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.

Raise High the Roofbeam

This is a little better! Now my house block for the RR looks like a house! I need to finish the roof and the chimneys, then put in a bit of greenery and a couple of birdies, and maybe a pet or two, and I'm done! This stone house is featured on my blog a few weeks ago (in April, actually--it FEELS like just a few weeks, really); it is a Vermillion stitchery design, believe it or not, and is called Plantation Sampler. It's likely out of print; I bought it with a little bunch of samplers from an ebay seller. I like it because it looks like the old houses in Pennsylvania.

This weekend was a whirlwind of stitching, grocery shopping (tell me why we need to go each of the three days to the grocery store where there are just two of us living here) and gardening. Lots of gardening! Here's my 20x10 foot veggie raised bed. The neighbors all think it's hysterical and call me the "farmer." Guess they've never seen a tomato growing before. What? They think they grow in plastic packages in the store? Oddly, although all the houses in this neighborhood have large lots, nobody seems to try to grow anything edible. In fact, the covenants of this neighborhood association were quite strict regarding how close to the lot line the garden should be. Why? Are they worried my melons are going to make a break for it?

Bananarama

I'll make this quick because a thunder storm is headed our way. I'm not sure if the banana plant is putting up a shoot or just sent up a periscope to look around.

I made jam (5 jars) of the wonderful fresh strawberries I bought at the farmers' market yesterday.

I've been working steadily on my house block for the RR neighborhood. Mail date for the RR is Friday, so I've been working hard on it this weekend. I'm enjoying everyone else's progress. Next round though, I'm starting a bit earlier. All the same, it's been fun to stitch a lot this weekend instead of tearing up and down the road.

Yes, We Have No Bananas

It's been a while since I've posted since I've been busy at work and at home, and little stitching has been accomplished. At home, mostly I've been gardening. We put in tomatoes and squash and brussels sprouts and melons and peppers in the 20x10 garden plot at the rear of our yard. We've been tending the borders that the previous homeowners left--they're fairly nice, if a bit hosta-heavy. And because I wanted to see what exactly was already planted, I'm not doing much with the borders until I see it all come up, so I've been expressing myself with containers and trying my hand at different plants. Like bananas. We're hardiness zone 7, so bananas have to be brought inside in the winter, but because we have an approximately 20 foot ceiling in our family room, it shouldn't be a problem. Bananas are shipped as a goofy looking bare rhizome with a reedy-looking thing on it. Supposedly during the warm humid season it will grow one-two feet a week. Hard to believe, but here it is (any bananas are inedible but if the season lasts long enough, there will be little bunches of them). It gets enormous leaves that are quite interesting and dramatic, and I'll have to transplant it to a larger container later probably. I also got some bare root orchids and planted them from the same tropical plant company.

Since we're talking about inedible fruits, here is a pineapple plant, also with a purely decorative fruit. Looks good enough to eat, though, doesn't it?

And some yummy iris. The previous owners planted these, and several other varieties of iris, all along the north edge of the house. They're all so heavy that they're flopping over onto the grass, and I've been cutting them and bringing them inside to enjoy.

And finally, some stitching. This is for the group 1 Neighborhood round robin that I'm in. I'm not telling right now what it will look like or where it's drawn from, but see if you can figure out what type of house it will be. Right now it's a mystery, like all those interesting shoots and buds in my garden...

A Day Late

Last week was a killer week, with no stitching. And the weekend continued in the same way, so I'm going to show you something art-related, if not entirely stitching-related.

The first two pictures are of an art acquisition by Big Law. We have lots of very interesting (and probably very pricey) art in the building. I like that we have sculpture and photographs and etchings and paintings and weaving and glass. We actually have some Chihuly glass, which is just beautiful--a series of ruby-colored ewers. Most all of our artwork was done in the 30s and 40s (although I don't know why since Big Law was founded in the 1800s), and much of it is devoted to work: farming and factories in particular. Some it is sly, referencing our larger clients (which must remain secret, but which are household names) in a flattering way. This is a folk art rendition of the White House, which I love especially since the real White House is across the street, but which a lot of people here do not like at all. The carving is amazing, and the scale of it is eye-popping; you can't tell from this picture, but it's probably a bit over three feet up, sideways and deep. It sits on a pedestal in our reception area which is a bit problematic because the reception area is Italianate and formal, all cold white marble, white leather and white orchids in clear glass vases.


Mostly I worked in my garden. Now that mid/late-spring is seriously, solidly here, I can see what the previous owners of our home planted, and I am adjusting accordingly. Mostly there are lots and lots of hostas, which I like well enough, but not in such quantity. I don't know a lot about them, but I overheard someone in the garden center saying that they tend to take over a garden bed. They sure do! I believe there are flocks and flocks of irises, which I love. Hopefully there are some yellow ones as well as blue/purple ones. The azaleas are in bloom; most of them are scarlet. And there appear to be some lilies, some hydrangeas and some stuff that I can't identify yet. I went to the nursery and purchased a modest supply of peonies (my favorite flower on earth), two enormous pre-planted pots for my front steps and stuff for the veggie garden. The house came with a 20 foot by 10 foot raised bed which we think the previous owners used as a kind of play area/sand box for their kids. We're filling it with dirt (the landscaper is trucking it in tomorrow) and then planting tomatoes and other stuff. When I wasn't planting, I headed for the library (gardening and landscaping books) and stopped along the way at a community yard sale where I bought this for $5. Even though it's done on aida, I really liked the vibrant colors and the folky design (it looks like a Charles Wysocki), so I bought it. The yard seller told me she had stitched it, and that it took her a long time because it was a lot of work. We all know how true that is, don't we? I don't know if it's cheating to buy someone else's stiching, but I'm going to enjoy it anyway because at the rate I'm going, I'm never going to complete anything!

And since we're talking about other people's art, here's something I bought from a lovely blog that I read called http://beachyscapecodcupboard.blogspot.com. Beachy is such a wonderful artist (she hand made this card using a photo of an old house she spotted on her walk to the beach) and is a fellow Cape Codder as well.