Some porch sitting on a Slow Stitching Sunday...

Hello all -- did you have a good week? Mother Nature decided to make amends for her bad behavior and gave us a glorious week of nice temperatures and low humidity... I spent lots and lots of time sitting on my sunroom porch stitching and napping and knitting and reading and more napping... great way to spend a day.  I still had to water most evenings but I didn't come back into the house feeling like a wet dishrag... so that was good too...

One of my window boxes that was looking a little sad perked up... the other one went completely belly up... but I did find some fresh petunias to pop into the boxes at Lowe's... I was pleasantly surprised to find they had some nice looking annuals this late in the season... most places have given up on annuals and it is still too early for mums... I LOVE mums... but not this soon.

My dahlias continue to get taller and have lots of buds and a couple of blooms... this first one is a dinner plate dahlia called Bodacious... the color in real life is gorgeous... the petals are rose-y red on the front and yellow on the back...

it is about 7" wide here... I was going to show a pic of my hand next to it for comparison but my older son reminded my that I have "little gypsy hands" so I'm not sure it would help... however those little gypsy hands are helpful in getting into small spaces when needed... LOL

And this one is called New Dimension...

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It is a fimbriated-laciniated dahlia... I have no idea what that means I just found it on the web...  I assume it describes the spiky frilly petals...it is about 6" across ... the edges are pink but the base is yellow...very pretty... and there will be more to come.

On the stitching front I got several pieces finished up... now some of these only needed a bit more time but got put aside for other projects... first up is Rise and Shine by ScissorTail Designs...

I used 32 ct linen I dyed with Rit dyes and DMC flosses... I have an idea for displaying this on a little galvanized piece I picked up a Hobby Lobby...

And then I did a snippet from Hands On Designs Fresh Eggs Farm...

again 32 ct linen ... I used Rit Evening Blue...now I changed the truck to a turquoise color to coordinate with the ceramic truck I got at Hobby Lobby (and yes I do spend too much time and money at Hobby Lobby but it is so much fun!!) ...not sure how I'm going to FFO this one.

And I have August stitched for Hands on Designs A Year of Celebrations...

You know what I'm going to say... 32 ct linen this time painted not dyed with Rit... this one has a definite hot summer sunflower vibe... and I made my picnic blanket yellow and white checked instead of the blue that was called for... if I was buying a picnic blanket you can be assured it would be yellow... not sure about the ants on this one but stitched them anyway...

And last evening I started this piece by Nikyscreations called Summer Scissors Sampler..

the colors are off here ... that grayish area is actually a light olive green and to the left it is yellow... I swear my old iPhone took way better pictures than this one... here's what the chart looks like...

I think it is a cute one ... and she has done other seasons too... shouldn't take too long to stitch and I want to get it done as there are 4 new Brenda Gervais With Thy Needle & Thread Fall/Halloween charts I want to do...

OH my goodness... I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE all of these... realistically I can probably get the first 3 done for Halloween ... that black cat may be more than I can manage ... but we will see... and if you are interested in these charts check out Kitten Stitcher... here is a link... these charts may have jumped into my cart last evening... she has reasonable shipping costs... and lots more charts I want to add to my stash... some older Sheepish Designs caught my eye too...

So there is always plenty to stitch and sew... I got a few more blocks done for my son's Quilty Stars quilt... I would have done more but the weather was so nice it was hard to leave the porch to go downstairs and sew... maybe this week the weather will force me off the porch... suppose to get more humid... but then it will be the beginning of August ... oh how did it get to be August already???  I ready somewhere last week that there were less than 100 days till Halloween... don't even want to think about Christmas yet, although my Hobby Lobby was gearing up for it big time when I was there yesterday...

I think dinner is going to be carryout tonight... I'm lazy and don't want to heat up the house to cook... got a couple of things I have to do on my agenda this week but hope to find plenty of stitching and sewing time too... I'll  link up with Kathy's Quilts and check out what everyone else got done last week... hope you have a good week ahead!!

happy stitching-
carol fun