Slow Sunday in November.

 As November is a new month, I'm going to be stitching one of these hexagons each day! I finished prepping these yesterday, so they are easy to grab at lunch and get one stitched up. These will be grouped into fours and added to my QAYG hexagon quilt from a few years ago that insists on being bigger. I have 2 additional rows already stitched and need 2 more to make it the 88x88 that it wants to be. Each row needs 12 sets of 4, so this will be a long term project over the next couple of months. The blues were at the top of the scrap bins, as you can tell from the pull of fabrics. 

I have not made progress on adding the last 8 circles onto the String of Beads but hope to get it completed this week. 

Linking up with the Slow Sunday Stitchers.

Marching season is officially over with the long practices. They go down to just a couple hours after school on Fridays until the 2 December parades are done. They got an overall Exceptional rating - one step down from Superior they got the last two years. The guard and visual did get Superior ratings. The music was not as spot on as their Thursday performance at the football game. It was a great show, and they should be very proud of all their hard work this season. Would you believe I didn't even take a photo? It was a long ride to get to the venue - Greg and I headed 45 minutes to pick up Grandma and then continued 40 minutes further to the venue. Same route back, and around 8, we decided to do dinner out with Grandma before returning her home and chatting for a bit. It was nice to have adult chats without the kids! Greg and I got home just before 11 and Emily rolled in about 11:15. Aidan put the outside light on for us, as he stayed home and finished applying to colleges, which were due by midnight last night for the early applications. Fingers crossed he gets what he wants in January!

Winter Guard try outs are this week. Emily will do that at the first one, and then she heads off on the Junior class Civil Rights trip for 5 days to Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia. 

Looks like I should have lots of time to 'play' this week, if only I would put down my phone and stop scrolling and playing games!

The county Pre MPA from October 21,2025.

This is all the bands. I think we are about halfway through, Belleview HS.

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.
 

Sunday

Sunday and a migraine. Sigh. I went back to bed after about 30 minutes and slept until after noon. A bit better. No, I am stubborn and have not taken the meds for it. I will though, as I'd like it gone and I normally have multiple days once I get one. Mine tends to be behind the right eye, but thankfully light and sound don't bother me too much. 

I did get a new to me car yesterday! We got it through Carvana and traded in the 2016 Kia. I now have a 2018 Honda CRV EX-L. It's got about 45K miles on it and drives well. I'm happy to be back in a CRV. They delivered it to our door and everything!

 Aidan is driving my 2014 Crv. Emily has Greg's 2013 Tacoma truck. It got stripped down and painted over the summer and looks like a brand new vehicle for her. She has been driving it to horses on Saturdays and will be driving to school this week for marching band practice. They are doing one week instead of 2 this year, so it is a long day for them. 8-6. The teacher is pregnant and due the end of November, so she is very organized this year! 

I did a little hand stitching in between things yesterday. I just need to sew the rows together on the shoo fly block. Then move onto the curvy parts of the flowering snowball. I had just a wee bit of thread left, so added that yellow square with it yesterday. I think it is around a one inch square, so just a few stitches and it was attached. This is my current hand piecing project. 

I'll also work on crocheting the grey around the last 6 granny blocks this week before I figure out how to assemble the box of them into an afghan. 

I'd also like to get these last two teal blocks finished this month. I have 14 of the 16 string of beads blocks completed.  These are needle turned applique. They need a press, as the travel bag got them a bit wrinkled. I drew on the peel placement with pencil. My two teal colors and the outer dark green peels are marked and ready to go.

 This is the first 12 of them. The orange ones did not make it into that photo, but they are completed.

Plenty to keep me busy and out of trouble this week! Linking up with Kathy and the other slow Sunday Stitchers. 

Seeing the results of Kathy's unpicking on that pretty bird cross stitch, I might have to revisit the January cross stitch design that has been at a standstill for too many years due to a counting mistake. It might be time to figure out where I went wrong and unpick so I can get that one moving along again. 

25 hours without internet

 We also live in a dead area for our cell phones..... we tend to use the in house wifi for our phones.

Everyone is alive.... although someone didn't make a peach cobbler as he was unable to google recipes. I did point him toward the bookcase of cookbooks. He did find one for a cobbler ... and said 'Did you know you have a Chinese cookbook? Yup, I do!. Does Emily know? Not sure'. He took it to her, since that is her wheelhouse for making things.

We had no phone (through the wifi for the land line one) and no tv as we do streaming. I occasionally had one bar on my cell phone.  It was probably a good thing we could not watch the hockey game Monday night.... as we are both rooting for the Oilers and they lost big time to the Florida Panthers (we are lightning fans!). 

I work from home, and log in through my work's VPN. No internet means not able to work. Arrrgghh. 

I did drop a load off to Goodwill and got it out of my house around noon yesterday. I might have finished my audiobook and needed to get to an area I could download the next one .... hehehe. I also did a check on our outage. Yup, was still out with expected 6:30PM resolved time. It came back a little earlier - with no notification from them. Greg just happened to check and it reset and came back around 4:40PM. We lost it around 3:30 PM the previous day. So much for signing up for a text notification of it coming up. 

I really did not get much done as I had no motivation. I did give the dog a good walk before it got hot (before 8AM) and chatted with a couple of neighbors. One also worked from home but had Verizon cell service. We have TMobile. The other has a different provider than Centurylink for internet so she was fine. They are putting in fiber across the road so I'm sure they cut a line somewhere. 

I did mark stitching lines on the back of one of the shoo fly blocks and one of the flowering snowball blocks. I started on the flowering snowball.

And got these 3 parts together. I need another one like this and then the two lighter parts with a yellow square in the middle.

I also got the two orange sting of beads blocks done for the month. I got the darker orange one with green peels done yesterday.

Back to work today. Greg took the kids to the bank to get their own checking accounts and a card attached to it. We will still be paying this, but it will establish their credit ratings and we can separate out their use of the 'card' they each have in their name for paying for gas and things while they are out and about. Greg had it lumped in with his and was questioning things and I had to explain which kid was where for each of the dates listed. He was questioning Jacksonville Food Trucks. I explained, the end of April was Skills USA for Aidan and they did not cover food, we did. They covered the hotel and getting them up there and back. We pay for gas and food for them. Some extras we discuss and pay, some things they pay out of their monies. Like Aidan and books he bought while at Skills USA. They are pretty responsible with their money. 

Aidan is off for his Senior formal photo for the yearbook. They have men in tuxes and ladies in a black v shape by their neck. Very different from what mine were, but $25 and done. We will do outside ones ourselves for him at his request.

I'd better finish this now as it is the end of lunchtime and time to get back to work. 

RSC blocks

 I got both of my green string of beads blocks completed this month. I'm all up to date! I have 4 more blocks to make, 2 in orange and 2 in aqua/teals.  It will be set 4x4.

I tried to get a better picture in the liing room, but someone saw quilt blocks and decided he needed to pose. He is now snoozing across the blocks, holding them down for me. 

Bear has his teddy bear with him.

Is this a good pose Mom? 

Linking up on Saturday with Angela and the RSC.

Emily had her awards on Tuesday. Aidan's are next Tuesday. They are still each having extra reviews and exams through next week. Emily's got riding on Saturday and her music program banquet and awards is on Saturday. A pot luck and then 2 hours of awards for marching band, symphonic, chorus, Big Band Jazz, and Winter Guard Programs. 

End of school busy!

I'm watching The Quilter on Netflix. Impressive!

Thank goodness it is Saturday!

 What a week! Crazy at work, learning new things with a deadline looming is always fun. I have not been doing much of anything, but I did get this one light green string of beads block completed. It is a rainy day today, so I hope to spend time doing something in the sewing room. Linking up with the RSC in green.

Some normal day sights this week. The pink mimosa tree is in full bloom on the side yard. It is a very fluffy flower with pink.

On our walk this morning (Bear and I) we saw one Momma turkey with her 3 littles. There is another one with 8 or 9 littles as well.

Another wild turkey we saw this morning.

I had my phone with me today and the birds were chirping away. There is a storm coming in this afternoon and it is very overcast so maybe they are busy enjoying the rain free weather? According to my Merlin app (thank you to whomever mentioned it!) I was hearing Tufted titmouse, Carolina Wren, yellow throated vireo, common ground dove and one I have not seen was a northern parula. 

This one was holding me down last night. Yes, my leg is under the quilt, and he is using it as a pillow.

I was working on figuring a backing for the Arkansas Traveller quilt on Thursday. I was piecing all the extra blocks and parts before I had to stop and do a run to Lady Lake. I think I will just use one of the plain cotton panel sheets I have in a box so I can get it done this weekend without too much thinking. I used that on the back of the green quilt above, and it is oh so soft and cuddly. No thinking and I can maybe get a quilt finish this year!

In other news....

We met with an elder care lawyer on Wednesday then headed over to see Tom, my FIL. He was laying flat in bed and snoozing. We did the paperwork finally for admitting, since the admitting person kept catching him asleep and did not want to wake him. He was pretty discouraged and said he could barely stand and was not walking. He was one week out from hip surgery from the break the Sunday befor that. I was hoping to have all Thursday to play in my sewing room. Alas, we needed to head over to do some of his banking and check the house. We also brought more clothing for him that is easier to get in and out of with his hip. He was a different person on Thursday. Sleeping, but sitting up in the recliner. He had been to the rehab area and done some shuffle walking - which was great news! He has come to terms with he will be there for a while to rehab and get his strength back rather than the few days he was hoping. I believe he has 100 days available for rehab, and he has awesome insurance so does not pay a dime. I was listening to my audio book last night when I got a call from a local number I did not recognize. I answered it and it was from his Rehab facility. Hubby did not answer his cell, so I'm glad we gave them mine as well. Seems he has a blood clot in his leg. They did an ultrasound and gave the blood thinner shot and will keep an eye on it. At least he notified them his foot felt weird, and they addressed it immediately. I'm sure there will be a trip over today to check in on him again. 

I still had the non dairy coconut yogurt from Emily's meal so tried it in the yogurt scone recipe (on the recipe page). I added some frozen blueberries on top. She will be so happy she can eat them without a lactaid pill!

A yard day.

 I snapped a few photos' Saturday as I was cutting back shrubs and weeding. A few of my flowers and a pretty butterfly that was feasting on the sweet smelling tea olives.

Blue Plumbago

Mexican petunia

tea olive bushes (taller than my car!) They form a hedge around the stone parking area.

I hand stitched these two hexagons into sets of 4, so they are all ready to be stitched into a row to be added to the original quilt.... eventually. I have the parts for 2 columns to be added, but I think I might want 4. We will see. Each column needs 48 hexagons.

I started on the gold string of beads block last night. Note to self, prep this on the cutting mat, not my recliner arm. I might need to check to make sure they are placed in the correct spot before I add the other six peels. 

the blocks so far.

I did some emergency surgeries last night. Bear loves to destuff his animals. Poor lambie. 

Lambie, bear and the reindeer got a little machine stitching and then hand stitching to close up a lot of the holes caused by the destuffing process. As you can see - Mr Moose is scheduled for surgery later today. I have a bucket of 'stuffing' to put back in him as I close up those holes. We will see how long before I have nightly crime scenes of stuffed animals all over my living room floor!

Aidan is heading to Jacksonville this week for a Skills USA competition. Emily will get to drive herself to and from school this week until he returns late Thursday. She has various AICE testing preps after school, so it works out well. As her brother is gone, I asked her for meal ideas. She gave me 3 vegetarian ones that we will make this week. 

I've got a Sams run today, then hope to play in the sewing room. I will be stitching peels and/or hexagons later this evening as I relax before the new week starts.

Linking up with Kathy and the other Slow Sunday Stitchers.

RSC in red

I finally got some red sewing in this month! 

I added 6 BITA blocks. I just need 5 more next month and then I can start assembling my rainbow of blocks.

I added the second red string of beads block this month, along with two pinks, two blues and a yellow. I have another gold yellow prepped that I'll start working on later this evening. These are hand applique. I need to add some orange, teal and maybe bright green? White would not show on the background. I plan 16 blocks for these.

This hawk was on the fence when I got home from school with Emily today. Aidan was late with some AICE testing prep after school. Emily has some AICE prep for 2 classes tomorrow morning at school. 

When I messed up making the BITA blocks back in January, I ended up with this 'Alternate' block. I really need to come up with a name for them. I added 8 in red this month.

One 16 patch block in red. I realize I need to make one more of these. I have a couple of parts made and will sew a few more as I am making the Table Scrap Challenge. I hope to link up with that Saturday afternoon.

Linking up Saturday with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

Mid week

 I started the light pink block on Wednesday.  These middles will have a round over it, I have not decided the colors.  Might be all yellow or each blocks color. I'll decide when they are all done.

I had a girl pick up at school, so I grabbed the bag. I added a grey round to a granny square. I have had finishing ideas running through my head on these. We will see what happens! 

A visit to my FIL today after a dog walk. I'm sure he will need a grocery shop. He is still very weak, so we will see. I've been calling him each morning, since greg won't, and his meal delivery was not starting until today. 

I do hope to play with red more. I've got alternate blocks to make and a table scrap challenge.  I had an idea for it, then mentioned the prompt of red and rain to Emily last night.  She had an interesting idea. We will see which wins!

I had bought a ham last week ($1.98 a pound) but since we went out Sunday I cooked part of it on Monday night with the Boars Head brown sugar sauce on it. I got a 5 pounder and cut it into chunks and cooked about a pound of it and seal a mealed chunks for the fridge. I did save off the bone part and cut parts to add to salads for a couple of days. I still had that and had pinto beans in a can of dry beans. I looked up recipes for the instapot and made this one yesterday. Emily had something else, but Aidan was game to try it. His response, a little less salt (I added some at the end and should not have) and some savory herbs next time. I made cornbread to go with it. 

I get a whole day Saturday to myself! I plan to get the Arkansas Traveller quilt pinned and quilted this weekend.  Emily has test review at school and will drive herself! Aidan has skills usa next week, so will drive to school Monday, hand keys to Emily and return Thursday evening after a competition in Jacksonville. Emily gets to drive herself to school and back! Her comment, darn, I need to get up 5 minutes earlier to eat breakfast. I guess she eats in the car while Aidan drives. It is quite early - they leave for school at 6:55.

Someone is ready for a walk before it gets too hot. 

Good morning

 

I started stitching the light blue beads block yesterday. I need to prep more backgrounds for the rest of the blocks. I'm hoping Angela calls for purple next month so I can get all caught up with the light blue, pink and yellow.

I'm hoping for sewing time this week to  make my red BITA blocks and the 8 alternate blocks. I also need 16 patches and some chickens. The table scrap challenge is due this week as well....

Red and rain. Now that should be an interesting link up! 

Easter weekend

 I have yet to go sew any red with my machine, but I did get some hand work RSC in this week. I added pink and blue string beads blocks this week and finished up the second red one last weekend. I plan on making 16 of these.

After going with Emily to horses and watching F1 qualifying with Aidan, I took a little 'me' time. I went for a haircut and then a nice relaxing pedicure. I also picked up an Easter Lily for my MIL tomorrow while I was out. I ordered flowers to be delivered to my Mom and Dad today as well. 

My FIL was released from rehab yesterday and is settled in at home. Let's just say it has been a stressful week and I'm glad to be on the other end of it. I think most of the kids extra activities are over for the year as they roll into testing time - AICE and Florida state. The AICE ones are for college credit. 

Tomorrow we are heading to my MIL's house and will go out for Easter lunch and then will play some games at her house. Nice and relaxing.

Audiobooks - I finished 'The Twisted Women's Book Club' by various authors through my Audible. I just started 'The Women' by Kristin Hannah on my Libby app. Netflix - I watched The Residence. It was just the right mix of mystery/comedy and drama for me this week. 

Linking up Saturday with the RSC and Sunday with Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitchers. 

Weekend

After a very busy week, the weekend was nearly as busy! I need a vacation.

The newly licensed girl was not up for her first solo drive to be across town through traffic to horses. So, I got to ride along with her and got to see the horses and baby mini goats. The girls did not even get onto the horses until 11:30 for their 11 AM lesson. They were enjoying goat time. Since she did have a lesson at noon, she let the girls go over to the other pasture areas and hang out on their horses. Kyra's Grandpa calls this their 'solve all the worlds problem time.... or teenage girl time!'. They go to different schools and Kyra is a year ahead of Emily. These girls have been riding together for a few years now.

Once we got home, Grandma drove up as she wanted a Pig and Cattle restaurant meal and it is just down the road from us! We had a nice late lunch. She had not heard of a bunch of the USA/Florida bills being brought to the house/senate floors that will remove rights and various programs. Guess who owns all the media outlets now - the $$ so they choose what to report on! Sigh. I try to educate myself with news outlets from across the globe to stay informed.

After a little resting, this one insisted on a walk and since it was a beautiful day in the mid 70's I was able to do that late afternoon. If it is 80 F + the pavement is too hot for his paws. I have melted many a sneaker bottom walking on the roads in Florida.  See Bears smile! He does love his walks. He is waiting for one right now, in fact.

I have about 1.25 peels left to stitch down on this and it should be completed in the F1 race today at 11AM. I would have completed it last night, but Bear decided I had stitched enough and he needed Mom lap time and snuggles.

This is a block I saw back in the 1990's that I loved. It was done in purple and green. It was on my 'someday' list when my skills got there. I was reminded of it in this book I got years ago that I flip through every once in a while for inspiration. The block is called String of Beads, which is the name I remember it being called way back when. I decided to do mine in a rainbow of colors with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge (RSC). Red is this months color.

Linking up with the RSC and Slow Sunday Stitchers.