Tuesday...the sun came out, I survived and I didn't think about the car repair...

So a new day dawns... and I'm channeling my inner Annie, Gloria Gaynor and Scarlett O'Hara... and things were looking up. I found the marigolds I wanted... in fact I found all the marigolds I wanted both big and small and they were on sale... hot diggity dog!!!  So even though it got way past 80 degrees I decided to go outside and work in the garden... I got the big marigolds planted...

10 of them... 5 yellow and 5 orange... 5 is a number I like.... it is my lucky number... well maybe it is and maybe it isn't ... more on that in a minute.


And these two flats of marigolds will get planted around my rose bushes... they did great last year and I have high hopes for them this year.

And my pyramid of petunias is off to a grand start... including the petunias planted around the base of the rose tree I have 14 different varieties.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE petunias!!!

I also planted a half dozen lantanas and 2 perennials and I see I have a couple of spaces for more flowers... I shall definitely walk around a garden center or two later this week. I do have a gift card to a local nursery that was a Mother's Day gift... its burning a hole in my pocket...LOL


So I was outside... all hot and sweaty and muddy but happy ...and then my son came out... he needed to talk to me... okay, what's up?  His AC isn't working...he's checked the circuit breakers, turned it on and off, googled the problem and nothing is happening and there is a puddle of water around the base...drat!!!  Now he really needs this AC... it is a portable one to supplement the anemic AC he gets from the rest of the house... and he's the kinda person who always likes things cold... which his room is not when the temp outside is pushing 90... so today I won't  think about the car repair because today we need to buy a new AC unit... which is..... remember my lucky number 5... $550... bingo we have a winner... 2 days in a row ... 2 big ticket items.... I give up... the harder I try to save money the more  of it leaves my wallet... my new strategy will be to be a big spender....ROFL... ain't gonna happen. But somehow I'm not as upset about this as I was the car repair... perhaps I'm getting immune to big ticket expenses... oh that can't be good.

Well, I'm going to drown my sorrows in some premium ice cream and be grateful I can pay for this stuff... I didn't touch my sewing machine today but maybe tomorrow ....and I found this pattern this afternoon and I think I'll be downloading it tonight...

The pattern is called Delightful and it is by Natalia Bonner... here is a link to her website.  I'm thinking of doing it in shades of yellow... with a brown-y orange center.... OMG... it will be GIANT marigold!!!  Well that should keep my mind off of my money woes...

Oh before I forget ...and I just about did... I know a lot of you like me are disappointed that Judy of the Patchwork Times isn't doing Design Wall Monday anymore... but Jan of the Colorful Fabriholic told me about 3 other sites who do a design wall feature on Monday.

Em's Scrapbag    http://emsscrapbag.blogspot.com/
Love Laugh Quilt http://lovelaughquilt.blogspot.com/
Cooking Up Quilts http://www.cookingupquilts.com/



Thank you for all who commiserated with me... I appreciate it... and I'm fine... I always tell my son that no matter how bad things seem in the moment they are usually easier to deal with in a day or two... I need to take my own advice.

happy stitching -
carol fun

It was a Monday in every sense of the word....

By the time you read this post it will probably be Tuesday but oh it was a Monday in every sense of the word. It started with such promise... sunny and dry...and I didn't have a thing that I HAD to do... there was stuff I wanted to do and I did get to some of them but it took a while to get there. Now I was going to start with my whine about Monday but I've decided to put it at the end of this post... lets start out the way the day started out...on  a good note.

So I finished my Lunch Box quilt from the new book Charm School... you can see the book here. I used a mature layer cake from Momo called Just Wing it!  I think that lime green Grunge was an inspired choice on my part... it really makes this quilt...IMHO

Here's my favorite block... love that little bee in the upper right quadrant. 

I spotted some lime green fabric in my stash that should make a great back for this. It is just a throw size about 64" x 64".

And then to make myself feel better today (I'll explain at the end of this post) I finished sewing all the hourglass units for my Arcade quilt. The top 4 rows are sewn together and the bottom 4 rows await me tomorrow... I hope..,

Now this quilt pattern can be found in the Winter 2016 edition of Quilts and More Magazine ... the fabric is the Basic Grey line called Saturday Morning and I wish my pictures were better as these colors are so much more vibrant... bright orange, deep forest green, periwinkle, mint green, navy...and the prints are quite an eclectic mix...rather bohemian.

Here are a couple of blocks I've sewn together and you can see the prints more clearly...florals, text, dots, dashes, diamonds, little people..

There were several Grunge prints in this line and I'm using them for the cornerstones. I have the border fabric for this quilt and I ordered fabric for the back today from Fabric Shack...and enough to make some coordinating pillow cases. I think it will look great in my bedroom.  

I really needed some sewing therapy today ... now I'm going to whine for a while so you can skip this if you want... I understand. My lovely Monday went south by noon. I got in my car and the red check oil light came on... insert four letter words. Now I just got my car back from a week and half stay at the dealership that cost a pretty penny. A major repair was done and it had a 90,000 mile check up even though I haven't quite gotten to 90,000.  When I got it back on Friday I thought I was set for a while...not a mere 48 hours. I took it back to the dealership... the service tech thought it might just be a sensor, as they had put a new one in as part of the major repair and perhaps they got a bad one. Now since the major repair took waaay longer than they anticipated they have been treating me with  kid gloves and he immediately offered be another brand new loaner car. I took it as I didn't feel like spending my afternoon in their waiting room. I thought it would be a hundred dollar repair and they'd have it fixed by tomorrow.... I was WRONG... it is going to cost another $550 and it won't be ready till next week as they have to wait for the part..aarrgghhh... so far in the past 3 weeks this car has cost me $2500... I have the savings to fix it but spending money like this is NOT satisfying... and  up till today I thought I'd hang onto this car for a while. Its a Subaru, I was hoping to drive it to 150,000 miles...now I'm not sure if I should hang onto it or not.  Additionally,  I did something to my left foot about a week ago... and the pain comes and it goes... and today it came  with some sciatica pain and stayed...ugh... and I thought I'd drown my sorrows in my garden... I want to plant some marigolds... so I hit the garden shops and somehow no one had nice marigolds. I went to 3 places and still can't find what I want... these fat pompom marigolds...

And this morning I read that Judy at Patchwork Times has decided to do away with her Design Wall Monday linkup and several other linkups she has hosted. She is still blogging but it is more focused on her life in Texas. Hers was one of the first blogs I found years ago and it makes me a bit sad that this feature is being eliminated. I'm hoping that someone else may pick up the torch and host a Design Wall Monday. I thought perhaps I could do it but I've never done a linkup... don't know if it is hard to manage or not... perhaps I can look into it. I don't want to step on any one's toes but it is fun to see what others are up to and I like that it didn't have to be a finished quilt...just what you were working on at the moment. Now I know these are all first world problems and I'll get over these issues but for Monday I wallowed and whined.

As Scarlet said... tomorrow is another day... and Annie said... the sun will come out tomorrow... and as Gloria Gaynor sang... I will survive!

happy stitching-

carol fun 

There is sun for my Slow Sunday Stitching.... yeah!!!

There is a big yellow ball in the sky and there is sunshine outside my window and that makes me happy happy happy!  Hopefully my pots and window boxes are drying out a bit and steeling themselves for the frost advisory that is out for tonight. I'm going to bring in the pots on my pyramid of petunias and  move the stuff on the porch into the corner of the porch where they should be more protected. I'm banking on the window boxes being attached to the house and  most of them 6 feet off the ground to be okay... keeping my fingers crossed and saying a prayer.

And I'm taking a little time today to stitch on my BBD Garden Borders... it is coming along very nicely!

I've got the windows and the door framed so there will be some mindless stitching while I watch my PBS shows tonight... Call the Midwife and Home Fires... I made a couple of color changes to the section with the bits of borders... they were all graphed in  GA Garden  Gate like the first one and it was too much gray for me. And I changed out the GA Grecian Gold to the GA Terra Cotta in the stars as there was little to no contrast with the GA Caramel Corn that I had. You can click on the pic and make it bigger to look closer... I'm still not totally satisfied .. they  still look a bit mushy to me... and as I type this I think I'll wait till I get the door on the house and maybe switch the Terra Cotta to Country Redwood... oh the "joy" of hand dyed floss... I love the look but hate the "surprise" factor... makes me appreciate DMC.

I've gotten a lot done this week as there have been baseball games... GOOD baseball games... my beloved Cincinnati Reds have had several stellar outings... games where they scored 12 runs...unheard of... LOL!!! Wish they could bank them and save them for other games... like the many they lost last year by one run...oh well...that's life and that's baseball...

And I finally got my Easter decor put away and switched the bunnies for birds... lots of birds... I LOVE birds. I re-did my 3 tiered tray and parts of it I really like, and other parts leave me mmmehh... but I got tired of futzing with it and this is how it stands...

Now for the parts I love... those hydrangeas... they are a wonderful coral red orange... and  they look great up against the tulip quilt!   And I am happy with the little Prairie Schooler Worm... isn't he adorable???  (Yeah I'm nuts... in real life I keep my distance from worms)

I scored this wonderful frame marked down at Michaels last week...

I'm going to look at my stash and see what other small pieces I  could stitch for this frame... I'm thinking I have some bird and birdhouse charts that would be cute too.

So this afternoon's baseball game starts momentarily... dinner is in the crock pot and the Dude is snoozing by the front door...

all it right in my world... and hope it is in yours too!

I'll link up with Kathy's Quilts today and Super Mom - No Cape on Monday.

happy stitching-
carol fun

Really, this is all I got to show...

It has been over a month since I linked up with Patchwork Times Friday feature On the Needles and this is all I have to show for my time... really... it is...

one solitary scrappy sock and the tiniest bit of a mate cast on... sad sad sad... I haven't been knitting as much lately (playing more with my cross stitch in the evenings) but even so I should have more to show... but I don't... because my routine lately has been cast on, knit, frog, repeat... over and and over and over and over. I think I've stated at least another 4 or 5 socks and each has been a bust... wrong colors... too small... changed my mind... got bored... or any of a million other excuses.  This one is a lot of Opal skeins... except I don't think that purple at the cuff is an Opal color... I'm not sure what that was.. I hope it turns up again in the next sock but I'm not sure as I have a bunch of little nameless balls of scrap yarn ...oh well.

I'd like to blame my lethargic behavior on the weather... and I will... too many gray rainy days... like today... which is wet, gray, cold and miserable.... what happened to those 80 degree days of April??? I was so proud of myself for getting so much potted up ... and we know pride goeth before a fall... and when I was hurrying to pot things up I was feeling smug that Mother Nature would water stuff  for me... oh and has she watered... now I'm afraid everything is drowning!!!  I've emptied the saucers out of every pot  I can on numerous occasions... I'm afraid that the roots are turning to mush... but it is too soon to know... they need a chance to dry out and then we'll see.

And then I heard on the radio today we could get some frost Sunday night....NOOOOOOOOOOO.... I have no one to blame but me if this happens as it has been drilled into me since I was a child helping my Grandma to plant that you shouldn't put anything in the ground till Mother's Day... but I was seduced by those 80 degree April days... big sigh.  I can haul the stuff I have in pots into the garage and the stuff in the window boxes on the house should be okay as they are close to the house and high off the ground. I checked a couple of other weather forecasts and they didn't have a frost warning in them so I'm hoping the radio station is being an alarmist.


And since I don't have much of anything to show knitting wise and my rants about the weather are getting depressing I will tell you about a great play I saw this week... Beautiful, The Carole King Musical...

OMG if you have a chance to see this one do it!!!  When I opened the  Playbill and looked at the musical numbers I knew it was going to be special... I knew all the words to every song listed...and if you are of a certain age (and we won't be specific here but if the 60's and 70's were your youth you know who I mean) this is the soundtrack of that time. I knew that Carole King and Gerry Goffin wrote a lot of songs but I had no clue how many hits they had... unbelievable.

I saw this show at the Aronoff in Cincinnati and the cast was wonderful. Lots of great voices... you will leave the theater happy happy happy!!!

Here's hoping mine and your weekend will be less soggy and more sunny...

happy knitting-
carol fun

Slow Sunday Stitching...something finished and something started

Hello ... well another week whizzed by me but as I sit here on Sunday I do have something to show for my time... which feels good.  I hope that everyone has survived the wicked storms yesterday and the night before. We had torrential downpours here in southwest Ohio and the loudest longest thunder I've ever heard... kinda frightening. Glad it is over. And on Wednesday of last week I tried to do myself in with a marathon planting session. I planted over 100 petunias and several flats of assorted filler items... geraniums,  salvia, dusty miller, nicotania, snapdragons... and then on Friday night they were pummelled into pulp by the rain. The  wind was vicious too and about midnight I realized my beautiful rose tree was probably toast. I ran out in my pajamas and it was sprawled on the driveway with its lovely Queen of Hearts petunias tossed about. I uprighted it, tucked it into my back entryway and plopped the petunias back into the pot... still looks bedraggled today but it is alive. A couple of days of sunshine would help but the forecast still has a lot of rain in it ... Mother Nature is not to be messed with...

So lets move on to more upbeat stuff... I FINISHED my Little House Needleworks "Needlework ABC's"... here's the arty picture... this was hard to get into one frame...

and here is another look...

a little blurry...sorry... but here are individual pics which show my changes..

First I made the buttons more "mother of pearl" ...

then I made the house yellow... 

and the bee threading the needle got a yellow thread...

and that meant the spool of thread had to be yellow, and of course the lady is sporting a yellow dress with auburn locks... love her....LOL...love me!!!

This measures about 2.5" wide and 19" long... I'm envisioning a white wood frame and I'm hoping to hang it right by my front door. From start to finish it took me a little over a month, but there was at least one week where I didn't touch it at all.  I was worried that I might run out of thread with this piece as I purchased it as a kit. My first worry was the white but I had plenty of it, What I did just have enough of was the brown that is used for all of the letters and assorted accents. At about the letter M I got panicky that I would run out of the brown so I went ahead and stitched all of the letters. At that point I had one piece of floss left, about 6" in length... I change the hair color of the lovely lady and when I stitched her shoes there was NOTHING left...not a single ply.  Now that is cutting it close. I don't know if perhaps I lost some of the thread or it just took that much but glad I made it work.

And because I finished something that gave me permission (like I need it...LOL) to start something new...and this is what I chose...

Blackbird Designs Garden Borders, the 12th part of the Abecedarian series. And here is how far I've gotten in two evenings... moving right along...

I love all those green threads... CC Camouflage and Avocado and GA Dried Thyme. I'm stitching this on the called for linen... 30 count R & R Korty's Blend.

As for the Abcedarian series I have stitched 4 of the 12 and I'm not sure if I will ever do all of them. Something new BBD always seems to call my name. I've got a small start on last years  Garden Club series and this year's offering of Loose Feathers  have captured my heart too... lots of birds... I LOVE birds.. sigh... so many pretties I want to stitch. 

Perhaps there will be a little stitching time today... right now I'm off to a birthday lunch for my youngest son... how did he get to be 27??? I'm not any older...  but  I'm  certainly delusional ... 

I'm linking up with Kathy Quilts today and Super Mom - No Cape tomorrow... have a lovely Sunday and I hope you stay dry!!

happy stitching-

carol fun 

Where was I???

I'm a bad blogger... but then I'm not telling you anything you didn't already know, am I?  I didn't mean to be away for 2 weeks... I actually thought it was only 1 week... but you also know math is not my forte so there was an error in my calculation there too.

Remember when I had that wonderful brief micro-burst of creativity and productivity...well it seems to have left the house... I've putzed on this and that haven't finished hardly anything...wait wait... I did make some Easter cards...

its hard to tell in this picture but the bunny is embossed and then cut out with this incredibly cute die from Paper Smooches...info can be found here.

And I finally got  my little tulip quilt up on my living room wall...

I'm really happy with the quilting Terry did on this one... a dense scroll-y pattern in a variegated thread.

And I got a few more blocks together for an IG QAL #charmschoolsewalongsew... my version of the Lunch Box pattern from the book Charm School 

I have more blocks made than are on the design wall and still have about 16 to go... if I counted right and we all know I probably didn't...oh well. I want to get this top together by the end of the week...it is good to have goals right????


So where have I been spending my  time the last 2 weeks.... tropical vacation???  ...laundry???  ...working for world peace? Naaahhhh... I've been visiting garden centers and plant nurseries and any place that has Spring flowers for sale... here's a look at my haul so far... this table full...

and these roses...

and a few close ups of  some of the flowers I've brought home...

this is called a Pocket book plant and those little flowers are pouches...

and this is called Blue Moon phlox and it is an amazing lavender blue color... and peeking out in the lower left corner are those Lemon Slice petunias I adore...

and speaking of petunias... there are soooooo many pretty ones out there...

from left to right... the purple/yellow ones in the back are called Moonstruck... the pink and yellow ones are called Queen of Hearts...see the hearts???   and the ones in front are called Good and Plenty in an orange colorway....

and I searched high and low for these guys...

a light lavender wave petunia... my color scheme for my window boxes this year will include yellow and rosy pink and these lavender petunias...

and then there are the roses...

this is just one of the branches from the yellow tree rose... it is called Julia Child and I had absolutely no intention of buying a tree rose but this one just called my name and I was powerless to resist...

now this rose is one I went shopping for ... 

it is a David Austin rose called Gertrude Jekyll and it is a climbing rose... I got 2 of them to plant by the corner of my front porch... my plan is that they will grow up the brick pillar ... wish me luck... in my mind's eye it is going to be very English cottage-y... I think the pink color will show up well against the yellow brick and I love the shape of these English roses... they have a peony look.

And I bought this rose...

another David Austin rose called Pat Austin... this one will replace the peach one I had last year... I loved that bush but it had problems with black spot and Japanese beetles and then it didn't come back this year at all... dead...dead...dead... probably did me a favor. Last year the David Austin roses had less problems with black spot so I think they will be a better choice for me... and I'm sure the deer will agree and leave them alone....ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.... oh I am delusional... I'll be spraying the heck out of these babies, but it will be worth it. 

Tomorrow I start to pot and plant stuff up... this isn't all I'm going to do... I want to do a border of marigolds around my rose bushes and there is my pyramid of petunias to pot up... I have a few for this display but I have more I want to get... 

So if you are looking for me in the next week I should be out in the yard... or back in one of the garden centers... flowers are as addicting as fabric and yarn... good thing they aren't illegal as I'm hooked...LOL!

happy stitching-

carol fun

Juggling act...

Did you know I can juggle? Not things like balls or chainsaws, but quilt projects... I can juggle quilt projects!  Now doesn't the verb juggle sound waaaay more purposeful... more conscientious... more responsible...than OMG I just saw another shiny pattern I just have to try ... RIGHT NOW!!!!

The true fact is that my crafty ADD has me running in several circles...at the same time... too bad it doesn't seem to burn off any calories...LOL!  So what am I working on right now, well first...

I have two rows of the big tulips sewn together.. 3 more to go...here's a close-up of the border fabric...

a nice sunny yellow... need to get this one done and off to the long arm quilter if I have any hope at all of getting it on my bed while there are still tulips in bloom.


And then I was distracted by this project...the quilt pattern is called Arcade and it was on the cover of the Winter 2016 edition of the magazine Quilts and More. The designer is Sherri McConnell and her blog is A Quilting Life. When I saw this pattern I thought it would be a great match for the layer cakes of the Basic Grey collection Saturday Morning that I had already purchased.  You can see the collection here.  So far I have 6 of the big units complete but I've run out of sashing fabric...

Sorry for the wonky angle but my design wall is still full of tulips, so I'm using the living room floor.
The pattern makes a 66" square quilt using one layer cake... I want it big enough for my bed so I'm using 2 layer cakes and a border. I like the shabby chic feel of this fabric.  Those hourglass blocks are going together nicely... no bias edges on the outside...yeah!!!

This unit is BIG... over 18"... so it should make up quickly...

And the since there are already 2 balls quilts in the air I thought I'd add a third one! Have you seen this new book...

My friend Robin posted about it on IG and well I was intrigued. I'm very impressed as there are several quilts in this book I'd like to do. Some take just 2 charm packs, others need 3 or 4 which is layer cake territory and I have lots of them in my stash.

This is my first choice from the book... the pattern is called Lunch Box...  and these are my fabric picks...

Now I completely forgot that I had this layer cake... it is by Momo...and I LOVE Momo, but it isn't more 70's avocado/harvest gold/chocolate brown colorway I'm most familiar with...this one is very bright and Spring-y...perfect for right now...as the temp is 70 and I have the windows open and there is lovely breeze... oh back to the quilting (see how easy it is for the ADD to pop up?)  Anyway there is a quilt along for this book on Instagram which you can follow here...

I couldn't wait to sew up a couple of blocks of this pattern... the blocks start like this...

little Puss in the Corner blocks... and then you slash them and slash some background fabric and sew the pieces together and  they look like this...

and here is one all sewn together...

I love the scrappiness of this pattern and the Spring-y colors and the yummy-ness of that lime green Grunge. I picked it up at a new to me shop in town called Home Grown, Home Sewn... you can see their website here. I was very impressed with this shop... it is small but packed full of colorful fabric and notions and patterns and samples... the whole place has such a happy vibe... I'll be visiting again soon as it is only about 15 minutes from my house. I saw several fabrics I'd like to have some yardage of.

And pairing this brand new Grunge fabric with this well aged Just Wing It! layer cake has been interesting. Like I said I had totally forgot I even owned this fabric... I know it is older collection as the price marked on it was $32 and I'm pretty sure I paid less than that ... I believe  this was marked down at a sale at Fabric Shack a couple of years ago. Also,  I know this is "vintage" as when I went to cut it up the squares were actually more than 10"... I had to trim it down and it trimmed off the pinked edges to get it to 10"... that doesn't happen anymore. Now they are barely 10" including the pinked edges.

So three projects (we aren't even going to think about the other two year long QAL's I'm working on) are all in different corners of my sewing space... that still leaves one corner open...LOL... I think I'll stop here right now. I've been very energetic and productive on the quilting front these last couple of weeks... the cross stitch and the knitting have fallen by the way side but I'm sure they will return. I don't feel guilty bouncing from project to project anymore. Everything will get done in due time... at least I think it will...LOL!!!

 I'm linking up with Patchwork Times and Love Laugh Quilt and then I'm off too juggle and sew!!!

happy stitching-
carol fun