Happy Halloween!

I am completely and totally not in the mood to go trick or treating in the rain with my boys tonight.  I'd rather be pulling more fabric for this project -- 

The pattern is Stairsteps by Jo of Jo's Country Junction and this is exactly my kind of quilt. I can do everything except for the solid red from my stash (and, considering the amount of solid red I bought and re-bought  because I really want to make Scrap Vomit -- which isn't even online anymore, I could probably have done the red from stash too.)

I think this is going to be a long term project, even if I make my quilt smaller than Jo made hers. That's an awful lot of triangles!

This post is linked to Patchwork Times. 

Weekly Stash Report

I haven't decided whether I'm going to use these as fabric for a future project, or as dish towels in the kitchen. It depends on whether or not they soften up a bit once they're washed.

Whatever they wind up being, I love the designs and the price was right.

Once again, October has gotten away from me and I'm making a list of things that I didn't get done in 2016 and still want to do. There's always next year. Or the year after that...

Vintage Folk Art Cat from a $1 Plastic Pumpkin
Fusible Applique Trick or Treat Bags


Weekly Stash Report

Fabric used this week: 0 yards
Fabric used year to date: 7 1/4 yards
Fabric added this week:  0 yards
Fabric added year  to date: 30 1/4 yards (+4 sheets)
Net added for 2016: 23 yards

Yarn used this Week:  0  yards
Yarn used year to Date: 5950 yards
Yarn added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn added Year to Date: 9118 yards
Net added for 2016: 3168 yards

This post is linked to Patchwork Times.

Look what I found at the Local Safeway!

Long time blog readers will know that we fell in love with Hatch peppers after a trip to Arizona a few years back. We bought a bunch at Costco and rationed them, assuming that we could get more when we went back the following year. But that didn't happen. They replaced them with a different brand that isn't Hatch.

And it's really, really important that the peppers be from the Hatch Valley of New Mexico. If not,  I might as well buy the Great Value diced chiles at Walmart. Those are okay, but they're not the same.

While we were in Arizona a couple of months ago, we missed Hatch Pepper Days at the local grocery store that brings them in and roasts them. Obviously I'm going to have to plan future vacations around that annual event!

But Teenage Son found these on the shelf at the local Safeway. It's more than I want to spend for a little can of chiles, but they're the real thing and I can get them when I want them. I'm just hoping it's a permanent thing. And that at some point they're go on sale, because if that ever happens I'm stocking up!

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {10/28/16}

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.

Zero the Ghost Dog

Pattern: Zero the Ghost Dog from Knitted Toy Box 

Just a cute little project that I found on Ravelry and thought I could whip up with some stash yarn. It's an unlabeled nubby cotton that I got for free at a yard sale, double stranded in an effort to give it a bit more substance.

This post is linked to Patchwork Times, Yarn Along, Crazy Mom Quilts , Wrap up Friday  

{Thrift Shop Temptations} The Rest of the Embroidery

While I was writing last week's post about that delicately embroidered pillowcase, I realized something -- maybe I should have gone through the rest of the linen section to see if there was anything else by the same stitcher...

That thrift shop isn't far from home, but their parking is tricky. I left early for my pre-op appointment and was lucky enough to find a spot with enough space for the van. (Have I told you how much I hate parallel parking that thing? And how many places around here make me do it?)

These definitely weren't by my gal. I could tell that from ten feet away.

These looked right, and they had crocheted edgings. The colors looked brighter, though, and I didn't think the stitching was quite as delicate.

Then I checked the back and decided that they had to be by my gal. Except for the travelling floss between the flower centers. There is none of that on the bird pillowcase, even when she was only doing a stitch or two at a time of one color.

I still can't decide if these go together or not. Maybe the pillowcase with the bird was used and laundered more. That would explain the difference in fabric color and maybe why the colors are lighter. Maybe they were done by the same hand at different times so that explains the differences, including why the edgings are different colors. Did she start out with the perfect backs and then get a little sloppier...or did she improve with time?

Any theories?

{Yarn Along} Pocketbooks and Pistols

It took me two months to knit the first sock. There was a completed pair in the middle with a bit of lace work, but that's still way too much time to spend on one sock. I'm on day five of the second sock and two of those days I only managed a couple of rows. But I'm getting there. Maybe I'll even have these done in time to cast on with the yarn I'd intended to knit with in October!



I think I've finally figured out what I like so much about the Haley Randolph mystery series by Dorothy Howell. They're like guilty-pleasure reality television. It doesn't matter that Haley is kind of shallow or that she doesn't have a particularly strong work ethic -- she's fun to read about. She's also grown a lot as the series progressed and has always cared about her friends and family.  (And she's a refreshing change from so many other cozy heroines who are perfect and know it.) In the latest book, Pocketbooks and Pistols, Haley is working two jobs. Being an event planner suits her well, and her part time job at the unbearably Holt's Department Store gets her a fabulous discount at a high end chain where she can buy the clothes and designer bags she lives for. In fact, this time it looks like she'll be able to just walk in and buy a Mystique, this season's hottest new accessory. But then she finds a body by the Holt's dumpster and she finds herself involved in a murder investigation. Because if Holt's closes, she loses her employee discount and the bag of her dreams.  And Haley isn't going to let that happen.

Disclosure -- I was provided with an advance review copy by the publishers. All opinions are my own. This post is linked to Patchwork Times, Yarn Along 

How do You Feel About Fussy Cutting?

I love the results that other people get, but I'm always hesitant when it comes to fussy cutting. My usual goal is to use as much of the fabric as humanly possible, especially when it comes to a favorite print, but for the project I have in mind I'm going to need to get the right image and to get it more or less centered.

I think the rectangles I've marked out are the best plan, but I'm going to sleep on it before I do any actual cutting. Just in case I change my mind.

7 Days to Halloween

I actually drove past this car without noticing the skeletons. HOW?!  Once Teenage son pointed them out to me (and asked how I could possibly miss them) we circled back for a parking space so he could get pictures.

Because they're adorable in a realistically skeletal way. This is the absolute best Halloween thing I've seen all month.

I've seen all of these posts about how hard it is to take a break from social media. It's not. Just spend a very long day at the Retro Gaming Expo with your teenage son and follow it immediately with an even longer day at the pumpkin patch with your two younger boys. You'll be too tired to even think of looking at Facebook or Pinterest or writing a blog post. Or maybe it doesn't count because while they were waiting in lines I read two books on the Kindle app of my phone. (I say it counts because it would count if I'd been reading something on paper.)

I didn't intend to do those two things back to back. The pumpkin patch was supposed to wait until next weekend, but the weather looked good and I decided it would be better to be dry and exhausted than getting as absolutely soaked as I did last year. On the plus side, I've never, ever seen my youngest boys wear themselves out like that.   I've got three happy sons and I'm not leaving the house again for days.

Unless I need something for Halloween costumes, because I'm running out of time and have absolutely no plan.

Food52 A New Way to Dinner

The idea behind Food52 A New Way to Dinner: A Playbook of Strategies for the Week Ahead is that you do most of the prep work on the weekend and then use what you've already cooked to make quick meals the rest of  the week. That sounds like exactly the kind of miracle I've been looking for, so I happily accepted a review copy from  the publisher.

There's a lot about this book to like. There are a lot of  recipes here, all with clear instructions. Weekly shopping lists are divided  into categories to make the trip to the store easier. Shortcuts and substitutions are offered in case your weekend doesn't allow for all of the suggested tasks. There are deserts and alcoholic beverages and lunches, not just dinners.

Ultimately, this isn't the book that's going to solve my nightly struggles. Too many of the foods are either completely unfamiliar or things that I know my family won't eat (and that's just taking the adults into consideration.) I'm looking for meals that I can prepare with products from the local grocery store... I'm not expecting to find ramps or garlic scapes when I can only find leeks on a good day. That's not a complaint about the book, though. It's a great looking plan that's not well-suited to our household.

What's your nightly plan? Anyone know of a cookbook or great website that's got healthy food with less exotic ingredients?

Disclosure - The publisher provided me with an electronic ARC. 

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {10/21/16}

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} Vintage Embroidery

On the way back from picking up some antibiotics on Tuesday, I stopped at a thrift shop I rarely visit. Parallel parking isn't my favorite thing and there's rarely a spot unless I want to park on a side street and walk a couple of blocks. I didn't find the book I was looking for, but I did find this adorable pillow case. 

I don't buy a lot of vintage embroidery, usually because I'm too cheap and would rather spend the money on supplies to do my own stitching. But it was only fifty cents and it's got that cute embroidered edging and just look at how delicate that stitching is! I had to look twice to be sure that it really was stitching and not somehow drawn on. Most of the embroidery I see is kind of clunky.

I don't know how anyone does anything this exquisite. Look at the back!  I'm in complete and total awe of this gal's sewing skills.

The fabric is discolored, but the stains are more obvious in the pictures than they are in real life.  I'm not sure if I want to use it on my pillow or cut out the birds and incorporate them into a quilt.  For the moment, it's a nice dilemma to have.

{Yarn Along} Slow Progress

I cast on the purple sock on August 15 and finally bound off the cuff a couple of nights ago. It shouldn't take me two months to knit a single stockinette sock...not even if I manage to finish another fancier pair and a pumpkin dishcloth at the same time. The other sock is going even slower. I sit down to work on it, but after a few rows something happens to pull me away from my knitting. I'll get my knitting mojo back sooner or later, but I'm tired of waiting for it to show up.



Tree of Treasures: A Life in Ornaments by Bonnie Mackay has me thinking about my Christmas tree in an entirely different way. I'm not good with ornaments. They get lost, or broken, or I pack them carefully away and forget where I put the box. This author treasures her ornaments, whether they're old or new, store bought or handmade. When accidents happen, she turns the broken bits to face the tree. Reading the stories of each ornament made me feel more attached to my own rag tag collection of decorations.

Disclosure -- I was provided with advance review copies by the publishers. All opinions are my own. This post is linked to Patchwork Times, Yarn Along

Finding the Space to Pin Baste Big Quilts

I love quilting on my Janome, but I have a heck of a time finding space to pin baste large quilts. Our house is small and has furniture in it The nail polish quilt will take every inch of my floor space and then some. 

When we moved our travel trailer home I started to wonder if that hard surface under the mattress would be big enough to lay out the nail polish quilt on.

This could work! I wound up with the mattress tipped up against the door, but basting in the trailer would mean that I didn't have to chase all of the kids out of the room before starting and that I could leave a big project partially finished until the next day.

This quilt still needs two sides of the border put on, so it'll be a while before I can test my theory and be sure this really works. I'll let you know what happens.

Where do you pin baste?

Weekly Stash Report

While I was curled up on the couch last week recovering from surgery and sulking, Mom was on a Halloween shop hop up the Oregon coast and picked me up kits  for thirteen cute Halloween blocks. And a yard of gorgeous book spine fabric. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it yet, but it'll be something special.

While I was waiting for the power to go out yesterday, I followed some fun rabbit trails and found drool worthy projects:

Becky's Henny Penny and Cocky Lockey potholders make me want to learn to crochet Right Now. The last pair on the page reminds me of our two lovebirds.

This paper pieced haunted house is soooo intricate! (How many pieces are in that basement window?!) I don't paper piece, but after seeing this project I sure want to give it another try.

All Hallow's Eve, with its appliqued tree and moon, might be more my speed.

Weekly Stash Report

Fabric used this week: 0 yards
Fabric used year to date: 7 1/4 yards
Fabric added this week:  1 yards
Fabric added year  to date: 30 1/4 yards (+4 sheets)
Net added for 2016: 23 yards

Yarn used this Week: 50  yards
Yarn used year to Date: 5950 yards
Yarn added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn added Year to Date: 9118 yards
Net added for 2016: 3168 yards

This post is linked to Patchwork Times.

The Old House

I'm fascinated by old houses.  There are a few abandoned places I drive by regularly -- and a few that I thought were abandoned until I saw smoke coming out of the chimney on a snowy day.

This place definitely doesn't have residents, even though I saw a light in the windows on the way home one night. It has to have been the setting sun reflecting against the glass. People don't live in places with caved in roofs....do they? 

We've been driving past this place since we bought our old farm house ten years ago.  When we first saw it, the roof had collapsed a bit.  

In March of 2013, there was still a porch.

And this is what was left of the house's front side a couple of years later, with the entire roof and most of the front wall gone. That's the same tree in the center of both pictures. 

Same angle and tree a few days ago... The blackberries make it hard to see what's left, but the poor house is steadily crumbling.

One of these days I'm afraid I'll come around the curve and it will be gone. The land around it is still used for farming and the barn in back is in great condition. But the house is slowly rotting. I'd love to know what its story is. Hubby asked once if I thought there was still furniture in there...

I'd love to get a look through that downstairs window, which wasn't visible until they cleared away the berries last week. But I'm trying to be respectful of the "no trespassing" signs.

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {10/14/16}

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.

I Refuse to Block This

Pattern: Pumpking

Do you block your knitting? Except for lace shawls, I don't. Some of my socks might benefit from some gentle blocking, but they're going to stretch on my feet and I don't have that kind of patience. 

I'm definitely not blocking a dishcloth just so I can take a picture of it looking pretty and flat. It'll be wadded up in the sink soon enough. 

This post is linked to Patchwork Times, Yarn Along, Crazy Mom Quilts , Wrap up Friday  

{Yarn Along} A Bit of Halloween Knitting

My goal, which I made before I knew how soon I was going to have surgery, was to finish the September Scare socks before the first Scary Sock pattern was released. I got the socks done with hours to spare and when the first pattern, for a pair of socks based on Stranger Things, was released I pulled out some appropriate yarn. And then I procrastinated because I was too stressed to learn a new technique (the jogless jog) and I wasn't sure which size I should make and I was just feeling spectacularly unmotivated.

Then there were only a couple of days left until the next pattern so I decided to hold off and see which of the two I was more inspired by. Those white blobs are a bit of Halloween knitting from my Ravelry queue that may or may not come together as planned.

Monday night, the second pattern was released. It's based on The Birds and has spiralling feathers and is looking a lot more tempting. But it's cuff down and I'm still not feeling all that motivated to cast on sixty-some stitches and join without twisting.

I spent the first couple of days after my surgery curled up with a stack of library books.

The Obsession by Nora Roberts had been renewed and renewed again and returned and checked out and renewed....I wanted to read it but there was always something else I needed/wanted to start first. I'm glad I kept this copy at home until the time was right. There are two stories here -- the one that starts the night Naomi follows her father into the woods and opens a locked root cellar where she discovers the woman he's been holding captive, and the one where Naomi has grown up, become a successful photographer, and is renovating a neglected old house.  I was immediately pulled into the first half of the book, but it took me some time to warm up to grown up Naomi. The book is a romantic suspense and not nearly as dark as the other stuff I've been reading these days.

The Shut Eye by Belinda Bauer starts with five footprints that a four-year-old left in wet cement moments before he disappeared without a trace. Hoping for answers that the police can't provide, his mother turns to a psychic who refuses to help. There's a lot going on here and I'm not sure it all tied together well.

Halfway through End of Watch I'm not enjoying it as much as I did Finders Keepers.

Disclosure -- The books are from the library. This post is linked to Patchwork Times, Yarn Along,  

{Thrift Shop Temptations} Now I Want a Toy Iron

The sun is shining and I needed stuff to make dinner and wasn't in too much of a rush to finally stop at the thrift shop I've been driving past for months. Here in our small town it looks like the line between "thrift store" and "antique mall" and "video rental store that also sells random crap"

is very blurred. 

There was some pretty eye  candy to be found in the antique mall and now I've got a sudden urge to buy myself a toy iron. It might have been this toy iron, except for that chipped horse head. 

I remember having a toy iron and ironing board when I was little, and I remember Grandpa clipping off the electrical prongs. Which makes me both wonder if it was at one point a functional iron and wish that we'd hung onto it. The ironing board was around forever and might possibly be in my attic, but the iron is long gone.

This antique quilt was in absolutely awful condition, but that pink sashing and border pulled me across the room to take a look at it. I didn't want to unfold it to get a look a the whole thing, not when I was in no way interested in becoming its next owner, but I had to get a picture of that wide scalloped border.

Some  days, you just need some pretty vintage eye candy to make the world seem happier.