Up and down on a Slow Sunday...

Hello - well it was an up an down week for me... and I'm sure the same can be said of many of us, particularly those who've had to deal with Hurricane Helene... the pictures I've seen of the damage are heartbreaking. I follow a gal on IG... here's link to her ... she's an pediatric ER doctor who lives in the Tampa - St. Pete area... this is the 3rd time in 4 years her home has been flooded from the storm surge. I can't even imagine going through that 1 time much less 3... and therefore I will not complain about the small power outage I had... I'll mention it but I'm not complaining... it happened from about 6-12pm and we just went to bed early... we did get a LOT of rain...too late for my flowers but it should make it easier to get them out of the ground... which is on the agenda for later this week if my left knee lets me get up and down.  I have an appointment on Tuesday and I definitely need a shot of something... cortisone or gel... either one I just want some relief. 

As for things that were uplifting a joint birthday celebration... me and my dear friend Laurey (we're 10 days apart)  had us eating lunch at our favorite local spot and then going back to her house with the rest of the gang to eat this yummy cake! Oh those little brown lumps are acorns in case you didn't know...LOL

Turns out it has both buttercream and chocolate mousse in between 4 layers of chocolate cake... and it was DELICIOUS!!!

As for crafty stuff I finished the Primrose Cottage Autumn Quaker and I LOVE how it turned out...

I'm pretty sure the linen was dyed with Rit Marigold and I used Gentle Arts Autumn Leaves floss. I was surprised about  how much floss I used. It calls for 2 skeins and while I used parts of 2 leftover skeins and broke into a full one I needed every inch.  

Now I ordered this frame off of Amazon and it fits nicely ... its 6" square... but the color is all wrong... I'll need to paint this one... something a bit more "rusty". Okay in this pic it doesn't look bad but I don't like it IRL. 

And Autumn Quaker complete I reached for a new project and started Harvest Tiny Town by Heart in Hand.

I'm using the DMC conversion  and I dyed the linen with Rit Tan dye... got a slightly splooshy look which is what I wanted.... and I should have taken a pic of the linen all rolled out... next week...

As for sewing I've added a more to the Fall 4-patch project... I want to finish this in a week or so, as I'm hoping to see my long arm gal, Delinda and I want to have something to take to her. This is going to be 13 blocks wide and 17 blocks long... so approximately 52" x 68" ... a nice throw size and I have a couple of pieces of yardage on the shelves that should make a lovely back, so this will be an entirely FREE quilt!! Do NOT think deeply about that statement... as someone who has a degree in Economics I know there is no such thing as a free lunch or a free quilt but I will delude myself into thinking there is... cause it makes me HAPPY! 

One the decor scene I'll show my big display shelf unit... lots of the Fall decorations that I LOVE!! Which is clearly evidenced by the 5 sterlite bins Nick hauled upstairs for me... couldn't do it without him!

At the top I have Bent Creek's All in a Row... I think this may have been the first row design they did.  

Next we have Blackbird Designs Feast of Friendship... I stitched an alphabet into the cartouche at the bottom to make this fit my definition of a sampler... I want it to have an alphabet and a house, although in recent years I'm not as  adamant about the house part... guess I'm getting soft in my old age... sheesh

Moving down...

From left to right, we have the Autumn Alphabet by Lizzie Kate... I've done all 4 seasons of this and I still LOVE every single one!  My addition this year, the freebie  Bittersweet & Pumpkin by Pinker n Punkin Quilitng and  the little McCoy dish of smalls from Prairie Schooler #164 October...

and on the right side in the truck bed I have Jack from the Pineberry Lane pattern  Cats & Jack. 

On the shelf below I have Autumn Sampler by Barbara Ana with a plethora of pale pumpkins...

And Flower Pot Sampler by From the Heart Needleart... this one holds a memory... I stitched this during the time I had my wrist and hand in a cast... had to put it in a hoop on a stand but I was determined to find a way to stitch ... this one would be pretty in any colorway, wouldn't it?  And the little sampler  pillow is  Lizzie Kate  Autumn ABC's. 

 

Now I'd like to get out the Halloween stuff this week... but that is going to be dependent on the state of my knees and how much I can impose on Nick. Currently the plan is to clean out the garden beds at the end of the week and I can't do that without him... and I need him to tote the Halloween bins up and down the stairs so we shall see how this all progresses.  The plan is that the majority of the pumpkins stay in place and I change out the cross stitch... that plan has worked well in the last couple of years and if it ain't broke there's no need to fix it, right?

And I wanted to mention that last Saturday I attended a really fun school reunion... it was the 57th anniversary reunion of my grade school, St. Therese in Southgate, KY... there were 48 kids in the class... can you imagine 48 kids in one classroom these days?  In the first grade we were quite the wild bunch... we started out with Sister Esther but the poor thing only made it till Christmas when she was shuffled off to be the cook sister and Sister John replaced her.  The story was Sister Esther kinda had a nervous breakdown... in retrospect she was probably only in her late 20's and this was the first class she'd ever taught... they threw her in the deep end and well... it didn't work out, poor girl. 

Twenty - eight people from the class came to the reunion. Six members have passed away, so that was a pretty good turnout. We reminisced  about our favorite teacher... Sister Lawrence in the 8th grade was the one most mentioned... and without a doubt the one we all intensely disliked was Sister Ida in the 5th grade. She was tiny... under 5 ft tall, but oh my God, she was hell on wheels. I truly believe this woman was a psychopath with a hormonal condition in a Benedictine habit. She always had a bit of  facial hair issue and she would yell and whack you with a ruler without any warning. Her favorite way to torture us was to have us diagram these incredibly elaborate sentences for homework... and we would end up doing it over and over an over and over again as she determined it was not correctly diagrammed.  This went on for months until some of the parents put their foot down. One parent was an English teacher and she went and talked with Sister Ida and informed her of her errors.  To this day, I can diagram a sentence with all the participles and phrases but I'm not sure what use it ever had. 

And you may be asking why a 57th year reunion... as we've never had even one before...well the group that got together to arrange it decided that there was no better time than the present... and they were correct. Everyone there agreed we want to do it again... and a 60th year reunion is all ready in the works. 

Please excuse my tangent but I really did enjoy my trip down memory lane... and it turns out that as I was the shortest person in class 1st grade through high school... I am still the shortest person in the class. Nuns always lined you up by height and I always knew my spot...LOL

So plans for next week... like I mentioned cleaning out the garden beds and getting out the Halloween decor. Of course there will be a bit of cross stitching and some knitting (I'm into socks again) and some sewing.  I'm going to the ortho doc Tuesday morning and I'll have Elliott in the afternoon. Have a local organization coming to take away a chair I'm donating on Wednesday. Need to get a fasting blood test done and it looks like Thursday good for that. Friday my financial guy is coming for a semi-annual meeting and sometime during that day the local waterworks company is suppose to come and inspect the water meter... now this one has me annoyed as the only time frame they will give you is ANYTIME between 8 am and 4pm... WHAT the??? They will deign to call you 30 minutes prior to their arrival... grrrr... how would anyone who works be able to schedule this?  And I'm rethinking this appointment... will probably re-schedule it so I could go out to breakfast that day instead. 

I hope that your upcoming week isn't filled up with stuff you don't want to do, but with stuff you want to do... I'll link up with Kathy's Quilts and Quilting is More Fun than Housework today ...

happy stitching-

carol fun