Even Though We Live Miles Away, We Are Neighbors

I laughed reading a friend's email yesterday because she looked forward to a neighborly gathering, and she lives 27.9 miles away, a 49 minute drive, according to Google maps. But yes, we are neighbors.

Our closest neighbor is half a mile away as the crow flies.  If one doesn't have wings and must drive or walk, it's closer to a mile.

Yesterday I visited a friend who lives about three miles down the road to pick up some carrots because she planted way too many. Since my carrots didn't do too well, I'm all for picking up some carrots. Earlier I gave her some garlic and she said I may have some pesto, too. Yum!

Here's our road. The road grader was here since our last rainstorm, so it looks good.

It's fun looking at our neighboring ranches. This one is around 1300 acres and has pines, cacti, and ferns: three different ecosystems at work.

 Friend Raye lives closer to the village with neighbors nearby.

Her house is adobe and the original structure was built in the early 1900's. That's Goldie, the almost fourteen year old Labrador.

               A smiling farmer out standing in her field, ready to dig. We barely made a dent in the row where Raye is standing, but I still ended up with plenty of carrots.

That's about five pounds of carrots, a zucchini, yellow squash and a lemon cucumber.

Goldie decided to cool off in the acequia, one of a series of water ditches that runs through many of the ranches in New Mexico.

Labradors and water equal fun!

We had some tea on the porch and Goldie had a few more pets. She's a happy oldster.

And then it was back toward home. Don't you love those clouds?

Now about those carrots: Stay tuned.

Quilty Pleasures: HST Overload Quilt

Man, oh, man! It's been a long time since I've written a quilt post, but I'm seriously stoked about the quilt I'm making right now.

Here's HST Overload on my back-of-a-tablecloth design wall. I've cropped out the blue painters' tape attaching it to the drywall, so it looks much tidier than in real life.

 I've had the blocks completed for about three weeks now, and they sat patiently while I dithered about where to lay it all out. At first I was going to do what I've done in the past, which is lay a tablecloth, flannel side up, on our bed which is upstairs. It's a good workout going up and down the stairs, but I decided not this time. I need a design wall in the sewing room, thus the taped up tablecloth.

In the next couple weeks I hope to have a real design wall, using this neato tutorial from The Quilting Edge blog. Instead of batting, though, I'll use a gray flannel sheet because Kaffe Fassett likes gray instead of white for his design wall. Less glaring, is one of his reasons. If it's good enough for Kaffe, well, you know the rest.

When the quilt is together, I'll update you all.