Let's Make Baby Quilts! {11/30/18}

Let's Make Baby Quilts Linky Party Rules: 
Link directly to your post or specific Flickr photo. Your post can be about a baby quilt that's finished, or in progress, or you can be writing about what you have planned,  as long as it's about baby quilts. You're welcome to link to baby quilt posts that aren't brand new, but please don't submit the same post or picture more than once. I'd love it if you linked back to my site, either with a text link or the Let's Make Baby Quilts! button.

{Thrift Shop Temptations} More Things I Want but Don't Need

When is the last time you saw one of these? For me it was in elementary school music class, when they brought them out once a year. 

I kind of wanted it. My youngest son definitely wanted it...but even at forty percent off, it wasn't cheap. We have no practical use for an autoharp and there are definitely better ways to spend fifty bucks.

I do hope that the person who does really want or need one of these things finds this one.

My middle son wanted this --

We found two of them last week, but neither one was cheap, never mind the fact that he doesn't have anything to play on it or really understand what it is.  Last year, I found one at St. Vinnie's for five bucks and has to talk myself out of bringing it home. Apparently I was wrong and should have bought it.

We also didn't buy the five foot square oil painting of a white cat. Even though he had birthday money and really really really thought it was the most awesome thing ever.

{I've Been Reading} Midsummer Mayhem

Midsummer Mayhem by Marty Wingate

Pru Parke is thrilled, and maybe a little intimidated, to find herself in charge of the grounds of a private estate. The regular gardener quit in a huff after losing patience with the Shakesperean troupe that will be putting on A Midsummer Night's Dream on the grounds. At first, Pru's enthusiasm is over having access to the gorgeous gardens that have always been concealed behind locked gates, but she quickly gets caught up in the excitement of the upcoming production...and then in a murder investigation after one of the performers is found dead. 

I've enjoyed all of the Potting Shed mysteries, including this one. The mystery kept me guessing and not knowing a single thing about A Midsummer Night's Dream didn't detract from my enjoyment of the book at all.

Disclosure -- The publisher provided me with an advance review copy. 

New Starts Before the End of the Year?

I want to start another new shawl....and another pair of plain socks...and maybe this pattern I just purchased and downloaded off of etsy. I absolutely want to stitch it, the question is just whether or not I need to start right this second. 

A few of my stitchy friends are planning to spend 2019 stitching only on WIPs....so they're starting a whole bunch of new things before the first of January. I guess that's the same logic as stocking up on fabric or yarn before deciding to work on projects from stash.

I've decided that I like having multiple projects on my needles and Q-snaps, so I'm starting new projects. But I also like finishing things before the end of the year, so I'm making myself a little bit crazy.

Can You See the Deer?

They actually look more like deer in the photograph than they did while I was stitching them, and I'm sure they'll be even clearer once I get the space around them filled in and do the back-stitching. 

Out in the real world, the deer are suddenly everywhere. My oldest son was out yelling for the barn cat yesterday and apparently two of them were standing in the yard looking at him like he'd lost his mind. We drove down to Safeway for some ice cream and one was running across the cross walk. I know we live in the country and that's where the deer are, but they're usually not on main street dodging heavy traffic.

You'd think that with all of the cougar sightings in town -- and all of the talk about how they're going to eat our pets and children -- that there wouldn't be any deer left.

Salt and Pepper Socks

Look -- another pair of socks! Now that the weather has started getting colder, I'm really appreciating the fact that I've knit myself more warm wool socks than any reasonable human being needs. 

Yarn: Drops Fabel, Salt and Pepper 

I really like this yarn. They're the same shades of black white and grey as another pair I knit at the beginning of the year, but the pattern is a lot more random. 

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {11/23/18}

Let's Make Baby Quilts Linky Party Rules: 
Link directly to your post or specific Flickr photo. Your post can be about a baby quilt that's finished, or in progress, or you can be writing about what you have planned,  as long as it's about baby quilts. You're welcome to link to baby quilt posts that aren't brand new, but please don't submit the same post or picture more than once. I'd love it if you linked back to my site, either with a text link or the Let's Make Baby Quilts! button.

{Thrift Shop Temptations} Taking Time to Look at the Pictures

I had some time to kill on Monday and I also needed a new shovel for the fireplace, so we wandered through the thrift shops. I should have measured Stonehearth Hutch before leaving the house so I could try to find it a frame. Because I hadn't done that and didn't have the slightest idea what size I need, I looked at stuff that was already framed.

This one has to have a story, because that's a heck of a frame for a jigsaw puzzle.  

This one briefly tempted me. It also had friends that included a windmill and (I think) a corkscrew. But I decided that I didn't love it enough to give up  any wall space in the sewing room.

Buying this and taking out the picture to keep the frame would be wrong...wouldn't it?

My limited wall space made this easy to resist. 

If I could remember how to do latch hook this unopened kit probably would have come home with me. It's just fantastically awful and I kind of love it. 

There were even needlework kits. Too bad the girls with hoops had been opened and most of the contents were gone. The pear and houses were like new, but I didn't really see myself stitching either. 

I'm going to have more time to kill later this week, so I'm going to take measurements and see what size frame I actually do need.

{This Week's List} Getting Through the Holiday

I crossed every item off of last week's list! It was a very short list, but I'm still taking credit for getting it all done. 

I'll work on the shawl and the socks and the stitching this week, but my schedule is going to be crazier than usual and I'm not making a list.

Slow Sunday Stitching

Although "slow" isn't the best word to describe this project. My progress is so much quicker than I expected it to be. 

I love love love all of this greenery! In just a couple of weeks of stitching, I've stitched my way through a quarter of the chart. Now I've got another big project competing for my attention and I want to spend every waking hour on both.

Did I mention that stitching is fun?

Ever Heard of Black Salve?

Homeschooling the boys leads me down a lot of online rabbit holes and the one we fell into this week was downright scary. It started with a Youtube thumbnail warning that black salve was killing people.

What? We used black salve all the time when I was a kid, for scrapes and splinters. The main ingredient is iodine. I watched the video and it turns out that there are completely different things being called "black salve." There's the one I grew up with and there's one containing escharotic agents, which burn away the tissue they comes into contact with.

I don't have medical training and I'm not offering any kind of medical advice. (But seriously, if you have a mole that you think is cancerous you probably should have it looked at before you burn it off!) I just wanted to bring this to your attention in case someone you know is talking about black salve. It might be a good idea to find out which kind before you reach the conclusion that it's safe or dangerous.

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {11/16/18}

Let's Make Baby Quilts Linky Party Rules: 
Link directly to your post or specific Flickr photo. Your post can be about a baby quilt that's finished, or in progress, or you can be writing about what you have planned,  as long as it's about baby quilts. You're welcome to link to baby quilt posts that aren't brand new, but please don't submit the same post or picture more than once. I'd love it if you linked back to my site, either with a text link or the Let's Make Baby Quilts! button.

The Dimensions Stitch Along

If you've been reading my blog for long, you know that I have a love/hate relationship with needlework kits. I love collecting them, especially if they're dirt cheap at a thrift shop or estate sale. I love planning to stitch them. But when it comes to sorting the floss and actually getting started, my fears kick in. What if I use the wrong color? What if I run out of floss? What if I mess it up? 

Those fears aren't completely far fetched. I've used the wrong floss...and run out of floss...and messed up at least three kits so badly that I had to abandon them. I've also improved my stitching and learned some new tricks since then. I'm better at checking colors and counting my stitches and cotton floss can be substituted easily enough. 

My friend Amy (you can find her on Instagram or Youtube)  loves these Dimensions Gold Collections kits as much as I do, so we're motivating each other to get some of the kits in our stash started and finished. 

Want to join us? Any Dimensions kit counts. You can start something new or pick up an old project. Just share your pictures on Instagram with the #dimensionssal hashtag. Or if you're not on Instagram, you're welcome to send pictures to me and I'll share them here. 

I started All is Calm this morning and made a lot of progress. Everything I've stitched so far is half-stitches so I'm making fast progress, even if threading my needle with four strands of floss is a challenge. They're also all blended colors. But I'm absolutely loving it so far! 

A Bit at a Time, it Adds Up

I haven't been doing a whole lot of knitting over the past couple of weeks, but a bit at a time it's added up. Most of my progress on the Oz socks came while we were watching a documentary on Howard Hughes that I think left us knowing less than we did  before we watched it. The progress on the Salt and Pepper socks crept up on me. They'd been coming together sooooo slowly...and now the end is in sight!

{I've Been Reading} The Skeleton Makes a Friend

The Family Skeleton mystery series by Leigh Perry keeps getting better and better! You'd think that it might get hard to find believable new ways to get a living skeleton out into the world where he can help his best friend solve murders, but the author keeps making it happen.  In The Skeleton Makes a Friend, the rustic lakeside cabin that Georgia has rented while she's working at a college summer program is the perfect place for her daughter, Madison, and her skeleton friend, Sid, to enjoy the sun. If someone happens to wander by while they're swimming he can just sink to the bottom of the lake until the coast is clear.

Things get more complicated when a teenage girl comes to the cabin looking for Sid, who she met through an online game. A member of their group has gone missing and she wants Sid's help finding him, but of course it's impossible for him to meet up with her in real life. So Georgia helps her in person while Sid helps online. I loved this one. It kept me guessing until the very end.



Seances are for Suckers by Tamara Berry is the first in a new series and I immediately liked the heroine, Eleanor Wilde. She removes troublesome spirits and manifestations from the homes of her clients by putting on a supernatural (and also completely bogus) show while also quietly removing the source of the disturbance. Usually it's mice in the walls. Holding fake seances isn't the most honest work, but she's doing what she has to to provide her sister with needed medical care.

Nicholas Hartford approaches her to deal with a ghost at his family's ancestral estate, knowing full well that Eleanor's abilities are no more real than Xavier, the family ghost. His mother, on the other hand, believes in both. Eleanor is completely willing to do her thing for the ridiculous amount of cash that Nicholas is willing to pay, but there's something sinister happening at the estate and someone doesn't want her to succeed.

I highly recommend this one, especially if you enjoyed The White Magic Five and Dime series by Steve Hockensmith and Lisa Falco.

Disclosure -- The publishers provided me with ARCs. 

{This Week's List} Stitch Alongs

I did get the floss sorted out for All is Calm. Whoever designed that kit and divided the colors into bundles did an amazing job. It was very easy to figure out which floss was which color and I didn't even have to rely on the DMC conversions and chart. The fabric is almost completely gridded and I'm ready to start stitching on Thursday. 

I got the heel on the Return to Oz socks done.  That project is just fiddly enough to keep me from doing it on auto-pilot.

And there's still no new shawl. I don't know why I'm so resistant to casting one on, but I keep telling myself I'll make a decision about yarn and a pattern and then keep putting it off. Even though I got stuff done, this week's list is a lot like last week's list.

-- figure out where I put the second skein of Salt and Pepper Fabel
-- start a new shawl
-- start stitching All is Calm

{Estate Sale Tempatations} Cornhuskers

You know how sometimes you find a thing and it needs to come live with you even though you don't know why? This box is one of those things.

I found it at an estate sale that had advertised itself as a lifetime collection of craft supplies.  Or something like that. It's been a while and I don't remember the exact phrasing, but the ad definitely over-promised. They didn't have much and it was one of those sales where almost nothing is priced.

But I had to ask about this box...and you can tell by the fact that I'm posting pictures I took in my own yard that it came home with me. The lady wanted two dollars and she had to tell me the story behind it. 

Of course if there's a story I need to hear it. The box was painted by her partner's mother, whose husband had made the box. To me that didn't sound like much of a story, but to the person running the estate sale, it was important...enough so that I'll probably write it on a card and tape it to the bottom of the box.  It's made of heavy plywood and the hinges need some TLC. It's also the shiniest tole painted thing I've ever stumbled across. Not that I've ever seen tole painting sealed behind a high gloss coat. 

There are corn husk people on all four sides, from the Cornhusker pattern books by Bonnie Seaman. Three of them look like corn husk dolls, but the lady with the sunk has an unsettlingly human nose. She's probably the reason I bought the box. 

There's also the fact that we had a painting from the same pattern book hanging in the upstairs hallway when I was growing up. And the fact that the handle on top is a lot like the door pulls in our kitchen were. Not an exact match, but close enough to make me feel nostalgic. 

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {11/9/18}

Let's Make Baby Quilts Linky Party Rules: 
Link directly to your post or specific Flickr photo. Your post can be about a baby quilt that's finished, or in progress, or you can be writing about what you have planned,  as long as it's about baby quilts. You're welcome to link to baby quilt posts that aren't brand new, but please don't submit the same post or picture more than once. I'd love it if you linked back to my site, either with a text link or the Let's Make Baby Quilts! button.

Being Picky About Cross Stitch Hedgehogs

Remember all of those kits I bought during the Hobby Lobby incident? I picked up the hedgehogs because they were adorable and looked so realistic. If you want proof, here they are with Sophie, my daughter's hedgie... 

Aren't those little eyes and noses just adorable? I hadn't worked with a Riolis kit before and had some doubts when I bought them. Instead of the cotton floss I've always stitched with, they come with a wool/acrylic blend. I had my doubts, but it's wonderful stuff to work with. The coverage is great and the texture is like old fashioned needlepoint.

The best part is those cards its wound on. All of the colors are numbered so you know exactly what you're supposed to be stitching with.

A bunch of stitchers are doing this chart (and others) as part of the Hedgehog SAL.  If you're interested in joining, the details are here, or you can check out the #hedgehogsal tag on Instagram.

This Week's List

I was actually at a point where I could have finished all of my current WIPs before the end of the year and go into 2019 with a clean slate or with brand new projects. It tempted me for a split second, but then reality caught up with me.

There's a hedgehog SAL that started in October and I have the perfect kit for it. Stitching it at the same time as other people will keep me motivated -- along with the fact that the pattern and threads are absolutely amazing. I've made a ridiculous amount of progress over the past week, which I'll show you soon.

I'm starting my own Dimensions kit SAL and don't want to wait until January. And there's another SAL that's perfect for another kit in my stash. On Thursday I spent three and a half hours gridding fabric at the monthly PNW Stitchers meetup and I can't wait to get stitching on it.

This Week's Goals 

-- finish gridding fabric for All is Calm and sort the floss
-- finish the first heel on Return to Oz socks
-- cast on a new shawl

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {11/2/18}

Let's Make Baby Quilts Linky Party Rules: 
Link directly to your post or specific Flickr photo. Your post can be about a baby quilt that's finished, or in progress, or you can be writing about what you have planned,  as long as it's about baby quilts. You're welcome to link to baby quilt posts that aren't brand new, but please don't submit the same post or picture more than once. I'd love it if you linked back to my site, either with a text link or the Let's Make Baby Quilts! button.

{Estate Sale Temptations} Old Television Sets

I have a completely irrational love for old console television sets. We were still using ours until a few years ago, but that set was from 1986 and just a couple of years too new to be fun. There's a Youtube video that went viral a few months ago showing  how a guy hooked up new equipment to one of these old televisions. Exactly the same set up my husband put together years earlier, but we didn't realize it was supposed to be a big deal. Now we've got a boring new flatscreen, but that doesn't stop me from drooling over the old sets.

This was in the living room of the estate sale I posted about last week. It's exactly the kind I wish I could have.

This one was out on the enclosed porch and the tag said that it worked and I could've bought it for $12.50 on Saturday or whatever the final get it out of here now price was on Sunday. There isn't room for this in my house. I was reasonable and practical but I'm going to sulk about it for a while. It had a radio and a phonograph and probably an 8 track player. No, even I'm not deluded into thinking I'd really use an 8 track player.

This one was also on the enclosed porch. I didn't even look at the price because I knew it would make me sad. 

One of these days I might be in the situation to rescue one and convert it into something neat. We see sets like the one in the top picture with free signs on them on a pretty regular basis. (I bet they'd have thrown all three of these in with the truck if it hadn't been snatched out from under us!)

So here's what I did buy...

I got these five needlework pieces, two original text Nancy Drew books, and a couple of vintage calendar tea towels, all for under four bucks. It's hard know because they were making bundle deals and there were a couple of things the boys had to have.

Half price would've been $1.50 for the set of four needlepoint pictures and $2.50 for the crewel country store. I paid less than that.

This are exactly the sort of vintage needlework that makes my heart go pitty pat. Of course I'd have been happier if they were unstitched kits, but I couldn't leave them behind.