Weekly update: a few wildflowers, convention and scrappy multitasking, and reading

 Each year I search for flags -- wild iris. This afternoon I found them everywhere I looked. I think that's because it's been so very, very dry (as in ZERO rainfall) that the other vegetation is not as lush as usual.  Even so I'm surprised that the iris are blooming in such profusion. The wild ones like wet feet. This year they're high and dry.  

See the exposed roots?  (Yellow are invasive; blue are native.)

I found another patch of hybrid iris. (Last week I posted a photo of the clump that comes back annually.)  

Daisies are abundant in early June -- very appropriate since the P.E.O. Illinois state convention is always the first weekend.  Ordinarily I'd have snapped a photo as I drove to the convention but this year, of course, was different -- it was held as a Zoom webinar.  

The registrar reported 548 people in attendance (chapter delegates, past state presidents, committee members) but we only saw the people speaking and the slide shows with convention business and videos with committee reports.  

It was very efficient. All the business was finished in an hour and the mandatory program videos took less than an hour on Saturday.   The time of inspiration, time of remembrance (necrology), and honoring 50-year members were by video, all nicely-done.   The keynote address and officer installation on Sunday (webinar format) went smoothly. 

 What was missing, of course, was the camaraderie and excitement of an in-person assembly. 

I attended as both my chapter delegate and as a committee chair, though I had only one vote.

I sat in the comfort of my studio.   Yes, I multi-tasked -- and I didn't miss a thing! 

Here's what I got done.  I showed a photo of the Ohio Stars last week.  I thought about setting them side-by-side. I thought about one-fabric sashing but the blocks have a huge array of blues.  I went completely scrappy and added a few pops of red. It's 63 x 75. 

# # # # # # Browsing is back at the library -- the reading rooms reopened to the public Hooray!

The Souvenir Museum         One of the disadvantages to today's instantly-shared digital photographs is that we no longer have the tactile memory of printed photos -- when we made extra prints and sent them to friends ("We took this one on our vacation this summer!") The short stories in this collection are like a stack of those photos. Each one sparks a reminiscence and, in this case, an entire self-contained gem of a story. Five "photos" are from Sadie and Jack's lives -- the time they went to Ireland for his sister's wedding; when Jack was a teenager and apprenticed himself to a puppeteer in London; Sadie's mother and father; and finally when Sadie and Jack went to Amsterdam. Interspersed are "photos" with stories of other people (one related to jack; the others aren't connected, but they might be). Were these strung chronologically they would be very intense and rather depressing; instead, told episodically, the characters are quirky and interesting.

The Lost Apothecary   was an enjoyable historical mystery about a 21st-century scholar who discovers the secrets of an 18th-century woman apothecary whose compounds helped other women in oppressive relationships.  The narration goes from Nella and Eliza in 1791 London to present-day Caroline.   Though things threatened to go terribly wrong in both eras, there's a twist!

I have nearly all of Kaffe Fassett's books and I had to add this to the collection.  It's part biography, part design philosophy, and part studio tour with a couple of quilts, needlepoint designs, and knitting patterns -- and a whole lot of fabulous color.   Absolutely delicious!    

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Linking up with Oh Scrap!  Monday Making  Design Wall Monday