The Garden in June

We had thunderstorms and even a hailstorm last night with marble-sized hail that lasted for about five minutes. I was worried about damage in the garden, but everything seems to have come through unscathed. It’s a beautiful morning out there, albeit still a bit wet:

The beans are up:

The lettuce and broccoli look wonderful:

And the pigs are hard at work:

I can see how much they have grown in just two weeks.

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Yesterday was not the most productive of days; I weeded for a few hours in the morning until it started raining—although it was warm enough that I weeded in the rain for a while longer—and then came back to the house to work on some inside tasks. The electric co-op had a crew out here replacing the power pole across the road because it had been damaged in that March windstorm. They guys warned me that they would be shutting the power off for an hour or two at some point. I could have switched us over to the generator, but it’s loud and I didn’t want it running all day. I puttered and worked on the latest Candy Coated while I waited for the power to go out. All of the rows are done:

Now it’s just a matter of sewing the rows together—I do that in sections—and trimming the edges, and then it can be quilted.

[The organizers of the Mennonite Country Auction (what I refer to as the Ritzville sale because it is held in Ritzville, WA) announced last week that the 2020 auction will not have in-person activities due to the pandemic. An online sale is planned, instead. I am glad they are not cancelling the event altogether. Hopefully, I will have a few quilts ready by then to donate.]

This Candy Coated top used up most of the contents of the scrap bag. I am down to just a handful of strips to use as the beginning of the next scrap quilt. Of course, this was only the bright fabrics. I still have smaller scrap bags of whites and low volume fabrics. They could easily be combined into a low volume quilt, but I am not sure what I want to start next. I’ve been procrastinating by making this quilt, waiting for inspiration to strike. I’m still waiting. Even a road trip, which is usually good for getting my creative juices going, didn’t help. I am hearing the same thing from lots of other sewists. Some of it seems to be a side effect of protracted mask-making. Some of it seems to stem from uncertainty about what’s coming next.

I have the Slabtown backpack pattern. I have a couple of Noodlehead bag patterns. I’ve got a supply of knits for making some tops. I got some new-to-me used quilt block encyclopedias and I could play around with my Accuquilt dies. I’ve pinned about two dozen ideas to my Pinterest board. Nothing has set me on fire, though. I think I am just going to make a pile of options. I’ll choose something and work on it until it’s done, then go to the next item in the pile. This is rather like writer’s block. Sometimes you just have to keep sewing even when you don’t feel like it.