July's Pickin's or I love July

I love July, the flowers, the fourth, the twentieth(my birthday). When I was a kid, my marker for my birthday was the 4th of July. I would start getting excited to think my birthday was in a few weeks.

My flowers are going nuts this year. Five years since I started moving rock and replacing it with flowers. Yes, enclosed in the fence used to be all rock and a few peonies, a volunteer buckthorn bush(which I decided to keep, and some irises overgrown with grass.) My husband claims I have moved 3 tons of rock, UGH! It does keep me in shape, though! Great payoff. I love photographing my flowers and painting them.

I finished the Beachcomber Tunic - consignment for a friend. We used Eizabeth Lavold's Silky Wool. I did the knitted decreasing and the crochet work. I loved the way it came out and we modified it by leaving slits on the sides.

Speaking of painting, I whipped this out yesterday to take to my daughter's baby shower. It's a copy of Silk Safari Wall Art. I think I did a pretty decent repro and it's what daughter desired, plus it was fun brushing up on my stenciling skills. I taught stenciling in the late eighties, early nineties when I live forty miles out of Boston. It was so fun and New Hampshire was the hot bed of stenciling in the 1700's so I learned so much! New England is a fun place to live. Everything is so quaint and the food, well, you couldn't find anything Mexican, which was really hard convincing marketers that they needed to carry black beans, corn tortillas, and all the fixin's!

I am headed to Illinois for the baby shower, flying out the 12th, the shower is the 19th, I will celebrate my birthday with my family on the 2oth and return to hubby the 21st. Hubby and I will again take off the 15th of August for the birthing and I get to stay through to Sept. 8. I have to get back to see Santana at Fiddler's Green. Carlos and I share the same birthday(July 20th).

Here's a pic of my college friend, Tracy Stewart, we spent the day together for the 4th of July. We had fun hanging out with the HP people, Rob is a fantastic host and extraordinaire barbeque chef and the food was so good. He and hubby talk shop and Tracy and I down margaritas. Lots of fun and laughter!