in to look after it for us so we've painted the master bedroom for him and hung new curtains. Wayne is patching all those little dents and popped screws and nails which appear over the course of a few years. We are looking for new lights to replace our 3 hideous hall ones - those shiny brass octagonal things with little round chandelier bulbs. We want something that will take compact fluorescents or halogens.

There is stuff to pack again -we're leaving most of our furniture and dishes here for when we are visiting Ottawa (and for Bob to use) but there's still a lot of small kitchen appliances (seriously - can anyone imagine Bob baking bread or making waffles from scratch?), books, files, clothes, cat stuff, computer stuff, tools etc that we'll want to have in Nova Scotia.

I finished a latch hook rug of 2 bunnies for a wall-hanging for Isla's room last week. Now I'm madly working on a hooked rug for a traveling display my rug hooking group is organizing for this summer. It's the 225th anniversary of the United Empire Loyalists coming to Canada and Shelburne is having a huge celebration all year . Last summer, I got the brilliant idea for this rug show, featuring 14" by 18" rugs with a common theme - Shelburne county then and now. The bandwagon started to roll very quickly and the actual organization was taken over by several of my friends in the Shelburne Sirens (thanks Marion, Linda, Phyllis, Shirley et al!). Marion has sent pictures of some of the rugs in progress (or even worse finished) but, of course, the brilliant person who thought up the whole thing has only done about1/3 of her rug, which is a view of the interior of the Ross-Thomson store which is now a museum. Here's hoping the Senators last a while in the playoffs - I get the most work done on it during hockey games.

We've also spent the last couple of days shredding old financial records of Grandpa Ray Cooper (Wayne's Dad) who died in September 2006 - Revenue Canada has finally declared they are finished collecting taxes from him and his Estate so we can get rid of a bunch of stuff instead of having to move it to NS with us, just in case I screwed up something in the Estate process. Now that I know how to do it all (at least for simple estates!), I hope I don't need the knowledge again for a long time, if ever.

My Rug!!

As promised, here is a picture of my 4 year project - now a fire-screen.

Fog returns; Fish are DONE!!

After no fog since June 16th, it returned with a vengeance yesterday evening - within about 10 minutes we went from bright and clear to pea soup. It was still around this morning but quickly burned off as we are having a HOT day - the humidex is 31 or 32C - not very hot for those in Ontario but debilitating for the Lockeport population. Of course it's making the bugs multiply exponentially and the grass grow similarly. Tomorrow is supposed to be the same.

The momentous news is that I have finished my fish rug (over 3 years - almost 4, I think). It was originally intended to hang over the fireplace in the living room but Heather V. painted us a great picture of our house here which has claimed that spot. I was looking for a place to prop up my rug to look at it (modestly admiring all my hard work)and I draped it on the fireplace screen - it looks wonderful there so it's found a home. Picture will follow when Wayne gets here with the digital camera. Now I need a new project - I'm thinking of doing our red cottage in Maine.