A finished project.

 The little basket of apples is now a little pillow.  I think he needs company.

These are the wood projects from the 2 sessions of cookie decorating and crafting event the last 2 months. Cider was August and the fox and mushroom was September. 

Sunday and a new week

 Well, I missed a few days this week. Turns out I got a stomach bug and it was a good one! 2 days in bed. I finally got up and stayed up today and was able to eat a little and drink fluids. The cats are a little sad, as they had me captive in bed for a couple of days. 

I tried watching a movie yesterday - Hocus Pocus, one of my October favorites. It took me almost 7 hours and a couple of naps in between to get through it yesterday. Hocus Pocus 2 went much smoother today and I was able to do a little stitching while watching. I had planned to start a new one from PinkernPunkin Quilting and Stitching, the Clementine and baby Jack, but when I opened the cross stitch bag, I found a started basket of apples stamp from her site as well. Only, this one had an error I noticed after I added another apple, so both needed to be unstitched. Note to self, leave more space when cutting out cloth so it can fit in a little hoop. I found some really old needles. Anyone remember the store Ames? or was it a New England thing? General Department store - before Walmart. We had Ames, Zayers and Harry's in the Barre/Montpelier area of Vermont. Vermont was a hard sell on allowing Walmart in for years. I think our Ames went out of business in the early 2000's. It was after I got my house in 2001 and before I sold it in 2006. 

Ames - $1.17 for 4 cross stitch needles. Wish we had those prices now!

After a movie and a couple of shows, I'm nearly done. I just need to add a few stems and some leaves to the apples.

 

Finished. 

Unfortunately, no progress on putting either of these two RSC block collections together into a top yet. I hope to be in the sewing area tomorrow and get these blocks trimmed to the same size and sewn together. I will probably need to make some green circles where the blocks meet as well. The yellow circles sure did make the colored peels look at lot better! I believe this is 48x48 for a size or will be.

Hand appliqued String of Beads blocks

Hand pieced Flying Snowballs (Flowering Snoball and Shoo Fly blocks) These are also 12 inch finished blocks, so this one should be 84x84.

We have a rose in bloom this week.

The night blooming Jasmine is looking in full bloom so it should smell nice tonight. Since my screens are fixed, I might even be able to open a window for a little bit to get some of the pretty smell in there once it cools down tonight into the lower 70's.

Both kids were home late on Friday. Emily had a football game, so marching practice after school, dinner there and then the game. It was homecoming week, so they did their show after the game. She got home a bit after 10:30PM.  Aidan had Academic club and then was planning to go to the football game. He and his friends went out to eat at a Thai restaurant then went to the game. He was peopled out, so did not stay and watch Emily perform after the game. He did say the band and cheerleaders were great. The football team, not so much. I think it was 44 to 6, and we had the 6. He was home around 9:30. Aidan, being Senior year is going to his first Homecoming dance with a bunch of friends. This year, Emily decided not to go. They got jipped last year with two hurricanes and a reschedule for 2 hours after a football game last year. I'm guessing she will go next year for her senior year. We will see.

Linking up to RSC on Saturday and Slow Sunday Stitching. 

October 1

 In light of things happening in this country, I'm going with some nature and progress on projects.

I poked around the mess of a sewing room and managed to find my Applipops! If you saw the room, you would be extremely impressed! I then cut 16 yellows and found my starch and got 16 little circles made. Last night, they were appliqued to the middle of the blocks while watching episode 2 of High Potential and then the latest episode of Only Murders in the Building and then the podcast on Hulu.  

Bear is holding them in place for me right now! They need a trim up and then I'll machine stitch them together. It should be 48 inches square when done. So.... probably a white 2.5 inch strip will be added all around. We will see if the green peels in a border decide they are necessary or not. It might be happy with that and the green as a binding. I really wish it would make up it's mind. As it will hang in my office, this size might be just fine as is (if I say it enough, it might agree with me!).

Now from the morning walk. The girl did head to school today. I think a full day of sleeping helped with her humidifier on all day. The boy was fixing his lunch when I headed out the door with Bear for his walk.

We met 7 turkeys on the lawn up the street from us. There must have been a real bear nearby at some point as their trash can was knocked over and trash all over an area of their lawn. We are one street away from a nature preserve/forest area.

Isn't this a pretty sight? I do love watching as the sun comes up in the morning. Yesterday and Monday it was gloomy and all grey clouds with the Imelda storm off the Florida coast.

The neighbors one street over are all decorated for Halloween. My neighbor across the street has not put his up yet, but I expect that to happen today. The carriage is new this year and the flying witch. The basilisk has a head that is just out of the photo. 

This is a new house that was built this year and they decorated up a bit as well. Love the purple spider on her web.

On tap today - trimming so the blocks are the same size and then getting them stitched together. I have a baby panel that needs to get started. It is the ABC of Dr. Seuss, so I'm going to cut them and make each block a little bigger and then sew them back together again into a little baby throw. I'll have to pop out and grab the book to go with it. We were discussing a baby shower and it will either be the 12th or the 2nd of November. If it is the 12th, I've got to get it done quick!

Last String of Beads block is completed.

 Well, the peels are all completed. I still need to make 16 circles to pop on the middle of the block! I know I have the applipops somewhere in my sewing area. This is the second teal one. I guess I'll need to decide if the middles are all the same color (thinking yellow) or a color coordinating with each block. 

All 16 blocks. I just hope I don't lose the peel points when I stitch them together! Circles need to go on first though.

One kid is home today. She got home late after marching practice yesterday (6:40ish) and said she was not feeling great - sore throat and stuffy. Today is the only day she 'could' take off from school so this morning I was not surprised when she was in jammies on the couch when I got up at 6:30 and she asked if she should stay home today or not. I told her yes, go back to bed as rest is best. She had a crazy weekend - I just did the pick ups and it threw me all off with the late times. 

Last night was taco meat - one did soft taco's, I did mine as a salad with tortilla chips and one other did similar. I think Greg just did a taco salad. Tonight - I pulled a 2 pound chuck roast, so will either pop that in a crock pot or the oven (depending on if I do it after I post this) with root veggies for dinner tonight.

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.
 

Table Scrap Challenge - radio or tv.

I had various ideas running around in my head, but to show my age I went with the old tv 'offline' strip! Hey, it was easy and quick to make up. It took longer to pull fabrics than to make this little guy, I think. I did have to dig through boxes and move a bunch of things from the sewing area to reach the machine and the stash wall to make this. More work needs to be done in there to clean up from moving the house around a bit. 

It finishes around 5x8ish. I cut the bigger parts at 1.5 inches by 4 and the lower row is of 1.5 inch squares.

I think it looks pretty spot on for the two rows I did. 

My version:

I'll be linking up Friday with Joy and The Table Scrap Challenge. Heck, there is even a little blue and green in this for the RSC colors!

Flying Snowball blocks ....

 I believe I have all of these blocks hand stitched as of last evening. I did 4 of them yesterday after work.

 It was more appealing than figuring out where to hang things in my new office space. The front room is painted and that dark maroon wall only needed 2 coats, like everything else! 

I'm waiting on my new desk to arrive sometime today, but pulled in a half banquet table to work on Monday morning until it arrives and gets put together. A job for tomorrow I guess! It will be a desk that works sitting and can raise up for a standing desk. I've never had one like that, so we will see how it is. 

For now, I moved the dog's crate into one corner and the old victrola is in the other. Bear was in there a bunch yesterday and is adjusting well to this crate moving around the last week. Normally, it was on the edge of the room by the door area and covered with a quilt. It got shoved into the dining room area - about 6 feet away as it is the other room when you first walk in the door. I moved it back Monday to the far corner in the room that is now my office.... with 2 big windows with light. The road noise is a bit much, but I'm sure I'll get used to it. Having sunlight is a big plus.  Despite his cage and then his bed pillow covered with a quilt that he used to curl up on in my old office, he is laying on the floor (carpeted) right by my left side, like always. 

I wrote this earlier. He moved to his crate so I could lay out the blocks. It should be 84x84 as it is 7x7 of 12 inch blocks. This is the initial toss on the floor. We will see if things need moving around.

The hand quilting frame will be against the right side wall.