Wednesday....

It has been an interesting day. The usual yelling start to get the kids moving and out the door to school. One more day before vacation so tomorrow should be easy to get them ready and off to school. (Aidan has a field trip to see Cinderella and Emily has an Easter Egg hunt).  It was pretty foggy this morning, so I tried to FMQ the border again on Celtic Solstice. Three needle breaks and other thread breaks and I gave up again (after a LOT of muttering). I have one side done and one or two flowers on the second side. I think it will get ALL picked out and I'll try something different. I seem to be able to only FMQ with Masterpiece thread and I'm trying to use a Coats and Clark cotton that I loved the colors on since they pick up the yellow, orange and lime greens in the quilt. I tried cleaning the machine, rethreading and obviously changing the needles (5 of them total today!).

I took my walk this morning after that and grabbed my shower. A few loads of laundry have been done as well as going through the kids clothes and pulling those they have outgrown. Those will head to Grandma's to bring to her local woman's shelter this weekend. The dishwasher was put through and then..... I started feeling congested and blah. I have Aidan's field trip tomorrow at school so I decided to catch up on a few of my recorded shows (NCIS LA, and NCIS from last week) and pulled out my crochet mystery. They released clues 6+7 last week...... but I am back on clue #4. I now have 8 of twenty completed. I had three done when I started working on these this morning. I think I have the pattern down on this one so it will go much faster now without having to keep referring to the directions. I still need to stitch in those tails as well.

Em just cleared out her room to vacuum in there, so I should vacuum the rest of the house after she is done. I'd also like to pot the climbing flowers my MIL picked up for me a couple of weeks ago. Other than that... I'm taking it easy and planning to crochet a few more of these step 4 blocks. Lets hope the congestion does not move to the sore throat the other Mom's have been getting (and the kids of course with strep). It sounds like a week long thing and we start vacation on Friday.

Aidan's tops of his ears are red today and his cheeks are getting a little red....that is never a good sign with him as it means he is coming down with it too.  =(. Maybe we'll all just rest this afternoon instead ? Off to find my crochet hook.

Slow Stitching Sunday.....

Kathy reminds us to slow down once a week and relax with our stitching. It will be a busy day at work and I am already looking forward to some slow stitching later this evening. I never know what I will be in the mood for which is why I have sooooooo many projects in process =).

I'd really like to get a little crochet work in since I am a bit behind on my crochet mystery. No stress allowed as all my video's and instructions are saved off! I am working on clue 4 and clue 6 will be released on Tuesday. Thank goodness clue #5 is a really easy one.

I also have my appliqué midget blocks that I could work on - I have a few prepped in their baggies and I'd like to have one ready for Tuesday's post. I have been hand stitching some yellow around the one's I have completed already.

Then... there is hand quilting on hugs and kisses which is crying in the corner because it has not been worked on in over a week. Poor thing.

What project will you be relaxing with today? Head on over to Kathy's Quilts and see what other slow stitching is going on in blogland today.

Monday, Monday....

I seem to falling a little behind on the crochet mystery but I did finish step 3. (Ignore those ends I need to weave in!) Now to start step 4 from Tuesday's release before step 5 comes out tomorrow.

A busy morning on tap - running a few errands (how did the cats run out of their special cat food this weekend?) and planting the yellow and purple flowers I got yesterday out in the front bed.  I got the herbs all planted and some seedlings started in the pots out front. Still need to finish playing in the rest of the garden with the kids this afternoon. First.... off for my walk and then a shower. Hmmmm, maybe I'll have some time to sew later this morning since lunch is bubbling away in the crock pot - lentil soup, yum. Scouts tonight for the kids and Mom and Dad arrive back this afternoon - maybe I should clean up the house a little bit too =)

We did a cookie booth last night at Walmart and as we were picking up the firemen showed up wanting some cookies. We were out of the kinds they wanted but they let the girls check out the truck! Emily got to talk on the radio to the home base while she was in there. Miss fire and rescue loved it! (She has fire trucks and police cars that she plays with at home doing lots of fire and rescue jobs around the house - it is amazing what trouble some of her stuffed animals get into that she has to rescue them from!) A big thank you to Station 21.

Tiny Tuesday.....

I was working on my appliqué last night at girl scouts with Emily and finished it off this morning.  The pattern shows some embroidery stitch work in the brown of some daisy knots and in the leaves to add a stem line and a little line outside the brown center. Those might get added at some point. As I was sorting through my fabrics I found a bunch of rainbow solids in mostly 30's colors. I need about 2 yards to border all these little squares so I am deciding if I will use multiple colors, just a single one of yellow which I have a lot of or alternate yellow and blues...... Maybe yellow surround and then sashing of a blue to look like a window pane?  Lots of time to decide but I would like to start sashing these as I finish the blocks to make it that much easier to finish it later.

I also have most of clue #3 done for the crochet mystery. Clue three had two parts. I did part A in cream this weekend and part B is going to be the dark country blue. I only have a couple done but they go pretty fast as they are mostly chain stitches. I should have all 20 of them done later today or tomorrow just in time to start clue #4 which will be released mid morning today.

Looks like the fog has burnt off so time to go for my walk this morning.

Slow stitching Sunday

Today will be a long day of settling into new rooms. That includes settling into my new sewing area! We need to do some moving of things in the shed to get to the slat boards that will be put up on my back wall. That should make shelving and hooks easy to put up and rearrange as I want.

I finished the last step of my crochet along last night.

I also added the last set of squares to my trip around the world block in pink.

That leaves me with  some hand appliqué  - back basting  - on my Midget blocks this evening. Nice and relaxing after a long day.

Head on over and see what others are working on today for Slow Sunday Stitching.

Clue #2 of the crochet mystery.

Ok, I looked at part of the video yesterday but decided I had to try one of these before my walk this morning (and hopefully it gets into the higher 40's before I head out to walk!). Without the video tutorial I would have been hopelessly lost! With the video - it was actually pretty easy. I need to review the stitches and made sure I am doing my single crochet and half double crochet correctly but I learned how to do a single front post crochet.... which I know I have seen in some patterns that I have been wanting to try. I was thinking I would use the cream all of yesterday but this morning I laid the yarns out over the first clue and the light blue got grabbed for this clue.

My first X. 19 more to go!

It was a lovely relaxing day yesterday watching a few episodes of Downtown Abbey and finishing the last side of binding on my 2014 RSC Sampler and the Goodnight Irene quilt. They both need a spin in the washer and dryer and then maybe some pictures of the finished quilts will appear later this week. I'm off to walk and then clean in Emily's old room.... and maybe my sewing table might be put up in there so I can sew a bit today! Being in limbo with rooms is not fun. Having the area cleaned will let Greg move in there on Saturday... the the kids stuff goes into his old space and then..... I get to  figure out my space. I think someone will be doing some shelf building for me this weekend so I am all set to put things away starting on Monday. I can't wait.

Stay warm wherever you are.

Tiny Tuesday....

I did not make my appliqué block this week so I'll show my 20 granny squares for clue one of the mystery crochet along.

I finished the last two and all the tails this morning in time for clue #2 to come out here. The video to the next clue is here. It looks like we add an X on top of this using one of the contrast yarns. Time to make some decisions.....

I should be back to the normal Tiny Tuesday blocks next week and I'll make the missed one up sometime this year.

Now to try and organize my crafting and sewing things a bit so I'll be all set to set up my new area by the end of next week after we swap a few more rooms around. It seems someone wants Emily's old room for his office so a little more time before I am all settled in. Time to get out the pencil and paper and figure out some storage space.

Monday..... All ready for the crochet mystery to begin!

I got this package in the mail on Friday. I completely forgot about it. I had ordered some yarn for the crochet mystery last week and it arrived in plenty of time.

I did manage to find two dark country blue yarns at Joann's last weekend so now the decisions.

Country blue, dark country blue, light country blue and grey 

or

Country blue, light country blue, cream and grey

or
country blue, dark country blue, light country blue and cream

Hmmmmm. I think we'll see what the first clue is on Tuesday and then decide. Are you joining in?

This is the cat cake I made for Aidan yesterday. Vanilla cake with vanilla frosting to look like our Sophie. I had to raid the kids Halloween candy to get the twizlers for the coller and whiskers. M&M's for the eyes and red sugar sprinkles for the ears.

Mom, I left the package of kids pictures in the truck on Saturday so I'll pop them in the mail this afternoon once Greg gets home from work. Scouts tonight. Heading to Disney Wednesday after the kids early release.

Oh boo, something new....

I was poking around blog land and noticed that Amy is going to do a crochet mystery at thecrochetcrowd.com. I checked out the link...... thought about it and then checked it out a few more times over the last few days. Then..... I signed up for it! Yikes, what am I thinking? I see a trip to Walmart or Joanns in my future to pick out some simply soft caron yarn. This crochet or knit along starts on February 10 and will have instructions and video's of the pattern parts posted each Tuesday for 10 weeks. Now do I go with their posted color combinations or do I try my own? I need to get back in there and find the color combo page and have it with me when I go to the store.   It really will be a mystery!