Tiny Needle Tuesday

 

I only managed to get one little yellow pair of overalls and a little star finished on the birth sampler this week. I had other fish to fry.

Instead of stitching I got the bug to sort and cut up that big bin of material I had just inherited. 

Dad's lady friend's Daughter asked me to incorporate this piece of material into whatever quilt design I decided to make for her. Her mother had made her a dress out of it years ago. The motifs are really big for a quilt but I had an idea.

I fussy cut the small butterflies and some other small motifs I found on different material that otherwise wouldn't be suitable.

Dad's lady friend was not a quilter so most of the material was used for clothing or home decor. It was hard to find a pattern that was going to look right with such randomness going on. I watched scrappy quilt You Tube videos all night.  I decided on a simple postage stamp block to let the material speak for itself as it is very vintage and rather fragile. I am still determined to use just what's in the bin so it's going to be interesting. 

A Sunday Miracle

 

O ye of little faith.....look what came down my driveway on Sunday morning.

Surprise, surprise....all 16 cabinets made it here. Finally. It's going to take a while to process this so for now we are just looking at them in wonder. Today we are helping Daughter and SIL move into their new house. We'll just have to deal with our good fortune later. 

Labor of Love

 

I spent all day Tuesday clearing out my dining area so I would have a place to put my cabinets. Now that space looks like this. It's a car load of sewing supplies that I picked up from Dad's recently departed little lady friend's house. 

Her daughter is clearing out her house and wanted me to have her mother's crafty things. There are boxes and boxes of batting and fiber fill.

There were bags of unfinished afghans. 

There are boxes of craft books and quilting magazines. I'm having a good time reading those. 

The big job is to go through the many boxes of material. Her daughter asked me to make her a quilt from the material but most of it is knits and other clothing weights. I do think I have enough for something scrappy in cotton. It's going to be a challenge but I'm looking forward to it. It reminds me of those days when Dad would get be all fired up to make something for someone he wanted to give a gift to. I just have to clear out the sewing room-again. I had to put all that kitchen stuff somewhere. 

Finally a Finish

 

The mitts are done-again. Even though it wasn't a sit and knit kind of week I did get something accomplished. Once I could concentrate and visualize what I was supposed to be doing fixing my mistake was easy peasy. 

I didn't end up frogging the Dog Star sleeves. I thought I would work past the ribbing and see what happened and I think it's going to be alright size-wise. The way babies are popping out around here it should fit someone someday.

The hat got re-started. Hats are nice mindless knitting so it was my go to project. 

Speaking of mindless, look at this plain vanilla man sock. That yarn is GORGEOUS. It's Knit Pick's Stroll in Walrus and I am in love with this colorway. I need to get some of this for myself. 

Those That Serve

 

I cropped this photo from a kindergarten class picture of Daughter's that I used in a post on her wedding blog. That's the groom to be behind her. They first met at the pre-school they both attended at Gallaudet University where his mother and I worked once upon a time. It was love at first sight apparently. They got into trouble for kissing at nap time. 

Twenty years later they reconnected via Facebook when she was graduating from college and he was returning home after serving in the Middle East with the Marines. I've never had a son that served but I think often of SIL's mother and what she must have endured for all those years he was away and in harm's way. She got her boy home safe and sound when so many do not. 2,372 did not come back from Iraq and 4,418 did not come home from Afghanistan. 55,220 did not come home from Viet Nam and we lost 407,316 in WW2. I have no idea why I needed to look up all those casualty reports last night but I did. Our guy that came home is moving into a new house this coming week and has a son of his own on the way. On days like yesterday I think about that. A lot. 

A Deep Dive

 

Well.....guess what didn't show up. I didn't jump off the pier like I said I would when the cabinets didn't show up but I wanted to. At this point I could care less about any of this but I had to listen to The Mister stomping around and screaming at people on the phone all day yesterday. 

It seems Lowes told us they would be here on Wednesday when they knew that they only ship from the central warehouse on Thursdays. That's when they send them to the store so the delivery people can pick them up from there. Now they are saying Sunday....Sunday? Really? Sunday? Seems unlikely. We unboxed our one lone cabinet and sat it up the table in the newly cleared kitchen as a sort of totem. It's our offering to the delivery gods that they may hear us and have mercy...lol. You've just gotta laugh. This is the forth time I've packed everything up for nothing. It's become a regular comedy routine. Sigh......

Happy Cabinet Day!!!

 

On Tuesday, November 5th 2019 we took Pup to Lowes to start the process of re-doing the kitchen. 

On December 4th, 2019 we started taking out the old cabinets and ripping up the tile floor. 

On Friday April 30, 2021, two weeks after our second vaccines, we finally made it into the store to order our new cabinets. 

If tomorrow I don't show you a giant pile of cabinets where this mess used to be you probably won't be hearing from me again. I just might go jump off the pier.

Tiny Needle Tuesday

 

The birth sampler got a string of bunting and several new branches on the tree this week. 

I got a lot more rope done on the nautical sampler and started a big white cloud behind the sails. Those clouds are not going to be fun. I hate stitching with white. 

My sweet little bookmark has a house now. I have to ration working on this because it is so much fun and at the price I paid for it I want that fun to last as long as I can. No one needs a pile of bookmarks but I can see myself getting addicted. 

Hot Stuff

 

Son and DIL invited us over for dinner so they could give me some things they brought back from their Michigan trip. Cherry things. Lots and lots. You know I am going to be making some dried cherry scones this week. 

The real surprise was this. It's their new toy. 

Son had spent the week perfecting his pizza making skills. 

He had a regular assembly line going. 

That fancy pizza oven heats to 700 degrees and in minutes....and I mean minutes we had the most amazing pizza I've ever had and I am a real pizza snob. I grew up with an Italian Auntie and I know what real pizza is and this is it. It is all about the crust. I am going to dream about this pizza it was so good. 

Not to be outdone DIL was finishing up some cookies she made for a friend's baby shower. Have you ever? They are just so darn cute. Between the two of them they could set up shop. I'd be the first in line for a pizza and a cookie. 

Respite

 

There was just too much tooth drama going on Friday for yesterday to be a normal day. I was worn out. A little bit of worry seems to go a very long way these days. I did get my new kitchen toys washed and ready to use. I needed new cutting mats and I found some cute little ones on Amazon. 

I also bought a set of scone cutters. I've been addicted to watching people in the UK make scones and most of them use these so I had to have them too. I mixed up a dough using a box of raisins I had leftover from my lockdown days and had a pan full cut out and in the oven in no time. 

Look at those babies. I haven't had a good scone since our bakeshop down the street got sold. The new owners can't make a decent scone I am sad to say but these were sooooo good. I found the recipe on the "What's For Tea?" You Tube channel. It wasn't a lot of fun converting the measurements into something I could understand but it was worth it. They were perfect. 

Adding Insult to Injury

 

The Mister went to bed with a terrible toothache Thursday night and had to have an emergency extraction in the morning.

Our dentist is just off the boardwalk at the beach and it was raining RAINING. Buckets and buckets. We were under an areal flood warning so we knew what to expect. 

The Bay was also pretty ticked off about it and wouldn't let the storm drains do their thing. 

We've got a new pumping system but it was working overtime to no avail. 

Yikes. That's the parking lot and it was underwater. As if all this humidity wasn't bad enough. Just look at that mess. 

He had to take several detours to get to the dentist but the nasty tooth is out. Poor guy. Yesterday was pretty all around awful. 

All Dried Up

 

I know I've been complaining about the humidity for days now but when I was packing up my watercolors to go on last week's house sitting adventure I noticed that the gouache set I bought last year was looking rather pitiful.

It used to look like this. It was nice and creamy and a lot of fun to paint with. We keep two dehumidifiers going in the downstairs so it should have been no surprise that they dried up. I don't think the lid was airtight. 

I tossed them in the trash before I left and since The Mister hadn't taken out the trash in the craft room I dug them out again when I came home and tried using them like watercolor. I am glad I did because they worked great and were lots of fun to play with. 

I'm not the only one having dry paint problems. The Mister has been very frustrated with his latest paint by number set for the same reason. Several of the colors in the little pots are dried out and water did not bring them back to life. He's been subbing them out with some acrylic I had but it's too thin and needs many coats to cover the numbers. We are trying different things to thicken it up but so far nothing's working. Bummer. 

 

Uggy, Muggy and Buggy

 

I hate to continually complain about the weather but this is what I woke up to yesterday.

This isn't fog. It's just humidity. You can't walk outside without your glasses fogging up. It feels like you are walking into a steam bath. 

And it doesn't look like we will be out of this tropical weather pattern for a while since the Atlantic keeps stirring up more trouble. The good news is that our cabinets left the manufacturer in North Carolina yesterday. Now we just have to wait for the store to call us and tell us when they will be delivered. Could it be the end of the living out of cardboard boxes era? I'll wait and see. I've heard all this before. 

Wednesday WIPs: Tropical Depression Edition

 

Oh, dear....I had this second mitt done and tried it on and I had put the hand opening on the wrong side. Rip, rip, rip.

I cast on the Dog Star sleeves but they look too small. I think I am going up a size, maybe two. Rip, rip, rip. 

The poor hat is still in the basket. It's been so gloomy, hot and humid out that I've got no knitting mojo at the moment. I'm tired of complaining about this horrible weather but it's horrible out there folks. Uggy, buggy and muggy.

The one thing that is still floating my boat is Audun. Little mindless squares I can do.