Tiny Needle Tuesday

 

I turned the corner on both ends of the Village Quaker this week. If I do one little house a day, I can be done in 16 days. Won't that be nice.

The summer seasonal Patchwork has the right border panel finished. I have to put the lacy edging on this week. I did figure out how to finish the left hand boxes on the fall Patchwork without a pattern. It took a few tries to get that little mushroom right but I think I've got it now.

I'm outlining that big fish the girl is riding on. See all that yellow floss? That's how much came with the kit. That's how big that fish is. It's going to take a while but after outlining the thing it will be just mindless stitching. 

And.....two more finishes for Dear Jane. Well, one complete finish and one that is now all together but still needs its borders. The green one is the first block of row D. Woo hoo...I'm starting to get somewhere. 

Radio Days

 

I had promised myself a weekend off. I was going to NOT pick up a project and just SIT on the couch and watch junk TV all day. I NEVER do that. The thing is that Comcast had a huge outage here. NO TV. NO INTERNET-no nothing. All darn weekend. All that quiet was nerve wracking I finally got out my little radio and surfed the channels like I was 13 again. It was interesting. There's some weird stuff on the airwaves these days. My favorite was finding a Spanish language station that was having an Eric Clapton night and listening to the DJ trying to explain the Clapton/Harrison/Boyd love triangle after playing Layla.

I used to love my little transistor radio. I also had a big radio that could get shortwave stations. I used to love listening to French language Canada. Note it on my dresser with a coat hanger antenna. Classy, huh? If my sister is reading this post, that is the butterfly quilt I was talking about. My great grandmother made it for my mother and I adopted it and used it to tatters as you can see. Just looking at that room now makes me cringe. I've never been very good at that interior decorating thing and I suppose it started early. 

I'm happy to say all our tech stuff was restored by late Sunday afternoon so I did get some of my weekend off with junk TV...along with a lot of cooking and cleaning and laundry....sigh.

Made in the Shade

 

I said I wasn't getting off the couch this weekend but look where I ended up. I had just given Pup a haircut and a bath and we were hiding out in the shade while The Mister walked over to the farmer's market at 8 am.

We were at the little park across from the bay and there are plenty of benches in the shade at that time of day. 

There was even a nice breeze coming off the water. The humidity hasn't been too crazy-yet.

Since he was itching to go to the farmer's market, I told him to pick up something for dinner. I'm thinking frittata. 

Back home I spent the day working on quilting things and making Pup a supply of pumpkin muffins. I also cleaned all the fruit out of our wonky fridge and made a little cake out of them. It's a kind of summer fruit cake with peaches, apples and pears and it was awfully good. I could have eaten the whole darn thing-but I didn't. At least not yet. I'll nibble away at it all weekend thinking that eating it that way changes the calorie count in some way. Wouldn't it be nice if it did? 

Upstairs, Downstairs

 

If you think slopping that joint compound on the ceiling is bad, you should see what comes next. 

After it's dry we have to take sponges, mops and buckets of water and wipe it all down over and over. I want subtle texture, think old Tuscan villa-not Luray Caverns. I actually had the idea 30 years ago to do this to those awful popcorn ceilings while I was sitting in a Olive Garden. They had vintage plaster looking walls and I liked them. 

That was the downstairs mess, upstairs we had another mess to deal with. Our new refrigerator has been making an awful noise. We called Samsung and they told us to......unplug it for 24 hours. It seems that every 18 months the fan will freeze up and you have to manual defrost it? We couldn't believe it but after doing some Googling it is indeed a common problem with this brand. That's just crazy. We pulled it out and gave it a good cleaning. We unplugged it for 2 hours and it did make the noise a bit less noisy but 24 hours? With all my food inside? No way. It's still under warranty so Monday we'll see what they have to say. 

Between the heat, the work and the mess I was out of sorts for the rest of the day. I hid in my sewing room and pulled out a few things I've been neglecting like the table runner I've been hand quilting and....

....poor Spiral Chicken. I cut up her new strips and sat still long enough to get a few on them on but that was it for me for the day. Tired is an understatement. I'm not getting off this couch until Monday.

 

The Icing on the Cake

 

I spent 5 hours on a ladder yesterday slopping joint compound onto the ceiling. It's like icing a 21x21' cake. I had to send The Mister to the hardware store to get me the big bucket of the stuff after I went through 2 of these. 

I had gone over the spot where the leak was the night before hoping that the colors would match so I wouldn't have to do the whole ceiling. They didn't.

The rest of the new flooring is going to be delivered in the next few weeks so we're trying to get all the messy stuff done before it gets here. The Mister is going to be painting and doing some tiling in the laundry area while I continue on with my ceiling work. I've got days of it ahead of me which is fine. It's too darn hot to go anywhere anyway.

Hot Stuff

 

Summer is officially here. They are putting up the jellyfish nets on the beach. I haven't seen one yet but this heatwave will certainly encourage them to stop on by. 

Now that school is out, we'll be getting a big crowd every day. They closed our water park this year for renovations so this little beach is all we have to beat the heat.

Every day they update the beach conditions and I had to laugh at yesterday's air temperature. I wish it had been 46 degrees. That's my kind of weather. Maybe they meant Celsius? That I might have believed. 

Wednesday WIPs

 

Nothing is very interesting knit wise this week but I do have a new project box started in the sewing room. I'm going to try to build a purple cupcake dress. 

This one to be exact. 

Taylor Barbie needs to get out of her Grammy gown and I found this Barbie pattern book on Amazon. 

I also found someone on Etsy that sells vintage doll patterns. Poor Skipper needs some clothes that fit and are age appropriate. She's wearing Barbie's old hand me downs and looks rather sad in them. 

I've also been obsessed with finding those teeny tiny Barbie buttons. These are not quite them but I'm getting closer. 

I decided, against my better judgement, to try my hand at making doll clothes after this debacle. I was doing so well getting some quality things from Ebay and then not once but twice I was sent the wrong dress. This was supposed to be a small party dress for Skipper and twice I got the same big Barbie dress from the same vendor. I give up. I'll make my own.

Tiny Needle Tuesday

 

I don't have much to show for this week stitching wise. Floors, quilts, sisters, life....you know. Too much going on.

I meant to round the corners on the Village Quaker but I only got two corner flowers and one blue thingy done. 
 

I said I was going to flip flop the Patchwork seasons and I did. Autumn had the most work left to do so it was its turn this week. It was going pretty well until I discovered that I have inexplicably lost the bottom half of the pattern. I've been using the photo to figure out the bottom two boxes on the left hand side. The last thing is supposed to be a mushroom but my eyes gave out so I'll have to try again with some daylight. The border boxes won't be a problem because all four sides are the same. 

I did get the lattice on the last of the row B blocks of Dear Jane and I was pretty close to finishing the first block of Row D.  Hopefully I'll have more time this week.

And... the top of sister's scrappy little lap quilt is done and Pup approved. The backing and batting are ordered and when it gets here, hopefully, I'll have Charmed Stars finished so I can get started on it. I'm close.

A Father's Day Quilting Bee

 

Little Sister had two containers filled with Dad's hexies. There are hundreds of them in there. I was shocked.  

She wanted to turn them into a quilt so she came down for the weekend and we set up an assembly line like we used to when Dad was still with us. My two sisters manned the machines while I did the cutting. 

We got this far before we got too tired and silly. We'll finish the top today-if we can stop laughing long enough. 

And today is Middle Sister's birthday. I wish I could remember how old she will be but I've forgotten because I am older and can't remember much of anything anymore. Beatles lyrics I can remember. Anything anyone just told me-forget about it. No recall at all. 

Nostalgia

 

Our Saturday farmer's market is held at our senior center and while The Mister shops Pup and I hide out on this shady sidewalk. Yesterday that sidewalk gave me a wave of emotion I hadn't felt in a long time. It's where they had set up the long row of chairs where we waited to get the very first of our Covid vaccines. I don't think I've ever been so terrified as I was that day. I was pretty sure I was going to be carried out on a stretcher.

I think the pandemic has been on my mind lately because of this. It's my latest listen. Someone asked me a while back if I liked it and I didn't answer because I didn't know. I dove in without knowing what it was about. All I knew was that Meryl Streep was the reader and that was enough for me. For the record, she is excellent. What I didn't know was that it takes place during the pandemic lockdown and the main character is enjoying having her college aged daughters all to herself for the duration. Her experience on her Michigan cherry farm was rather idyllic compared to what the rest of the world was going through and she acknowledges that. The loss of life can never be forgotten but the noise of the world being that quiet for so long was extraordinary. Sometimes I miss that.

 Thankfully all those feelings didn't last. The noisy world was right there in front of me again and I had things to buy.

Size Matters

 

I was chugging away every night on those last ten squares I needed for the last row of Audun when my alarm bells went off. 

The new squares seemed a little small and they were. By a lot. It seems I picked up the wrong hook. I have two blue ones and I was using the wrong one. Sigh....the whole frustrating mess gave me a terrific hot flash and seeing that we are under some sort of heat dome at the moment Audun is taking a break until fall. I just can't with it right now. 

On a happier note, Trim Day went very well and we spent yesterday afternoon piling stuff up in that finished room so we can.....

....start the hallway next week. First up will be spackling the ceiling. When we moved in it had one of those sloppy popcorn ceilings that I hated so I spent a summer vacation scraping it all off. I replaced it with a more subtle troweled look using a big bucket of drywall spackle but after an upstairs bathroom leaked a few years ago, it now has to all be redone. No fun there. 

Friday Fluff

It's been fun watching everyone get ready for this year's Tour. It starts on June 29th this year. I had no idea what I was going to work on until yesterday morning when I noticed this basket of cotton fiber I had stashed in the living room of all places.

I bought it a few Tours ago but lost interest in it. It's slow going on a spindle so this year I am determined to learn to spin it on a wheel. It's fiddly but as long as I don't expect perfection it should work. I haven't used my Ashford Traditional in a long while and it was nice to get it back in business. 

The Corridale I dyed for the handspun socks is off the Ladybug and just look at it. It's some of the nicest spinning I've ever done. Too bad it's going in those ugly socks.

As for the floor, we tackled the closet. That little bit took all day. No fun there. 

Today will be trim day so off we went to the hardware store for more of it. It's so long we have to hang it out the window. It's my job to hold on to it. 

Instead of doing my usual crafty stuff, I spent yesterday afternoon painting that trim instead. Soon we'll be tackling the big room and I told The Mister that we'll be working two days on and one day off for that part of the adventure. Three days in a row of all this fun is too much. Too, too much. TGIF.