What a Day!

Before work, I noticed the clematis on the patio was starting to bloom, so I grabbed the camera and caught a photo.  I love these plants and I wish I had several varieties--maybe I'll look for another one this year.  Some are hardier than others though, and I definitely need one that's going to grow even under abusive circumstances--I tend to ignore the garden for the most part and Hubby tends to cut everything back whenever he can.

Until I plugged the camera into my computer to upload some photos, I'd totally forgotten the day also started off with me stuck in mostly stopped traffic for an extra 45 minutes on my drive to work.  This is the second time in two weeks something like this has happened--last week there was a fatality on the freeway and every route in either direction was stopped--and not just the freeways.  I know this because I tried several alternate routes, and it didn't make any difference.  Today I just waited it out because I had no idea what was causing the slow down.  It's usually very rare that I'd be anything like this late to work.

As it turned out, when I took this photo, I was finally nearing the problem.

See that overpass ahead and the crane?  That's a freeway up there and traffic was stopped or slow on that road too.  They've been doing construction on the overpass to widen it or reinforce it or something--I'm really not sure--but this is the first time it's affected traffic to this degree.  For most of the route, the road is two lanes in either direction and travels at 50 mph, although at this point, it narrows to one lane.  It was backed up for miles while they moved heavy equipment from under the overpass and did whatever these guys do.  Crazy.

Then at work we had a little bit of an incident.  You know I work for a law firm, right?  I really can't say anything specific because of confidentiality concerns, but a woman was in our office giving a deposition and she had some kind of a problem--whether it was a panic attack or medical or what, I'm not sure.  We had to call emergency services to take her to the hospital.  Definitely NOT something that happens every day!

I think I said I'd try to remember to take my camera to the Thimbleberries Club meeting and I did, but I sort of forgot to take photos during show and tell until this quilt was being shown.  The quilt itself was made by an almost-90 year old woman and it's probably the last quilt she'll ever make because she was struggling to remember how to do the binding.  The woman who is holding the quilt offered to do the binding for the elderly quilter.  Sweet, isn't it?  I hope someone will be that kind to me someday.

When I came home from Thimbleberries, I thought I'd make the next block for the block of the month.  And it's a basket for May!  I may applique a couple flowers in the basket but I'm not sure.

Here are all the blocks together so far:

I don't know if I'd mentioned it before, but I'm using scraps for this quilt too.  Well, I did mention I don't seem to have any problems using my Thimbleberries scraps and this is one example.  All of the backgrounds have been scrappy so far except for this month's block.  Unless I changed the block construction, I would have had to make those two large upper corners out of one fabric and I thought that making the rest of several different creams would have looked even funnier.

I saw a wonderfully scrappy quilt at the quilt shop and I took a photo, but I'm going to save that to show you a little later in the week.  It's time now for me to make my way toward bed because this crazy day is finally coming to an end.  "See" you tomorrow!