I am definitely in the mood for getting out again. We haven’t bee out since the last trip at the end of April. For Mother’s Day we had most of the kids and grandkids come over for dinner. It was nicer than just the two of us going somewhere, though I did do the cooking LOL! We had pot roast, carrots, and potatoes so it wasn’t too hard.
The kitten are growing like weeds. They are so well behaved! Never any scratching even when being held against their will. They don’t scratch anything except their scratching post except for my big rolls of batting downstairs. I have had to move them all to an inaccessible spot since that soft batting seemed just right for little kitten climbing. We kept them on kitten food since they were so small, but we are transitioning them to adult cat food now. They seem to like it just fine.
I have been sewing some. The king sized quilt for our bedroom at home has the main center part completed – 80” square. I need to add borders, but I haven’t gotten in the mood. I did finish quilting three quilts for my quilt guild though. As before, just utilitarian meandering, but it keeps me in practice. I am not a person comfortable with completely scrap,quilts, particularly in big pieces. I find these dreadful, but the people who donate fabric to the guild should have no doubt every inch of useable stuff they give to us will be put to good use.
I also have made Kevin a pillow case for the travel pillow he uses for his knees at night. We found a little pillow at a truck stop this winter, but it has a satin cover and slips off the bed during the night. A cotton cover keeps it in place better. I am also just finishing up a bunch of bowl cozies I am going to use as small gifts on our upcoming trip.
I modified my fabrication process to pre-wash both fabric and the batting. Then I made sure all three layers (fabric/batting/fabric) are quilted together. Hopefully that help them keep their shape after washing.
We do have the first part of our summer trip planned. In a normal year we would just take off, making reservations only at destinations. This year we are slightly spooked by reports of massive numbers of people on the road, so we made more reservations than normal. We leave on Tuesday, 1 June, to go to Hamilton, MO, home of the Missouri Star Quilt Company and their multiple shops. We will stay there a couple of nights then off to eastern Oklahoma to visit some tourist locations we haven’t seen for 30 years or more. Then we head to Canton Reservoir where I worked as a seasonal park ranger before my senior year in college. I haven’t been back since, so it should be fun. We have reserved a Boondocker’s Welcome site in far eastern Texas off I-40. I figure I will give the hosts a couple of bowl cozies as a thank you. We are hoping for good enough weather to hit up a bunch of Native American sites in New Mexico. Eventually we will head north to Cody, WY for an FMCA chapter rally followed by Gillette, WY for the big FMCA national convention. We then have reservations at Badlands NP during a new moon for Kevin to get some astrophotography done. We will gradually head back to Iowa then, time TBD.
I will be getting some shoulder surgery done when we get back. I have a bone spur that is giving me grief. I have been using cortisone shots to manage it, but I figured it will only get worse. Hopefully there isn’t much rotator cuff involvement. Rehab is something between 2 and 12 weeks, depending on what they have to do. Sigh. Even with an MRI they can’t tell until they get to look inside.
Kevin has been busy making even more modifications and updates to the motorhome. I will post those after we get on the road so I can take good pictures. The expensive one was 600 amp hours of LifeBlue LiFePO4 batteries with internal heaters. I am really looking forward to off-grid camping with those! Some of the less expensive modifications are woodworking and others are 3D printing, and they are quite cool. We even got our yearly diesel maintenance done, this time at the Decorah Truck Country shop. Nice folks. It was a more extensive list than we had for previous yearly, so it also cost more. Sigh. Just the price of owning a diesel motorhome.
And we are off to start packing!