Where focus gets something finished on a Slow Sunday...

Hello - well it was one of those social weeks where there was a lot of dining out... and it was very nice...but I do believe that a week of staying home would be a good idea too... gotta work on that... I do feel like I used my time at home productively for a change... I was bouncing from one project to another... "like a BB in a boxcar" my dear Dad would say... but I found some focus and picked back up Every Opening Flower by With Thy Needle & Thread and ... ta dah!!!  I have a FINISH!!! An aside these pictures are a little murky...don't know why... sorry...

Now this is 2 years in the making... it was the first sampler I worked on for my "7 samplers for my 70th" ... and I told myself earlier this month that I wanted it done by the end of  September... and I DID IT!!!  

Filling in the house was very soothing... and I needed that...

and I love the vase of flowers...

and that bird with its Smyrna cross wings... swoon...

and the bees buzzing around the bee skep..

now when I was nearing the end I thought about what would be the last little bit I'd stitch... and  I thought it would be the windows on the house ... but in the end I added some backstitching around the wings of the bees and that was that... 

This is a big sampler... 12" x 13" roughly on 32 ct linen I painted with Rit Aquamarine dye... I'm hoping to send this off to the framer this week as I'm rearranging the wall of samplers in my living room...I've been thinking about this re-vamp for a while but an incident at 6 am the other morning set the project in motion. Sooooo I was sound asleep and BAM!!! What was that???  Is someone trying to break into my house?  Nope... it was this sign falling off the wall in the living room...

 this is metal and it isn't super heavy and it has been up on that wall for probably 9 years...now it was hung with those 3M Command hooks as the walls in my house are made of some material that is almost impenetrable... you have to have drill to put a hole in the wall... and while I have a drill the Command hooks are easier... and have held up pretty well... mostly... anyway I have been thinking of re-locating this sign to the back hallway so I can put more samplers on this wall in the living room... and Every Opening Flower is definitely one I want up on this wall. I have a long narrow one ... The Drawn Thread's  Sunnyside Sampler...

that would fit nicely in the space where the HOME sign was... but that would just be sorta temporary as  I really want to hang the WTN&T  Summer Schoolhouse, Lessons in Abecdarian there... at the moment this is where I am on that project...

gotta long way to go... but as I tell myself every stitch is more one than you had before and I will get there... eventually. Rather than space things out I think I'm going to re- arrange the samplers on the wall very close together and keep adding to the wall as I complete other samplers... and this would hopefully motivate me to finish a couple of the big ones I have in the works... if I put things up with Command hooks I can change my mind more easily.. and if you know anything about me I do like to change things up... all the time!! LOL

And before I change things up and put out the Halloween stuff (nice segue huh?)   here's some more of my Fall decor... this is the small shelf unit...

From the top ... an assortment of Hobby Lobby decor... the wagon, the little pumpkins and that blue-ish screen piece... the little tile with the basket of pumpkins is from  The Cat's Meow Village   I had  a whole collection of these tiles and just recently found them...

On the right side I have a pumpkin mini quilt done in Sandy Gervais fabrics and The Drawn Thread Welcome Autumn ... I stitch this on 32 ct linen I dyed... probably used Aquamarine ... or maybe Evening Blue... I forget...

The two shelves below... on the left, and from left to right, middle shelf... I have Pineberry Lane's Gather  and Barbara Ana's Autumn Keeper and  a piece from Lizzie Kate's Autumn Smalls ... and on the bottom shelf is the Flowerpot Sampler by From the Heart Needleart and a freebie from  PinkernPunkin's Pumpkin & Bittersweet  and on the very far right side my version of The Stitcherhood's  Quaker Pumpkin. 

Sorry for the weird angle of the pictures... I usually move the chair to get a better shot but my shoulder was hurting and I didn't want to strain it any more to get the pictures. 

Sooooo September is basically over...not sure how that happened... and I might get motivated to put out the Halloween stuff later in the week... in the past couple of years I've kinda replaced the Fall cross stitch with Halloween cross stitch and then added in some knickknacks... not too hard to do... and I'm all about doing things the easy way... we'll see how the week goes... 

Last week it rained a lot... we needed it ... my grass looks so much better ... however all that rain is a double edged sword... my flower beds still look really good... and by the first of October last year I had all the beds cleaned out... this year the dahlias and the cleome and the cannas are still going strong  so I'm not ready to do that job... right now if the weather holds and the 10 day forecast says it will, I can postpone that job for a bit longer... but I'm still dreading it... but it has to be done. 

Plans for the week... trying to stay home more... spent most of Friday and all day Saturday not leaving the house...not sure I really got a lot more accomplished but it felt good... quiet and calm and cozy... have plans to do dinner with Elliott and his parents and his other grandparents... he wants to give us a talk about his favorite things in the whole wide world ... Lego Mixels...  here's history... these were manufactured from 2014-2016... Elliott wasn't even born till 2019 so all of these Legoes have been purchased on the secondary market... good thing Dad has great search talents on eBay... anyway I don't know as much as Elliott does about them, but I do know there are 81 separate characters... Elliott knows all their names and the names of their tribes (3 to a tribe... and then as I remember you can combine the 3 characters in the tribe into a Murp...but there is also a combination called a Mix and a Max and something called a Nixel...  and I can see that I need the TED talk Elliott plans to give... LOL 

I might sew a bit this week...I really should FFO some pieces that have been languishing... and I think I'll start on that Christmas sampler  from Blackbird Designs, The Bells on Christmas Day... I dyed a piece of linen that will work for it ...and I pulled the flosses ... but I think I'll  "green" it up a bit... and add in some turquoise... Weeks Teal Frost to be precise... I used it in the Blackbird Designs Feliz Navidad sampler which you can see here and I really like that pop of color. 

I'll link up with Kathy's Quilts today... hope your week ahead is a good one...

happy  stitching-

carol fun