Adventures in Paradise

Oh, The Cuteness...

As I usually do on Sunday afternoons, I took myself up to Escondido for a little flying fun. The advantage of taking the late afternoon class is that the regulars are all at about the same level - it makes for a quick class and lots of swing. (This also means lots of deep blisters and bloody hand rips, but that's not really the point.) Today was much the same, but with the addition of one young beginner...

an 8 year-old who was absoutely adorable and caught his knee hang on the second go-round, which you can see he thought was pretty awesome. While we were flying his little sister ran around generally being adorable and wanting to join the fun.

So she grabbed herself a belt and tossed it on, then headed for the ladder to join us on the platform. Yeah, we didn't let her get far.

She did, however, get a chance to swing on the low bar with a little help from her daddy.

I didn't fly quite as much as I would have liked thanks to a lovely deep blister on my left hand, I will spare you that visual, but at least I got to play with this lovely little one while I was taking a break.

My Stars

So, one of the things that's been hard to get used to (and hopefully I won't have to get used to) is that after all the media stuff on me during and immediately after the deployment, people started asking the Navy to send me to their gatherings as a guest speaker. I just fulfilled what I think is my final commitment last week. I spoke at a reunion for a ship that had been commissioned in 1943 and saw service in three wars: WWII, Korea and Vietnam. There were only two gentlemen left who'd served on the ship in the 1940's, but the 50's and 60's were well represented.

I got to speak about my favorite thing - my sailors - and then answered some questions. The gentleman who organized the event told me that he thought the old guys were testing my knowledge, and I think they came away with a little bit of respect. Their wives loved me. I don't think they told anyone outside their organization committee that the ship CO who was going to be addressing them was a woman because the buzz that started when I walked into the room before dinner was impressive.

One of the wives gave me a thank you gift that was just stunning.

The lights on the ship do awful things to the white on the quilt - but seriously...

A pretty eagle panel...and the gold stars are appliqued.

And the star blocks throughout are highlighted with hand quilting.

Isn't it lovely? Most of my quilts are less traditional in design, but I can totally respect the work she put into this because it's harder than the simple lines I'm used to sewing. This one will stay on the ship with me.

Good Times

What makes a good weekend? Well, there's the Saturday morning trip to the Farmer's Market - and being able to buy winter squash and strawberries at the same point in the season - both local.

I worked on a new trick (link since it's not a video of me) at the rig, and the entire group flying was solid, so no waiting for new people to get over fears, just each of us going in a steady flow. My hands are sore, but that's to be expected when you get to fly two or three times more than in a typical class.

And then there's this, which I suppose throws my idea of a good weekend from "borderline normal" to "something completely different." One of two new guns was landed on Saturday morning. Can't wait to play with my new toy...

Not Completely Gone

I had a post almost entirely written and then Firefox quit on me, completely losing everything. Someday I will learn to save after I post photos or get more than a paragraph written. So...instead of showing you ship pictures, I'll just show you the one...

Salt Water + Steel = Rust. Rust = lots of corrosion control and preservation work. This was six weeks ago...it doesn't look like this anymore.

And while I'm not spending much time at home, I am getting some long overdue stuff done, like this quilt the front of which was done last June.

I started quilting with a dark blue thread, but I wasn't happy with it, so I tried a few other colors, then settled on something completely different - I quilted each square with it's own color, so the blocks are echoed on the back.

 

I do really love the Brown Bear, Brown Bear backing with the wildly colored animals. There's a great story on NPR this week about Eric Carle and his animal art.  Lorri, if you still like it, it's Pipsqueak's.

Next up, I'm trying out this stack of colors.

The color scheme is inspired by a 9 patch I saw on Pinterest but can no longer find. Needless to say, it was pink and purple with pops of green. This is for the second daughter of a friend of mine - baby #1 got this quilt last year. When I asked about color schemes for this one, I was told that since I did such a great job with the first one (which was a fat quarter bundle, so I can't take credit) that they'd leave the colors up to me. They really loved the vibrant colors of the first one and the white in the waves really toned things down. I'm torn between doing a similar pattern - maybe a zig-zag style or going completely different with the nine patch that inspired the colors. I'd use white sashing again to tone down the brightness of the colors.

And on the list of dangerous things, I just downloaded Wendy's lace book onto my Kindle app for my iPad. It's not the lace part that's dangerous, it's the idea of knitting books available whenever I'm connected to the internet. The weather's getting cooler, which bodes well for knitting.

We did it!!

From Shanti's Mom:

Has everyone checked out the Pepsi Refresh site?  We did it!  We pushed the Puppy Rescue Mission into the top 15 ... actually we pushed them to #3!!!  This means they get the $25K that they so desperately need.

I can't thank everyone enough and I know the director of the Puppy Rescue Mission is aware of the fact that after I sent out my note ... here on the blog, and to every dog organization I know ... they had a major spike from #16 to #5, and on up to #3. 

What a community we are ... you all ROCK!!!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!