Dragon Tales

 

Look what we found on the beach yesterday. It's the headless dragon boats. They'll put the heads on tomorrow for the race. It's a huge event here every year but we're going to miss it. We've got babysitting duty this weekend while SIL is in Chicago for work.

The crew was all in a panic when we got there yesterday because the pink boat needed to get bailed out. The crew was having to move all the boats because the tide was higher than expected and threatening to swamp them all. Not good.

The other half of the beach was closed off because the horseshoe crabs are a little late this year in coming ashore to do their reproducing thing. It's usually in May. The moon and the tides have to be just right for romancing it seems. With all this going on in town, it's going to be an interesting day tomorrow. 

If You Give a Mouse....

 

....a Cookie. That's the book I was thinking of last night when I pulled out my teeny tiny iron. I had received a shipment of little doll skirts and they came vacuum packed thus a wrinkled mess. I couldn't even identify them as skirts at first. 

I bought that little iron for Dear Jane so if I had the iron out I might as well work on another block and....

...if I  had the blocks out I might was well take a good look at them and see where I am. I haven't picked up Dear Jane in ages. I've got 39 of the 169 blocks done which means I have only 3 of the 13 rows completed. I still have a lot of white lattice to sew on before I can go back to making blocks again. I should have been doing it as I went along but didn't. The good news is that I'm planning on spending the summer with her. Progress will be made. 

And....speaking of doll skirts, here are two new reasons for buying more clothes. That's Pretty Flowers Barbie on the left and Babysitting Skipper on the right. They are both Mattel but in the cheap Barbie category so they came wearing next to nothing. Putting together a wardrobe for each of them has been fun.

Expensive Midge and Skipper are not to be outdone. They got new outfits for the summer too. Skipper, being a 9 inch doll, is hard to find clothes for. I'm getting more and more tempted to try to make some myself. Somebody stop me. 

Wednesday WIPs

 

Molding day wasn't too terrible-until we got to the door frame. We had to pull one side of it out and move it because once again we discovered that most of our original framing is not square or level. 

We got to use The Mister's shiny new miter saw. We killed the old one when we re-did the upstairs. All the molding is now cut and in place but not attached. We are going to use The Mister's fancy air compressor thingy to nail it and Pup can't stand the noise it makes so I'll be putting her in the car and driving her around until he is finished. The things we do. 

As for knitting, the dark gray blob now has the start of a second sleeve and the light gray blob has one row of its front bands knit. It's a long way up and back. This will take a while. 

And....I had the 10th and supposedly last row attached on Audun but I made a fatal error. I neglected to attach the top corners of the row not thinking that another row wasn't happening. I guess another row is happening now after all. 

I think it would be better off more rectangular anyway so it's not such a terrible thing to have to add at least another row. I've still got plenty of those cute little mini skeins to make more squares so I just need to adjust my expectations and move forward. 

Tiny Needle Tuesday

 

The Mister did go play golf yesterday for a few hours but I thought it was a better use of my time to clean out the refrigerator and do three loads of laundry than finish the right hand side of the Village Quaker. I'm close.

I also had a bit more painting to do. We forgot to do the inside edges of the closet where the doors attach so I had to do two coats on them so we could get the molding down and the doors back up today. Over the weekend I did get a good start on the bottom border of Patchwork Ete. 

I didn't get around to starting my piggy stack but I did decide on the colors.

I also had a big a ha moment this week. I had put this project on the back burner because it was so difficult to get my hand inside the pillow case to stitch. When I was ripping out a seam on the February quilt I realized that I know how to take apart seams AND put them back together so why struggle. I ripped out two sides so the stitching fabric lies flat. I can get it in a frame now and spent some time catching up. 

And...because someone asked, this is the website I used for the recipe for the doggy pumpkin muffins. Poor Pup. I can't stop eating them. I've put away the little loaf and two of the muffins already. She gets a few pieces. I get the rest. They are awfully good with a cup of tea.

Sweet Stuff

 

On my day "off" yesterday I made Pup some pumpkin muffins. They are the healthy doggy version and I have to admit that even with only one tablespoon of molasses and no sugar or fat, they were darn good. I had a hard time not eating them all myself. I made her the muffins because she's always begging for whatever I'm eating and whatever I'm eating is not particularly good for her-or me probably.

I didn't get to everything else I had hoped to get to but I did spend some time here. I put about 7 more inches on it. 

I also made a good dent in the warp for the towel I hope to be working on this summer. I may get today off too if The Mister decides to go golfing. He keeps saying he's going and then changes his mind. He's a little freaky about it after all the surgery and I don't blame him but I do miss those days all to myself. 

No Rest For the Weary

 

I made the mistake of telling The Mister I wanted to go to the farmer's market yesterday morning which was all well and good...

 

...but he said since we were out how about we swing by the local hardware store and pick up some molding? 

We needed to get the quarter round for the floor and something new to go around the door. The previous owners replaced this door's molding for some reason and it never matched. It will now. 

That meant that we had more painting to do....

...and some patching. While The Mister was doing this I was vacuuming and scrubbing the rest of the house. A week of being too tired to do much of anything after working all day downstairs left the upstairs covered in cat hair and dust. Not any more. I had a headache anyway so at least I can say I got something done. Hopefully I'll get today off. I've got a loom, a sewing machine and a spinning wheel calling my name. 

Seeing Red

 

On this first day of June, I have two FOs to share. First, the floor. The first room is DONE. To answer Betsy's question, we have one more bedroom sized room to do, a  hallway and a big family room. It's a lot. Now we have to shift everything out of the other room into this one so we can get to work on it next week We ARE taking the weekend off. We're both beat. 

Since we only had that closet to finish yesterday I had plenty of spare time to myself in the afternoon. I got to work finishing up the February quilt top. 

Ta da.....it did get a bit out of hand. It was only supposed to be something small to throw over the back of my couch but it just kept growing. I had a lot of fun working on it. I probably won't quilt it until winter because the Juki queue is a long one at the moment. 

Speaking of the Juki, I'm still working on Charming Stars. I'm doing some fancy stuff in the middle of the stars so it's taking some time. I think I have three more blocks to go and then I have to tackle the sashing and the outside pieced border. I've loved every step of this project and it's rare that I get to say that about anything I'm doing.