It seems as if tulips have been at the forefront lately, both in quilting and in real life! As much as I'm itching to start on my Friends of Baltimore Quilt, I decided to plug along for a while on my Loopy Tulips. After a marathon session of prepping leaves, I had enough to finish one full block.

Lots more to do, but once prepped they are pretty mindless stitching and seem to be going quickly. One problem I'm encountering has to do with aging eyes. Saturday morning I spent about 5 minutes trying to thread a needle – something I've never had trouble with. I had to dig out my trusty needle threader.

This is the table top threader by Clover – a little pricey, but the only one I've found that doesn't break.

In real life, my friend Bethy and I took the girls over to the tulip fields in Mt. Vernon. The tulips were almost a month early this year. We avoided the crowds and went on a weekday, and although we didn't exactly have the fields to ourselves, we were able to get some lovely photos.

The last picture was taken by Isobel. She has quite the eye for photography and it will be interesting to see if she pursues this.

I did need a comfortable knitting project to work on in the car and socks just aren't doing it for me right now, so I cast on for a small shawl. The Geology Shawl.  This is complex enough to keep my interest, but simple enough that I don't need to concentrate too hard.

I'll end this on a sad cautionary tale. The day before yesterday we thought we were giving Maggie a treat and let her chew on a hambone. Yesterday evening we ended up at the emergency vet with our poor puppy extremely dehydrated and suffering from pancreatitis, probably due to a swallowed bone chip. The x-rays don't identify the foreign body as a bone chip, but we accept that that is what it is. We will never do that again! Here's poor Maggie at the clinic wrapped up in a warming blanket. 

Fortunately she seems to be fine after a night in the hospital and a boatload of money! That was one expensive hambone!!