Sunday stitching...

The kids are heading to Grandma's for the day. I hear I get to add fencing to some panels for the chicken coop and finish filling in the dirt underneath. I see some slow stitching with a movie later today!

The middle of the umbrella quilt is finished so it is time to mark and stitch the setting triangles. Who knows, maybe a binding will get made and attached this week as well? This was my freehand attempt. I'll get the ruler out to mark the others.

Linking up with Kathy and the other Slow Stitchers.

I keep telling myself I need to actually finish a few things before starting something new..... like a hand pieced flowering snowball quilt from scraps or finally trying a block I drafted years ago from scraps..... something new might pop up next week, we will see.

Flowering Snowball.

drafted block

RSC in dark blue

I sewed the stars and nines this week. I have the sweet confetti blocks all cut I just need to go in and sew them up. I should have those for next Saturday. I do love playing with dark blues!

The last snowflake for Hoarfrost is in process of applique. Once this one is done I can trim it and piece the top part up to the borders. I have some white on white fabrics in stock now so I plan to play with that and blue for the icy border later today. The morning will be spent trimming the hedges with Aidan and doing some weeding before it gets too hot while the others are working in the back on the chicken coop. 

Linking up with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. 

****Added this next part. Keep in mind I am pretty much self taught on this and from what I have learned from books and video's. This is how I decided to do my diamonds in the snowflake.... cause I am way too lazy to actually 'prep' it first! I did make a slice with scissors in that diamond before pinning to the background. When I got to the point of stitching them I used my little scissors to snip right up to the drawn line on the corners. Snowflakes are not perfect after all!

Then I tuck the needle in at one corner and swish the fabric for that side under up to the drawn line and a little more if needed. Hard to see but my thumb is holding the end of the needle that is turning it under.

I stitch that side down and repeat for all the sides. I have 2 of the diamonds done - 4 to go.

A day off...

So what did I do? Good question! Not as much as I wanted but that is always the case I think.

I slept in - oops! That walk at 8:15AM is a lot hotter than the one at 7:15AM! After breakfast and my Noom tasks and some surfing.... It was time to 'sew' the fencing together under the coop area. We used 3 parts of the fence for under it so nothing digs up and I used the wire that kept the fence bound in wrapping to 'stitch' them together. Can't have something digging under and getting those chickens! Much twisting and turning explained why I had trouble moving last night! Breaks in between were necessary with lots of vitamin water to replenish. Those breaks might have involved some hand quilting time. Emily cleaned the chicken cage so I was on chicken watching duty as we put them in the old guinea pig play area out on the grass. A shower felt so good after all that! 

Then lunch and I fed the sourdough starter which had been neglected a bit in the fridge. Some searching for what to make with that leftover starter.... I had about a cup and a half to play with. I found a cracker recipe and the soft pretzel recipe I have made a couple of times. I asked Greg..... Pretzels please! Pretzels it was.... and would you believe I had enough to try the crackers too? I started the pretzel dough and got that rising for an hour while I found the ground wheat and made the cracker dough and put that in the fridge. I found a new audio book somewhere in all this as I finished my last book by Susan Wiggs last night. It was a good one but I can't remember the name and have already returned it. I found the sewing machine and started sewing some of the parts I had cut yesterday for the stars and nines. .... Then the timer went off and it was back to pretzel making! I got them shaped - 4 round pretzel shapes and 7 pretzel rods were the new shape for us. This is a wee bit time consuming but not too bad. You have to bring water to an almost boil and add baking soda then 'cook' the pretzels for about 45 seconds on each side - place onto their baking pans, add the salt or topping and then bake them for about 18-20 minutes. I had my one pretzel with some mustard. I do believe by 9PM all the others were gone! I guess the kids and Greg really liked them.

At that point it was getting closer to dinner but I wanted to bake off the crackers so got those set and baking. Those came out pretty good - I added a Tbsp of my pampered chef rosemary mix to the batter. 

We had to get the top of the 'playhouse' up onto the chicken coop frame as we are repurposing that as the hen house. With Greg's back we were not 100% sure how that would work. I was thinking a pulley system but he was thinking something different. He leaned 3 boards up onto the platform and got the house up against it. The 4 of us pushed the house onto the boards and up and it slid right onto the top! It took less than 2 minutes and no one's back was hurt! Greg and Aidan turned it around so the 'correct' side was facing the house - the run side was set and the back side for cleaning was towards the woods. They can fill in the under part with the dirt today and then building the fencing and door for the coop can begin as well as fixing up the house. Progress.

Since everyone had filled up on pretzels... dinner changed to chicken wings, sweet potato fries and I had gotten some swiss chard and added that to my plate. A game of monopoly and then a little walk with Aidan before the thunder sent us home. The movie The Martian was on so we watched that and that was pretty much my day! Lots of baking, chickens and a little sewing thrown in. 

Tuesday...

Not much new. I have been spending way too much time watching the numbers in my area go up. Must turn off the computer!  Sigh..... At least Peanut is able to sleep all comfy in his bed on my desk while I am at work. It is rough being a cat you know!

While searching I found a mask pattern over at JoyfulQuilter that I've been wanting to try.  I have 3 masks for me know. So one can stay in the car while the others are washed with one for my purse. The kids insist they only need the one.... but I am thinking they each will get another to have at Grandma's house. This one has a surprise top and bottom that 'open up' and cover the nose and chin. I added a 4.5 inch pipe cleaner... hey, we had extra green clover leafs from Thinking Day so I put one to use in this. It helped keep the nose part in place against my face. We will see how it does through the wash. A tip - I use pipe cleaners to clean out the area below my bobbin each time I wind it. They are good at picking up lint from the machine. They also can get twisted and thrown onto the floor as a cat toy when you need someone to move out of the way of the needle!

I sewed up this little baby after work today and took it for a test drive at a trip to Publix to pick up a prescription and some veggies for 'Emliy's' meal tomorrow night  - roasted veggie and sausage pasta - a Melissa D'arabian recipe. Aidan's pick tonight was burgers on the foreman with coleslaw (I tried a new 'healthier recipe'... lets just say I was the only one that ate that!) and a Kansas cucumber salad. Emily turned up her nose and pulled out some popcorn chicken and popped that in the oven and had it with some honey mustard sauce (a little yellow mustard, a little honey and stir!).  Yesterday I had pulled out some frozen carnitas meat to go with some rice and refried beans.  Seems the kids didn't care for it as much leftover..... I told them there is one more package in the freezer and I got 'the look' from both of them! I thought it was pretty darn good again. I finished thawing it under the broiler and that sauce was great on the white rice. Yum. Seems I am the only one that eats leftovers in my house!

Waiting for the temps to drop a couple degrees into the 80's. (93 and feels like 103 right now at 6:30PM) to take a little walk. Think I'll go prep a snowflake for applique while I wait.

A Magic Stars finish

I finished hand stitching the binding on this baby quilt yesterday afternoon. This is the back - 10 inch squares of 'fun' kid prints.

The front - Tiffany's Magic Stars... tutorial from The Joyful Quilters blog. I just did machine walking foot of diagonal lines in the corners.... the decided to outline stitch in those L shapes and in the center blocks. I used warm and natural so a lot of stitching was not needed. It should be all set for lots of washings and use.

Still working on quilting rain onto the umbrella quilt.

My second order from Connecting Threads arrived yesterday (under a week!) so I now have white on white fabric to prep and stitch a couple snowflakes for Hoarfrost and I can start cutting and stitching the boarder for it. 

We are expecting really hot temps again today. I might try and go attach the chicken wire to the bottom of the coop area... but I have a feeling it will be put off for a cooler day.  I don't do well with heat and humidity. I think I'll just stay inside and stitch!

Linking up with Kathy and the other Slow Stitchers. 

Peanut keeping an eye on the chickens this morning while enjoying the heat lamp. They love the roost dowel Greg installed this week.

Outside while Emily cleaned their cage yesterday.They are about 2 weeks old.

I sent Aidan out to snap some photo's of my flowers yesterday before the rain came.

Feel free to stop reading here. The rest is why not as much stitching got done due to some stressful decisions that needed to get made. Lets see what it was!

I find I tend to play games on my phone (Cookie Jam) when I am stressed. Lets just say lots of games played and not so much stitching this week. Tuesday there was an emergency school board meeting a day after a mandate came down Monday that schools in Florida will be open on time .... for us that is August 10, 2020. Our new cases are averaging 10K the last 2 days and have been averaging 7-8K new a day for the last 2 weeks.... and hospital ICU's are getting full. In my county (Marion County)  we had 409 new cases in the last week as of Friday with 84 in hospital and 10 of those in Covid-19-ICU's in the 3 local hospitals in Ocala.  Edited - 15,300 new cases in Florida in the last 24 hours! 70K added in the last week.

Teams have been working to come up with opening plans before this mandate came down. (Keep in mind most of the state is still not wearing masks). They came up with great solutions.... and then it was up to parents to make the decision. We have until July 15 to decide for each child. The choice was in school every day following the bell or virtual at home with your schools teachers following the bell. The teachers will either have a class of kids in front of them or a class of virtual in front of them, no mixing. After reading the 70+ page document and lots of discussion with hubby without little ears around.... Grandma's sciatic recovered enough that she took the kids Tuesday and silly lady kept them until Thursday night!... We are opting to keep the kids home for schooling. Our cases are still rising and the kids are not comfortable going out in public with so many not social distancing or wearing masks. I only go out for groceries and Greg goes out for work where unfortunately he is in a small space and while he wears a mask, most of the customers do not! We will reevaluate in December for the Jan-May semester. Hopefully our local cases and hospitals will be in a better situation at that point. This also allows us to still see my in-laws who are in the higher risk age group. Greg's back is also not better - no shot Wednesday as insurance denied the request. Let's just say he sneezed and coughed Friday and called off work Saturday in intense pain. No way can he get CoVid-19 right now!  No matter your thoughts on this pandemic, I think we all need to practice kindness as everyone is in a different situation and there is no easy answer. Some have no choice but to send their kids to school as they need to be at work. The teachers and administration of schools are also put in a difficult situation. That is their job/passion and it is potentially risking them and/or their families. No easy solution and no easy answers so please practice kindness. 

Since we have a feeling this will be on-going for the next year or more.... we decided to use that stimulus check to purchase new laptops, wireless mouse and keyboards for each of the kids for school. They each had really old hand me downs (over 10 years old and out of update capability). These should last them well into high school. It also helped as they were so excited when the keyboard and mice arrived Friday.... the computers arrive on Monday.

Saturday in Blue.....

This week I added 2 of the 16 patches and 2 Stash Buster blocks in dark blues.

The chicks are growing and love the roosts that Greg made for them. We added this bigger one yesterday and all 4 of them were sitting on it within an hour! Feathers are coming in and they are looking a little scruffy.

Linking up with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge Saturday morning.

Progress and an almost finish

I managed to get the baby quilt quilted on Wednesday and now it is just finishing up the binding.

The first snowflake is appliqued down onto block 1. I am waiting for some white fabric to come in so I can finish the other two snowflakes and make the borders for the Hoarfrost quilt.