What's in a name?

I love looking at the names of stores and various other facilities here. They often use a curious combination of English and Russian/Ukrainian. By which I mean, they may take English (or other foreign) words and ad them into their name, such as Anschlag (a grocery store, also German for "attack") or RoDent (not a dentist I would want to visit). There's also our corner store "Boaz".
And then there are the names which mix Latin and Cyrillic letters/words, often one word in one language and the other in the other language. Or occasionally a letter here or there that doesn't match the rest. As in the case of Piranha, which has a Russian "я" (ya) somewhere in the middle (I think like this Pirяna or possibly Piranя) and is a men's hair salon. Yana and Anya are Russian names, but still wondering who came up with that name and who goes to that salon? I'm not sure I'd want to get my hair cut at a place named after a flesh-eating fish.

On my recent trip to Lviv I came across a couple of gems that made me chuckle.
The first: Mini bite--children's clothing. "Mini" I get..."bite"? scares me a little. Just wondering what the thinking was behind that one?

The second: The Grill: steak, wok and roll...just fascinates me all around. The use of the English article "the" with grill--they don't have articles in Russian and Ukrainian so it is totally superfluous; then the steak, wok and roll part. I've heard of wok and roll restaurants, but "steak, wok and roll"? That was a new one to me and made me chuckle. I didn't go in, but the sign sure made me want to!

Packing and Sorting (and resting)

This week and next, and last week for that matter, I'll be packing and sorting and sorting and packing. It is hard to go through all my things and try to figure out what to take now, what to have brought or sent later, what to leave in storage here, what to give away or sell and what to throw out.
Some of the sorting is good and necessary. Some of it is just plain hard and time consuming. Some of it is alarming (how did I end up with so much stuff that I don't want to part with!). Right now I think I've narrowed down the worldly possessions that I intend to keep for as long as I can to about 10-50lb. suitcases. No easy feat, I can assure you. I'm hoping that there won't be more before I'm done. I've given away about that much stuff too. It is amazing how easy it is to accumulate! It's also scary to think of having to start over again. But, one step at a time--purge, then binge. :D

On top of the packing, I've been a little under the weather again this week. I'm not sure if it is low blood pressure, back/joint pain or just not sleeping well, but I am having a hard time keeping my energy up. It could be the heat too, I suppose, although in general I am doing better with that this year. It is extra frustrating to have my energy sapped during these two weeks when I need to focus on packing and finishing things up with the office (and of course, there is Ellie's quilt), so I would appreciate your prayers both for energy and for grace to deal with the fatigue and extra joint pain. Even typing is painful right now. :( And for wisdom to focus my energies in the places where they need to go, not getting caught up in unnecessary things.

It is hard to believe I'll be leaving here in two weeks!

Note: It rained this evening which probably accounts for the extra joint pain. Hopefully that will simmer down now although they are predicting more rain for the weekend and next week.

Ellie's Quilt

I've finally started working on Ellie's quilt. Three weeks before I fly away. :|
Nothing like a deadline for motivation! August seems to be a good quilt month for me anyway, so here I am again, working on quilt #7. Thank goodness Matt and Anya aren't planning on having kids too soon! Maybe I'll get their quilt and Vienna's and Ziva's done and their new sibling's quilts done before Matt and Anya add any more to my list. lol

Ellie's quilt design is about taking a walk in the garden. I was thinking of doing purples and pinks and something with butterflies for her, but it has turned out to have a lot more greens and browns in with those purples and pinks than I had originally anticipated. But I like it.
I cut and pieced the squares last week. It went pretty quickly and today I started working on the quilting part. I haven't fully decided what I'll do for the quilting, it is kind of a "take it as it comes to me" type thing.
The brown strips are the pathways through the garden. The green is foliage and the other squares are flower plots. It will have a couple of borders, a more brown one and then a more pink/purple/flower one. The backing is this really pretty brown material I found the other day. It is so soft and smooth and the design is girly even if it is in brown. But somehow even the brown seems like it is a girly brown to me. I had originally planned to use a different material, with butterflies all over it, but it was much coarser and not quite the right size, so when I saw this I just had to get it.
Now all I need to do is sew like a maniac for the next two weeks and we should be all good!
I've been planning this quilt for several years and it has gone through several variations until I came up with this one. I wanted something that was not impossible to piece and could also be kept in smaller pieces to be quilted as quilting a full-size quilt is a difficult task. I'll put the backing on after I have quilted the squares and sewed them all together and then I will probably quilt a few simple lines through all the layers for stability. But we'll see. It's a work in progress!