The second October stitch along update

 Three weeks have passed by quickly. How can we be near the end of October already? This is how Three Boats On a Tropical Beach by Artecy looked at the last update. I had just started working on the third of six columns.

 

I’m still only stitching dark colors right now. There are a lot of them for sure. Below you can see more of the palm tree filling in. 

This Stitch Along is hosted every three weeks by Avis at Sewing Beside the Sea who kindly sends us the needed posting reminders. Christina is taking a break from the Stitch Along for now. Hopefully she will return in the future.

Grab yourself a cup of coffee or tea and take some time to visit the other bloggers below who are part of this stitch-along. There is a wide variety of stitching projects. These talented stitchers are from all over the world, so please allow for the time differences and check back for each post.  

Avis, Claire, Kathy, Margaret,

 Sunny, Megan, Deborah, Sharon, Daisy, 

Cathie, Linda, MaryMargaret, Cindy, Helen

Thanks for stopping by!

What a show!

 Hubby and I went to dinner followed by a show Thursday night at a local theater. We saw “Come From Away”. 

Oh my goodness what a powerful show this is to see. We both left the theater feeling joyful, sad and uplifted. I highly recommend everyone seeing this musical if you can. 

Now to mundane subjects. The Christmas tree on my granddaughter’s stocking has some ornaments now. 

I’ve spent some time using my PCStitch program and I think I’ve figured out the little girl’s hair. I don’t know whether or not I want to do a sample stitch to see how it looks and tweak where necessary. Maybe. I am a floss miser even though it is fairly cheap. 

The block part of Having a Ball is now 2/3 quilted.

The granny square baby blanket has 7 of 17 rows completed. I like the way it looks. 

No baking was done this week. I need to concentrate on losing weight to help my back. The first epidural didn’t work. I have the second scheduled for Monday. 

I am joining Frederique at the Quilting Patch today and Kathy for some Slow Sunday Stitching tomorrow. I hope you take some time to relax with some tea or coffee and pop on over to their sites to see what other bloggers are stitching. 

Thanks for stopping by! 

Home Alone

 Hubby had a work conference to attend in Lisbon, Portugal from Sunday to Wednesday, so I was home alone until I picked him up at the airport Wednesday afternoon. Of course we had a Nor’Easter storm here Sunday through Tuesday morning, so I mostly stayed inside. Thankfully the storm packed less of a punch than expected and there was no water in the basement or cleanup outside. 

Of course I took the opportunity to listen to my old records (I will date myself. I sang along to old Partridge Family albums), read, bake, make ice cream and craft. 

I baked some delicious Pumpkin Muffins and enjoyed them with a cup of tea. 

The recipe is from a small cookbook pamphlet from Miller’s Restaurant in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. We went there when my son was 18 months old. I have had that pamplet for 35 years! I posted the recipe in the photos below. 

Yes, I did use rum to soak the raisins. 

I also made Toasted Coconut Dark Chocolate Ice Cream. It is my new favorite.

There were a lot of egg whites left over from my ice cream making, so I made Flourless Fudge Cookies. They are tasty and easy to make, but calorie heavy.

I’m glad I take photos of my crafts each week as it doesn’t feel like I’m making much progress on my granddaughter’s stocking. I am almost done with the current page, but the Christmas tree has so many color changes that is slow going. 

The green block on Having a Ball has been quilted and the pink is all set up to go. 

The donation hat is all done. I don’t like the pompom, but it will have to do.

There are 5 rows assembled on the baby blanket.

I’ve also started a gift for my older granddaughter. 

Here is the link to what it will be. 

I’m still reading The First Ladies. I can’t say that I am loving it now. It is more like reading the event diaries of Eleanor Roosevelt and Mary McLeod Bethune. There are a lot of historical facts that I am learning, but it is not as interesting an historical novel as I had hoped. Of course when you are dealing with two famous historical figures it must be difficult to fictionalize their interactions. I will finish this novel as the history is interesting, but I’m not sure I would recommend it. In reading this novel I discovered that there was a push by some lawmakers in the 1930s to make lynching illegal in the United States. That bill failed. Of course I had to find out when that despicable act actually was made illegal. I was extremely horrified to discover that it wasn’t until 2022 that President Biden signed the Emmet Till Antilynching Act. We wonder why the USA is where we are today with bigotry and racism when it took almost a century to outlaw a morally bereft practice. 

All in all, I think I made good use of my time home alone. It was a treat, but I am happy that Hubby is back home now. 

I am joining Frederique at the Quilting Patch today and Kathy for some Slow Sunday Stitching tomorrow. I hope you take some time to relax with some tea or coffee and pop on over to their sites to see what other bloggers are stitching. 

Thanks for stopping by! 

I think I spent my home alone time well. 

Autumn

Autumn weather has arrived here on Long Island. It has turned cooler and the trees are starting to turn colors. It is about time. I am enjoying wearing long pants, long sleeves and the occasional sweater. Of course we are supposed to be getting a very wet and windy Nor'Easter here for the next few days also. I would prefer the sunshine, but we badly need the rain. 

This past week started with me getting an epidural cortisone shot in the hope of easing the aches and pains due to 4 herniated discs. I underwent anethesia for the procedure. No sleep on Monday night due to the cortisone, but big nap on Tuesday. I took it easy both days and spent most of my time crafting. 

One of the perks of the enforced relaxing was that I finished quilting 3 more blocks on Having A Ball. There are 14 blocks out of 36 that still need to be quilted. The background will need quilting also. I am loving the way this is quilt is looking. 

My granddaughter's stocking has a wall and the beginnings of the Christmas tree completed. 

I also added most of the backstitching on the bear and the nightgown. 

There are 6 inches knit on the donation hat. I need to get to 8 inches before decreasing. I should finish that in the next few days. 

I assembled one more row of the baby blanket. No photo. 

I tried another new recipe. Ugly Bread. This recipe made 2 flat thin loaves and they were delicious. 

It was an easy recipe. I will save it and make it again.

Hubby will be traveling for work for the next few days, so I will have the house to myself. I will have to keep checking the basement for leaks with the storm, but I wonder how much crafting progress will happen. You will get an update next weekend. I had originally hoped to wash windows while he was gone, but it will be too wet to do so. 

I am joining Frederique at the Quilting Patch today and Kathy for some Slow Sunday Stitching tomorrow. I hope you take some time to relax with some tea or coffee and pop on over to their sites to see what other bloggers are stitching. 

Thanks for stopping by! 

Happy Dance

 Finally! I finished the 8th page that I have been working on seemingly forever. This is where Three Boats was three weeks ago.

8 out of 24 pages have now been completed. 

Yes, 1/3 of it is done. Yay!!!!

I have even started working on the next page at the top of the third column.

There are three colors stitched there: black, slate grey and forest green.

This Stitch Along is hosted every three weeks by Avis at Sewing Beside the Sea who kindly sends us the needed posting reminders. Christina is taking a break from the Stitch Along for now. Hopefully she will return in the future.

Grab yourself a cup of coffee or tea and take some time to visit the other bloggers below who are part of this stitch-along. There is a wide variety of stitching projects. These talented stitchers are from all over the world, so please allow for the time differences and check back for each post.  

Avis, Claire, Kathy, Margaret,

 Sunny, Megan, Deborah, Sharon, Daisy, 

Cathie, Linda, MaryMargaret, Cindy, Helen

Thanks for stopping by!

A new pillow and progress

I am determined to actually start working on some of the organizing projects that I have faced since retiring 3 years ago. I certainly have the time, just not the motivation. On Monday, Hubby and I made a trip to the local Salvation Army donation area to clear out some clothes and items that we had set aside in the basement. Since then I have been spending some more time this week in the basement. It is where we have a multitude of storage boxes and where all my craft supplies reside as well as my sewing machine. There is a sectional, an older TV as well as an Xbox that sometimes gets used when our kids visit. 

I started the organizing by to working on one of the languishing projects. Many years ago I wanted to update all of my many photo albums with scrapbooking. I bought all the supplies and got to work. Guess what? I really don't enjoy scrapbooking. There are just too many decisions. I also don't like to cut up photos. Eight photos that used to fit on the front and back of one album page, now take up two pages. What color paper should I use? Should I make a frame around a photo? What should I write on a little sign? Should I add stickers? I was in the middle of an album from 1990-1991. When I was pregnant with my daughter! I had wanted to at least scrapbook through her birth. I took out that album. There was a half-finished page from the summer before she was born. I finished it, closed the album and said enough. My scrapbooking days are over. I will use the supplies for crafts with my grandkids. This is no longer a project that is hanging over my head and it feels like such a weight has been lifted. Whew!

Once that was done, I went looking through some odds and ends in a basket by my sewing table and found two small printed Autumn panels. I had just unearthed two small Autumn pillows that I made last year and decided that these panels could be made into pillows also. I looked through my fabrics and used one to make the small pillow with the scarecrow below. It was a quick and easy finish.

I now have it displayed with the Pumpkin House and Old Crow pillows. There is a slightly larger panel that says Happy Thanksgiving that will become another pillow this week. 

My granddaughter's stocking is growing by leaps and bounds. Stitching up the individual packages is a nice way to pass an afternoon.

Next is to start stitching the Christmas tree above the gifts.

I have started to assemble the granny square baby blanket.

Three of the 17 rows are completed. Ignore the perspective that the right hand side is wider than the left. It is not.

The purple block block is quilted and the hoop had been moved. Next to be quilted is the yellow block.

I have added rows to the donation hat. I need to keep knitting the pattern until it is 8 inches long. I work on this while waiting for my balky computer to load pages and while reading the posts of fellow bloggers.

In my quest to actually makes some of the recipes that I have clipped and printed over the years, I had two successes and one fail this week. The first was a cole slaw recipe that was too thick and creamy for my taste. That recipe was tossed. Next I made this Double Dutch Dark Chocolate ice cream. 

So delicious. This will be made again for sure. Last night I made Baked Split Chicken Breasts. Now Hubby is not a fan of white meat chicken and he loved this recipe. It is tasty and easy to make. I may try it with bone-in thighs sometime. 

I finished reading The Dressmaker's Gift by Fiona Valpy. I loved it! I am now about to start The First Ladies.

I think I have written enough for today. 

I am joining Frederique at the Quilting Patch today and Kathy for some Slow Sunday Stitching tomorrow. I hope you take some time to relax with some tea or coffee and pop on over to their sites to see what other bloggers are stitching. 

Thanks for stopping by! 

    

Ryder Cup and Crafting

 In past posts I’ve shared photos of the biking/walking trail through the Massapequa Preserve that hubby and I like to walk on. We haven't been there in a while due to my knee issues.

There is an entrance about a mile east of our home that we use. We usually walk south through the woods to a pond near one of the local high schools. If we were to walk north 2.5 miles, the path leads to Bethpage State Park where the Ryder Cup is being played this weekend. No, we are not attending. In past years, Hubby has played golf with our son on the green and blue courses at Bethpage though in recent years he has found it near impossible to get a tee time. What used to be a simple process has fallen victim to computer bots since COVID. Hubby has a nearly unusable gift card due to this problem.

Regardless, we will be staying close to home this weekend listening to the security and VIP helicopters flying overhead and watching on TV. 

That makes for more crafting time! As if I don’t have enough already. I said I would show you my granny squares when they were done and here they are. 

I laid them out in 17 rows of 13 squares and then gathered each row on a knitting needle to keep them in order. I have 17 granny square kebabs. 

Two of the rows have already been assembled. 

There’s not much progress on the hat. I work on it while on the computer so it should grow as I read other blogs this weekend. 

Except for some, backstitching, the bear is done on my granddaughter’s Christmas stocking. I’m working my way up the stocking now, adding the backstitching as I go. 

The purple block has some of its quilting now.

Last Saturday, we finally had a new washer and dryer delivered. The heating element in the dryer only worked intermittently. The washer had only worked on a few of its cycles for several years. Since we had to move a bunch of storage containers in the basement to make room for the delivery, I decided to start cutting out the fabric for another I-Spy quilt. One of the boxes contained all of my novelty fabrics so of course it made sense to start yet another project. I made up the design based on something I had seen on the internet.

Each of the squares are 3.5". I cut out all of the novelty fabric for the large solid squares you see in the photo. 

I still have to cut the white and black fabrics. Each black and white nine-patch will have a solid colored fabric in the center. I have plenty of scraps for that.

I finished reading Switchboard Soldiers, by Jennifer Chiaverini and I highly recommend it. I’ve moved on from WWI to WWII and am now reading The Dressmaker’s Gift by Fiona Valpy. So far I am enjoying this book. 

From the photo above, you can see that I have slowly started to decorate for Autumn. I have a couple of little displays done. 

There is still more to unpack.

I am joining Frederique at the Quilting Patch today and Kathy for some Slow Sunday Stitching tomorrow. I hope you take some time to relax with some tea or coffee and pop on over to their sites to see what other bloggers are stitching. 

Thanks for stopping by!