Mad for Glads

Work progresses on Leslie's Neighborhood RR:

See if you can guess who the designer of the house is. A hint: she uses JUST her first name.

In the meantime, I've started collecting house charts on my visits to the LNS. Here's one from Kit and Bix (Bix and Kit?) that I picked up. I like the cute farm house and the yard and trees. It may find its way into someone's RR square.

And here's a little gift that showed up on the side of my house. As I've said before, this is the first spring/summer that we've lived in this house, and although I'm eager to landscape and garden, we've waited a bit to see what the previous owners planted. Here's a nice suprise: gladiolus!

Have a wonderful week!

A Little Progress on Long Dog

I didn't do as much stitching as I'd have liked on Long Dog, but it's moving along anyway. Not having to change colors speeds things up, although I'm thinking that things will slow down hugely when I have to stitch the grid in gray over the design.

My garden is trying to kill me, I think. Two weeks ago a brown recluse spider bit me in the hand. I didn't get much of a look at him, but the bite was tell-tale. It is just now beginning to heal; it looks like a bullet wound. Brown recluse bites are bad because the flesh around the bite dies and in order to get the infection out, you have to dig down and scoop out the bitten part, opening it up to drain and heal. Because it was a smallish bite, I resisted going off to the doctor, choosing to "operate" with a sterilized size 28 Piecemaker needle (which, by the way, is all I use now; I have yet to break one off in my needlework the way I do with the John James needles). I got a nasty case of poison ivy in the same outing while weeding the garden beds on the north side of the house.

Anyway, I'm on the mend, my garden is thriving, and I'm stitching, cleaning and blogging happily while DBF makes this luscious Sunday rotisserie. Mmmmm. Think I'll go up to the garden and pick some yellow squash to go with it!

Long Dog, Short Weekend

I've had this in my stash for a while and ran across it the other night when I was cleaning out the sewing room. I've had the urge to put it in order, both because we're having all the floors re-done in the house, and that involves picking stuff up off the floor and putting it away--somewhere. I've also bought a blouse pattern because I was in Exquisite Fabrics in D.C. Friday, and they were having a sale on the most gorgeous fabrics. I bought a bit over three yards of seersucker, only what's different is that the seersucker is silk rather than cotton or cotton/poly. I'm excited but a little hesitant about sewing garments because of the whole fitting thing. I usually don't do that kind of sewing--I'm more comfortable with home dec sewing. But I'm tired of what the stores have in stock, and tired of what I wear all the time (mostly silk sweaters with black pants). I have blouses, but nothing really dressy, and everything out there that's dressy seems sheer. So I'm going to try it--it's a wrap blouse with a graceful neckline. We'll see how it turns out--I'll show you pictures as I go. That project will have wait probably until late July when I take two weeks of vacation at home so I can hang around the house while the floor installers are here. Can't wait--it's been a long slog since my last vacation. I may try to squeeze in a quick trip to the Cape to see my parents as well.

Anyway, this is Long Dog Samplers' "Bagatelle." I saw it stitched in one of my LNS' a couple of years ago and couldn't resist.
This is R&R's 32 count blue spruce fabric with Needlepoint Silk's white (2 strands)--I had the NPI in my stash also, although the pattern actually calls for DMC. After stitching the design, you apply a kind of netting effect by back-stitching about a million miles of a gray silk (or cotton, if you're using that).

The weekend is just too short for trying to get everything done, isn't it? I think I could spend half my time doing needlework and crafts and the other half the time gardening. Here are two fun flowers I've gotten lately; I'm using them both in containers. The first is lantana, which I've just discovered. I love the way it starts out one color and shades into others as the flowers mature.

This guy is a petunia. I love the ruffliness and the purple-and-white flower.

Out the Door

We're having a much-needed steady rain/drizzle, so I can't go out and play (or plant). I should be relieved, since I've spent so much time puttering in the garden, but I'm sort of depressed about it. I wanted to plant these--sugar baby watermelons. The BF predicts they won't grow (for some reason, melons never would grow in his dad's garden), but my canteloupes are coming along, so I'm going to try these.

The banana leaf is unfurling, and since it unwound a bit, it has grown about an inch a day, even in the rain! Maybe that two feet a week growth is not an exaggeration.

I got my RR out the door to Wendy. While I think the house turned out well (although it photographs much lighter than IRL), I'm not completely pleased with it; I'd like to find some more critters for the grounds, expand the lawn a bit and would like to pick out and re-do the lettering. Maybe when I get it back.

This is what I'm working on now. This is my 2nd attempt. The first time, I had decided to do over-one on 36 count fabric, which didn't work well for my eyes. Too bad-I'd seen the finished product done over one on a high-thread-count fabric, and it was beautiful To tell you the truth, this sampler is a tad boring--too many solid blocks of color. That makes it a speedier stitch, but only if you pick it up to work on it.