Birthday: Wool, Quilts and Frogs

I've managed to make it yet another year (Yea! Hooray!) and to top it off it's also Father's Day. While mine is no longer with us, my in-laws live next door so we will definitely be visiting today. While my real birthday is today, we celebrated yesterday. My gift was a day to do what I wanted, with husband as chauffeur. I don't buy much for myself so I've never spent some Christmas money I was given and have had tucked away since December, so I thought a drive up to Florissant, MO, which is way, way far from my house, would be on the docket.

There's an old historic home up there that has both a quilt shop and woolen shop on the various floors. Next to it is another yarn shop with spinners! That's where I headed first and got a private lesson on the spinning wheel. I haven't been able to do anything at all with mine, rather I end up with some strangely shaped yarn that won't serve any purpose. I picked up some sheep wool to try since I have been using llama which is much more silky.

Then it was next door to the fabric shop where I picked up some fat quarters for quilting, a miniature quilt kit, plus a couple of panels for pillows or piecing into a larger quilt. They have an entire Civil War era fabric area, pretty, tiny prints in all the popular colors of the time, nice blocks of the month to make samplers too.

They had a pretty felt kit with applique rabbits running in a circle around an area where a pillar candle would be and so many lovely fabrics that you can't imagine not having a piece of every one in your stash.

On the way home we detoured through old St Charles, MO where I stopped at another quilt shop and picked up a couple of embroidery patterns, one being Old Glory that is embellished with beads as well as floss and the other a collection of various gardening bunnies, the kind that push wheel barrows- nothing cuter, unless the bunny was pushing a wheel barrow with a chicken in it!

Then it was on to Bass Pro, a concession to the patient husband who doted on my every purchase and followed me around shop to shop making conversation with the salespeople and spinners. After checking out a few items there- I wanted the coyote decoy to keep the deer away-we stopped across the parking lot and had dinner at the Chinese buffet- which was amazing. You couldn't have gone to McDonalds for the price plus filled your plate with shrimp!

Today, the real birthday. . . as I was pulling into the drive after church I noticed how much water had collected in our culvert again after last night's big, bad storms. And what was IN the water, which is probably at least mid calf deep???? Frogs- big frogs- or at least I thought they were big. Turns out they were really frog duos- guy and girl- you know. I love frogs. This culvert is going to dry up in a few days and they won't be able to enjoy swimming in my grass. That's not so problematic; however, they were laying strings and strings of frog eggs.

As I mentioned, I love frogs. When they start their nightly chorus I love to sit out in the semi darkness and drink it in. Sort of like embracing the cicada experience- a lovely song albeit LOUD. So I grabbed a couple of Solo plastic cups and started wading in the water, moving the love-frogs aside and grabbing up the sticky eggs that they wind around the twigs and grass.

I sent the first batch into our little pond on the garden wall. The next one was transported by my husband, humoring me of course. Then the last one I place in our fountain since they seem to thrive in it and never get sucked up through the system to erupt out the top in a tadpole shower.

All in all it has been a fine birthday and now we move onto Father's Day!

Helen's Hen House Link