A Busy Week

On Labor Day we had a small family picnic at Brad and Kami's.
Brad is the Grill Master! The ribs were delish! He made his own secret barbeque sauce.
There were only five of us but there was plenty of food and conversation.

My mother is the person you can barely see on the left. She made the deviled eggs and baked beans. I made the fried cabbage with spaetzle and the pineapple upside down cake for dessert.

On Wednesday I began designing my next rug which is based on
traditional Baltimore Album quilt blocks. In the picture I am transferring my rug from paper onto my transfer mesh.

I bought this mesh at the PA Fabric Outlet about a month ago, hoping that it would work better than the interfacing that I had been using. I like working with the new material and it's fine enough that I can see the design well and the marker goes through to the burlap easily.

Then I dyed some wool using one of the new dyebooks that I purchased. Surprise! The colors came out just right!

Maybe I should have been using dye formulas from a book all along??? Could have saved a lot of pain and suffering and wasted time, dye and wool. DUH!!!


These are the colors I plan to use in the rug. Not the most exciting, but then, album quilts are predominantly red and green.

I will be quilting my actual album quilt this winter so I am making this rug to go with it. Right now the quilt is with a friend who has a long arm quilting machine. She is basting the top to the batting and backing. Then during the cold months I will hand quilt it in a hoop.

Thursday was the hookin at Grant Street Woolworks. This is my official 'retirement' party. We no sooner arrived at the hookin when the Fedex truck arrived with my new floor stand for my hoop. I wonder if Linda planned that!??

Check the cake on the table. My favorite- chocolate with white icing!

Linda and Zip are chowing down on the pizza, snack mix and cake. Thank you sooo much, Linda, for the delightful party!

And here is Joanne hiding behind her latest project. She brought the most awesome bar cookies! She gave me a container of them to bring home. In fact I am sitting here typing with a few of them and a cup of tea. There aren't many left, Joanne!

Kathy is working on her project and ignoring the lure of the food.

Linda is doing the finishing.

And I bought !guess what! another dye book *with swatches*!!! LOL! Linda just got them in the shop a few days ago.

Here is a better view of the new floor stand. It has little wheels! And tote bags fit on the bottom so all your equipment can be rolled along.

Until the next time, enjoy your life to the fullest!

Happy Hooking!

The Domestic Life

In my younger days when I was between jobs, one of my favorite things was baking bread.

I got up early and decided to make a batch of bread using some whole wheat flour that was in the freezer and needed using up.

I make bread using several different methods: bread maching (least favorite), used to do it by hand but it's hard on the wrists as you get older, in the Kitchen Aid mixer with the bread hook, and my favorite- in the food processor.

About 1/3 of the flour I used was whole wheat and the rest was plain bread flour. You can see the yeast proofing in the measuring cup.

The dough has been kneaded in the processor. I then take it out and knead a few times by hand.

The dough is now ready for it's first rising. When I got my yeast out of the fridge, I was dismayed to see that it had outdated three years ago. But I stirred it into the warm water to proof with a little bit of sugar and it worked just fine.

It was nice and sunny in the kitchen. The first rise only took about an hour.

The loaves are now shaped and ready for their second rising.

They were nice and plump in about half an hour.

Into the oven they go!

I use a pizza peel to slide them onto the baking stone.
It took about 25 minutes for the baking. Bread is done at 190 degrees which I check with an instant read thermometer.

And here are the finished loaves! Just in time for a mid-morning breakfast of turkey bacon and eggs over easy.

Here's the reality check! The big sink full of dirty equipment!

Why does having fun have to make such a mess???

While I am in the kitchen, Zip was not slacking. I found these charis along the street in Chambersburg for bulk trash pickup. They were just plain wood with grungy upholstered seats. I brought them home and Zip took the seats off and painted the frames. Then I recovered the seats and this morning he put them all back together.

The ones we have in the kitchen now matched the off whte legs of the table, but they were too wide to fit well under the table at the ends. These fit nicely. We will paint the table legs to match.

My gameboard table runner is finished! And doesn't the bowl of GOURDS look good on it? Gourds like these and many other wonderful gourd creations for Christmas, Halloweed, etc. can be seen and purchased at Grant Street Woolworks.

Now on to the next project. I wonder what it shall be!

Forgot to mention

I forgot to mention that Robbie is almost back to his normal health. He must have severely twisted his spine when he fell of the windowsill. The Doc gave me steroids to give him and they worked wonders.

He occasionally has a painful moment when he jumps down off of a table or chair, but he is much improved.

We are so thankful our boy is back to his usual loving self!

Busy Day, but lots accomplished

Yesterday was my first official day of retirement. Yes, it's true! I'm no longer working in the sewing room at Great War Militaria. Linda found a very capable replacement for me. So now I am a woman of leisure...well, kinda!


Yesterday I celebrated by finishing the hooking on my gameboard. And I got up with all good intentions of taking it to the hook-in at Grantstreet Woolworks. But...I got so involved in working around the house that I decided to just stay home. It's not often that I get the urge to do housework!

Zip got into the spirit also and here he is fixing the faucet in the bathtub with assistance from Deiter! What a good little helper he is!!!

And here he is helping Mommy, too! I'm getting ready to slice peaches for a dessert I'm making. He loved rubbing his head against the fuzzy skin of the peach. And look at the size of the peach! We got these giants at the Round Barn down near Cashtown.

We pulled about a half bushel of beets to pickle. A few years ago I took a fit and decided to sell my pressure canner at a yard sale. I had decided NEVER to can again! I had spent 30 years of summers canning and I was sick of it!!! Now I wish I hadn't been so rash. But I have plenty of big pots that will do the trick.

The first batch of jars is out of the water bath. I just love to see the finished canned goods lined up on the countertop!

I haven't done so many constructive things in a day since I was...well...lots younger. Now I'm sitting down having a quiet cup of tea and working on whipping the edge of the gameboard.

Over the past two weeks I have purchased several dye formula books. I don't know what my next project will be, but I know I want to dye some interesting colors for it. Right now I feel really inspired and invigorated, but that probably won't last long! LOL! I just need to make the most of my energy while it lasts.

Happy hooking!

Now I can 'Finish' my Rugs...

Kathy always tells us that a rug isn't finished until it has a label on it. Well, Kathy, I finally made some labels.

Took me a while to decide how I wanted to do it- print them on the computer, just write on it with a micron pen, or....what???. I can't seem to get permanent archival ink for my printer so ruled that one out. Didn't think my own handwriting was really what I wanted either.

Decided on the dreaded embroidery machine! When I bought this machine, reading the literature makes it seem like it is soooo easy and everything is done automatically. There are icons on the computer screen with Auto-this and Auto-that, but......! And the tutorial is a breeze! Just click on the line in the drawing and it automatically traces around the drawing and makes outline stitches! NOT!!!

As you have probably guessed, the reality is that everything has to be done manually and it takes an age! LOL!!! Sone lettering fonts are provided with the embroidery software, but not many. And there are a few small decorative embroideries.
But the nice thing is, you can purchase wonderful designs on the internet if you don't have the time or patience to use your own designs. Embroidery Library is an especially good site (and reasonably priced!)

So here are the labels. The top one I'll use with designs that are not my own. I plan to write on by hand the name of the rug and the designer. The bottom one I'll use for my own designs.

Here is the machine in action. No hands necessary! It just does it's own thing until it needs a change of thread color. The sewing is the easy part. The setting up is the pain-in-
the-butt!

We had a really bad weekend with kitty health problems. I have been a total wreck!!! After finding out about two months ago that Sophie had diebetes (she is doing well at this point!), her brother Robbie fell off the window sill in the kitchen and now has some kind of neurological problems. We are not sure whether he had some kind of seizure that caused him to fall or if the fall was the cause of the problem. Anyhow he seems to lose his balance frequently now. We took him to the vet on Sat. morning and the bloodwork was fine, no inner ear problems, etc. And while he was at the vet's, he wasn't showing any signs of balance problems.

Sunday He was really schitzy and distressed. Yesterday he seemed better, with only one minor loss of balance that I noticed. This morning he had a small episode. Unfortunately without lots of expensive tests and ones that our vet is not equipped to do anyhow, we probably will not know what is causing this affliction. If it doesn't get any worse, he will be able to adjust. We will just have to wait and see and pray for the best.

Since I was such a basket case over Robbie, the only thing I had any concentration for was hooking. My gameboard is a no brainer at this point! The picture came out kind of dark. I took it on the front porch where there is better light than inside, but the sun wasn't shining directly on it. But you can see that it's progressing.

I'm getting tired of doing little red and black blocks! There are an awful lot of them!!!

Hope to see some of you at the hook-in at Grant Street Woolworks on Thursday!

Just Hookin'

On Thursday Grant Street Woolworks had their weekly hook-in. Jill K. from Virginia came and brought a friend along. We had a nice morning chatting and picking out wools for Jill's next project. This is the crow and sunflower rug that she has just finished. I love her colors! And the hooking is perfect! Way to go, Jill!

Doris came in the afternoon, and Kathy came later. I don't have any pictures because neither were working while I was there. We all just sat around and talked...and ate! LOL! Doris brought her 'purple project' to show, but since this is for presentation at another group, I didn't photograph it. I will say it's lovely! I did TRY to get some work done, but the conversation was more interesting. hehe!

I had my gameboard started. I got out the wools I had dyed, and in the fluorescent lighting, the yellow gold looked hideous! It was VERY bright and almost yellow green! Yuuuuuck!!! How embarrasing! Why didn't I get out those paint chips before I did that? What was I thinking????

Went home that evening and went through my wool stash and tried some other colors. Decided the golden brown was a decent choice. Of course there was only two small pieces. Got out the dyepot...AGAIN! This time I am happy with the results!

Now for a quiet day when I can make some real progress.

Happy Hooking, everyone!

Rughooker's Lament

Tell me why...why, why, why?! Oh why don't I ever have the right color in my stash?

Zip should be accompanying me on the guitar. This is a very sad song! LOL!!!

It seems like no matter how many pieces of wool and any color under the sun and then a few more, I never have the color I want for a specific project! I thought this checkerboard was going to be a good way to use up wool that I already have without needing to go to the dyepot. NOT!

I do have some red I like, and started out making the squares red and tan. Didn't like the tan. Re-decided on black. Do I have any black? NO! Overdyed some stuff that I didn't like with what I thought might make a nice antique black. Not dark enough against the red. Getting frustrated already! Got out (gasp!) a pack of BLACK dye. Overdyed again. Now I like it! Horay, a small success!




Since this is a gameboard I kind of want it to look like an old primitive painted one. Promary colors, but grungy. Here are the reds and a sage green that I thought would work.

I wanted the background behind the tree to be a gold/mustard color. Didn't have any of that either. Ended up overdying more odd pieces of light colored wool. Then dyed a dark green for the leaves and grass.
I do have some leftover brown worms from another project that will be the tree branches. But the whole point of all of this is that my 'sijmple' little gameboard turned into another dyefest, which was what I was hoping to avoid.



I think from now on I am going to just buy lighter neutral colored wool and dye everything, instead of purchasing lovely pieces that strike my fancy with no clear idea of what they will be used for. Because...and here the light bulb comes on!....I end up overdying them anyhow!

My final commnet is:
I need to be more like Doris. I KNOW she does not have these problems!!!



The last time I was telling you about learning about the settings on my camera. Look at the difference between the two pictures! The first one is on the 'normal' setting.


This one was taken right after, but with the setting for 'trees and leaves. Isn't that amazing?! I am just fascinated with the cool things a digital camera can do!

The veggies are from our garden. Those are cherry tomatoes. The baby eggplant is only about two inches long. Isn't it cute. Unfortunately when I went to chop him up for my salad, he was tough as leather! Oh well!