Quilt, Cycon, and Tulips

Here it is! The long-awaited Random Sunday. On Wednesday night. At least I keep it interesting. Now, on with the show.

Quilt

First thing is I have to show off my quilt! See, that’s part of what was going on this weekend. I got together with some wonderful quilt friends to show off our latest quilt challenge. About twice per year we issue a challenge to make a quilting project following certain rules. This last one was to create a quilt project inspired by a book. We couldn’t take the easy way out and reproduce a quilt from a cover or from a description in the

book. Instead, we had to use the colors, other descriptions, or whatever, to inspire the quilt itself. Mine is pictured here. I created it based on the cover of my poetry book, Scath Oran. That’s where the colors come from. The pattern I used is called Celtic Crossings, which ties into the Celtic mythology theme of my quilt. And please ignore the few silver clips on it still. I haven’t quite gotten the binding sewn down yet. I know it is sideways from what most quilts are oriented, but this is because it’s a snuggle quilt. This way when my son and I snuggle up on the couch to read or watch a movie, we have a lap quilt that’s wide enough to cover us both. Well, both and then some. Maybe Daddy can join us under the quilt.

Cycon

Cycon happened this last weekend. I wish I could have taken part more than I did in

events. It was a blast from the pieces I did do. There were so many cool author booths out there. Then the Cover Wars and Character Battles were fun to check out. Seeing all the awesome art and ideas made me so happy. Plus, I took part in most of the closing panel for the event. Two main organizers prodded me into joining because I worked on many of the graphics for the event. They figured I earned a spot at the table or something like that. Either way, the discussions we had were great. They meandered all over the place, but what do you expect out of a collection of dreamers and creatives? I don’t know that Cycon did that much for me in terms of book sales or traffic to my website or anything like that. I probably should have done more to track that and promote it. But that’s okay. Ultimately, I do this for the love of writing and words and art. Not to make money or be hugely popular or whatever. It’s the joy of what I do. And in that, Cycon was a huge success, and I loved every minute.

Tulips

And now for a different subject. One I am also ecstatic over, but unrelated to the rest of this. My ice cream tulips are blossoming! Two years ago, my son and I planted some tulip bulbs in a flower bed in my front yard. We planted them in the fall like it said. Last spring, they all came up. The first ones to blossom were these smaller sized ones that were orange and red streaked together. Those we got when we bought the house. Hence the tulip garden where it is, among other reasons. Then the first of my big solid colored

tulips blossomed. We had a whole row of pretty tulips. Then the deer wandered by and ate every blossom. It was like they took scissors and cut them all off. The irritation on my son’s face was priceless, though I know I was right there with him. He told me in no uncertain terms those were naughty deer. I still had hope, at that point, we’d have tulips, though. The ice creams hadn’t blossomed yet. They had buds but hadn’t gotten further than that. Well, a massive heat wave ruined that. It got to like 100 Fahrenheit and cooked the poor things. Nothing I could do about it. This year has been cooler and they’re blossoming. Man do they look cool. And we put a net over some fencing around the tulips, so the naughty deer don’t eat them again. Made my son thrilled.