Blooms

My Christmas Cacti have all been busy putting on a show the last two weeks. I have five and four of them bloomed in late October/early November as they always do. I usually get a smaller bloom mid summer as well. But all five surprised me by setting buds in early January and they started opening by the middle of the month.

I didn't think about taking pictures until a couple were almost done but here's an idea of the range of colors among the plants.

I love this red



Salmon/cream

white with light pink

I was ecstatic when I saw the buds appear on the next plant. It's a start that I received from a cousin in Iowa about four years ago. The mother plant belonged to her grandmother and is probably close to 100 years old. I took about 3 sections of leaves and rooted them in water, then set in potting soil and I've been waiting and waiting. This is the first bloom and it had about 6-7 nice big flowers. I'm thrilled!

I guess the hoya was trying to keep up with the cactus as it started blooming again too. Or maybe it's the other way around since the hoya has been blooming about every 3 months for the last couple of years.

Here you can see three flower clusters, each in a different stage of opening, one fully open, one formed, but not open and one just beginning.

I tried to get a close up and don't know how to set my camera so that it's not blurry, so my apologies. These blooms are just gorgeous! And there are going to be at least 8 of these this time around.

While all that was blooming in the kitchen windows, I've been making blooms in the living room recliner as well this week. Since my goal again this year is to dig into those UFOs and unquilted tops and get 'er done, I decided to work on some applique started in 2006. A group of online friends worked on a Baltimore Album quilt project that one of the members designed using EQ blocks as a starting point.

I made 17 blocks back then and set them aside. I thought I wanted three more to have 20 blocks for a good sized wall hanging. But now I've decided I may do 25. We'll see when I run out of blocks I want to make. I've added a few to those in the original project.

This is what I got done this week:

My design with a little embroidery thrown in:

Don't' those birds look familiar? I told Tom I didn't want to put the date on in case I didn't actually get the quilt finished this year. He suggested I should do exactly that as an incentive to get it done! So I did. We'll see if I have to rip it out! LOL.

There's a link to my earlier blocks on my sidebar (look under the UFO list). Or just click here


Now ask me why I'm posting this at 3:13 in the morning. Another night I can't get to sleep!