Charity Quilt Squares plus a Ta-Dah

Here is my little Ta-dah moment for the day. Somehow today, between weeding the garden, fishing off the garden wall & finding shapes in clouds, I have managed to finish the edge of the Baby Ripple blanket. It is only 2 rows of single crochet around the outside as I experimented a little & anything too large was going to look horrible we decided. So I added just this little edge to give it a finished off look. My only problem with edging is working out where to stick the hook in to the existing sides. So I don't know if I did it technically right in crochet work but oh well, I did it where it went the easiest.

Also today I had to finish off some quilt squares. This is for a quilt to raise money for the Elkhounds that need rescuing in the USA. I am friends online with a large group of people around the world who own Elkhounds.

Meet Juneau our Elkhound. She's nearly 5.

In North America there are a lot more of these dogs than there are here in Australia. So many in fact that they have rescue groups to help these dogs when they are abandoned or need rehoming. This is done primarily through the John Nelsen Moosedog Rescue Fund. The group pays for health work needed for a dog & foster care for a dog until its forever home is found. It's probably a good thing I am not near all these dogs else I could imagine I would have quite a few. Foster failure is regular with those who take them in originally on a temporary basis. There are also lots of happy stories though on dogs that are rescued & do have amazing stories on how they ended up looking for a new home.

Fundraising is done regularly through a number of people to help fund this work as it does cost a bit to do this. A few ladies that quilt a little have got together to work on a quilt together. I was recently sent the fabric pieces all cut & ready to sew. I will send them back to the USA & then the quilt will be completed & will most likely be raffled off. Cool. It's nice to be able to do something to help raise funds from the other side of the world. I'm not terribly happy with my squares though as for one thing I was short a star point. So I will have to hope there is a little left that the recipient can finish it off. Also I had a couple of rather small squares so I tried to assemble as well as possible but I hope she has enough fabric also to undo & resew those that look a bit wonky. Really I don't think they will do at all, but it depends on what fabric is left. Hopefully there is some.

So two little jobs finished off today. Hopefully tonight I can finish off another one before getting back to my rainbow ripple blanket. I was very excited yesterday when I got to venture out for a couple of hours all by myself & I got to go stash shopping. I found the orange I had run out of while out & about so I can now get back onto my blanket. I bet now the weather will warm up more & I will have to put it down again. The last week would have been perfect for sitting under it but oh well, it wasn't to be & I did get the baby blanket done in the meantime.

It's exciting to see all the produce popping up in the garden again too at last. The beans are going mad. We will soon have a lot of Roma tomatoes ready to pick followed by some Ping Pong tomatoes & Heirlooms. It will be interesting to see how they all taste & produce in the end. We have just finished all the tomatoes from the freezer that we had last year so that has been fabulous to have a supply all year. We also decided that it would be good to try to do a spreadsheet on how our vegies grow, with info like how much room they need, whether they are even tasty & anything else we think we should use for reference next year. You know, you always assume you will remember all those things, but come next year, I can imagine we will be trying to remember which ones we grew that were really delicious or which ones were really short plants & didn't need high stakes etc etc... so much to remember. We will try to record it.

Hopefully Sunday will be just as much fun as today was. Enjoy the tennis finals! I will. Hope the ones you cheer for win!