Pretty in Pink

 

In spite of lots of kitchen work getting done I managed to find a little time last night to play with my new princess stamp set. 

They weren't the only new things I got to play with. I've got new alcohol markers. I got the green ones for Daughter's invitations a few weeks ago and I got the gray set for our Christmas cards yesterday. 

I needed the gray because I've got a lot of mountains color. 

As for the kitchen, we put in 5 hours yesterday and got this far on that second wall. They probably tiled the entire New York subway faster than we will have finished two walls in a kitchen. I blame it on age. The age of our bow walled house and the age of the tile setters. If I'm not goofing something up, The Mister is. 

Field Trip

 

I felt as forlorn as Pup looks at finding myself in Lowes again yesterday morning. 

The second wall does not have a window but it does have a fancy range hood to tile around so we went looking for options to make our numbers come out right in order to center the tile over the stove. We have no idea if any of this will work but it's all they had that matched our tile.

I'm going for a rather minimalist look in the kitchen itself but I thought I would get wild and crazy with the 36 by 36 inch landing between the wood floor and the new laminate. I found this tile that I loved and bought a few of them to see if they would work but alas......they do not. Too small. Numbers. Again. I hate numbers. 

But.......the day was not a total loss. When I got home this was waiting in the mailbox. 

My princess stamp and die set has arrived! If I hadn't been so tired when we got home I would have run downstairs and started making princesses but instead Pup and I took a long nap. All those numbers were making my head hurt. 

Sweater Weather

 

We faced a brand new dilemma with the tile yesterday. We can't decide how to do the part over the stove. We looked at lots of pictures, did a lot of measuring and then decided we needed to just let it be for a while and get some fresh air. 

It's been cold. Wonderfully cold. Pup had to wear a sweater and so did I. 

I never did find the metal closures for the neck but I wore Lofoten for the first time and I loved it. Wool of the Andes is not the softest yarn when you are working with it but after blocking it feels great over a long necked shirt. I was toasty warm and very comfortable. 

We took a nice long walk through town and noticed that holiday decorating was in full swing. 

We also noticed a lot of storm damage. Poor little beach town. Hopefully they'll get it all cleaned up and fixed by the big tree lighting in December. 

In a Corner

 

I bet you're as sick of looking at this tile as I am. It took us four hours yesterday to get to the corner but we got there. 

The weather was clear but COLD. The poor Mister was covered in water from the wet saw all day.

Pup spent those four hours pouting in her stroller. She kept getting under foot. If the sun is shining she wants to be out but we have things to do. 

Eventually we did get her out for a little walk and then we heated up some canned beans and threw them on a tortilla with some salad I had made in the morning. I'm over trying to cook in that mess. It's microwave or nothing from now on. Afterwards I got started on this year's Christmas cards. 

I picked this card because I thought the car would tempt The Mister into wanting to help. So far, no luck. I'm in it all by myself but that's okay. After fighting over tile all day being alone in my card room isn't so bad.

Wednesday WIPs

 

We had an unexpected day off from the kitchen drudgery yesterday so I got to spend some quality time with my knitting baskets. It rained all day so we couldn't get the tile cutting equipment out on the deck.  My twofer stripey socks are a bit lop-sided. I guess I've been favoring one over the other. 

My Fright Club redo hat is still potato chip knitting. I hate to put it down. 

I decided to go traditional with the baby Dogstar. I was going to put some color in the yoke but why tinker with a classic combination. 

The last sleeve on Festive Doodle is heading down to the wrist which is a good thing because it is finally sweater weather around here. I'm wrapped in a shawl right now and ....gasp, I have socks on. It's about time the weather matched the calendar.

Speaking of calendars, in the month of December I need to come up not only with my Christmas cards but also with 30 of something like this. Daughter is giving a friend a baby sprinkle in February for her soon to be baby girl and this is the stamp set she decided on. I would complain about the work but isn't this just the cutest? Squee.......

Tiny Needle Tuesday

 

I'e gotten some work done on the nautical sampler this week because I've been hiding downstairs with Pup while the oven is doing its burn off thing for several days in a row. Four times I've cranked it up and it still smells awful. I wouldn't eat anything out of it yet so it's getting annoying. 

After about an hour the burn smell goes out the windows so I can get back upstairs but the toy tree is slow going. I did a little duck and a few more branches this week but that's it.

I had the binding sewn on the memory quilt but it looked awful so I took it off and trimmed off about a half an inch from the last white border. I had used some floppy material and it did not take well to the machine quilting so cutting it back made it play nicely on the edges. It was a pain but it was worth it to get rid of the ripples and the puckers. 

Of course this is how I am spending most of my day. Can you believe we still haven't even got to the corner yet? Cutting the tile around the window was not a lot of fun-and we still have the other side of the window to do. Argh....

November

 

Some of you get all googly about October but it's November that gives me all the feels. It's when fall usually starts around here even though this year we're still waiting. The worst thing about November is that Inktober is over.  Here's this year's 31. I can't believe I did it with everything else going on.

The last four are Crispy-air fried tofu, which I am living on thanks to the kitchen mess. Patch-I got a patched up scarecrow in a pumpkin patch. Slither is a blue tailed skink. They always seem to get in the house and I'm always rescuing them from the cats. Risk is Covid of course. Everything seems like a risk these days. This one taught me that I have no idea what a hypodermic needle looks like. I should have done some homework on that one before I tried to draw it. It's pretty bad but it gets the point across, eh?

These are the tools I used this year. I don't think I spent more than 10 minutes on any of them. It was slap and dash all the way but it was fun and something to look forward to at the end of the day.

This pile now joins the other three piles of Inktober pasts. I really need a way to organize all this but I really like working on those tiny watercolor blocks. A big sheet of blank paper scares me to death. 

And......Halloween wasn't a total bust yesterday. In spite of the mess on the boardwalk they managed to still hold the Puppy Parade. Pup had a ball-kind of. She hates wearing a dress, she hates crowds and loud noises but other than that she had a good time....lol.

Also.......in spite of not having a working kitchen I managed to figure out a way to make my mom's Halloween donut recipe. I had to fry them in an electric skillet and use olive oil but I got it done. It's just not Halloween without them.