Outside – Page 2 – On Beads and Needles

Early Summer Catch-up

Wow, it’s been a while – I have lots to catch up on since I posted last. Winter finally ended, though I can tell you, it was a long one for here, and good riddance. Then we had quite a bit of HOT and days of torrential downpours; TS Alberto just went through here last week, and that’s the first time I can recall a named storm happening in May. I think this year is going to be a strange one for weather. I do have the garden in, though still need to get my trellises in and get it mulched. I put out green beans this year, for the first time – we’ll see how my luck is with them. We also scoured Lowes in 2 counties to clean them out of cacti to replace all the ones we didn’t bring in last winter:

My irises didn’t do ANYTHING this year, for the first time EVER – I got 2 new ones and 2 old ones to bloom – that’s it 🙁 I can only assume it was the weather – I did not do anything differently putting them in than I have ever done, so I am at a loss as to what was different this year. The plants themselves all look very healthy, they just didn’t produce blooms. We’ll see what next year does for them. Here’s one of the new ones:

The tiger lilies, on the other hand, look great this year – they were pretty scraggly last year, but I think all the rain we’ve gotten at the time we’ve gotten it this year made a difference.

We have had a LOT of visitors to our backyard this year. I looked outside one day a few weeks ago and saw: 3 Indigo Buntings, a pair of Goldfinches, Purple House finches, Brown-headed Cowbirds, the usual retinue of cardinals, and all the LBJs. I also saw a Rosy Breasted Grosbeak – thought I imagined it, until he came back and I got his picture; he must have been passing through, as he was here for a few days, and I haven’t seen him since. We have had a racoon come to the feeders, and we’ve seen a lot of lizards, including new-to-us (we think) Broad Headed Skinks.

He has no idea there is a coonhound in the house he’s invading 🙂 Not that that coonhound would actually know what to DO with this guy if he ran across him….

Broadhead skink pair, and lower down the wall, a blue-tailed skink.

Doe, a deer, a female deer! There’s your earworm for the day 🙂

In stitching news, I have only worked on a couple of things since my last post; if you can believe this, I actually started something and worked only it until it was done! I haven’t done that in a LONG time. Even more amazing, it was a project on black, a Stoney Creek no less, and for whatever reason, it was the easiest black-fabric project I have ever worked, even though the fabric (28ct jobelan) is the same fabric I have used before. This one was just easy so I kept at it. For the record, I used to think white floss on white fabric was hard, but have since revised that to say black on black is harder. For my great-nephew Britton, Stoney Creek’s Passing Saturn:

Passing Saturn by Stoney Creek, using called-for fibers. I ad-libbed some extra stars and constellations in there…

I also made a bit of progress on a travel project, Halloween Resurrection by Lone Elm at the April & May PINS get-togethers. This is a fun design – I just happened to see someone’s finish on FB, or I’d have never run across it. I put this on Vintage Stormy Night linen – pretty good match, I think:

Halloween Resurrection – using called-for WDW & DMC.

When I finished Saturn, I pulled out my Desert Mandala for a turn – working on Part 6, which has the beaded Scorpion, and then the landscape panel will have Window Rock in it. I am almost done with the scorpion; he & the rattlesnake are going to have to go on something else someday 🙂

Chatelaine Desert Landscape Mandala, on 28ct Desert Sky lugana from Silkweaver, using a variety of silks & DMC (many silks converted to HDF), and lots of delica beads, of course.

Our trip to Mexico in March was great! The wind was really strong the first day out, so we didn’t spend a lot of time out on deck. We definitely enjoyed our balcony room, keeping the door open all night so we could listen to the water. Our excursions were cool, though I do have to say, we didn’t have quite enough time sitting in the sand; while we both enjoyed the cruise, it doesn’t replace just going to the beach for a week.

Mayan ruin, one of 13 fire towers, at Cozumel.

Last week, we traveled north to say goodbye to DH’s mother, Sally. She was a great lady, she will be greatly missed by all.

That’s the news from this part of the world. Happy Summer – hopefully no remarkable weather anomalies to report next time, but I doubt we’ll be that lucky… Until next time, Happy Stitching!

An Overdue Fall Update

Wow, have I been slacking, or what? I think my last update was July? Lots of things going on since then, though most of it has been work. We got the house painted, which was kind of an odyssey while we waited for it to stop raining for a week. But it finally stopped, and it took 1 guy a whole week, but he did a GREAT job, with the woodwork that needed done before the paint. And then we had even more fun getting ready for new carpet; our 23-yo contractor-grade stuff was 30 seconds from complete disintegration, so it was time. So – we had to move the entire first floor, except the kitchen. THAT was a huge pain in the ass, but my craft room is getting put back together and cleaned up, and hopefully much more organized. I had about 1000 pounds of books that had to go down steps – they haven’t come back up, just the 200 pounds that are the To Be Read pile. Next year, hopefully the kitchen gets redone.

Also of note since my last post, we had an eclipse AND a hurricane in the same week – because we shop in bulk, I guess. We had Hurricane Harvey blow through after it devastated the Houston area, then we had a solar eclipse, and then Hurricane Irma come straight up through Florida to the north Georgia mountains, where we had 65-70 mile winds – which this area isn’t used to having. The woods behind the house had some damage, we had one tree come down through the fence, ,and trees were down everywhere, with the power outages to go with. Fortunately, we were only down a couple of hours, but since all of our power poles were replaced during the last ice-pocolypse, the only thing we really had to worry about was trees. At one point, the wind blew so hard, it took our biggest tree out back and twisted it – where it twisted, it shattered, and a huge 30′ is still hanging, while another huge section slammed into the ground, so loudly the folks across the street called to see if we were okay, since it shook the whole neighborhood:

In stitching news, I got sucked into a Tempting Tangles stitch along, The Great Cheshire Pumpkin, which ended up taking a lot more time than I thought it would. 8 parts, released every 2 weeks, pretty much consumed all of my time for the last couple of months. But it’s done, and with a couple of weeks to spare. On 28ct Wood Violet linen, using DMC:

The Great Cheshire Pumpkin by Tempting Tangles.

I did take a break from Pumpkin long enough to do the third Chatelaine Mini Mystery Castle that I had kitted up. MM K took me 3 weeks, for some reason; the other two only took 2 weeks. Now I need time to get the three made into bellpulls – the hardware is sitting on the table, yelling at me every time I walk into the craft room.:

Chatelaine Mini Mystery K, on 28ct linen banding, using silks, PTB, DMC, and lots of beads and crystals.

And since it is October, my favorite decorating season, I finished up the rest of the ornaments I stitched last year, so I could put up my new Halloween tree:

JBW’s, stitched with Thread gatherer and Victorian Motto Shoppe threads, on various fabrics.

We also had our fall exchange, for which I did one of the small Prairie Schooler ornaments, and finished it into an actual ornament this time. I don’t have a picture of the Halloween Owl I received from Diane – I will try to take a picture of it for next time.

Boo! by Prairie Schooler. On 28ct Lambswool jobelan.

The only other thing I managed to touch was a bit more on my canvas piece, Field of Sunflowers – now on the outer border:

Field of Sunflowers, by From Nancy’s Needle.

The newest addition to the house, Opie Cunningham, is growing like a weed. I have the most ridiculous assortment of cat scratches from him, including one that is a bout a foot long all down my forearm – he does a mean spider cat impression. And then he sleeps:

My San Diego kid is now stationed in Florida, and his fiance will be in Virginia in a few weeks. The Virginia kid is currently deployed, with a unit on the USS Franklin D Roosevelt, going god knows where. It’s radio silence from him, so it’s going to be hard to not know where he is or what he’s doing 🙁 It’s a different world out there than when I was in the game…

Until next time, happy stitching!

A Mid-Summer Update

Well, here in the Rain State, things are damp. The temps have been pretty nice, though this week, summer has finally shown up in force, with uber-humidity. For the months of May & June, we were well above average for rainfall, coming in at nearly double the average. Which is great for the garden, which is producing cucumbers at an alarming rate.

First Pick – July. I NEVER get peppers before fall, let alone 4 of the Cajun bells, which I really need when chili season starts…

In stitching news, I’ve been working through a few things since I last posted. First, when I left off in May, I was still working on Plum Pudding. I only worked a couple more days on it, got some beads in, and got to a stopping place.

Plum Pudding by Glendon Place – DD converted to Carrie’s silks, and the awful MH beads converted to Miyuki delicas. On 28ct Sprite, though my piece came decidedly GREY instead of purple – which works out with Carrie’s vibrant colors.

I put PP away and then decided to do a rotation on IC Anatolia – it seemed my start/finish of Green Damsel wasn’t enough Ink Circles, so Anatolia it was (though Growth Rings was yelling at me too – but I needed to re-do my Tacky Bob before I could work on another bead project). I did a couple of small bands all the way across, and then a couple of the bigger ones on the left; I LOVE these Carrie’s colors!

Ink Circles’ Anatolia – Carrie’s cottons on 32ct, I think…

Then I couldn’t stop the hollering any longer – Hummingbird Lace wanted to be worked on. It wanted to be worked on so much, I completed BOTH of the remaining over-1 hummers, and started the top left inner border! I probably could have kept going, but nothing else gets touched that way, so…

Châtelaine Hummingbird Lace – bottom hummer. On custom-dyed 28ct jobelan, using DMC, silks, metallics, delicas.

Left over-1 hummer, and the beginnings of the inner border.

You can see the weekly progress photos, which I took for the Chatelaine FB page weekend challenges, in the Flick album for this project here.

Wall cloud; since we are in a hole, we can’t usually see much in the way of cloud formations, since all we have sight of is the sky directly overhead of the street – but we had this parked over us one evening, just one of many storms we’ve had this summer.

I had an impulse start around the 4th of July, mainly because I don’t have any Halloween stuff going at the moment, which is WRONG. Tempting Tangles has a Halloween SAL going from her FB page/Etsy shop, and I signed up, picked a purple fabric out of the stash (28ct Wood Violet, which my friend Judy gave to me, because, you know, purple is ME) and got part 1 in:

The Great Cheshire Pumpkin SAL by Tempting Tangles; DMC on 28ct jobelan. I added the feather details to the owl, just because.

Part 2 is sitting here waiting on me, but I am busy trying to finish NC’s Faerie Winter Dream, which I am not really enjoying because of the mix of Caron Wildflowers w/DMC – some WF on its own, some mixed with DMC, and then DMC 2 strands, as well as single-strand Kreinik #4. I know the mix is for visual interest, but it just doesn’t provide consistent coverage that I like. Maybe if I had put it on a light fabric as it was charted, it wouldn’t be so noticeable, but because I have it on dark, the dark shows through more than I like. BUT, once I get all the beads on, it will be awesome. This is where I am as of last night:

Faerie Winter Dream by Nora Corbett, on a 28ct linen in Winter Solstice from Hand Dyed by Stephanie. A zillion beads to come, soon…

That’s the progress of things lately; I think I did more on SC Life’s a Journey, too, but didn’t dig it out to take a picture. Stitching has been a bit of a challenge lately because we’ve added a 4-legged terror to the household; Monkey was missing poor Bean, so we’ve been looking for a kitty for her, and instead of a new black kitty – which EVERYONE ELSE can find – we found:

Opie Cunningham Rife – a Manx of all things. And one of about 20 orange cats at the shelter.

It took 30 years, but I finally have a cat that pushes things off onto the floor. I wasn’t specifically looking for that trait.

If he grows into those feet, he’s going to be a MONSTER.

Until next time, happy Stitching! And wish me luck this cat doesn’t destroy anything too important, and learns how to stay OUT of the water bowl (my kitchen floor is ridiculously clean, thanks to mopping up a LOT).