October 1

 In light of things happening in this country, I'm going with some nature and progress on projects.

I poked around the mess of a sewing room and managed to find my Applipops! If you saw the room, you would be extremely impressed! I then cut 16 yellows and found my starch and got 16 little circles made. Last night, they were appliqued to the middle of the blocks while watching episode 2 of High Potential and then the latest episode of Only Murders in the Building and then the podcast on Hulu.  

Bear is holding them in place for me right now! They need a trim up and then I'll machine stitch them together. It should be 48 inches square when done. So.... probably a white 2.5 inch strip will be added all around. We will see if the green peels in a border decide they are necessary or not. It might be happy with that and the green as a binding. I really wish it would make up it's mind. As it will hang in my office, this size might be just fine as is (if I say it enough, it might agree with me!).

Now from the morning walk. The girl did head to school today. I think a full day of sleeping helped with her humidifier on all day. The boy was fixing his lunch when I headed out the door with Bear for his walk.

We met 7 turkeys on the lawn up the street from us. There must have been a real bear nearby at some point as their trash can was knocked over and trash all over an area of their lawn. We are one street away from a nature preserve/forest area.

Isn't this a pretty sight? I do love watching as the sun comes up in the morning. Yesterday and Monday it was gloomy and all grey clouds with the Imelda storm off the Florida coast.

The neighbors one street over are all decorated for Halloween. My neighbor across the street has not put his up yet, but I expect that to happen today. The carriage is new this year and the flying witch. The basilisk has a head that is just out of the photo. 

This is a new house that was built this year and they decorated up a bit as well. Love the purple spider on her web.

On tap today - trimming so the blocks are the same size and then getting them stitched together. I have a baby panel that needs to get started. It is the ABC of Dr. Seuss, so I'm going to cut them and make each block a little bigger and then sew them back together again into a little baby throw. I'll have to pop out and grab the book to go with it. We were discussing a baby shower and it will either be the 12th or the 2nd of November. If it is the 12th, I've got to get it done quick!

Last String of Beads block is completed.

 Well, the peels are all completed. I still need to make 16 circles to pop on the middle of the block! I know I have the applipops somewhere in my sewing area. This is the second teal one. I guess I'll need to decide if the middles are all the same color (thinking yellow) or a color coordinating with each block. 

All 16 blocks. I just hope I don't lose the peel points when I stitch them together! Circles need to go on first though.

One kid is home today. She got home late after marching practice yesterday (6:40ish) and said she was not feeling great - sore throat and stuffy. Today is the only day she 'could' take off from school so this morning I was not surprised when she was in jammies on the couch when I got up at 6:30 and she asked if she should stay home today or not. I told her yes, go back to bed as rest is best. She had a crazy weekend - I just did the pick ups and it threw me all off with the late times. 

Last night was taco meat - one did soft taco's, I did mine as a salad with tortilla chips and one other did similar. I think Greg just did a taco salad. Tonight - I pulled a 2 pound chuck roast, so will either pop that in a crock pot or the oven (depending on if I do it after I post this) with root veggies for dinner tonight.

Sunday Stitching

There will be some Sunday stitching, but I really do need to do a bunch of things I did not do yesterday. Yesterday, I put the frame into my new office space and started hand quilting on the Birds in the Air. Turns out, I was not in the mood to do curves on the big triangle so I think it will be just free handed straight lines! Much easier to do on the frame.

I have 4 of the 8 peels appliqued onto this block. The four outer green ones will get added this week. This is the last of the 16 String of Beads blocks to get completed.

All the Flowering snowballs and shoo fly blocks have been hand pieced for the Flying Snowball quilt. I'll probably machine stitch these together into a top. I pulled blues, teals, purples and greens for this one.

Friday I went to the away football game at The Villages as a band chaperone. The band performed after the game. So we got home about 11:30PM that night. Then, Saturday I dropped Emily to school for 10:45 AM for practice before they headed to Tampa for a competition that evening. They placed 2nd in their division. Not bad. It was a late night/morning. The bussed arrived back at the school around 1:45AM. I think I headed to bed at 2:30AM. She is still sleeping, and I'm not going to wake her or check until at least 2PM. She does have homework to get done today and wash to do! The boy had a night out for a friends birthdays and was about 40 minutes from home. He got in about 11:30 and stayed up chatting with me until about 1AM, when I headed out to get Emily from school. Greg and I went out to dinner last night, as a late anniversary date since both kids were gone. 

I'll do some housework that needs to get done and then try and figure out how the rest of my new office room will be set up. I've got a new desk (Emily put it together for me Wednesday night) and my hand quilting frame is in there. I need to figure out where things will go, so I can put quilts and pictures up on the walls. 

Linking up with Kathy and the Slow Sunday Stitchers.
 

Table Scrap Challenge - radio or tv.

I had various ideas running around in my head, but to show my age I went with the old tv 'offline' strip! Hey, it was easy and quick to make up. It took longer to pull fabrics than to make this little guy, I think. I did have to dig through boxes and move a bunch of things from the sewing area to reach the machine and the stash wall to make this. More work needs to be done in there to clean up from moving the house around a bit. 

It finishes around 5x8ish. I cut the bigger parts at 1.5 inches by 4 and the lower row is of 1.5 inch squares.

I think it looks pretty spot on for the two rows I did. 

My version:

I'll be linking up Friday with Joy and The Table Scrap Challenge. Heck, there is even a little blue and green in this for the RSC colors!

Flying Snowball blocks ....

 I believe I have all of these blocks hand stitched as of last evening. I did 4 of them yesterday after work.

 It was more appealing than figuring out where to hang things in my new office space. The front room is painted and that dark maroon wall only needed 2 coats, like everything else! 

I'm waiting on my new desk to arrive sometime today, but pulled in a half banquet table to work on Monday morning until it arrives and gets put together. A job for tomorrow I guess! It will be a desk that works sitting and can raise up for a standing desk. I've never had one like that, so we will see how it is. 

For now, I moved the dog's crate into one corner and the old victrola is in the other. Bear was in there a bunch yesterday and is adjusting well to this crate moving around the last week. Normally, it was on the edge of the room by the door area and covered with a quilt. It got shoved into the dining room area - about 6 feet away as it is the other room when you first walk in the door. I moved it back Monday to the far corner in the room that is now my office.... with 2 big windows with light. The road noise is a bit much, but I'm sure I'll get used to it. Having sunlight is a big plus.  Despite his cage and then his bed pillow covered with a quilt that he used to curl up on in my old office, he is laying on the floor (carpeted) right by my left side, like always. 

I wrote this earlier. He moved to his crate so I could lay out the blocks. It should be 84x84 as it is 7x7 of 12 inch blocks. This is the initial toss on the floor. We will see if things need moving around.

The hand quilting frame will be against the right side wall.

Sunday

 I did have a finish this week. My cross stitch had the last few stitches taken in Take time. I'll need to figure out how I want to finish it off but the stitching is completed.

It was an early wake up today for the F1 race in Baku - 7AM our time for 3PM their time. The dog is impatiently waiting on his walk. Look at that face! I'm stitching on the peels on the last String of Beads block. One peel down, 7 to go!

The front room finally got cleared out yesterday afternoon. Well, the Victrola and a telescope are in the middle of the room under a sheet. Emily and I did the first coat of what we could reach without ladders late evening. I did the edge work with a brush while she used the roller. The dark maroon wall (that I have hated for 14 years) is nearly gone. The model home we bought had lots of accent walls, and all were maroon. Greg is taking over my office area and decided to keep the table I had in there as my desk (my old kitchen table). He ordered me a rising office desk like we got Emily last year for her room. It will fit nicely against the front side half wall. The hand quilting frame will be in there as well. Aidan's racing and flying gear set up is now in his room - I have yet to go see how crowded it is in there.

I've been drawing different patterns into this triangle space to figure out what I want in there. I think I have settled on the green spot. We will see if I keep it hand drawn or make a template for it. Everything is stuffed into the sewing area of the finished garage area next to my old office. I can't get in there yet, but maybe by tonight.

I have a couple of hst's stitched for the next shoo fly block. Plenty of things to keep me busy this week.

Greg is going with Em for horses today (it is 50 minutes away now and she is not comfortable driving herself there yet). I've signed up for another cookie decorating and topper class this afternoon. I'm hoping some painting happens at home while I am away this afternoon! 

Nothing too special planned for our 19th anniversary today. I did get a pretty bunch of fall flowers handed to me yesterday. 

Linking up with Kathy and the Slow Sunday Stitchers.

Rsc in light greens

 I pulled out the alternate bita blocks.  I only had 4 in sage green. I have added 8 to the pile. Bright greens and light greens. It looks grey, but they really are greens! I'll have to add some light blues next week. Each block is 6 inch finished. 

Looking at the collection - there are eight blocks each of reds, pinks, dark blue, and yellow.

Guess I'll need to be filling in the missing colors over the next few weeks or more likely, this will hold until next year and get added to in 2026 I think.

Linking up with the RSC.

The kids will head with us over to visit their Grandpa in Assisted living today. It is an early Happy 90th Birthday visit for him as he celebrates the big event on Monday. They have it on the calendar of events at the place he lives.