These kittens are kicking my butt!

Remember the kittens I mentioned last week?  Things have been very rocky with them, and I have learned in no uncertain terms I am not cut out for this kind of fostering! I ended up passing one back to the bottle baby expert (and have later realized I should have passed on the whole crew!), as she was doing very poorly with me.  The rest are holding their own, gaining wight slowly and still not eating solid food.  SO basically I am feeling like a total failure right now.
I spend three or four hours a day with them!  You know why I'm a cat person?  Cat's aren't needy pets.  Kittens missing their momma are VERY needy, as it turns out.

I know, this isn't what you come here for, but this is really all I have done this week when I wasn't in the garden. It's a frustrating year out there as well. I am battling a raccoon who keeps digging up the pots and fresh plantings, in spite of the cayenne pepper I have been using everywhere. I suppose I should have tried to get some pictures out there.  Another thing to add to the list of things I've not done well lately.  Sorry.  

I did get some nice news last week- much to my surprise, the AQS jury accepted my fish quilt for the Syracuse "Quilt Week".  I honestly didn't think it would be up to their standards, but took a chance.  Every time I get accepted, I feel like I won a prize!

To make this worth your time, here are a few pictures from the Amherst Guild Quilt show I went to in April.  (I can't show many as I didn't take as many label pictures as I thought. sigh)  They are a very talented guild, and I always leave that show wanting to hibernate in my sewing room!

look how tiny the pieces are!!!

Probably the lighting, but this one glowed!

One of their "don't touch" signs!

Binding the corners and curves must have been a Herculean job!

I hope you can read the label!

So there's my sad post for this week. I hope the Russian data miners find something useful here.  (I noticed recently much of the traffic to my bog is from Russia, did a little searching and it turns out there is a huge scamming industry over there.  They use keywords in blog posts to try and steal  people's identities.  Isn't that nice?)

Some good news for a change, environmentally speaking.  Just nice to read these stories!

I am grateful for:
Quiet time in the garden- sort of nature therapy.
Encouraging words from an unlikely source.
Jamie's kitten expertise.
Hugs with friends.
Peanut butter cups