sloooooowly stitching . . .

It was a relatively slow week, stitch-wise.  Our church's VBS started today, and I spent a lot of the preparing for that!  I did get some stitching in, though.  Almost finished up the standing pilgrim on my Coming to America piece . . . 

I have about 90 minutes of free time from my last VBS music rotation to the closing rally, so I'll take this project with me and work on it each night.  Maybe I'll have all *three* pilgrims on the boat finished by week's (or VBS's) end.  

I am still unpacking and organizing things from the move . . . especially Nook things.  In doing some of that, I came across this little snowflake embroidery that was ninety percent finished . . . 

What in the world?  I started this in December, 2019.  I know this because I blogged about it, sharing this photo . . .

I was flummoxed!  It was SO close to being done. I'd pulled up the blog photo to see exactly which metalic flossed I'd used.  Once I'd found that, I began to stitch up the remaining gold spires.  That's when I remembered.  I had used a new product—Sulky's Stick & Stitch Stablizer. The project got too close to a hot iron, and it shrunk the stabilizer, so the pattern wasn't right.  I pulled out my new stitches and soaked the embroidery to get rid of the stabilizer. I left it out overnight to dry . . .

Not terrible!  I'd lost the pattern, so I "winged" it. (Not to fear.  I contacted Mary Corbet of Needle 'n Thread, from whom I'd purchased it, and she emailed me the pattern file today.  Thanks, Mary!!) I hosted a stitcher's group for my Sassy girls on Saturday, and finished up the stitching on it then.

It's not great, because my winging it wasn't great, but I'm glad it's finished.  I don't remember what my original plans were, but I've got some great metalic Christmas fabrics that I think I'll frame it with!

Another thing I found was a bag of HST pieces from my Christmas quilt.  Those weren't quite as old as the embroidery, but still date back a couple of years or so.  I laid them out a couple of different ways to decide how I wanted to stitch them together.  I came up with Harlequin Christmas, Jack-in-the-Box Christmas, and Pinwheel Christmas:

I'm leaning toward the Pinwheels, but all three have eye interest. It's a mini piece ... about big enough for a center table mat.  

In other news . . . more important news . . . family news:  granddaughter Olivia graduated from elementary to middle school *and* was awarded Student of the Year!  Pictured here with my James:

So very proud of her!!  Isn't she just beautiful?!

And finally, because we all know what a sucker I am for a sunset, here was the view from my balcony on Friday evening . . . 

It was pretty brilliant there, but to the south it was soft pink and blue . . . cotton candy skies! The whole western horizon was glorious!

I'll spend the rest of the week singing and dancing all our Magnified VBS tunes. Crooning!

:)

right on time . . .

You would not think that I'd have much to share, seeing as I just posted four days ago ... but, surprise! I have another photo-laden post, with a variety of content! 

Thursday evening was our guild's last meeting of the guild year ... our birthday party, so to speak. It was decorated beautifully!

There's always a shot of the outgoing board.  You'll notice me at the very top, right. I won't be on the 2023-24 board; my plate is rather full right now.

The quilt behind us is our 2024 Fanfare Quilt Show opportunity (raffle) quilt.  Isn't it beautiful??!  Created by one of our members (with help from other members). It's so beautiful it deserves a solo photo . . .

Chance tickets are $1 a piece.  I've already sold twenty.  Ha! I haven't even bought my own, yet!

Friday, Todd and I got up super early and were on the water again at sunrise.

It was a beautiful day! < insert beautiful lake photo here >

The temps couldn't have been more agreeable, with a lovely breeze out of the west.  We didn't stay out terribly long, but we enjoyed the time we had.

Saturday I picked up Ellie and we headed to L'Etoile Patisserie!  

It's a sweet little French bakery in town, owned by a dear couple (the wife is in my book club).

After much deliberation, Ellie chose a pain au chocolat with a mug of tea.  She looks very sophisticated, non?! From the bakery, we visited an LQS - Patches & Stitches - because I needed a skein of floss.  Ellie informed me she needed a new beading needle, so we picked up a pack of those, too.  That's what Neesey's are for, right?! Then we headed to the grocery store, then back to the camp. I helped Ellie make a cheesecake . . .

She did a great job with it! And then we tooled around the camp for a bit. 

This is inside the new outdoor chapel.  It's nearly finished ... they just have to run the electricity to the building. I can't wait to see it clear of scaffolding!

Here's a shot from the outside.  It's so beautiful.  Our Campers on Mission volunteers got the building up in May.  A small group of volunteers have continued to work on it and the landscaping. It's almost there!

Ellie and I watched movies and worked on our respective hand work projects. 

She's almost finished with hers, and I'm just getting started! After dark, we headed over to the Firefly Cabin to spend the night. 

We push the bunks together and pull the mattress down from the top for a little extra padding! It was a true Camp MACOBA adventure!  Ellie even spotted this beautiful cicada:

Not that she'd get anywhere close to it.  LOL!!  Sunday morning while we waited for it to be time to go to church, Ellie finished her pumpkin stitchery . . . 

This is another stitchery that she came up with the concept, and I drew it out for her approval and traced it on fabric for her.

Isn't it wonderful?!  She does such lovely work.  I promised her that when she finished it, I'd stitch it up into a pillow sham for her, so I guess the ball is now in my court!

We ended our sleepover weekend by dropping her home, and celebrating her dad's birthday (which is why we made cheesecake)!

His birthday was earlier in August, but schedules have been crazy, so here we are!  And anyway, month-long birthday celebrations are a thing, right?  Well, they are for me, anyway.  ;)

Sunday evening a made some progress on *my* stitchery:

Another sweet cross stitched piece from Pinker 'n Punkin Quilting.  I love her little freebie designs and I was just itching to do something with pumpkins!

So this is me, on a Monday, all caught up; have a fabulous week!

Cioa! 

:)

taking a turn . . .

Backposted (because how ever many years from now I'd regret not having posted these pictures along with their stories)!

Well.  The week started out just fine.  We woke up one day to a lovely blanket of snow.  I love March snows!  Remember, just the weekend before, we were out on the boat!

But, as is typical of March snows (not March ice storms, mind you), twelve hours later, it was back to Spring! And three days later . . .

By the end of the week, I was feeling poorly.  By Saturday morning I was feeling bad enough that, for the very first time, I took a covid test . . .

It didn't even take sixty seconds for the "positive" to show up.  Ah Bach. Talk about a turn for the worse.

Thankfully, I didn't feel terrible.  One day with a fever and bad headache, and then I was just tired.  I spent a bunch of time out on the deck (covered and with the heater on) . . .

And enjoyed the wildlife show . . .

By Monday, as hard as he'd tried to stay away, Todd had also succumbed. By Wednesday, I was really feeling fine, so I nursed Todd and took advantage of being home and worked on (and completed) my March UFO challenge project, which was to piece the T-block quilt (minus the border) that I'd tentatively named Oriental Tea Garden.

Yay!  I also worked on finishing the hand-quilting the silver spiderweb on my Halloween Hexi table topper . . .

This was actually May or June's UFO challenge project, but I've got the time, so I went ahead and finished it up! 

I did end up missing some big things. Ellie did her presentation on the fabled Babylon Hanging Gardens:

I was supposed to receive a Quilt of Valor at a presentation on Thursday, and our guild's quilt show, which is always spectacular, was over the weekend.

Luckily, I've got good friends who sent me some photos!

I can't believe I'm saying this ... but I'm ready to go back to work next week.  <grin>

:)

legoland or bust . . .

Backposted (because how ever many years from now I'd regret not having posted these pictures along with their stories)!

Finally, last weekend was the weekend of my Atlanta roadtrip with Ellie to visit Legoland!  I picked her up on Saturday morning, and we set our course!

With a pit stop at Cracker Barrel for lunch, naturally!

Clean Plate Club!

Well, breakfast at lunch ... Ellie loves pancakes & bacon! Yummy!  From there we headed to our hotel, which had an indoor, heated swimming pool.  Ummm, yes, please!

We ordered a pizza to our room for dinner and did each other's hair.  It really was quite fun—like a roadtrip sleepover!  Sunday morning we had breakfast at the hotel and then headed over to Legoland!

 

 

 

 

We did every activity, rode every ride, watched every movie, and posed with every photo prop.  LOL! 

It was a really fun day, for both us!

Ellie bought a couple of Lego people souvenirs to complete her little family . . .

And look who was happy to see me when we got Ellie home!

:)