Monday, September 12, 2022

Blogger comment issues.... and some crochet.

 Has anyone else noticed that the comment function of auto sending comments on the blog to your e-mail stopped working? I did a little searching online and it appears to be reported but no ETA on a fix. If anyone knows of a fix in Blogger, please pass it along!

I figured I'd show a little progress on the crochet front. I think I can get one more light blue out of the yarn left before I swap to the dark blue. I have 2 skeins of that and another of the medium blue on hand. 

This photo was from August 24th. I have been adding to the light pile.

This is what it looks like this morning! Progress. I really need to work in those tails.



We have a busy week.... well, Emily has a busy week! Tonight, is scouts and Aidan has guitar.

Tuesday she has FFA meeting after school, Wednesday is book club and Aidan is volunteering with his old Robotics teacher after school, Thursday she has early drop for Horse evaluation information and I think Friday is actually normal!

So for planning meals this week with all the crazy:

Monday  - pork schnitzel with scalloped potato and peas

Tuesday - meat loaf with baked potato and green beans

Wednesday is carnita's in the crock pot with rice and fresh salsa I think. I'll have to find another good veggie to add. Maybe a cucumber salad?

Thursday is leftovers - but it might get swapped with Wednesday depending on what is leftover.


My breakfasts will be oatmeal with craisins and maple syrup this week with salads for lunch with lots of veggies and a hard boiled egg. Apple and grapes for snacks.

I joined Noom again as it did help the last time a couple of years ago. I just need to plan ahead and stop all the takeout meals when life gets crazy and I get lazy and can't come up with meals! I really need to add a fish day into the mix... but it is really not my favorite so it is hard to throw it in the rotation. 

Back to work....

Sunday, September 11, 2022

Close to a finish.... Sweet Confetti Quilt.

Saturday was an afternoon in the sewing room. Due to the thunderstorms - I was able to pin my Sweet Confetti quilt without a cat helper. Peanut dislikes thunder and was hiding. He did venture out after the storm and decided to be in the quilt before I started quilting it. He finally moved, so I was able to add some simple quilting of a wavy line every 4-5 inches or so. I hit the end of my roll of Warm and Natural Batting. Sigh... I was hoping it would last another month or so before the good sales the end of November. I have some extra cuts still to piece together for another quilt or two I think. 

After quilting, it was time to pull fabrics to figure out the binding color. I pulled Emily in first and she immediately discarded the bright green and yellow. She said the pink worked best of the 4 options I gave her. She said to ask Aidan though.... so I went and got him. He said none of the above and pulled the gold yellow and bright blue as options..... then mentioned white would probably work the best. Emily agreed. So.... a white binding it is! I was leaning toward the pink.


White binding got made after dinner and attached to the front.

Now to stitch it to the back later today. First up - the house really could use a clean as I swap it over to fall. Maybe I'll actually put up my new quilt hangers and hang some fall quilts while I am at it!
 
Linking up with the Slow Sunday Stitchers.

Friday, September 9, 2022

A little sewing this week.

I decided to stitch together the crumb blocks and some crumb strips into this 40x60 quilt top. It is very 'busy' but happy to be a top rather than parts and pieces! (#3 on the Summer UFO challenge.)

Peanut was supervising as I was prepping Sweet Confetti for pinning.


The backing and the top all pressed and laid out.  I have them rolled up on the boards but the rainy dreary day Thursday had me switch to some hand work and tv rather than getting this pinned. Maybe tonight it will get pinned? This is #4 on the Summer UFO Challenge. I hope to finish both before the end of the month.


Instead, I was working on hand piecing the Harmony block. I got the top section stitched, the white rectangle marked and the four patches are all pieced together. Now to stitch the rectangle on the side and then the top for each of the 4 parts. Harmony is #13 on the UFO Challenge list but will not get finished this quarter.... maybe next one though. We will see. I do hope to get this second block pieced this month. 

The dogs stuffed animals got stitched as well - the big cat with a squeaker inside got stitched on the machine and the moose and squirrel had to get hand stitched. They would not fit under the machine. 
Emily and I took Bear to PetCo last night. He loved the car ride and going into the store to pick out some treats and a new toy. He got a bright green monster pull animal - with a pull rope on each end and it squeaks and has that paper sound when he chomps it. It is a Kong toy, so hopefully it will last!

Hubby got his booster for Shingles yesterday and he is feeling it today. He has been sleeping most of the day and is really off. The dog is keeping him company while I am working. I did take the dog out for his water play a couple of times today before the rains started. He is part lab and loves chasing the hose stream of water. It gets out some of his energy =)


***Saturday update. Hubby is much better today. Emily has gone to horses and ridden. Storms should roll in mid afternoon so I'll be pinning and hopefully quilting later today. Linking up with the RSC as 2 of these tops were from RSC collections. 

 

Wednesday, September 7, 2022

Progress on Sweet Confetti

 Why do I hesitate to sew those long seams together? Sigh - I have 3 seams to go until the Sweet Confetti becomes a top. Maybe that will happen tonight?


Tuesday was a bit of a weird day. I think I was dehydrated, or my electrolytes were off. Vertigo and a headache. The Advil worked on the headache and a PowerZero and lots of water helped with the spinning head. I did call off work and Greg did the kids drop to school. After that cleared up around noon, I must have been laying wrong in bed, cause my right shoulder is giving me pains (pinched nerve?) whenever I turn my head. Makes driving interesting! The Advil and heat have helped it today and it is a lot better than trying to sleep last night. 

While I was sewing the sweet confetti blocks (and unpicking) and resewing them together correctly, I pulled some crumb blocks and decided to just sew them together in between things. I had 2 sizes of blocks - I think one was 12.5 and the other was 10 or 10.5, maybe 11?. 

The smaller ones. 



The bigger ones. 36x36 I think.



I know I have a long strip of purple and blue.... maybe I'll put it all together and see what happens?
I called off horses tomorrow so maybe both of these will get some progress made and we will see what happens! Both happen to be on my Summer 2022 UFO list =). Might I get 2 more finishes this quarter?
Don't worry, I might have found a box while searching for that last sweet confetti block I was missing, with even more project kits I had forgotten about! 


Monday, September 5, 2022

Sweet Confetti

 I took it easy this weekend feeling a bit off. I watched one of the Night at the Museum each of the last 3 nights. I did lay out some blocks last night. Someone wanted to hold them down for me. I am missing one block. I'll search for it today while I sew these into twosies.



A couple of weeks ago, we got a brisket and cooked most of it. Greg cut off the extra and we decided to 'corn' it. It has been working in the fridge for the last 10 days. Time to take it out, rinse it off and pop it in the crock pot today. We will see how it turns out.


Saturday, September 3, 2022

RSC in light blue

 Looking at my list of things to add this month - it looks like crossed canoe and 16 patch blocks are all that is needed. I have light blue garden path blocks already from last year.


That got me to thinking of which collection should I attempt to get to a top stage this month. I am going to work on getting the Sweet Confetti blocks stitched together I think. These are from the book - Sunday Best Quilts. 96 blocks are made and ready to be stitched.

Linking up with the RSC Quilters.



Thursday, September 1, 2022

A bucket list item checked off....

 I have always wanted to ride a horse. I know - Emily has been riding for years now. Today was the day for me to give it a try! I rode Elwood, the gentlest and easiest horse to ride. Mostly I just steered him around but after the first couple of times around the ring I felt more comfortable on him. I am a bit afraid of heights, so there was that added to the mix! My goal is just to get comfortable riding, so I'll continue on next week with another lesson!

I think Emily and I tuckered this one out in the back yard tonight. We went out after it stopped raining and checked for eggs. There were 2 to bring in and one that was laid without the outer shell. We are getting one or two eggs a day now. We did loose Molly, our last red chicken this week to a hawk we think. That leaves us with 5 - 3 of the Plymouth and 2 of the Americana's.  Bear likes to carry his Kong ball in his mouth and run around with it in the back yard as we try and 'chase' him. I think he is out for the night!


I have added a couple more crochet granny squares to the pile this week.


After riding and some errands, I had a little time to head into the sewing room. Alas, nothing really struck me as wanting to get sewn today, so I grabbed the baggie of the Harmony - Hand Pieced Quilt Along project from last year and figured out where I was. Farther along than I remembered! I added some stitches to start assembling the 4 corners. The middle section parts are all cut out and pinned together so the next part is all set once I get the corners stitched together.

The school pick up line is lots better now that the after school program started at the middle school. I can get there at my 'normal' time and be on the middle school property so Aidan can walk to me. That means I have been adding some rows to the knitted dish cloth in the car line each day. Once that is done, I'll pop the EPP project in there.

One more day of work before a 3 day weekend!