Pulled in multiple directions on a Slow Sunday..

 Hello - well that week certainly got away from me... I've been pulled in multiple directions by several different projects in the yard, in the house and in the crafty realm.  I'm having a hard time prioritizing what should I do next, cause I want to do all of it!!! Right now!!! LOL

The weather has taken a definite turn to Spring, which means... it's time to hit the garden centers!  Now I've only gotten to 3 so far... a slow start.. but I have plans lots of plans as there are several different categories of plants I'm interested in this year.. 

I started with my favorites... petunias and verbena... it is hard to judge from the picture but this wagon was BIG...

and  in this wagon are 24 4" verbena plants... I got 12 in the Peachy Keen variety and 12 in the Amethyst Sparkler variety... there are 15 different petunias... 3 Persian Shield, 4 osteospermum , 4 cuphea and 4  Nemesia... some of these are new to me plants. 

I would have gotten more plants but that was about all I could fit in the back of my Subaru... I forgot to take out Elliott's car seat and that takes up a lot of space.... 

The next day I hit what is probably the largest garden center in the area and came home with 20 cleome, a flat of asparagus ferns, a flat of dusty miller, 2 False Indigo Baptisia in the colorway Sparkling Sapphire and 3 more petunias.

And then on Saturday I returned to the first garden center and bought 10 more petunias... definitely a binge buying bonanza... good thing I don't drink, smoke, do drugs or gamble...LOL

Now when I bought all these pretties the 10 day forecast didn't have a low temperature below 40... but as of typing this on Saturday evening there are 3 days, a week out, that have lows in the 30's ... drat!! I know I'm pushing it... Mother's Day is the 11th and around here the last day for a frost is usually the 15th... soooo instead of planting anything I'm staging stuff and keeping things on my covered patio and in my garage overnight till I can be more certain it isn't going to kill all my new pretties

I've staged this planter on the edge of my patio...

And I'm working on the petunia display... 

If I counted correctly there are 23 different varieties of petunias... I'm going to do each shelf as a colorway but in looking at this picture I think I'm going to switch the pink shelf and the peach/orange shelf... I can't wait to get them into pretty ceramic pots but for the moment it is better to leave them like this as they will be easier to move to my garden wagon and take into the garage to protect them if those 30 degree temperatures materialize... it is a week away and I know how unreliable weather guys can be...sigh...

Since I put in the sprinklers it has rained again this week... mostly on Friday... and it's forecast to rain T/W/Th/ and maybe F... at this rate it's gonna be a while before I actually use them. 

I got an estimate for the privacy  fence ... 38 ft of 6 ft high vinyl  that never needs to be painted fencing with a gate that locks... I shot off the deposit for the project right away... hoping that will get started in the next week or two... I don't think it will take more than a day to install it.  Besides obscuring the view of my neighbors trashy yards it will give me a protected spot to start seedlings  and some rose bushes and hopefully re-route the deer. Win- Win!!

I spent hours on Saturday cleaning out my raised beds... on Wednesday I cleaned out the leaves which were all from my neighbor across the street's oak tree... and no sooner did I get that done than the 2 other neighbors to both sides of my house's maple trees started dropping those little whirlybird/helicopter seeds... thousands and thousands of them.. sometimes it looks like it is snowing they are coming down so fast... this is just one pile around my patio...

And they were all over the raised beds... and if I leave them they will sprout... so I went out and picked them out of the beds and then covered the beds with a weed preventing cloth... now when the rest of them fall I'll be able to sweep them off ... and I'm hoping it will help the soil warm up faster...but this was a tedious back breaking job that has my hands aching ... time for some ibuprofen... 

The end product of that project...

There are 6 beds... each is 3 ft wide by 6 ft long... sooooo... I picked helicopters out of 108 sq feet ...yikes! ...no wonder I'm sore. 

Around the house I finally got the motivation to do some Spring cleaning... I cleaned out all the drawers in the furniture in the living room and one drawer in the kitchen. I attacked my closet and went through about 75% of it and these 5 well stuffed bags went to Goodwill.

I got into my crafty room upstairs and sorted out and filed the stacks of cross stitch patterns I've been tossing in there... very satisfying.. and there was a huge basket of floss - DMC, Crescent Colors, Weeks Dye Works - that needed to return to their proper storage containers. Glad to have a bit of control over that room again, but that took waaaaay longer than I thought it would.

As you might guess from what I've been showing you,  I wasn't very crafty this week... probably because I was too pooped from cleaning and garden shopping and garden cleaning ...LOL  But I did find time to start a new piece... Here Come the Robins by WTN&T...

I do loves me some animals dressed is spiffy outfits... 

This will be so cute in my upcoming display of bird stuff... which I had hoped to start working on yesterday but it didn't happen... all my Easter stuff is still up ... maybe by next week I'll have the bird stuff out... maybe...

Here's where I am on the 18 patch Jelly Roll quilt...

I'm going with the 5 x 7 block layout so it is longer than it is wider... a better size for throwing over a chair... I need 7 more blocks... with all the rain forecast for this upcoming week there should be some sewing time ... I'd like to get this off the design wall and I have a a pile of quilts still waiting to be bound. 

In my defense the week was busy along with all my shopping and cleaning activities ... dinner on Monday night with friends, Elliott on Tuesday, lunch on Wednesday with my quilty lady friends, on Thursday garden shopping and I had to have a plumber come for a stopped up bathroom sink, and my financial planner came on Friday for our semi-annual review... heck it is a wonder I got anything done at all ...LOL

Today we're taking Nick out for his 35th birthday... how did he get that old??? Tomorrow which is his birthday he's doing lunch with a friend... Elliott's other Grandma asked me to swap her days this week so I don't have him till Wednesday... Thursday I have a dental procedure... ugh... but so far Friday looks open...and I know I'd like to do more garden shopping... the fence it going to allow me to play with roses ... and I want David Austin roses but not everyone has them... as I recall there is a garden center on the other side of town that carries them, so I need to go and check them out... and I'd love to get my window boxes planted up... I need Nick's help for that as I have to get up on the ladder for 3 of the 5 and I feel safer if he's kinda holding on ...but that may have to wait  on the weather.

So who knows what I'll actually get done this week... right now I have so many things I want to do...along with more Spring cleaning (the kitchen pantry needs attention) I bought a new rug and some new drapes for my bedroom, but the drapes need to be steamed and putting down the new rug mean moving all the furniture and taking up the old rug... so by my reckoning  I want to clean, garden, re-decorate, sew, and stitch.... and nap... I like napping too... for a little while in the afternoon... 

I'll link up with Kathy's Quilts and Quilting is More Fun than Housework... the guy who is going to put in one more landscape light fixture is suppose to come today... and our dinner reservation is early  so I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to do today... maybe start putting away the Easter stuff ... or get a binding on one of the quilts piled up in my sewing studio... hope your week ahead has time in it to do all the stuff you want to do!!

happy stitching-

carol fun  

Happy Easter!! on a Slow Sunday...

 Hello - Happy Easter!!  I'm going to try and keep this short and sweet as you are probably busy with other stuff today... As you read this I should be preparing a prime rib roast and deviling some eggs for lunch... Nick and I are headed to Chris and Jenny's house to celebrate with Elliott and with Jenny's parents... should be a very nice day...

The weather seems to be creeping every so much closer to real Spring... I'm itching to replant my window boxes and fingers crossed this may be the week. I'm planning on doing something different than just petunias this year... I want to use that Proven Winner's Peachy Keen verbena ... but I need like 24 plants so I'll have to see if I can find that many... maybe have to do the Peachy Keen mixed with another color verbena or maybe some white or light purple petunias... I think that would be pretty and different... 

And I've come up with another outdoor project... I have a guy coming on Thursday to give me an estimate on a privacy fence... so I don't have to look at the mess in my neighbor's back yard anymore... there are 2 grills and neither has been touched in at least 2 years... and a wooden swing set that hasn't been played on either... anyway I want the privacy and I want a gate at the end to hopefully deter the deer from walking behind the house and near my raised beds... and if that works out the way I want I think I could do a raised bed of roses... particularly David Austin roses or other brands where the roses look more like peonies... English roses... I LOVE them... but so do the deer... you'd think the thorns would  deter them... but the don't. Anyway I'm excited for this... 

As for crafty stuff ... I got a couple more blocks done on the 18 patch JellyRoll quilt on Tuesday when Elliott was here... he wanted to play downstairs and it gave me time to sew... I think I need 8 or 9 more blocks and that will be enough... as for cross stitch I worked a bit on The Daily Reminder by With Thy Needle and Thread... I'll show pics of these next week.

And here is the last piece of my Easter decor... the little apple green shelf unit on the sunroom porch.. the weather was nice enough to sit out there on ... even opened the windows and let some fresh air in... 

At the top I have a new vase I bought from William Sonoma...I saw this about a month ago on someone else's blog and I told myself that was it was too stinking cute...it was pricey... and I didn't NEED it... but I WANTED it ... and then I caved in and bought it... a gift to me!! LOL... I have one of Melisa of PinkernPunkinquilting's  wonderful houses in the middle ... this one is called Tulip House...  I stitched it on 16ct Aida I painted with Apple Green Rit Dye... I love that it is a yellow house and I love the quilt on the side of the house!

In the middle is part of my collection of bunny heads... just the heads.. similar to my collection of Santa heads...just the heads... and snowmen heads...just the heads... sounds kinda gruesome but I'm going with it...LOL  I tucked in my latest FFO from With Thy Needle and Thread, Hoppy Easter... 

And on the bottom shelf... more bunny heads and I kept out the green tone on tone sampler Bower Birds by Hello from Liz Matthews and tucked in the Hippity pillow from WTNT Jellybean Jubilee... I'm happy to enjoy this display on the porch...

I think I'll banish the bunnies at the end of the week and bring out my bird stuff for May ... and then about mid June I'm going to do the patriotic stuff... I love having the different seasonal displays because I get bored looking at the same stuff all the time... I think back on my childhood and the decor stayed pretty much the same all year long except for some extra decorations at Halloween and Christmas... but I don't think I could limit myself like that anymore... so many cute things I'm happy that I own ... I'm so lucky to have the space to display them and the space to store them... 

So I hope this finds you having a lovely Easter... like I said we're headed to Chris and Jenny's at noon.. and after a big meal we'll sit and talk for a while and then I'll come home and take a nice nap... 

I'll link up with Kathy's Quilts and talk to you next week...

happy stitching-

carol fun 

PS... by my reckoning this is a SHORT post...LOL!

That didn't go like I thought it would on a Slow Sunday...

 Hello - well last week flew by and lots of things didn't go like I thought they would... I had an appointment or  dinner plans every day last week... some things went better than I expected and others certainly did not. The dinner plans were better than expected... lots of great conversation and fun ... the doctor's appointments left something to be desired... the retinal specialist is a lovely woman but punctuality is not her strong suite... now I expected it to be a long appointment as they dilated my eyes and I had to do some testing but waiting for almost an hour by myself in a darkened exam room was not how I thought it would go. Luckily I did have some knitting with me to pass the time and she said my eyes were fine.... come back in a year. 

My primary care doctor appointment took a fraction of the time the retinal specialist did ... and  nothing happened. The nurse took my vitals, reviewed my meds and chatted... the doctor came in, asked the exact same questions and listened to my heart and lungs and said come back in 6 months. Took less than 5 minutes... I got more attention from the front desk receptionist. Think it's time to find a new primary. I was assigned to this doctor when my previous primary left the practice... I really like my previous primary...never felt rushed and she always asked a question or two about what was going on in my life... I'm sure it was in her notes but she'd ask about my gardening or my hobbies or my son... a personal connection... and I like that and don't think it is too much to ask ... like I said, time to find a new primary care doctor.

So to distract myself from those annoyances I did get some crafty stuff done... I worked a bit on the new WTN&T piece, A Daily Reminder.... 

Excuse the wrinkles... I really like doing those big Smyrna crosses!  Now lots of these flosses have a low contrast to the linen I'm using... gives this piece a very different look from the cover picture...I got the Crescent Colors Queen Bee floss on Friday to do the house... that will brighten this up... and  I think the outside satin stitch border will really make this piece pop... but it's going to be a while before I get to it... I plan to stitch that last so it doesn't get fuzzy from handling the piece.

The only sewing I did was making a pillowcase for Elliot's birthday party yesterday... I put Christmas gifts and birthday gifts in a pillowcase as a way to wrap up his gifts... this time I used a fabric with robots... he's into robots right now. 

Didn't get any more blocks done on the 18 patch Jelly Roll quilt.... maybe later today I'll sew up a few more. I did sit down and write down a list of projects I want to get to... bunch of quilts that need bindings ... and a bunch of precuts I've purchased... I made the list because there are 2 Kaffe Fassett jelly rolls sitting on a shelf that I bought not that long ago... and I had something specific in mind for them... and now I can't for the life of me remember what that project was. So I'm going to take some notes ... try to keep track of projects I've seen that I want to do... like a version of the Peanut Butter quilt... this is a  free pattern ... go here and then scroll down where you see Quilt Pattern.... you have to put in your email but you can get a PDF sent to you... I'm thinking yellow sashing and blue cornerstones and low volumes ... and I saw a pattern called Cheese Platter... which you can see here... and I'm thinking of using my Tilda stash and low volumes for it... and there is the Lori Holt quilt I started a month ago and the American Jane quilt that I started a year ago and it made a brief appearance a couple of weeks ago... so many shiny things that catch my eye...LOL

I got 4 Easter cross stitch pieces FFO'd... in the nick of time... this is Hoppy Easter by With Thy Needle & Thread... I finished the stitching last Easter but never got around to FFO- ing it. I stitched this on a pink linen but it isn't showing up as pink as it is in real life... 

I used chenille trim from Lady Dot Creates in the color Snow on the outside.

And I closed the slit on the back with a carrot ... I really like that touch!

I also finished the 3 Lori Holt Easter charts I stitched in March... 

I kept these simple... a little pompom trim and some floral fabric ... further down this post you'll see how I displayed them... something a little different. 

As for my Easter displays here are the 2 in my living room... first the "small" shelf unit... a nice selection of cross stitch and knickknacks and a little quilting...

Up top there is Lizzie Kate's Spring Alphabet... I love it on the pale blue linen... 

and opposite the sampler is my little tulip quilt ... this was a free pattern on the FQS blog ... start here and you can see the block... click underneath that picture and it will take you to the website where you can download the pdf for all the block in the QAL project... this was block No. 24.  I want to make a quilt with this block in the larger size someday... maybe after I get to the 4 or is it 5 other tulip quilt patterns I want to sew up...LOL

On the shelves below on the left side, I've got a flock of yellow ducks in assorted sizes... and the cross stitch bunny driving a carrot car is from the pattern Spring Parade by Lila Studio.

On the right side  the basket of tulips has a Lizzie Kate piece from the pattern Spring Smalls  and the pink bunny in the pink frame is Egg Hunt by Emily Call... and my ever growing fleet of carrot cars! 

Here's the big display... so hard to get a good picture of a large rectangular object into a square format but I try...

From the top... some old stuff and some new stuff....

Here's where I displayed the new Lori Holt Easter pieces... this is a McCoy pottery bulb planter ... a vintage pieces that I love!

Below left to right...2/3rds of a chart from Blackbird Designs called Breath of Spring...this is OOP as far as I know... and I love the foil wrapped bunnies... they look like they are real chocolate, but they aren't... which is good because I'd probably have eaten them by now...LOL

in the middle is Sampler Hill  by With Thy Needle & Thread..  I like how the alphabet is lurking in the hill and as I recall there were 100 tulips in that border. 

Moving down...Easter Rabbits from Stitchy Princess Black... I totally changed the color palette on this one... 

and  the Easter pillow is from WTN&T Jellybean Jubilee...

Wrapping up the cross stitch on this display is this tone on tone sampler called Tribute from the OOP Blackbird Designs book called Women of Grace and Charm....

and Ah Tis Spring from Notforgotten Farms with my favorite egg cup sporting bunny slippers!

I haven't finished re-doing the little bookshelf display on the sunroom porch... need to do that today and I'll post it next week...which will be a short and sweet post as it will be Easter Sunday... and how did it get here so quick?? I was focused on Elliott's birthday which was yesterday and now I need to get an Easter Basket together... I do have a couple of things but haven't gotten him a chocolate bunny yet... somewhere I saw one that was a Reese's peanut butter bunny... and he loves Reese cups... 

Weather last week was blah... couple more rainy days ... a peek of sun... one warm afternoon ... hoping for improvement this week... temperatures may be a bit warmer... perhaps a 60 degree day ... but MORE rain is predicted... Mother Nature ... it was a joke... just because I got the new sprinkler system installed doesn't mean you have to rain and rain and rain and rain. I talked to Kevin who's company installed the system and he said when I'm ready to use it he'd come and walk me through the process... the way this is going that's gonna a be a while. 

So far the only stuff on my calendar is Elliott on Tuesday and an appointment to get my teeth cleaned on Wednesday... perhaps I'll get some sewing done and maybe I'll find the motivation to do some straightening up and purging of carp in my house... I've been talking about it for weeks... and mentally I've cleaned out a closet and a chest of drawers... but in actual real life all I've done it look at the box of giant trash bags I bought... it is so much more pleasant to sit and stitch, isn't it??

Hope you have a good week ahead... I'll link up with Kathy's Quilts and see what's going on over there.

The birthday party festivities wore me out... gonna sit in my chair on the sunroom porch and stitch and probably take a nap too!

happy stitching-

carol fun 

Betwixt and Between on a Slow Sunday...

 Hello - I feel like I'm betwixt and between on so many levels... first Mother Nature can not make up her mind whether she's okay with Spring or wants one more taste of Winter. It was super rainy here in SW Ohio as it has been lots of other places too. The sprinkler project is done except for showing me how to operate it and repairing a landscape lighting fixture. Hoping to set up a time to have them show me the ropes this week and while I said in jest that my having a sprinkler system installed would result in a super rainy Spring, I didn't mean it... it was a joke... but Mother Nature took me seriously... arrghh... and she's giving us a break on the rain Monday and Tuesday (fingers crossed) but we're going to have lows in the 20's and highs only barely 50 degrees... things are budding and I hope they won't get zapped. There are 35 days till Mother's Day, which around here, is the date it's usually okay to plant stuff in the ground... I can't wait!

As for projects well I'm betwixt and between there too.... I really got into the Blackbird Designs  The Sweet Birds Sings....I got all the stitching done except for the berries... they are charted as eyelets but I'm going to do them as Smyrna crosses... 

and I want to add a cartouche with an alphabet inside at the bottom. I started to chart it on Thursday but I was tired and I put it aside... need to focus to graph it properly. I may do the letters over 1 thread so it doesn't take up a lot of space.

Here's a close up of the sweet birds...

So while I was mulling over the charting I grabbed a WIP from my chairside basket to work on... this is Every Opening Flower by With Thy Needle and Thread... it was the opening project of my 7 for my 70th birthday... before that event went up in flames... 

This was where I was at in November of last year...

And here is where it is now...

It is a beautiful sampler... I love the linen I painted for this ... I think this will be the next WIP I focus on. 

However I might get a little side tracked by two other projects that are sitting next to my chair and loudly calling for my attention. The first is a new market release also from With Thy Needle & Thread called A Daily Reminder... 

I heard that there is going to be a SAL for this starting I think today. Now I LOVE the design the way the alphabet wraps around the 3 borders  and that all the letters are done in Smyrna crosses  and that outside border of satin stitches... it has me swooning LOL... the called for linen is Arboreal by Cedar River Linen... an interesting design choice that I like... but you know me... anymore I dye or paint all my linen... and  Friday night I went to dye a piece for this chart... and I didn't have a piece of 32 ct Wichlet which I LOVE for stitching in hand... it is stiff and it stays stiff even after dyeing... I know lots of stitchers love Zweigert because it is soft... not my personal preference... so because I'm chomping at the bit for this project I dyed a piece of 32 ct Jobelan for this. I started with a dunk in  Apple Green Rit dye, and it didn't look dark enough... so I put a glug of Rit Tan in the jar ... and while this was wet I wasn't sure I liked it... but it dried I'm pretty happy with this... is is darker than I normally stitch on, but not toooo dark and I think the mottling of tan adds interest... here are both sides ...not sure which I'll use ... and IRL this is beautiful... it has a lot of depth and movement....my phone does not capture greens well and as you've seen I stitch on a lot of green linen... sigh

I was watching a Flosstube video with Brenda and Laura the other day and they talked about how they weren't fond of highly mottled linen... and since I always seem to be on the "wrong" side of the current trend I LOVE highly mottled linen ... and of course I LOVE LOVE LOVE colored linen... I always have. Long before I started dyeing and painting my own linen, while the charts would call for some shade of beige I'd find a colored linen to stitch my version on... color makes me HAPPY!! Always has... as a teen I convinced my Mom to paint my bedroom a sunny yellow... and in my first apartment where I couldn't paint the walls I bought a sunny yellow bedspread for my bed... and now in my little house there's color everywhere... every room is painted a different color... the bathroom is turquoise, my bedroom is blue, the craft room is green, the kitchen and the sewing studio are yellow... the living room is a khaki tan which makes a great background for the olive green couch and the turquoise and green rugs and the yellow furniture... well...how did I get off on that tangent...LOL

Any how... I think this looks great with the flosses...

I think my version will have a much lower contrast than the original... and I'm okay with that... I like when parts of a sampler get pale and ghosty... I  plan to make the house yellow...it calls for Classic Colorworks Peanut Brittle but I might change that to Queen Bee because that matches the brick of my house and I'll do the flowers in a pinky floss... maybe Gentle Arts Woodrose...and I just noticed there is a bunny charted inside the fenced yard... oh that is definitely gonna be a chicken instead...LOL

And then there was a market release from Teresa Kogut that I also LOVE... Coco's Garden... I'm doing this on 32ct Jobelan... for some reason I think this needs a true evenweave fabric... 

This is 32ct Jobelan... for some reason I think this needs a true evenweave fabric... I used Rit Dye Aquamarine for this one... it's hard to tell in the picture but there is a lovely mottling/crackling effect going on with the linen and I really like it!  I'm using the called for DMC flosses... oh I'm going to make the bunny white... DMC 3865... I think he'll show up better on the aquamarine... and it is totally unrealistic to think I could get this done before Easter ... but if I get a few stitches in it I can revisit it later and shoot for next Easter... which is April 5, 2026... plenty of time...LOL

As for sewing I spent some time in my studio and got more blocks done for the 18 patch Jelly Roll quilt..

.

I think I'm going to make this square... 6 blocks by 6 blocks...  I do admit that some of the fabric pairings are less than perfect but  an uglyone here or there isn't too noticeable. 

Here's a closeup of some of the blocks... I'm trying to pair busy prints with not so busy prints...

I'm still working on my Easter decor... going to redo the porch display this week.  Here's the tier table in the living room... it is in your face yellow with lots of yellow knickknacks and stitching...

These little chick pillows are from WTN&T Jellybean Jubiliee.

This piece is a Blackbird Design from the book Thank You Sarah Tobias called Pins & Tulips Pincushion... it was supposed to be a 2 sided pillow... that bottom line of alphabet would have been stitched on the back... I like it this way with the whole alphabet showing... as far as I know this is an OOP book ... I tried googling it but nothing comes up. 

Next week is busy busy busy... I have 2 doctor's appointments that were made 6 months ago... one with they retinal eye specialist and the other a check up with my primary. I have Elliott on Tuesday.  I'm doing dinner one night with a friend and I'm getting my hair cut and colored on Thursday... and once my lawn guy gets the yard re-seeded the sprinkler guy will come and explain to me how to use the system... which should be this week too!

But today I'm going to  take it easy and stitch and maybe do a little sewing... it is grey and rainy and chilly and  yucky...I'm waiting for Annie to belt out "The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow"... lol

I'll link up with Kathy's Quilts and Quilting is More Fun than Housework ... hope your week ahead is a good one and that you have time to stitch and sew and that is isn't as soggy as it is in SW Ohio...

happy stitching-

carol fun