A Slow Sunday where maybe I should pay closer attention when I talk to myself...

Its Sunday again... don't know where the time goes... the last week was pretty nice. Had 3 full days where I didn't need to turn on the AC... take that Duke Energy... lovely temperatures, low humidity, nice breeze... my idea of PERFECT weather...and then it changed. Heat and humidity will be back this week. The only good thing about this weather is that it seems to rain a bit each day and I haven't had to water as much. 

I spent  a lot of time out on the porch/sunroom with the windows open cross stitching and I have a finish... Mrs. Maguire's  Garden by Pineberry Lane...

I can't get the color of this linen accurate ... it is a lovely olive-y green... the mottling came out wonderful and I'm happy with my floss changes... I made it a lot more yellow-y golden. I have plans for framing and priscillifying this ...might get to it tomorrow.

And since I finished one project I jumped into another...and this is where maybe   I should pay closer attention to when I talk to myself. I couldn't wait to get to  this one, Summer Welcome by The Drawn Thread...

I dithered over what size linen to stitch this on... the sample is on 30 count and the stitch count for the height is only 30 stitches...so over 2 threads that makes it 2" tall ...and that didn't seem very big... so I thought I'd do it on 28 count and it would be a teeny bit bigger... so I figured out the size piece I needed and cut it out and painted it...

 I love how it came out a nice sunny yellow...more intense than this pics shows... I got all my threads together which took a while as it is charted for silks ...which I converted to Gentle Arts...which I may convert some flosses to DMC... got my charts copied so I can make notes on them and sat down to stitch. And then it hit me... this doesn't look like 28 count..hmmm....where's my ruler.... OH carp... this isn't 28 ...this is 32...so now my piece will be even smaller than the original... how did I miss this??? The linen I cut this off of even has a note pinned to it clearly stating it is 32 count. 

I debated painting another piece of linen but I just didn't want to wait so I started stitching...and very quickly came to the conclusion that while I thought I wanted 28 count, I really really like 32... I like the coverage I get with 2 ply on 32 ...and this isn't as small as I thought...

I started in the middle because I wanted to see how that flag looked and while it isn't complete yet it  is looking good. I'm also debating how many of the fancy stitches this chart calls for...that I didn't notice till I sat down to stitch...can I eliminate...today I'm not feeling them... maybe tomorrow...so in the meantime I'll just work on the letters. 

On the gardening front, my yard is looking nice... I do think I may have over stuffed the window boxes... I have 5 of them this year and started out with a plan of 6 wave petunias to each section of window box and in total there are 12 sections for the 5 boxes... but it looked skimpy so I went and got more ...

Some of the petunias are down right leggy already...need to pinch them back...this is the corner by the porch ... got the wagon last year at Hobby Lobby... I'm pretty sure that plant behind the wagon is a week...and ENORMOUS weed but it so green I haven't got the heart to pull it out yet... I'll probably need a machete to chop it down... the stems are really thick. Why is it that weeds can look so good and the climbing rose bush next to it (that I'm not showing) looks really BAD...something has eaten the leaves... I sprayed some Neem oil and will see what happens. The lady down the street said the same thing happened to her climbing rose bush...she chopped hers back to the ground and I will probably have to do that too...maybe when I whack down that big weed. 

This is one of my views from the porch...

with the windows open the petunias smell lovely...one of my favorite flowers.

Now the Dude is sacked out on the couch today...I've thrown a quilt over the couch as the new slipcovers attract cat hair like a magnet and I'm tired of constantly cleaning it up.

I might take a little nap too... dinner is pretty much organized... doing shrimp over pasta with roasted asparagus, salad, watermelon and rolls. I'm hoping for lots of crafty time this week. Did a bit of sewing last week and want to get some quilt tops off to be quilted...and there is sock yarn to be played with and of course stitching to be done. I am never bored...and that is a wonderful thing.

I'll link up with Kathy's Quilts ... do check out the quilt on her header... so pretty...hope you are having a lovely Sunday and will have an equally lovely week...

happy stitching-

carol fun 

PS... I ran this post through spell check and for some reason it doesn't like the word "wagon"... I'm clueless as to why...that's the only way I know to spell it.