A variety of crafts

I have been doing some crafting when I have free time at work. Hubby and I get our local newspaper delivered each day. The paper comes in a plastic bag. I have been cutting those plastic bags into strips and making plarn (plastic yarn). When I thought I had enough plarn I started crocheting a pumpkin. It is stuffed with even more plastic bags. Here is the way it came out. 

 It looks like it was made with a tweed yarn, but it is all clear bags that have some black printing on them. 

Next I have decided to stitch some small Christmas ornaments on my free time. They are small and easy to put down when a student comes into my classroom for math help. 

I have added some stitches to Santa. I am going to try to finish whole areas of this at a time now so I can see the progress. I am still hoping I might finish this for Christmas. Of course having to frog a whole section that I had just stitched yesterday did not help that goal. 

I have added a few rows to the Baby Elephant Blanket. I have 37 of 106 rows completed.

I have also been remiss in not mentioning a wonderful purchase that I recently made. Isn't that wooden quilt block in the photo below absolutely wonderful!

Rick, the honey of Kathi from Designoriginalsbykc, made this gorgeous piece. He is a very talented woodworker and I am in love with my purchase. It is a great addition to my living room.

I am joining Kathy for some Slow Sunday Stitching. Pop on over to her site to see what other bloggers are stitching. I will be working on the backstitching on the secret project.

Thanks for stopping by!

Stitch Along Update

You would think that now that I have completed the cross-stitching on my secret project and only have the back-stitching left I would have found time to add lots of stitches to Santa. You might think that, but you would be incorrect. Work, physical therapy and visiting mom leaves me too tired to stitch most nights. This is where Santa was for the last update three weeks ago.

I have adjusted the scroll and I did manage to add a some light green stitches on the gift as well as start a little bit of the medium green stitching on the left of the gift. Sorry for the photo quality, it was getting dark outside when I snapped it.

We have also had visitors the last 3 weekends, including yesterday. Two of my cousins and their spouses came from Connecticut and Rhode Island to have a visit with my mother. They brought delicious homemade chicken soup and cold cuts for all of us to enjoy for lunch. Mom thoroughly enjoyed their visit and actually ate some soup and half of a sandwich. Sadly, I forgot to take any photos of all of us together. We see each other so infrequently that I was just enjoying their company. After visiting with my mother a couple of hours, they drove a few minutes to my house and got to visit with Hubby and my son also. My cousin Penny then surprised me with a beautiful and thoughtful gift. She gifted me these pretty silver thimbles that were her mom's. The smallest one in front is too small for my pinkie finger. It must have been made for someone with very small fingers or for a child.

 Aren't they just gorgeous?! My aunt was a wonderful seamstress. I remember that she made me a beautiful long velvet skirt to wear to my grandmother's 80th birthday celebration. I also remember that it was an unusually warm November day in the high 70s and I sweltered in that skirt, but I loved wearing 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, Constanze, Christina, Kathy, 

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

 Deborah, Renee, Carmela, Sharon, Daisy,

 Anne, AJ, Cathie, Linda, Helen  

Thanks for stopping by!

  

Some fun!

 I didn't post last week. My son, his fiancee, my daughter and her pup all came to visit last weekend. Yay!

 We enjoyed a beautiful day apple picking. I have no idea what kinds of apples we picked as nothing was labeled, but we had a good day.

Hubby was surveying the scene.

Can you believe how blue the sky was?

There were rows and rows of apple trees.

Another pretty view of nearby lands.

Don't ask me what kind of apple this is.

Don't ask about this one either.

We also stopped by the Riverhead Ciderhouse with the thought of sampling some hard cider and having a snack with it. I knew that they had an outdoor patio and it was fairly empty. Thankfully, prior to ordering we realized that the reason the patio was empty was the multitude of yellow jackets. My son bought two cans of hard cider....one a honey crisp variety and the other called Cinnamon Toast.

We came hope and I set out a charcuterie board of meat, cheese, hummus, crackers, olives and grapes and we all shared the Honey Crisp hard cider. Yum.

I wasn't able to work on any crafts with all the visitors. We played games at night and spent the days amusing Ruby. I think we tired her out.

This week since everyone left, I have concentrated on the cross-stitch on the secret project. I finished it yesterday. Now all that is left is outlining, cording and french knots. I am hoping to get that done by mid-November. 

I moved the scroll on Santa. I am going to work on his hands and the package he is holding. I have started adding some more green!

I have been adding rows to the Baby Elephant Afghan also. I am now about 1/3 of the way done with the graphghan part. 

I am almost done with the physical therapy for my shoulder. I have gotten most of the range of motion back and am concentrating on making it a little stronger now. I will be starting PT for my left knee now. I am not sure what I did, but I hurt it in March 2020 just before everything shut down due to the pandemic. Every once in a while it still feels swollen and stiff as well as a little weak. I have been walking a hilly neighborhood near where I work on one of my free periods and it has been acting up. I finally asked my orthopedist and he thinks I just tweaked the knee cap by stepping wrong. So I will add PT for that to get it all back on track.

As for my mom, she is mostly stuck in her new hospital bed now. She has absolutely no strength in her legs to help the aides get her out of bed. I would like her to be sitting in her wheelchair part of the day, but the aides can't physically lift her every single day and she is too scared of the Hoyer lift that has been provided for it to be safe to use. She was out of the bed was last weekend when her grandchildren visited her and one other day this week. There are days when she is very aware of what is going on and hopes to change it and other days when she just seems to accept where she is. She is mostly refusing to take her medications. She is also eating very little at this point. I am struggling to find food that even interests her. She will eat baked ziti or ravioli. She no longer seems to like my meatballs and sausage that was a staple. The hospice nurse has said to just keep trying different things and let her eat what she wants. Each day is different and some are quite draining. 

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!

Stitch Along update

I am trying so hard to finish the cross-stitch part of my secret project that Santa has been getting neglected. I did manage to finish the dark red of the bow in the last three weeks.

Here is the last update.

This is where I am now. The bow is complete.

 

I have to roll the scroll frame to start stitching the package. I may change scroll frames and put it on my stand. 

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, Constanze, Christina, Kathy, 

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

 Deborah, Renee, Carmela, Sharon, Daisy,

 Anne, AJ, Cathie, Linda, Helen  

Thanks for stopping by!

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!