August Stitch Along Update

 Oh my, can you believe we have arrived at the August update already?! I have been steadily working on the Woodland Animals birth announcement. This is where I was on the last update in July. I was busy working on the leaves of the tree.

I have finished the tree now and am getting ready to work on some of the animals.

Thank you to Avis at Sewing Beside the Sea for hosting this Stitch Along every three weeks and sending us the needed posting reminders. 

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. 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, Gun, Constanze, Christina, Kathy, Margaret, Heidi, Jackie, Sunny, Megan, Deborah, Sharon, Daisy, AJ, Cathie, Linda, Helen, Connie

Thanks for stopping by!

Books and Crafts

I finished reading "The Address" by Fiona Davis. It is an intriguing book set at the Dakota building in NYC in both the 1880s and the 1980s. I found it somewhat interesting, but I didn't enjoy it as much as I have enjoyed other books by this author. Some of the events were just disturbing. I think I need more feel-good books right now.

I am currently finishing "The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post" by Allison Pataki. I was finally able to renew my loan so that I can finish it. Thank goodness for my Kindle which saved the page that I had read up to before my loan ended. I had to go back to the beginning of the chapter to get the context, but it was easy to remember what had come before and continue with the story. 

I have added several stitches to October Morning. You can see that I am now adding a variety of rusts and oranges up the right side of this piece.

I have slowly added a few more rows to my crocheted ankle socks. 

I am not sure why I am hesitating on working on these although I did figure out that I need to work on them during the daylight as the yarn is too dark for me to see in artificial light.

There is not much more new this midweek.

Thanks for stopping by! 

End of July

I can't believe today is the last day of July. Where did that month go? Oh wait, it was way too hot to do anything outside, so it was mostly spent inside. That means that I made a lot of crafting progress. I almost finished another 10 blocks for the Log Cabin Star quilt. This time the second to last log assembled fairly easily...except for a couple of pieces that were cut a shade too small. I started adding the last log on Friday. 

All that is left are the y-seams that I may work on today.

The stitching on the Woodland Animals birth announcement is going at a quick pace. As you can see, the tree is almost done.

Next, I get to start stitching some of the animals. I think I will complete the backstitching as I go this time as it is all the same color for the entire piece and then I will know that an area is done. 

Hubby and I have been going down to Jones Beach at night a couple of times during the week. We walk the boardwalk and sometimes walk down to the water. It is very peaceful. 

We went to Wantagh Park this past week also. It was a sunny, hot day and there were surprisingly few people. We watched a few boats leave the marina and looked out over Flat Creek towards Jones Beach.

You can see the Jones Beach water tower and the outdoor theater in the distance.

This is the sunset driving home from the beach last night.

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

Thanks for stopping by!

A midweek post of crafts and books.

I have plenty of time for crafting now that I am off for the summer retired. That means I have more updates to write about than I can manage in just one post a week. At least right now.  

I have been adding stitches to October Morning. I have stitched all the way to the lower right corner and finished the fence. 

I also finished all the rust colored stitching above the mailbox.

I added some rows to the my first crocheted sock. It seems to be going well. Although the yarn looks grey in this photo is is actually a variegated forest green.

I was reading "The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post" by Alison Pataki, but I didn't finish it before my loan ran out and I am now on the wait list to renew. It is a novel based on Marjorie Post's interesting life. For many years a local college was called C.W. Post Community College (now LIU Post) named after Marjorie Post's father and established on an estate that he had built specifically for her. I have actually worked near that college for the past few years. 

I read "The Huntress" by Kate Quinn in the meantime. I can't say that I really liked this book. I almost stopped reading it when I was a third of the way through. It is very dark and I just didn't like the characters. I decided to read some of the reviews of this book before putting it aside and they were glowing, so I decided to continue reading it. I am glad that I finished this book, but I wasn't impressed. It was easy to figure out the plot line and the intervening events were mostly depressing. 

I am now reading "The Address" by Fiona Davis. I have no firm opinion of it yet, but I am not enjoying it as much as some of her other books. 

I thought I would leave you with a view of the beautiful sky Hubby and I saw on our evening walk on Monday. 

It was after a cold front came through with thunderstorms, but not much rain. It is now about 10 degrees cooler than it has been lately.

Thanks for stopping by!

Returning to some UFOs

 I have taken out a couple of projects that I put aside a while ago. I have finally returned to working on the Log Cabin Star quilt. That is my name for it. It is Judy Martin's Timberline Log Cabin quilt from this book. I am making the queen sized version. Here is a picture of the wall-hanging size.

I had 10 blocks that were close to being finished. I had to add the last log to three of them and then do all 10 y-seams. The final 2 logs on each block are not easy as you have to match seams on the diamonds. No matter how precise I am in my stitching....and trust me I do a whole lot of seam ripping...it seems I can't get those last to logs to go together easily. Surprisingly, the last log worked perfectly on those three blocks and all that was left was the y-seam. The first 6 were a breeze. The next 2 gave me fits and then the last two worked fine. I now have 41 out of 196 blocks completed. 

I started the next 10 blocks right away. 

I hope to work on this quilt at least 2 days a week each week. 

I have started bringing this wooden box with me to work on when visiting my mom. It was a birthday gift from a friend a few years ago. It uses a lot of floss to make the stitches as the lid is easily a quarter inch thick.

It isn't easy to slip the needle under the stitches when ending off either, because, of course, the box is very rigid. I am using this thimble to help. 

I had bought it for my mom a couple of years ago, but she never used it. I found it in one of her fabric drawers and it helps a lot with this project.

I am working the the tree branches and trunk of the Woodland Animals birth announcement. There are a whole lot of different shades of brown in this tree.

  If you haven't seen it already, I posted about my daughter's baby shower here. I am going to try to post twice a week now that I am retired as I am working on too many projects lately to share in one post a week. 

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!

A baby shower

This past weekend Hubby and I made a trip to Rhode Island and then to Boston. First we had dinner with one of my cousins and his wife as well as our daughter and her husband at a great restaurant called Besos Bistro in East Greenwich, RI on Friday night after a very long drive from Long Island.

On Saturday, Hubby played golf at the Warwick Country Club with my daughter's husband and father-in-law, while the women enjoyed my daughter's baby shower. There were games like guess the number of diapers in the diaper cake

and guess the total price of all the baby items in the box. 

We had a delicious buffet followed by cupcakes and macarons for dessert.

Each table had its own single layer diaper cake topped by a stuffed animal as well as a photo of one of the parents as a baby.

There were also some crafts for the guests to do. They could write a funny or uplifting message on a diaper.

There were some very clever messages.

Guests could also decorate onesies and undershirts.

These were displayed on a clothesline during the shower.

Yes, there is a beautiful view of the Greenwich Bay out the window.

My daughter received many adorable items for the baby.

Here she is opening my gift of embroidered bibs...

...and elephant afghan.

She has always been a big Harry Potter fan and often waited on line at midnight for the next book release with a good friend who gave her this sleeper.

The grandmothers enjoyed the shower almost as much as my daughter did.

Here are my daughter and her husband with his grandmother.

It is not too much longer until my granddaughter will be here!

After the shower we went back to my daughter's house near Boston. Her dog Ruby was very sleepy after spending a day and night in Rhode Island.

She snoozed while we ate pizza.

We enjoyed breakfast on her patio the next morning.

I hope to be able to make one more trip up to see her before the baby arrives.

Thanks for stopping by!

Stitch Along

I have been stitching like crazy lately on many different projects, but in this post I will just update my Stitch Along projects. First I want to share the finished Santa Stocking. Tada!!!

The birth announcement cross-stitch is stitching up quite quickly. I hadn't started it 3 weeks ago. Now I have almost finished all of the leaves on the tree. 

I am getting ready to stitch the tree branches and trunk. So far I am finding stitching 2 over 2 on 18 count very easy to do.

Thank you to Avis at Sewing Beside the Sea for hosting this Stitch Along every three weeks and sending us the needed posting reminders. 

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. 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, Gun, Constanze, Christina, Kathy, Margaret, Heidi, Jackie, Sunny, Megan, Deborah, Sharon, Daisy, AJ, Cathie, Linda, Helen, Connie

Thanks for stopping by!