Category Archive: quilts

I live in NW Washington state where summer usually starts near the end of July.  I just looked at the forecast for the next 10 days.   Instead of rain, we are to have temperatures of 79-84.    What a pleasure that will be for some of us.   There will be the usual people who will be complaining about the heat, but I intend to really enjoy the weather

I watched as these fellows really enjoyed the pond this morning.   I think they are washing their own fiber.  They have not been clipped, so they will probably be either in the shade or the water this coming week.

I finished the ice cream cones this afternoon and the slices of pie are next.

Today Jeremy came back and nearly finished up with the hives.   He didn’t bring marshmallows for the queen boxes and I never buy them.  So tomorrow he will come back and fit the queen boxes with those.   The worker bees eat it and free the queen, that makes here their queen.   Do you see the tiny box – the darker spot in the middle – that is where the queen is right now.  There is a cork plug on one end which will be replaced by the marshmallow.   The workers can feed her through the mesh on the side of the box.  Then Friday, I will check and see if they have released her.   If so, I can remove the queen box.

After all our shopping this morning, I worked on pulling the blue scraps out of 4 different boxes and putting them all in one.   Then I took this photo to show you, then I turned around to start the greens and there was another pile of blue scraps of which I did not take a photo.

There were reproducing as I was putting them away.   Here is the final  (I hope) photo of them.   I could barely get the lid on them.  Remember, these do not include the ones that I cut into squares – only the longer ones.    And I’ve used a lot of scraps in my quilts.   Oh, well, I just have more to use.   Tomorrow, I hope to tackle the greens.

The bees have not been housekeeping very well.  They have been storing the honey in bands that go from one frame to the other instead of straight along the frame.   Not that it really affects them, but it makes it more difficult for the human to get the honey.

Though there are many, many, many bees in the one hive, it appears that some of them flew off in a swarm with their queen this spring, so there isn’t a queen in there.  But there are enough bees, they are being divided into two colonies and the fellow helping me is bringing out 2 new queens tomorrow.    The hive I thought was not doing so well, is a slower hive, but has a good queen, quietly doing her job of laying eggs.

How can that be?   I thought after the last big scrap cutting event, I had them all organized and in one place.    Not so!   I found several more smaller boxes that had scraps tossed in them, more or less by width sizes.   Now I need to put all of one color together and in one box so they are usable.   I find I have about 3 times as many scraps as I thought.   That should keep me busy this week.

Maybe, but there is still more to do than the day is long.   Today Mary and I met with a customer and had lunch.   Our daughter needed help looking for a different apartment, and the potential next sheep needed frequent checking this afternoon.  And the gardening awaits.   Maybe tomorrow.

I grabbed a few  minutes to get this child’s quilt on and started.