Memorial weekend retreat, fishing and yard work progress

My husband's birthday was the 25th.  

He and our son wanted a chocolate cake with ganache. So I made a chocolate cake from scratch with a ganache layer, then a raspberry filling and another ganache layer then topped with raspberry again and covered in chocolate frosting. Nothing fancy for decorations. 

Just extra amount of everything. 

I'll have to call this a MAN cake. 

It was jiggly and bulging in the filling sections.

Crammed full of yumminess.

Who doesn't love ganache and raspberries? 

I spent the first part of the memorial weekend with a couple of friends at a retreat.  We stayed at the Stitchin Tree Quilters Cottage.  There is a quilt shop attached to the retreat house. 

I fell in love with the blocks the shop had on display for the Judy Niemyer quilt Cabin Fever.

So I bought the pattern and some of the fabric.

I'll have to buy more fabric later. 

I didn't want to exceed my budget! 

The pattern I'll use is shown in the smaller pic on the pattern cover. 

I also brought a top which I wanted to enlarge. 

This is my design plan for the borders. 

I added the narrow border and then started working on the piano keys. 

Ugh. So boring. Sewing strips. 

Super ugh!  My math was wrong and my keys aren't big enough. It needs to start and end with a tan key.  Grrrrrr! 

2" short..

This is where I normally would put this project away and work on it a year from now. But I decided to start tackling the awful job of changing my seam allowances from 1/4" to 1/8".  I started re-sewing and then ripping out all of the original seams.   I felt like my retreat time was a huge waste of time. Like driving on a trip to a destination for an entire day and then realizing you drove the wrong way. 

So I kept pushing on and got 'er done. 

Success!  

Now it ends and begins with tan and it worked on all sides. 

One of the gals with me was on a mission.

She was like a machine. 

Cranking out the projects. 

She cut out and completed the prep of all of these blocks.

They are ready for hand sewing.

Then she cut out and prepped these for sewing.

I just love her wool work.

She needed to add baby quilts to her quilt gift stash so she whipped out both of these cute tops.

The other gal in our trio worked on the blocks for a quilt she decided would look better on her bed than on the guest bed.  Ha ha!  I agree. 

It's lovely and has restful colors.

Then after the retreat I went fishing with my nephew and my brother. Unfortunately my nephew only caught one fish.  I spent the day trying to will the fish to bite for him.  

It didn't work. 

I caught these 3 bass and then 10 more after my brother and nephew left. 

I spent the last day of the weekend working in the yard. We had ornamental grass that was not doing well because of all the shade. So a friend came by and helped me dig it out. I gave half to him and then had to replant my half.

My hubby wanted some of it around the gigantic grass he had moved to a new spot. 

Then I hauled rocks over to the drain for the dam. It's so steep it's hard to mow.  And it has been eroding. So we're hoping the grass will help with this. 

But I wasnt able to finish it. 

A storm cell quickly brewed up and it began to thunder and lightning so I rushed inside. 

Good thing. It became very windy, torrential rain and quite a bit of hail. 

Whew!  I'm done working outside for the day.

Time to go in, take a shower, relax and enjoy the last few hours of my weekend.