An absence of care

 I finally had plans for last Sunday. I had been anticipating going to a local outdoor craft fair to get a few new items. That plan came to a crashing halt when my mother's care agency didn't schedule an aide to be with her during the day. The night time aide couldn't stay. I ended up staying with my mother the entire day until the night-time aide returned a couple of hours early. What I realized is that I can no longer substitute as my mother's aide. She is too weak and I am not strong enough to help her. I was unable to get her showered so I just washed what I could. Once I helped her to change her clothes and sit on the couch in her den, I couldn't help her get up again the rest of the day. Unfortunately the muscles in her legs are so weak that she can't get up from a sitting position without someone helping to lift her. She is very resistant to this process. She wants to help herself, but after a few attempts at getting up she gets frustrated and distracted (a result of the dementia) and just stops trying. I was quite sad by the end of the day. 

Hubby was great and brought over my secret cross-stitch for me to work on, but I hadn't returned the chart to the work bag so I couldn't work on it. Instead, I started sewing the ribbon bands on the hats on Mom's Overall Sam quilt blocks. I will share these blocks with you someday soon. I am trying to finish this quilt for my mom while I can get some of her imput. 

I have been exclusively stitching the secret cross-stitch. I am feeling the crunch to get this completed. Here is another peek.

I will be trying to add some more stitches to this today.

At night, when I can't see to work on cross-stitch, I have been adding rows to the Baby Elephant Blanket. I have 20 rows completed out of 106. Except for untangling the yarn skeins every so often and counting the stitches, this is a fairly quick crochet stitch.

Yesterday I found some time to start on the next 10 blocks for my daughter's quilt. 

Thankfully the care agency has cobbled together aides for my mother tomorrow. I really hope they can get a steady aide soon for Sunday to Tuesday. Maybe Hubby and I can figure out something fun to do today.

I am joining Kathy for some Slow Sunday Stitching. Pop on over to her site to see what other bloggers are stitching. 

Thanks for stopping by!

Need to find time

School has started so there is no daytime crafting going on. After school has been filled with physical therapy for my shoulder (twice a week) and a daily visit with my mother. That means there is little time at all to get some crafting done. I have to concentrate on my secret stitching as that is time sensitive and I need to leave time for framing. Here is a sneak peek of it.

I am fairly close to being done with the cross-stitch though what is left is comprised of little patches of color. I am hoping I can finish it by the end of this month. Then all that will be left is the back stitching and some cording. 

I have returned to crocheting the Baby Elephant Blanket. There are 106 rows to the graphghan part. I have finished fourteen of them now.

This has no time frame assigned to it, so it will just be when I feel like working on it.

Our son visited us over the Labor Day weekend. We went to a local waterfront park on Monday which was surprisingly empty despite the gorgeous weather.

There were a lot of boaters though. This park has its own marina and there are several others in the local area.

When we got back home Hubby and son competed in hitting golf balls into a pool float in the back yard.

I finally planted the pretty coneflower that I bought at a farmstand a couple of weeks ago. I love the color.

I have been reading a lot at school. I just finished "The Guardian" by Nicholas Sparks. Another tear jerker, but this book also had a sense of suspense to it. It was good, but not a book to read before bed. I will now be reading "Becoming" by Michelle Obama as well as "The Last Garden in England" by Julia Kelly.

Hubby and I went to Jones Beach yesterday to walk on the boardwalk. We were again surprised at how fairly empty it was. There were rip current warnings so that could have partly been the reason. It also could be that families were busy with school activities and sports.

The seagulls were having a enjoying a swim/bath in a "pond" that must have been formed when we got the remnants of Hurricane Ida. 

You can see the ocean with many container ships in the distance.

I am joining Kathy for some Slow Sunday Stitching. Pop on over to her site to see what other bloggers are stitching.

Thanks for stopping by!

First Stitch Along Update of September

I only worked on Santa a little bit these past three weeks as I need to spend most of my stitching time getting my secret stitching finished now that I am back at work.

The last time that I updated Santa I had started stitching the medium red color on the bow. 

That color is now finished and I have begun adding the dark red color. I think you can easily see the progress that I have made this time. 

Thanks so much to Avis at Sewing Beside the Sea for hosting this Stitch Along every three weeks.

Grab yourself a cup of coffee or tea and take some time to visit the other talented bloggers below who are part of this stitch-along. You will see 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, Gun, Carole, Constanze, Christina, Kathy, 

Margaret, Cindy, Heidi, Jackie, Sunny, Megan,

 Deborah, Renee, Carmela, Sharon, Daisy,

 Anne, AJ, Cathie, Linda, Helen  

Thanks for stopping by!

Quilt progress and a finish!

 I finished knitting the 2nd Butterfly baby blanket. Yay!

Now I can concentrate on the Elephant Baby Blanket and maybe work on a sweater for myself that I started some time ago. I have to figure out how to adjust the armholes though as my gauge is off lengthwise. 

I have been working on the Timberline Log Cabin quilt. I decided to work on ten blocks at a time. Here is the process for the final log of each block.

First I lay out the 10 blocks and pick a red diamond, a cream diamond and a green trapezoid. I try to make sure that no fabric is repeated in any block. It isn't hard to do as there are 6 different red, 33 different green and 32 different cream fabrics. This may be a scrappy quilt, but I am picky about repeating fabrics.

Next each diamond is trimmed using the Judy Martin tool that she recommends for this quilt.

Here is one pair all trimmed.

Preparing to sew them together.

Not bad if I do say so myself.

Here is the strip with the green trapezoid added.

Except for the Y-seam, the block is complete. I am happy that I seem to have mastered matching the seams of the diamonds.

Here are the 11 blocks that I have finished so far except for the Y-seams. This is the arrangement that is shown in Judy Martin's book for the center. She doesn't show the complete arrangement for the queen-sized quilt, but there are several options online.

I need 196 of these blocks in total.Then there will be 4 corner blocks and 56 border blocks. Oh my this is another long-term project. These ten blocks took almost 2 weeks of on and off sewing while I am on summer vacation.

I am joining Kathy for some Slow Sunday Stitching. Pop on over to her site to see what other bloggers are stitching. I think I will spend some time working on the secret stitching. School starts on Tuesday, so my stitching time will be greatly reduced.

Thanks for stopping by!

Slow stitching for sure

 There wasn't much stitching going on this week that I can show you. I spent a lot of time on the secret stitching. I added a few stitches to Santa so that the bow has been filled in a little more from last week.

My daughter, son-in-law and their pup came to visit late Wednesday night. They had planned to stay until this morning, but Hurricane Henri is heading our way so they had to leave after an early dinner yesterday in order to get back to Boston before the storm hits. 

We visited Gardiner County park and walked down to the water. 

The park is very marshy and as a result was full of mosquitos. My daughter and I liberally sprayed ourselves with OFF, but she was still bitten.

Ruby enjoyed visiting our house.

My mother was very glad to see her also.

I made a couple of plum cakes. After giving my mom and my mother-in-law each 1/2 of a cake and after sharing the other one with the kids this is what is left.

I finished reading "74 Seaside Ave" by Debbie Macomber and I am about to start " The Dollhouse" by Fiona Davis. This book is on my Kindle, so if we lose electricity, I also have "The Guardian" by Nicolas Sparks in physical book form if necessary. I am really hoping the electricity stays on. I don't want to have a repeat of Superstorm Sandy where we had no electricity for over a week. Hubby and I spent part of today securing our outdoor furniture, potted plants and pool toys. We don't want anything blowing away. 

I am joining Kathy for some Slow Sunday Stitching. Pop on over to her site to see what other bloggers are stitching. I think I will spend this rainy Sunday working on the secret stitching. 

Thanks for stopping by!

Stitch Along progress

I have been trying to complete one to three 18" lengths of floss each time I work on the Santa stocking. Here is what Santa looked like on my last update.

I finished stitching all of that particular red for the bow and have now added some of the next darker red. This is what Santa looks like now. It is hard to see that there are two different reds in the bow, but believe me there are.

I still don't know whether or not he will be finished for this Christmas, but I am not stressing over it.

Thanks so much to Avis at Sewing Beside the Sea for hosting this Stitch Along every three weeks.

Grab yourself a cup of coffee or tea and take some time to visit the other talented bloggers below who are part of this stitch-along. You will see 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, Gun, Carole, Constanze, Christina, Kathy, 

Margaret, Cindy, Heidi, Jackie, Sunny, Megan,

 Deborah, Renee, Carmela, Sharon, Daisy,

 Anne, AJ, Laura, Cathie, Linda, Helen  

If you want to see my latest update on some of my other crafts, you can find it here. 

Thanks for stopping by!

 

And so it begins

Of course, now that I have finished cutting out all of the more than 4000 pieces for the Log Cabin Star quilt, I had to start piecing some of the blocks. This is a slow process as accuracy is going to be of paramount proportion. That of course also means lots of seam ripping. Here is what the quilt will eventually look like although this is only the wall hanging size.

I made a sample block last summer just to be sure that I was capable of completing it. It isn't perfect, but it convinced me that I should keep going.

Since I need a total of 196 of the block you see above, I decided to work on 10 blocks at a time to keep it manageable. I am slowly, very slowly, adding strips to get all of the blocks to be the same size. it is working and it hasn't frustrated me yet. I have yet to fully complete the first 10 blocks that  you see below, but I am enjoying spending time at my sewing machine. Yes, there will be y-seams to stitch on each block.

I finished "Jingle as Ye Enter, Jingle as Ye Go". This was a kit from the Victorian Motto Sampler Shoppe that is no longer available. Hubby cut and sanded the dowel for me. I happened to have the ribbon in my stash.

The knitted Butterfly Baby Blanket is almost completed. Just 10 more rows and the seed stitch border and it will be done. 

I finished reading "The Storyteller" by Jodi Picoult and I can tell you without a doubt that I am glad it is over. I did not enjoy this book. It is set in Poland during WWII and it depressing to no end. I have to remind myself that I understand the lessons of the Holocaust and I do not need to read a novel based on it. Only because I was somewhat invested in the characters did I stick with it until the end, but I have to admit that I could not read this book near bedtime at all. 

I am now reading "74 Seaside Avenue" by Debbie Macomber and I am a much happier camper.

I am joining Kathy for some Slow Sunday Stitching. Pop on over to her site to see what other bloggers are up to. My slow stitching today will be on my secret stitching. I have been making a whole lot of progress.

If you are interested, there is a Santa update here.

That is all the interesting news right now. 

Thanks for stopping by!