TNT: Two out of Three Ain't Bad

 

I finished the middle row of the needlepoint project. One more row to go. I'm terribly impressed with myself since this kit was headed to the trash at one point. I didn't think there was anyway I could pull it off. 

I got the Boo! filled in and I got the pumpkin outlined this week in spite of it not being the stitching kind of week.

I'm still heading down the border on the Patchwork quilt with my wibbly wobbly stitches. I always feel like my great grandmother is watching me over my shoulder and giving me the "tsk, tsk" face. I wish they'd taken some photos of her quilting set up. I'd love to know how she did it. Dad said he remembers her having a big floor frame. 

Look at all those teeny tiny stitches so close together in a perfect row. I've spent most of my life trying to figure this out. Still haven't.

The I's Have It

 

Whenever I see a hurricane with a name that starts with an I, I start worrying. In year's past both Irene and Isabelle did a lot of damage. I still have the skeletons of two huge black walnuts that they each brought down out in the back. One of them pushed the boardwalk two blocks back and destroyed a lot of homes. Thankfully, post tropical Isaias only dumped a deluge of rain on us for about 24 hours yesterday.

No complaints here. It gave me the time and the right mood to get out the Halloween bin. 

I have a ratty old bin filled with ratty old things from many year's past. Zelda, my grandmother's wooden Schoenhut doll, is wearing my dear departed doggie's Halloween costume. 

My old witch hat is now the centerpiece on the dining room table. Or it should be. The Mister has his Halloween puzzle in the middle of it and I have the Patchwork quilt on the other end.

The ceramic Jack O'Lantern gets turned around in October. The rest of the year I turn it around so it's just a pumpkin. My mom made it for me back in her ceramic craze days. I dropped it out of the attic a few years ago and shattered it. It's held together with glue now and never will go in the attic again. 

I was really on a roll getting things decorated when I noticed......I had left the summer curtains up. Today's chore will be taking them down, putting up the winter curtains and rearranging those lights. I didn't have the heart to tell The Mister what I'd done after he spent the morning untangling and then putting them up for me. I'll do it myself today when he's busy doing something else. 

Finally, A Gaggle

I've finally got my geese all in a row. Most have their noses intact. A few have a smidgen missing. I added the border yesterday and had to rip back some of the geese to give me the space I needed to attach it without losing the noses of those on the end. 

I'm glad that part is done. Now I have to make a lot of butter churn blocks which seems pretty simple in comparison. Now that the whole thing is coming together I can see how small it is going to be. Although the pattern says it's a quilt it's really more like a large table topper. 

I've been brainstorming ways to make it bigger but all I have left is this small pile of scraps. I did find some yardage of the two fabrics in the front. Believe it or not someone was selling them on eBay from the 2016 Spiced Potpourri collection. What were the chances?

The Zig Zag is still getting some attention. It was one of those weeks around here so I'm looking forward to being in one place today. Football and rain. The perfect combination for a much needed day to myself. 

Up On a Soapbox

 

We earned our voting stickers this week by turning in our ballots. 

We've been voting by mail here since the pandemic and I love it. What I don't love is having to have a degree in constitutional law to be able to fill out my ballot. We had three questions on it that took me hours of research to unravel in order to make an informed decision and I'm still not sure if I got it right. 

I don't want to excuse the non-voters of the world but if you can't write questions about constitutional amendments that can be easily understood you get what you deserve. I know I read at least three sources on the pros and cons for every question and still was confused by the ambiguous language as were the authors of some of the articles I read. I can see a lot of folks just leaving this section blank.

And while we are talking politics let me say that I've been doing a lot of knitting at night while watching The West Wing. I never watched it when it originally aired. What a brilliant show it was. I feel like I'm working towards that constitutional law degree with every episode. 

Friday Fluff: Heading Downhill

I've got a lot of fancy knitting going on right now and I am itching to cast on something simple. I can't spin fast enough to get the yarn for my Dust Bunny cardi even though I'm managing to get a bit done every night.
 

The handspun Pimpeliesse is just past the halfway point. I've been weighing the yarn every time I feed Betty and started the decreases when I had a bit more than half left but that ball sure looks small. I hate playing yarn chicken especially with handspun.

Speaking of Betty, she's been very busy this week in spite of her trying to go into hibernation from the colder temperatures. She hasn't been her bubbly, bouncy self but we've still made bread and jars of crackers. The best thing was this maple glazed pumpkin bread. The recipe said it was better the next day and it is. You can see that we're pretty close to finishing off one of the loaves. 

Christmas in October

 

I was frazzled beyond belief yesterday. Three days of The Mister worrying himself to death over all the new truck details has worn me out. Today we have to go into town to turn in the tags. Yesterday was a big fight with the finance company. The dealership filled out the paperwork using a company The Mister didn't want to use so it had to be switched. It's all been a big headache. Anyway....the only energy I had left was to open a package that came. It's the materials for this year's Christmas cards.

Here's a closeup of the stamp set. Every fall I look at the offerings of all the stamp companies and this year I picked these from Mama Elephant.

Here's their inspiration card. I also bought that pretty snowflake frame die. What I have to do now is make that ombre background before anything else gets done. Hopefully, as soon as things calm down around here, I can get down to the craft room and get an assembly line going. 

Wednesday WIPs: Welcome to the Big Top

 

The Stephen West MKAL has been a crazy week of knitting gymnastics. I made it through section one and am almost done with section two. It looks like a circus tent doesn't it? This might be the ugliest thing I've ever made but I'm having fun making it. The next clue drops tomorrow but I still have FOUR more pages of knitting to go before I'll be ready for it. 

I might have gotten more done this week if I hadn't spent two days in the car turning the heels on the Halloween socks outside a Ford dealership while The Mister traded in his old 2008 Ford Ranger. 

On Monday we spent the day haggling over the price and doing some test driving. We went all the way back yesterday to pick up the new Maverick after it had the bed liner installed. 

I'll probably be spending today trying to figure out how all these fancy gadgets work. The Mister is no good with such things and it turns out I'm not much better. It took me quite a while just to figure out how to get the radio to play when all the darn thing wanted to do was to read me text messages and sell me YouTube music.