Focus

This is the last day of my vacation, and yesterday was the first day of autumn (even if it is still in the 80s). Figure I'd find the perfect summer vacation sampler. This is by Cross Eyed Cricket. I've recently bought the CEC Halloween sampler, Sleepy Hollow, and will probably wait until spring to stitch that. I will be headed for Cape Cod sometime next month, but by the time I get there, the summer cottages will be boarded up, there will be a chilly breeze and the water will be gray, most likely.

This is the fabric for the sheers I've been working on; I suspect I will not finish them during this vacation. Lack of focus. Note that I did not embroider all the little aqua leaves; that would be masochistic. Maybe in my next life.

I did focus on the Neighborhood RR though. Most of this progress occurred during this week, when I was supposed to be sewing curtains. I find I get a lot done if I bump one project with another.

Another Brick in the Wall (II)

It's been a long time since I've posted. Mostly it's been the pressures of work and school--I'm working on an accounting degree granted to students who have a degree in something else. There are ten pre-requisites, which I'm working my way through now, and then I go on to take ten advanced level accounting classes. The degree is offered at Virginia Commonwealth in Richmond, and I'm very excited about getting out of the legal field and into something else and equally excited about exiting the Washington work scene about a year from now, and heading into Richmond. I'm a late bloomer; this will be the second degree I've earned post-40. That's okay--I'm a better student for it--I'm probably a lot more shrewd than I was at 20 in my approach to assignments even if I do tend to forget where I put my car keys more these days. But it's meant a drop in stitching time, although I'm still plugging away in between answering questions about what items in a balance sheet might be red flags for an audit.

I've been on vacation this week and did some work on this: the brick stitch is a blast and gives a nice effect.


And speaking of bricks, here is some brickwork in buildings behind my favorite furniture store in Richmond, La Difference.

Here's the brickwork inside of La Diff, whose three floors of showrooms are in a big old brick industrial building. We're thinking of buying this table for our house.


More pictures of stitching projects coming up later. I've been working on the Neighborhood RR, and I have bought some new projects recently. I'm going to go to work on sewing a set of sheers for my bathroom windows before the daylight fades--the easiest way of working with sheers. I bought the fabric at G Street Fabrics after two days of combing the home dec section.
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Another Brick in the Wall

The missing floss (WDW cinnabar--2 skeins) arrived in the mail last week, so I was able to return to stitching bricks (in brick stitch!) on Kindred House by Chessie and Me. It's addictive, and I've been neglecting my other projects. It's a bit hard to count, though, and a frog came to visit a few times already; the brick stitch involves running 2 threads (over two) horizontally through the top holes as well as the bottom holes of each square, so I tend to lose count.

But I did spend a bit of time searching for the fibers for this Victoria Sampler design that I'm adapting to Nicole's RR. The original calls for silk, but I think it might look odd if it's a silk square along with cotton ones, so I'm doing the conversion on the fly. My picture is a bit blurry but you can see Nicole's square; Leslie's is outside the picture. They're both beautiful and detailed, and I searched long and hard to find something compatible in flavor. At the moment it looks like the periscope on a submarine.

Although it hasn't exactly become fall yet, I've got the itch to knit fall things, and I ran across this nifty cabled sweater in the Interweave Knits magazine. Yum. I have 20 balls of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran that I have been saving for a special project. Maybe this one? I haven't bought Vogue Knitting's Silver Anniversary edition yet but plan to. I find an awful lot of knitting magazines, I suppose to appeal to more people, or to develop patterns that don't all look the same, or which take advantage of some of the new, more outrageous fibers, are offering "cutting-edge" designs. I'm a bit old and out of shape for a "belly" sweater. And I wince thinking about how I'd look in some of the other fashion yarn extravaganzas (itchy knitted corset and panties, anyone?). And frankly, I've missed the whole sock thing: I wear only soft white cotton socks with my sneakers. I can't see messing with stranding colors and worrying about size to knit socks no one sees (or worse, that they do see) when one can knit a nice, cozy, classic sweater. It's partly my lifestyle: I'm going to wear Birkenstocks and loud striped socks at stuffy Big Law? I remember a short time after I learned to knit, pointing out to my mom (the world's most amazing knitter) a sweater with clever scotty dogs incorporated into the pattern. Mom shook her head and said I'd regret it because I would put tons of work into it, but it was so memorable and unique that I wouldn't want to wear it very often.

Counting Sheep

I've been hard at work on "Keep Me" this week. It doesn't look like much has been accomplished, but this bit took a while. And it's dull to stitch, so it made me very sleepy to work on it. I'd work on a couple of rows in the evening, and my eyes would begin to shut.

Speaking of sleeping, we shopped for a new bed today, weighing the pros and cons of various kinds of springs and foam and stuffing. I dutifully tried them out, but I mostly left the decision up to DBF; I can literally sleep on anything, anywhere, any time, through virtually any noise. I sleep on my commuter bus, head lolling or knocking against the window when we lurch in traffic; and I fall asleep most nights within about a minute. When I worked in Manhattan and slept every night in a hotel, I could sleep on the third floor of a low rise right through the noise of the traffic and the incessant honking. It's a gift. Poor BF tends toward insomnia, he takes a long time to fall asleep and he sleeps lightly; a cricket will awaken him.

Speaking of BF, he's decided to embark on the Nutrisystem diet plant to shed some weight. I applaud the effort and am trimming my own calories, but in a different way. My cardiologist recommends Nutrisystem, along with a couple of other programs. BF ordered two months' worth of the guy plan, and this is roughly one-fourth of the box of food that showed up at the door. He likes that portions are measured out for him and that there's a schedule for eating (6 times a day) along a recommendation of which food to eat each time from the plan as well as what fruits and vegetables to add. I personally would prefer to grapple with it myself, using fresh food I prepare, although I will admit to not being particularly successful at it. I don't care for the idea of the aseptic packaging and whatever mysterious substance is contained therein. While it's not my preference, I support it wholeheartedly, especially since we both need to lose weight. And we'll certainly get a nice break from preparing traditional meals. Guess what I can spend the extra time doing?

In honor of the diet, of course, we visted Carl's, a local institution, to say goodbye for the summer. Since we very seldom eat ice cream (our tastes run more to the savory than the sweet; we can tear up a bag of Fritos in my house whereas ice cream in the freezer sits until it's unfit to eat from freezer burn), it was a nice treat.

What I Did on my Summer Vacation

After five intense days, the floors are all in. Away, Crappy Carpet!


The hardwood installers were funny. We had three different crews of floor people working at different times, and I noticed that there are the guys who jabber all day long, generally about nothing (we won't talk about the carpet guy who had long involved conversations with himself in different voices, including a falsetto) and then there are the silent workers. The wood guys were the silent workers. They came in, set up the saws and the tools and went to work, not saying anything other than calling out an occasional measurement, for hours. At lunch, one of them went out to the truck and brought in an ice chest and passed out the best-smelling cold fried chicken to his co-workers. And then opened up a big tupperware container full of green salad and passed that around also. The three of them, chicken and salad in hand, then began to gossip about friends and family in the little town they all live in. After lunch they sealed up the cooler, threw out the bones and the wrappers and went back to working silently.
This is what I accomplished; I fell well short of my goal of finishing this project, but I made a good dent in it. This design is a little mysterious, isn't it? What kind of procession? Wedding? Who's the groom and who's the bride? There is a minster looking guy at the front of the line (and a white sheep). He's wearing a black frock coat. What does it mean? I think the black sheep looks a lot like a black lab.

I've shown you this picture before; it's Keep Me by Moira Blackburn. I felt like stitching a traditional sampler, so I kitted it up today and started it.

Here's the start. I'm working over one on 28 count Cashel in Fairy Dust (although there's no glitter or sheen involved) using a mixture of DMC and Weeks Dye Works fibers.

I accomplished so much this vacation, although I really could use another week to get the place really clean and everything put away. Back to work tomorrow...sigh. But on the plus side, I have another week coming up in September.

Things are Hopping on My Vacation

This is very likely my garden culprit. He hangs around quite a bit. I suspected him of munching the canteloupe leaves, blossoms and vines because he pays a call each morning and evening. He may be the tomato chomper as well; here's the circumstantial evidence. There's no smoking gun here, however; he didn't hop away with a tomato vine hanging out of his mouth, and I didn't catch him with a pack of bacon either. I assumed he didn't eat tomatoes because my own bunny hates them--dumb assumption.

Off he goes! This was this morning; I'm watering the plants tonight, so maybe he will slurp the water intead of the tomatoes, since I'll let a pan fill up.

Here's my rabbit, the Bunnyman. All of the noise from the floor layers, including a compressor, a giant staple gun and hammering, didn't faze him. While the cats hid under the basement steps, the Bunny just yawned elaborately, groomed himself and grunted a bit. He's a bit disheveled because he's moulting.

Not surprisingly as I like bunnies so much, I collect bunny stitching charts. Here is Prairie Grove Peddler, called "Garden Hoppin'." It's charted for DMC on 28 count Country French Linen, Antique Gold, by Wichelt.

This is an older chart that I recently bought on ebay by Chessie & Me. I forgot to bring the instructions downstairs with me, but it appears to call for overdyed floss. Note the carrot border!

Two Days in a Row!

Here's the house for Leslie's Neighborhood RR. I still have some more to do, but I might even be a day or two early this time!

Along with a little more work on Leslie's house, I added some detail to Procession and then started working on a valance for my bathroom. I think it's a Simplicity pattern; I bought the Waverly polished cotton print fabric at G Street Fabrics' warehouse store for about $4 a yard. A steal! So far I've cut out the face pieces, a laborious job because the print has a definite repeat. If the print doesn't start in the same place on all three pieces, they'll look mismatched. Tomorrow I'll cut out the lining pieces and stitch everything together.

On Sunday we went to the DC Big Flea, which is an antiques and collectibles show held four times a year in our area. Coincidentally, I had been reading in some magazine (maybe Cottage Living) about how collectible the old glass refrigerator bowls have become. They come in lots of colors and patterns and they're likely safer for storing/reheating food than plastic containers. Sure enough, one of the vendors had lots of them in all colors and sizes, so I bought this one. I love to picture some 30s-40s-50s era housewife storing her leftovers in this container.

This particular show had a number of vendors selling 50s stuff. I didn't buy a little juice set, and I now regret it. It consisted of several tiny glasses that were painted with fruits and had a fat but also tiny painted glass pitcher. Each glass might have held 3 ounces, and the pitcher might have held 24. (Note: I just went to ebay, and they're listed as "swanky swigs.") LOL! Anyway, no wonder we're fatter now than in the 50s--now we slug 20 ounces of juice without blinking. I remember as a kid that my mom always served Minute Maid orange juice from concentrate in jelly glasses that had pictures on them. Those jelly glasses might have held five ounces. I saw lots of little jelly/juice glasses at the show.
There was a particularly interesting vendor who had about eight British samplers for sale. They were each wonderful, historic, beautifully stitched. One in particular caught my eye, because it was a "zoo" sampler. Apparently there were a number of samplers from the time that commemorated the opening of the London Zoo. Zoo visitors got their first-ever glimpse of exotic animals and came back to stitch them. The sampler I saw had two zebras on the top of the design--one with black stripes, and one with brown. It was a special, special work of art, but I had to pass--even in less than perfect condition (it was nicely and fairly recently framed) with some wear and small holes in the fabric, it was $2300.

This is a flower blooming in my garden suddenly. I suspect it's some sort of lily, but I really don't know. The colors remind me of the bowl.

Thanks for your comments about thirsty critters/birds. I'll take the advice and put out a pan of water, especially since it's so dry here.

Vacation Whirl

I'm off work for six days, staying home to shepherd all the various workmen who come to the house to do renovations and updates. BF marvels that I don't resent being a captive to the house all day--although the workmen leave around 5 p.m.--but I'm a happy hermit with my crafts and plans and chores and activities. I've been messing with the garden, weeding and trying to figure out what/who is taking big bites out of the green tomatoes on just one plant and leaving half a tomato dangling on the vine. So far it hasn't discovered the other tomato plants.

I've owned this bicycle for over 20 years and probably last rode it 10 years ago. Our last house was located on an unsafe road, but now I have a large community to bike safely around, and there's a library about 3 miles from here that I can pedal to. So here it is, getting a tuneup Saturday. Gallons of gas used to go to the library: none!

Yesterday I spent quite a bit of time working on Leslie's RR, and it's nearly complete. I took some pictures, but I'm not happy with them, so I'll re-shoot tomorrow morning. This is today's project: "Procession." I'm hoping to finish it during this vacation.

Churches

This will be a short post; lots to do yet. I did manage to get some more work done on Whale Hunting. Everything on the church is done except for some back-stitching and the dome and cross on the steeple.

Here's something interesting that I spotted on the way to work. My bus drops me off at the corner of 20th and G, and I walk three blocks, to my office on Pennsylvania Avenue in DC, across the street from the White House. This brick building is an old Methodist church, which notes on their board that they do some services in German. This planter is between the church and the loading dock of the building next door, growing smack in the middle of the city--or at least smack in the middle of Foggy Bottom. It's corn--see the nice tassels? It's no accident either--there's a small pepper plant growing beneath the stalks of corn. The funny thing is that I didn't plant corn in my own garden because I'd always heard you had to have quite a lot of it to be pollinated and produce ears. Guess that's wrong--there are only about 3 stalks here. So nice to see in a city full of cars and irritating politicians!

Hot Summer Sunday

I've taken up Whale Hunting again; it's so hot here that stitching on something that looks like Maine is sort of refreshing. The project's better than 1/2 done now, and I'm at the left-hand margin. There are 12 charts total to this, and I've completed a bit more than six of them, although some of the remaining charts have just a small area to work. I'd really like to finish this up, as other than a Christmas design earlier this year and the Neighborhood RR design I did, I haven't completed anything.

And I've made a little progress on Leslie's Neighborhood RR. Those of you who guessed Just Nan is the designer were right. The design is called "Winterhaven," and it's hard to extract just the house and leave behind all the lovely surrounding design and embellishments.


Here's my newest project. I've been collecting house designs, thanks to the RR project, but I couldn't bear not to start this myself. What I have done so far doesn't photograph well on the light-colored hand-dyed linen I chose; hopefully as I get to a darker part of the design, I can show it to you. In the meantime, my LNS was out of the dark brick-colored variegated floss, so I went to ABC stitch's online site to buy some and yikes--found another perfect project by Victoria Sampler, called Harbour Village. The brick house sampler is a Chessie and Me design. The fun thing about it is that it is all specialty stitches. The bricks are done in "brick stitch" which is amazingly realistic and something I'll have to use on future projects.

I mean, really. How can you resist? (Photo borrowed from ABC Stitch.) I love ABC Stitch, by the way. Anytime I've ever ordered anything from them, it has shown up quickly, in my mailbox six states away, always within a few days. And if my two LNS's don't have it--whatever it is--I've been able to get it from ABC Stitch.

I start a vacation in two weeks, which I'm excited about. We are having most of the floors replaced in our house (all the yucky white carpet comes out and is being replaced by hardwood and tile, surfaces that stand up to the messes of six cats a lot better than the white carpet has), and someone has to stay home while the workers are doing their thing, so I'm hoping to get lots of stitching/sewing/ knitting/gardening time in.

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.