Elephants & Gardening & More Covid (and a little stupid humour)

 This elephant was great to work on.

All ruler work, as you can see, except for a few bits of tusks & toes, a wrinkly nose, and a shaggy tail.

This was pieced by the same gal who did this Unicorn quilt.

It made me think of the crazy elephant jokes we heard on our honeymoon, from another honeymooning couple at Blue Mountain.

GARDENING

After crabbing about mending hubby's pants a few weeks ago, the Universe decided to even the score.

Uh huh.  These are MY pants.  Sigh.

I decided to get all girly with my repair. 🌻

Bloodroot, which is alway nice and early.  

A bit of a change from daffodils which I also love.

The big news for me today - the asparagus is up!!!  Tomorrow I'll make a pot of soup from the last frozen packet of the 2020 crop, then it will be time to start pulling out all the recipes for fresh cuttings.  Mmm mmm...

COVID-19 UPDATE

WORLDWIDE:  140 million cases, 3 million deaths, 832,800 new cases April 16/21

USA:   32.3 million cases, 580,000 deaths, 82,000 new cases yesterday

CANADA: 1,106,000 cases, 23,541 deaths, 9,346 new yesterday

ONTARIO: 413,000 cases, 7,698 deaths, 4,362 new yesterday.  Ontario has been reporting record high numbers this past week. 

HAMILTON:  15,146 cases, 344 deaths, 247 new yesterday - a new record high.

I've been stewing and steaming most of the day over the Ontario Government's handling of the pandemic this year.  Yesterday the Premier announced the 4 week stay-at-home order would be extended by an additional two weeks, to end on May 20th.  I'm all in favour of this - don't misunderstand me.  But he could have done so much more, and much much earlier.  With the current lockdown, big box stores were finally limited to essential goods only, so apparently Costco and Walmart have cordoned off the fluffy goods we don't really need.  

Hubby and I have gotten our first shots last week, which was such a relief.  But in all honesty, we are in a great position to stay at home and stay out of harm's way.  I feel so badly for essential workers who should have been prioritized for vaccines - the dental hygienist, the grocery store cashier, the day care worker, the assisted living employee, ad nauseum...  And as far as essential goods goes, if we don't have vaccines for the Amazon employees, should Amazon really be open?  Putting their staff and the shipping company employees at risk so we can order a kite, or a set of magic markers?

If I were Doug Ford I would be in a coma by now from lack of sleep.  I truly feel sorry for him having the pandemic drop in his lap, but he has an excellent crew of scientists and medical experts who have advised him and warned him for months about where we were headed.  Because he did not heed their advice we have indeed landed where we don't want to be.

OK - off my soapbox.

STUPID HUMOUR FROM OUR HONEYMOON

Q: How do you get an elephant into a VW?
A: Open the car door, put the elephant inside, close the door.

Q: How do you put an elephant into a fridge?
A: Open the VW door, take the elephant out, close the VW door, open the fridge, put the elephant inside, close the fridge.

Q: How do you get 4 elephants into a Volkswagen?
A: 2 in the front and 2 in the back

Q: How do you know if there are 4 elephants in your fridge?
A: There's a VW parked outside your house.

Kaffe Sampler & Pants Mending

 I've said many times that I love working on sampler quilts.  This purple Kaffe - definitely wanted to keep this!

It was very difficult to see while I was working on the borders and the sashing, but the quilting shows nicely on the back.

Here are a couple of the blocks.

PANTS MENDING

Well, of course I want to talk to you about this.  Isn't mending every quilter's favorite thing to do?  No, I didn't think so.  Usually when DH asks me to mend something that he has CLEARLY been so careful with, I tell him to just add it to the pile.  Well, dammit.  That response didn't work this time.  He said that he N.E.E.D.E.D. these fixed, sooner rather than later.  Blecch.

Yes he blows through the knees on most of his work pants and adds lots of decorative little holes in assorted random places everywhere else.

If, like me, you mutter several un-ladylike words when faced with putting patches on the knees, the little tip I got from Mom many, many years ago is to open up the side seam.  Not the side with 14 rows of stitching - the OTHER side with a regular seam.  That is really quick to do with a seam ripper.  Then you can open up pretty much the whole leg, stitch the patch on, and then sew the seam closed again.

It doesn't make the job any more fun, but it will save your sanity.

Then you can go back to your OTHER favorite (?) thing - paper piecing some minis.

COVID-19 UPDATE

WORLDWIDE:  119.7 million cases, 2.6 million deaths, 454,000 new cases March. 13/21

USA:   29.4 million cases, 534,600 deaths, 53,000 new cases yesterday

CANADA: 913,300 cases, 22,400 deaths, 3,105 new yesterday

ONTARIO: 318,000 cases, 7,153 deaths, 1,747 new yesterday. 

HAMILTON:  11,241 cases, 295 deaths, 83 new yesterday