Spinning my wheels on a Slow Stitching Sunday...

Hello - so where have I been the past two weeks?  Absolutely nowhere... stuck close to home and it hasn't done anything to improve my mood about Covid.  At least the weather has been very nice the last week ... finally lower temperatures and humidity.  I've spent every minute I could sitting out on my sunroom porch. I've shut off the AC and opened the windows ... perhaps it will make this month's bill slightly lower than the gargantuan one I got for July... yikes... and then there was the water bill... both were the biggest bills I've gotten for utilities in the last 7 years.  I will say my flowers are looking good... the lawn... well, Mother Nature needs to pay a bit more attention... it could use some water...

As for crafty stuff, I've been almost totally monogamous to Elliott's stocking... my goal right now is to have it off to the finisher no later than mid-September... here's the back of the stocking right now...

And here is the front...

I got all the of the stuff in the sack, and the sack itself stitched. I did that arch around the window, the white trim on Santa's coat (although there is going to have to be some back stitching around that candy in his pockets),  the rockers on the rocking horse and a bit of background. I've decided to go with a dusty blue for the background... Bella Lusso yarn in colorway 563, cornflower.  And I went and painted out one of the packages and the rug and the decorations on the bows of the packages.  I'm going to stitch a train engine where the one package was and I'm just having bows on the other packages.  I'm copying the train from my son's stocking. Hopefully Elliott will love trains as much as his Daddy does.

And my mood had me procrastinating about putting away the patriotic decor and getting out my chickens... but yesterday I got my butt in gear and re-did the living room.  I like the chickens as a late summer display, but I'm looking forward to September and the Fall stuff... I LOVE LOVE LOVE FALL!!! But enough of that tangent... here's what I've got...

Now, the quilt on the wall is the same one I displayed last year... the flower and leaf blocks are from  Lori Holt's Farm Girl Vintage  book and the chicken is from Cluck Cluck Sew's appropriately titled pattern called Chickens.  I machine appliqued the chicken on after the quilt was quilted.

And the quilt on the back of the sofa is even older... I used  a portion of it as my blog header (and I really should figure out how to make it bigger there)... It is called Dotty Chickens with a Fried Egg border... circa 2001...

I like using the back of the sofa as another display area... I have a little house so not a lot of wall space.  I don't remember what pattern I used for the chickens... maybe one from Country Threads... I know the alternate blocks were my idea, as was orienting the chickens in different directions... and the eggs are just a snowball block with a yolk appliqued on... really simple.

Along with the wall quilt I have my tier tray...

lots and lots of chickens... I'd like to add some cross stitch to this display but I don't think it's gonna happen this year... I'm committed to the stocking (and yes I do need to keep telling myself that so I don't wander off into another project... I could easily find myself getting sidetracked by some new shiny thing... shiny things are soooooo seductive...LOL)

And I used several pieces from Pineberry Lane on my shelf display along with an assortment of chickens and a vintage picnic tin...

Here are some close ups ...

And no I didn't learn my lesson about that straw... it will go everywhere and be a pain in the butt to clean up ... but I LOVE it... and I'll use it in my Fall and Halloween and Thanksgiving displays so I don't have to think about cleaning it up till December... and then I'll break out the fake snow...followed by Easter grass... OMG... I never learn my lesson... LOL... good thing I have a great vacuum cleaner.

I still am working on two other smaller displays... I want to get back to my sewing machine and make 2 smaller table toppers using my American Jane fabrics. Hopefully that will happen this week. And I'd love to get some of those quilts languishing in my sewing room bound... and I want to start a Fall quilt for my bed... and I'm pretty obsessed with Elliott's stocking (see another reminder to myself) ... so many many things I want to do!!! Need to spend less time on the internet and more time with needles and thread.

So I've been up and down lately where Covid is concerned... it is nice to be able to go out and shop and eat in restaurants again, but it has been depressing to see the number of places that have closed up. Last week 2 of the places I shopped online went out of business ... and Friday I saw that one of the locations of a fast food Italian place we like and a Panera's near by it were gone too.  I understand the need to wear masks and socially distance but the demands to keep things shutdown until it is "safe" never seem to end... how many people need to go hungry?, or lose their jobs?, or their life savings?, or go bankrupt?, until people feel "safe"... life is not without risks... The unending nature of this situation is wearing me down... I want to look forward to a vacation or a quilt show or something fun and there is nothing on the horizon... I know I'm waaay better off than lots of people in this situation, but I want to see people's faces again and see that they are happy.  A local church has a marquee and puts up a positive quote each month... this month it says "Peace begins with a smile" - Mother Teresa... What a lovely sentiment... but since I can't see anyone's smile nor can they see mine I'm not sure this helps... okay... I'll climb down off the soapbox.

I'll link up with Kathy's Quilts today... doing dinner with my older son's family ... carryout from somewhere... and think my younger son and I will go for a walk in the park... and perhaps stop for an ice cream sundae... cause it is a Sunday... LOL... corny joke...

Hope you have a good week ahead... other than babysitting on Tuesday my week has nothing going... not sure if that is a good thing... but I'm hoping to stitch some more on the stocking and spend time with my sewing machine... we shall see how it all turns out.

happy stitching-
carol fun