Umbrella - last purple one...

This guy was started in one car line and finished in the second one today! It felt good to play with the needle and thread. Now to pull black/brown for the next umbrellas. I have 2 fabrics in mind already - a pretty brown print with blue flowers and a black with colorful cat faces on it..... I just need to find that one. I think I still have some of it hanging around in a scrap bin, somewhere. No car lines for me tomorrow... but I do have a horse lesson to sit through. Emily missed her lesson last week and they were away this weekend.

Sunday....

It has been a very long week and I seem to have a headache that started last night and was still there when I woke up this morning.

I hope to take a few stitches on this purple umbrella today. Hope is the important word there. 

I'm not sure if there will be 2 more after this or if I add another 11. I guess I'll decide mid October.

Linking up with Kathy and the other slow stitchers.

 There has been no sewing or stitching at all this week and I am in Florida instead of Vermont. My father in law Tom has been in the ICU since Monday. He turned 84 on Sunday and had called off our dinner out on Saturday not feeling well. There was great improvement yesterday and he was moved to a normal room late yesterday. Greg has headed over to see how he is today. The kids had an overnight with Grandma last night and they went to the car races - a previously scheduled outing and overnight. Let's just say I got woken up at 8:30PM from the recliner and told to go to bed to sleep last night! I think I have been in bed by 9 the last 3 nights. Very unlike me. Oh - Greg's parents have been divorced since he was 6 but both come over for holidays and are friendly. She has been great and came over to stay with the kids when we first found out. It has been lots of driving and shuffling of schedules to keep the kids centered and 'normal'. 

Today...I'll grab a shower and see how I am feeling as to if I go get Em from Grandma's (45 minutes away) or if Greg swings that way from the hospital. She has a 1PM birthday party to go to. I'm sure another dose of Advil will keep the headache at bay and knock down the low fever. In the mean time... I'm enjoying the smell of my night blooming jasmine which is loaded on the bush outside and wafting in through the closed windows.... too hot to open them!

Sunday slow stitching....

I have a couple hand work projects that I am working on.

I finished the embroidery for the Happy Little Things block. Time to pull and mark the rest of the block for hand piecing this week.

I started a new project - The Ella Marie Deacon Quilt along over at Sentimental Stitches. 4 blocks a month released mid month for the next 21 months. I think I will hand piece mine in scrappy blues from my stash. This is the first block I hand pieced - well I just need to add that shape all around. I'll prep the other 3 today.

I realized I had $25 over at bluprint that had to get used by the end of the month. I went looking around and saw they had bamboo knitting needles and they were on sale! I had broken the tip on my favorite size 8 that I use for dish cloths.... I got 2 sets of them in a 9 inch and a few other things and it arrived on Friday! Woo hoo - one pair will reside in the car but instead of the console - where it can get broken while taking it out! - I will put it in a zippered cloth bag with some dish cloth yarn (sugar and cream) and it will live in the passenger seat! I'll transfer my current pink dish cloth in process and that will be the first into the bag.  I also picked up a water erasable marking pen, a number 11 bamboo needle (hey, you never know when you might need it!) and Aurofil mako thread cream in a 40 weight I think. I believe I had 7 cents to spare! Not bad.

I did manage to 'fix' the batting on the frame last week and I am looking forward to watching Hocus Pocus (don't judge - I love watching this movie in the fall, and yes I have it on DVD!) this afternoon while adding some hand quilting onto my colorful trip around the world. I tend to work left to right on the frame (cause I'm silly like that!) and will be finishing the purple section today and moving onto the teal. I got a good amount done on it yesterday in between kids coming in to 'check on me'. I had to hit the pause button... a lot.... I was watching Bad Moms which is not kid appropriate.

Sophie the cat was supervising.

The kids made us a chocolate cake for our anniversary yesterday - complete with chocolate hearts they piped with a bar of baking chocolate in the pantry! Not bad for a 10+11 year old.... and with a little threatening they even cleaned up the kitchen pretty well after. Did I mention there was some threatening to never be allowed to bake again if they (one in particular) didn't help clean up and do all the dishes? For some reason they put candles on the cake - a 13 for our 13th wedding anniversary!

Linking up with Kathy and the other slow stitchers who are sharing what they are crafting in slow, methodical stitches this week. I wish I was in Ontario, Canada.... I'd join in on her slow stitching Sunday retreat Oct 6. I'll just join in, in spirit from Florida.

Saturday in Purple!

I was able to sew a little purple this week!

Since I have so much hand work time - I started a little 16 patch and got 2 of them done in purple to go with the one in pink. These are made with 2 inch scraps.

I also played with a new to me block... I just have to get past the problem I have with one section. Completely user error as the instructions are great, the person making it..... well I keep turning something wrong!
I have 2 of these blocks in purple now, well almost, that  I think are becoming a new RSC block collection =) Joanne at Canuckquilter sent me her pattern for the Variable Starburst. Thanks Joanne!

I really like playing with 16 patch blocks and since I have not been making any this year like I had planned..... I'm starting in September with some! These are from 2.5 inch scraps and were machine pieced.

I added the one block I have been consistent with this year -the  umbrella! After checking Joy's blog it seems I should have 38 of these as we are in week 38 of the year. Lets count... 38!

Linking up with the RSC where you can go find lots of pretty block collections being made from scraps.

Today is our 13th wedding anniversary. Greg is off to clean up a pool this morning. I'll drop Emily to the barn to help Liz with the horses for a couple of hours and Aidan is getting dragged into the overgrown garden with me to help try and tame it for fall planting in Florida. We were heading to the villages to take my FIL out for his birthday which is tomorrow - but he called off this morning not feeling well. He will be 84 tomorrow!

Ella Maria Deacon Quilt.....

I'm blaming Chris! She just had a blog post about the Ella Maria Deacon Quilt along over at Sentimental Stitches. It started a few days ago on the 15th and looks like Gay will be releasing 4 blocks a month (love that it is mid month to mid month!) for the next 21 months.

I managed to make 36 of the 64 blocks for the 1857 quilt along I did a few years ago. It finally got to a top stage this month. It is nice to have a quilt finished before starting a new one.... Oh yea, I finished a basket quilt recently. Guilt gone! 

We will see how this one goes. I think I made a decision that this will be a scrappy blue and cream quilt instead of the original green, maroon, brown on a cream print. There are 3 piles of blues to pull from (we won't even think of the amount in the 3 scrap bins!) and a good amount of creamy white on the shelf. I'll try to remember to grab the cream ones instead of the white on white. I'm thinking the softer cream is the look I am going for. Wish me luck. Not too late to join in on the fun. She has a facebook group you can ask to join to feel things out first if you'd like. The one for the 1857 quilt was very positive and friendly.

Tuesday 'brella

This little guy has been added to the umbrella collection of blocks. Aidan ordered a yard of this fabric with his extra $ from Blueprint. There was a scrap hanging around from his project that worked great for this.

Playing with Purple....

I saw this block over at Joanne's blog Canuckquilter last week. I loved it and thought it would look so pretty in purple! I was right. Thanks so much Joanne for the instructions to make it. This is 12 inches finished and I am debating on making a bunch of them in purple for a pretty scrappy purple quilt... or make a rainbow of them.

Linking up with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

Sunday.... a day of rest.....

I hope! The kids will soon be on the way to Grandma's house. Greg made waffles this morning. I helped Emily finish up her nails (marble nails) this morning while breakfast was being made. The nails were painted white last night and we tried one nail to see if it would work. It involved taping off the skin, using a little bowl of water and dropping nail polish into the water, then swirling it then dipping that finger in. The blue nail polish must have been used so she went with red and purple instead of blue and purple.

I plan to play today with fabric and prep things in a kid free house. The kids are in route to Grandma's house to play with Scruffy today.

The latest Happy Little Things block is all prepped for embroidery. I hope to get this done today so I can pull fabrics to finish off the block - hand piecing in the car lines this week. I'll use the same floss as the first one. I decided to mark with a thin permanent marker this time instead of pencil. The pencil was hard to see.

I'm finally going to 'fix' the batting on the frame that the kittens tore up last year. It has sat in timeout long enough. I have just a little to hand quilt before I get to remember how to turn it for the next section! I believe some time will be sitting at the frame today adding some hand quilting stitches in. I need to figure out a way to roll that batting and keep it safe... I may need to find a pool noodle or 2 and some little tie downs to create something with a muslin protector.... so I don't have to deal with this again!

One of the guilty parties.... on the cat and mice quilt I had draped over the frame but removed for the photo's. Wonder if he thinks those are real mice to catch?

I really, really wanted to have the cat and mouse quilt prepped for hand quilting by now... but I saw a backing I loved at Connecting Threads in the catalog. I thought about it all week......and this morning I ordered it along with some in purple for the backing of the 1857 quilt and a queen wool batting to try out for hand quilting (either the green irish chain or the Joanns Fabrics Y2K sampler quilt). I remembered I had $100 in birthday money still tucked away from last year for my splurge!

Linking up with the other slow stitchers at Kathy's Quilts today.

Purple parasol anyone?

It has been a busy week and I finally got my little purple umbrella completed just in time for the Saturday link up of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. 

I did manage to sew these blocks together last Sunday. It is now 72x72. This is a subset of blocks from the 1857 sampler album quilt along over at Sentimental Stitches a few years ago. It was all hand applique for me. I am not sure if this will be hand or machine quilted. Thoughts? I like how the darker tan background frames this one... my son, not so much! 

-Monday was working and kid pick up (and quick grocery run to pick up things for scout meeting that night) We did the brownie snack badge - made Pico with chips, energy trail mix and berry smoothies. I finally checked my phone about 9:30 that night (guess it rang while I was supervising chopping) and I got to log into work that night too!

-Tuesday I drop off both kids (I normally drop Em for 7:15/20ish and Greg drops Aidan for 9) and start work an hour later. Tonight was Emily's horses. She nixed my taco Tuesday thoughts and we did quick chicken chili and corn bread in between me having to go get the boy from school and making dinner early. Greg picks Em up Tuesdays so I can get my 5 hours in.

-Wednesday was working again and then kid pick up in the afternoon. Early taco dinner with a stop to get chili powder which someone could not find while making the mix. I had my taco meat over a salad with some chips on the side....before running out to my GS leader meeting. Seems one event is filling up fast.... lots of fb posts on our private GS troop page and I got another 4 indicating they really wanted to go. I had payment from 3 already.......

-Thursday - day off thank goodness! Dropped Em to school then drove 15 minutes to drop off our form and money for 7 girls and 2 adults to the Wizarding Event next month. Phew - got us in and it closed at capacity a few hours later! Then home to do the prize fund lists (which I kept putting off!), a quick shower and off to bowling. Rushed morning means I did not bowl well and the average went down! Oh well, higher handicap right? Stopped in at Sams to fill up with gas (going through lots more with kids in 2 schools!) and picked up a roaster chicken for dinner. Yup - you guessed it we were running again tonight. After picking up Emily - putting away stuff and looking at papers I got to go get the boy (20 minutes away). Got home to see his papers and then eat quick before everyone jumped in the car to head back to Aidan's school for open house! We went through his whole day.... in 10 minute increments with 4 minute walking. It is a big campus for a middle school! I got my steps in as I missed my walk this morning with errands! Hey - I got 10,000 steps (T+W) and within 500 steps of it (M+TH)! That morning walk after dropping Emily to school and before work actually happened this week!

-Friday - back to work today. Did keep the boy home from school - he was off today and a day of rest hopefully will help. I have cooking club tonight - Emily needs to clean a guinea pig cage after reading her book for 30 minutes (She LOVES her language arts teacher this year. She is actually reading by herself every day!) I found out Em's open house was rescheduled..... for when I am gone to VT! Figures. I had to reschedule her IEP as it fell on that week too. Sigh, I have yet to meet her teachers as Dad took her to the meet the teacher before school started and now gets to take them to her open house. The good news.... her speech has improved that we will probably be putting her in 'check' status so she won't get pulled back to back days from science this year. Aidan's IEP check for gifted is Monday. Dad gets to attend both this year and see what I have been doing the last 6-7 years with them!

-Saturday - You would think it would be a day of rest right? Not! Emily is doing community service with her KCL (Kindness, Community, Leadership) club at school. I think they are reading to animals? I'll drop her in the morning for 1.5 hours. The boy has a birthday party to go to with a friend from his school last year from 2-8. Depending on the weather and how Em feels at pick up mid morning - I might drop her to the barn to help Liz out with horse care for a couple of hours..... we will see. Me - I'll be in the sewing room playing with fabric in between running kids here and there!

Hope you are not too tired if you read this far. It was a very long week!

I'm feeling accomplished!

The kids were playing with scraps in the sewing room yesterday.

I set up an extra cutting mat on my office desk to cut out some borders for the cat and mice quilt (silly quilt wanted to be bigger so I made it happy!). I cut out some white - sewed the bigger strips together to do the sides and cut some for the top and bottom. Attached the top..... and spent a while looking for the other one! Did not find it.... decided to go with hubby to take the kids to Grandma's for an overnight around 5PM.... they wanted to spend the night with Scruffy's 1st night at her furever home! She adopted Scruffy officially on Saturday morning.

We did a meet and greet last week with her and Grandma so she could see how she was with the kids. A very sweet 1 year old terrier mix! You can see she is so happy with the kids and them with her. Grandma was a wee bit offended when they mentioned they usually don't put puppies with older folks.... and asked who would take her if something happened to her.  She immediately said my son and his family! =) We got approved from the meet and greet visit too I guess!

Today - I had a quick run to the girl scout store to get the proper number of badges - since they finally did their horseback riding yesterday as a troop. We had some bridge up since I had planned to do it.... I have 6 juniors and 5 brownies now. The girls got a great education and got to ride a horse, take care of it before and after and gave each one a bath and then put it out into the pasture. I loved getting compliments from Liz on the girls being respectful of the horses and well behaved. Makes me so proud of them! I also grabbed snack badges which we are doing tomorrow and letter boxing and geocaching as those are the next badges we will be working on. We tend to keep busy!

After a quick lunch it was sewing time! I turned on my machine and guess what I found draped over the edge of the sewing machine? Yup - that missing border for the top! It was white and blended right in! A little cutting and sewing and pressing and soon I had this cute top 61x72. This is the next hand quilting project.

Since I was on a roll, I found the photo I had taken of the blocks Aidan laid out for the 1857 quilt. I managed to get them sewn into a top as well today! This one is 72 inches square. It might need a dark purple border.... but maybe a dark purple binding will be sufficient. Not sure if this will be hand or machine quilted. It was all hand applique.

Time to settle in for a little relaxing knitting or crochet tonight I think. I'll either be finishing a dish cloth or making a scrubby. I have not managed to get to the store to pick up new knitting bamboo needles so I pulled these little ones out. I guess it will be a smaller dish cloth  since I don't think I can get 50 stitches on there... I think I am a little over 30 stitches now.

Linking up with the slow stitchers this Sunday and the Rainbow Scrap Challenge where purple is the color of the month.

Thursday Umbrella.....

Might be needed as a parasol. Boy is it hot out! Mid 90's for temp with feels like even hotter now that the sun has returned from behind all the clouds. Mom - this was from the fabric of pansy you got for me!

I stitched this at bowling today, along with
finishing up these 4 patches into a 16 patch block.

Edited: Linking up to the RSC on Saturday. I cut out some purple and white from strips to make two of these 16 patches in purples. I used the 2 inch strips. All prepped for car lines next week!

Purple....

I'm going to pull out the blocks for the 1857 Album quilt along that I did a few years ago over at SentimentalStitches.  It was free at the time each month over the span of 18 months. I did 36 of the blocks. It was a lot of applique. I did mine in a purple colorway of 2 purples and a green on a cream background. I had the border fleur de lis on a darker cream to frame it. I see a dark purple binding on this one eventually. This month, I hope to sew this one into a top. At least I'll be working on some purple with the RSC!

I had Aidan lay out the blocks for me. He did a pretty good job of balancing the colors. He was not sure what to do with this crest block... he said he turned it each way and decided to put the 'cow' face up! COW! Too funny.

I did a short walk with Emily this morning and we saw this flock of turkeys. We waited for them to cross the road in front of us then they were about 6-8 feet from us here on the lawn.

I took a break from work this morning to get some water and came back to this. Now how am I to sit in my chair with Ollie laying on it? Normally I sit and he lays between me and the back of the chair. Silly boy. Peanut usually lays down in his black bed.... or when he wants attention right in front of my laptop which he is blocking. Occasionally he sits on my lap and pretends to type on the keyboard. Silly boys.

We have seen a band or two of rain come through. Not bad. We played a new to me game yesterday and again today. It uses logic and strategy. I love it! It is called QWIXX. Aidan gets a little upset after a game or two when things don't go his way..... we are working on it. Emily just kicked both our butts this last game with a high score of 80! I got my 4th penalty to end the game. My strategy didn't work out this time but most of us had fun!

Em is in the pool with Dad supervision. Think I'll lay down and see if the headache goes away before I have to think about dinner. 

A finish!

I actually got a finish in August! Woo Hoo!The baskets got their binding finished last night after some pool time with the kids. Now to decide if it will hang in my office or my sewing area.

I'll be prepping the cat and mouse quilt today.... although I will need to do a 'test' and see if it might need a border or two to make it a wee bit snugglier. (is that a word?) I think it needs a little white border then a teal on the outside - maybe 4.5 inches or so. I have a feeling this one is going to get taken into a bedroom and I won't be seeing it for my use! 

Speaking of my use. I have to laugh. I crocheted a blue afghan years ago when I first met Greg back in 2005. It was called Michi's afghan....and 2 weeks ago it lived in Aidan's room. Then Emily claimed it for a while in hers, and yesterday it was in the den and Greg was snuggling up under it for an afternoon nap! We were discussing it in the pool. Seems Aidan wants a green and cream afghan - like the ones up in Vermont on the end of his bed  Mom! Yes, I have your pattern still. I saw it not too long ago - hand written by you. That one is a ripple one with I think 7 long rows that you hand 'stitch' together in alternating colors. I made a few of them over 20 years ago in pink and grey, orange and cream (that one Mom had started probably in the 70's! and I finished it), raspberry and cream. I guess I liked pink back then! Emily requested one like the Michi's afghan in a lighter blue than the navy that one is.  I guess I have request lists!

Linking up with the other slow stitchers today.

Emily had her riding lessons yesterday at the new facility. This one is less than 10 minutes from our house and is back to a covered arena. Love that!

My horse whisperer. Seems Prince did not want to get collected for his lesson but the 2 girls were able to catch him, put the halter on and lead him in from the far field by themselves.

Leading Prince into the arena for riding.

Well, another day and another shift for Hurricane Dorian. Today was the first day Greg appeared a little concerned.  A Cat 5 will do that I guess! He lived in Florida during the 90's and was stationed at Patrick when Andrew was going through. He said this one is reminding him of that one and once they get that big they kinda make their own weather pattern. We are prepped and ready..... well, we didn't do the yard pick up yesterday as it was heading away to the east but will do a quick bit today and maybe pop the boards over my bedroom windows tomorrow. Just to be safe. I just called them on their way to Grandma's and let them know Tuesday is a day off from school - just in precaution if they need to make the schools into shelters for those in low lying areas or mobile homes with the possible winds if it tracks more our way. Can you guess the reaction? Lots of cheering and clapping! The kids are looking forward to a game day and puzzle day with Mom and Dad Tuesday!