Can you guess what this is? (and Happy 4th of July!)

Here's today's mystery object!  Can you guess what it is?  I'll give you a hint.  I use it when I'm working on Gemma.  Oh, and it's not a remote control!  I spotted it while in line at Rural King today.  It was on the 'impulse buy' shelf in the checkout lane, and I am sure glad it was.  Give up?  It's an L.E.D. flashlight.  It has two areas of light.  One is the traditional area on the end and the other is the flat surface that looks like little buttons in this picture.  And it's magnetic!  I didn't discover this until I got home, but what a handy feature that is!

The wide area of light is absolutely perfect for looking at the underside of the quilt.  Since my tension issues on the machine have now made me paranoid, I do a lot of bending down and trying to see under the quilt.  This light is perfect and is extremely helpful.  Since it's magnetic, it also gives me a hands free view when I put it on the table and might want to clip a thread underneath.  In fact, I just keep it hanging under the machine, stuck to the metal table.  Love this new toy!  All for the low price of $7.99.  Pretty cool, huh?  Yes, I have been told it takes very little to amuse me...

I finished quilting this second charity top today.  I really like how the piecer put this together.  There just seems to be a nice balance and symmetry with these rows.  She didn't have all sports themed fabric so she put strips of white muslin in between some of the rows.  It really works.

I like the backing that was paired with this top if for nothing else, just because it is so busy.  This helped to hide some of my not-so-hot quilting.  Again, this top was done without the stitch regulator.  I just keep telling myself there is a learning curve here and practice makes perfect.  It's great that I'm having so much fun while practicing, too!

And what would a Fourth of July blog post be without a picture of the grill full of food?  The top rack was the designated vegetarian area for the evening, holding thick slices of zucchini for my darling son.  Below, browning ever so nicely, were six shish ka bobs.  Four were beef and two were pork.  They were premade at the meat counter of our local IGA store and they were fantastic!  Yummy!

Hope everyone had a nice Fourth of July and even more, hope everyone had a SAFE day.  God Bless the USA!