Dan's Ramblings

Dan here ~

Thursday once again. The weather roller coaster ride still continues. Today was not undoable, not terribly hot and not too windy. There was the fact that it poured in sheets a few times, but hey, it’s Maine, if you don’t like the weather wait a few minutes.

The flowers are beginning to look the worse for wear. They have not been impressed with the weather roller coaster. We noticed sun burning of the blossoms and I have had to dead the Sun-Patiens that we use along the front of the house. I seldom need to do that. I think it has been too hot. Some of them are also getting very leggy and hang way out over the edge of the planters. 

I cut back several plants and pulled a few others out of the planter along the driveway. Who knows the weather roller coaster could dip us into frost temperatures in another month to six weeks. As fast as these Thursdays come around that amount of time is nothing.

I had the Lemoyne star class I mentioned, and it was fun and very hectic. Everybody had a good time and found it a fun block. Since then I have had a three hour demo class on all the Studio 180 tools that I use. This was in an effort of trying to develop an interest in some scrap busting classes to demonstrate my concept of creating scrap quilts. Time will tell.

In the studio I was able to complete quilt #40 for 2026. I showed you a 24” section last time. 

2026-40

The stars came out looking very subtle. I guess there is nothing wrong with that. #41 seems to be headed in the same subtle direction. I have enough blocks together now to make several scrap quilts using several different sized blocks for my layouts. I’ll keep plugging away.

Tomorrow we are meeting up with Vanessa and some kids and going to the Rangeley Friends of the Arts production of “Diva”. Erin is singing and should be a good albeit long evening. I’m sure Carol will tell you more abut it next week.

A plethora of insects are flying around the flowers and seem to be enjoying their summer. The bumblebees along with the hummingbirds seem to be always present. I would be curious just how many different ones there are flying about.

Here are three of my favorites: two of the bumblebee, 

the third is a hummingbird clearwing moth.

When they are flying between the flowers they look very much like hummingbirds.

I’ve heard conflicting reports about this weekends weather. There are a lot of activities going on here on Sunday, so no rain would be nice. It is dry in the studio anyway. Time will tell and enjoy what is left of the summer.