Working with Wool

My girlfriend Gayle is in town for a few days. Gayle and I became friends years ago when I lived in Northern Utah and we belonged to the same rug hooking group. We've traveled together to rug camps, and our families have even enjoyed 4-wheeling together.
While my wool and rug hooking supplies currently sit idle on the shelf, Gayle continues to work daily on her rug projects.
It was so fun today to have her at my house, to see her work on a project, and to reminisce.

Seeing Gayle's beautiful colors of wool was inspiring and makes me want to pull all my supplies out again. If only there was time to do it all.

I worked on finishing up on my wool applique pillow (Fire Coral Flower by Woolylady) that I started last weekend.

I machine appliqued the button hole stitch on the vines of the pillow. I used a brown (Superior Threads) "Brytes by Caryl Bryer Fallert". This thread is a 30 weight polyester, and is a little thicker than a regular thread. Because of the thickness the stitching stands out more.

I then hand appliqued with a button hole stitch around the circles with a pearl cotton. Kind of fun to combine both techniques on the pillow.

The colors of this will go well on my living room couch.

For the backing of the pillow I used a Kaffe Fassett fabric. Love those Kaffe's.

A few months ago we had dinner at Mr. Cactus' sister's house. Kathy served the most wonderful homemade pomegranate jelly. Her husband Stan is a Master Gardner and he showed us how easy it is to grow pomegranates here in St.George. Since then, I have dreamed about having my own pomegranate tree.

Now that it is spring my dream came true. Mr. Cactus planted this for me today. It looks a little lonely in the red dirt, but I am told we have the perfect conditions for this tree.

Today our temperatures have been in the 70's, with blue, blue skies. I have several rosemary plants throughout our yard, and they are in bloom with beautiful purple flowers. The bees have been swarming the flowers of the plants.

I love to cook with fresh rosemary. I especially like it with chicken and roasted potatoes. I feel spoiled to be able to go out into my yard and snip a few springs right off the plants year round.
This is the perfect time of the year to be in St.George.