Birthday, Sewing and Eagles

I can't believe it has been so long long since I wrote on my Blog. It has been crazy busy at work. We are just finishing the Showbook for the show in Knoxville, July 13 - 16; and the registration guide is finished for the Des Moines show, September 28 - October 1. And, I just returned from three days of planning meetings for the 2012 summer show in Grand Rapids, MI.

And, then I had a birthday yesterday - had a nice leisurely day - stopped at Farmer's Market to pick up some home grown tomatoes, watermelon, green beans, and cabbage. Then did a little shopping, had lunch with Wayne at Tribeca, and home for a quiet evening.

Heavy rain and lots of wind woke me up about 5 a.m. so I got up. Decided I needed to make some new pillows that I use when I travel. They are shaped like dogbones and fit perfectly into a carryon.  I just finished making three new ones so I'll be set for a while.

Have you joined the new website, MyQuiltPlace.com ?  It's free and you can make your own page, add photos of your quilts, join or start interest groups. Check it out by clicking here.

Have you checked out the Decorah eagles lately. They are expected to fly away sometime this week. Right now they are sitting on the branches of the tree where their nest is. See how big the eagles are now. Click here to check them out.

That's all for now... hope you are having a great day!

E-1's Big Adventure

On Sunday I was sitting at the computer doing some paperwork, and decided to use a split screen so I could watch the eagles for a while too. Well, I had a really big show when Eaglet #1 (2 days old) was exercising his independence by trying to wiggle out from under Dad.

Here you can see both E-1 and E-2 as Dad tries to corral them both under him. Not an easy task.

Dad works on the nest all of the time - he is the nest builder, and he rearranges it every time he returns to the nest. He works on the inside rim of the nest to make room for the growing eaglets. He was doing that and either E-1 grabbed his beak or Dad caught some feathers of E-1, and the next thing you know, here is little E-1 on the outside of the nest bowl.

Here we have E-2 and the third egg in the nest, E-1 outside the bowl of the nest, and Dad pacing to try to figure out what to do next. He finally decides that he needs to sit back on the egg (which should hatch in the next day or two).

"Hey, Dad, here I am"... little E-1 keeps popping up behind Dad. Dad was very restless and kept moving around the nest.

"Hey, hey, I'm over here"... good thing the weather was warm that day so there was no harm to little E-1.

Bob Anderson from the Raptor Resource Group that provides this camera shows us the horses in the field next to the tree where the eagle nest is located.

This is Mom, who just arrived back at the nest. She looked at Dad as if to say, "what have you been doing up here?"

Mom takes over the duties of sitting on the nest. She, too, moved around quite a bit. Finally she turned to where E-1 was trying to climb back into the nest. She loosens the edge of the nest some, and uses her beak to scoop E-1 back into the nest under her. E-1 isn't so naughty when Mom is around.

And that concludes E-1's Big Adventure on Sunday afternoon!

This is enjoying nature at its finest! If you haven't logged on to check out the eagles for yourself, here is the link.

In Honor of President's Day

Since we have been in an eagle-watching mode lately, I chose this Redwork Eagle as my tribute to honor President's Day.

Some of you may remember me showing this on Simply Quilts a few years ago when Michael Buckingham was there with his book, Presidential Redwork. I demonstrated how to do the redwork for him.

Do you like redwork? I find it very relaxing. The key is to take small even stitches and you do get into a rhythm making those stitches.

Wishing for our President to take actions as keen as the eyesight of an eagle.

It's nearly time for the Decorah, Iowa, eagles to lay their eggs and start sitting on their nest. This morning they were both sitting on the branch next to the nest. The new camera lets them move the camera and also to zoom it so we are getting great pictures of the eagles this year. Thank you to the Raptor Resource group for providing us all an up-close look at the Decorah eagles. We have a front-row seat to watching nature in action.

Here is the link so you can go view the eagles:

http://www.raptorresource.org/falcon_cams/ .

Update on the Young Eagles in Decorah

The eagle cam was shut down on July 7, but click here to get the latest on the young eagles and some photos too.

I hope you enjoyed getting a close-up view of the hatching and raising of these young eagles as much as we did.