July Cornucopia

 

Hopefully we've all had a lovely July filled with outdoor activities, the right amount of sun, and lots of nice flowers. I've also been inside, on the various screens that I use, and here's a cornucopia of links to things that I've enjoyed, learned from, been inspired by, or that have made me think. Hope you find some of them to be useful too.  (note this was written on 7/1 before I fell ill for almost the entire month!)

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I guess I'm officially an "old lady" as I've finally given in and downloaded the Merlin app so that I can identify alllll those birds that wake me up every morning. I've been a long-time fan of the webpage for Cornell University Bird Lab with all the sound clips, photos and bird info.

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Now that the World Cup is over and I'm pretty soccer satisfied at this point, how about making a fabric soccer ball out of hexies and pentagons? I might get mine done in time for World Cup 2030

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Another reason to go visit Portland again, to see the absolutely beautiful new mural in the children's library section of the St. John's branch of the Multnomah County Library.

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One of the very first large online quilt fabric stores, eQuilter has changed ownership. It will be interesting to see what and how it changes. Wishing lots of ood luck to Luana Rubin in her art endeavors.

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The super interesting and very beautiful Wimbledon walk-on dress that Naomi Osaka wore has quite a significant backstory. So gorgeous!

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A free quilt design, utilizing Dresden Hexagon blocks called Freaky Familiars from Ruby Star Society.

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Nancy Drew (first four novels) are in the public domain, along with the first Miss Marple novel, here's an interesting article about how the Nancy Drew books were written and why they changed so much. I had no idea, I just stopped reading them once Nancy changed into someone else and wasn't interesting to me.

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Another free quilt design from Ruby Star Society, for a Merry Happy Christmas quilt.

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This article about making a mixed-media Story Scroll inspired me to buy a vintage spool because I'm going to try making my own version.

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This essay about Quicksand by Sarah Kendzior is amazing, especially if you're a Gen-X person.

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Really enjoying the Platypus Economics substack of Justin Wolfers, 

I am back to regularly listening to This American Life podcast, still very worth the time

  ProPublica's Narrated podcast (their long form investigations are read to you)

 and the shorter ProPublica podcast, Paper Trail, deep reporting you don't get from other sources.

We thoroughly enjoyed The Sheep Detectives movie on Amazon Prime. 

I also dug the documentary, Earth, Wind & Fire (To Be Celestial vs. That's the Weight of the World).

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