Sunday Slow Stitching and a Few Good Books

 October is moving so quickly I can barely keep up.  Lately it seems harder to carve out some me time to sit and stitch or read a book.  This time of the year keeps me busy with the online shops and as the weeks go by I will have less time for me until the New Year, which is what I signed on to when I decided to leave corporate America and do my own thing.  Mostly I have no regrets but as I get older I often wonder how long will I be able to keep up the pace.

A few weeks ago I attended a Broom Making workshop at the Ft. King National Historic Landmark Park, here is the broom I made.

After Hurricane Ian passed through we lost another tree so while my son was cutting up the tree I grabbed a piece of branch that will make either a great broom stick or a walking staff, right now it's in the garage curing for 6 months.  I enjoyed the workshop so much I just want to make another. 

Today is Sunday, the air was crisp and cool for my walk and after I post this and read a few blogs I'm going to enjoy some slow stitching on my greenman piece, I left off with my needle poking through a few days ago.

I haven't made very much progress since my last post of him but I did complete the Moon Crystals stitch along piece. I made a few changes to the moth, I didn't add the sequins and didn't do the Turkey stitch.  I'm not really a sequins in my embroidery person and I didn't much care for the Turkey stitch. This is no reflection on the designer, her work is beautiful but I have to go with what I like so I used the satin stitch in place of the turkey stitch, in the photo its the pink floss below the head and the sequins.

I did use the beads in the moth and the crescent moon, the large pink space should have been sequins. 

Here is the finished piece which need the stitch and wash product washed off which I will do later today. Overall I love how it turned out and I discovered I love doing the whipped backstitch and the chain stitch. Now to decide to put it in a hoop or make a pillow.

I have a few projects that need to be transferred to fabric so I can get started on them, for now I just want to stitch.  I am linking my post to Kathy's Quilts here, check out what other talented bloggers are slow stitching  https://kathysquilts.blogspot.com/2022/10/slow-sunday-stitching_01031266711.html

I picked up two books from the library yesterday while out running errands, I also returned 3 books. I will start reading The Girl Who Wrote in Silk this evening when my fingers are too sore to stitch any longer.

I started to read The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches last night, As Silly as it sounds while I am 

reading the book its as though someone is narrating it as I read, almost like the narration of the Queens of Mystery series, I can practically hear the voice in my head as I read. 

As I mentioned this week has been fairly busy with the online shops, especially after an Instagram influencer posted about one of out most popular products and sales went through the roof, at Amazon we sold more than 200 in an hour and from the home shop 75 one day and 70 the next and sales just keep coming. It's exhausting having so much to pack so early in the holiday season.

This is the object I am talking about, an embossed faux leather coffin shaped wallet, we sell them year round but at Halloween time we can barely keep them in stock.  

We are grateful to all our customers that have kept us in business all of these years it's nice to know the products we carry have a wide following. I'm just happy it's the wallet that's selling so fast and not the matching purse.

In closing I will leave you with a few autumn poems

I dream of colorful autumn leaves filling the branches of trees.

A New Month a Year Older and Some Slow Sunday Stitching

 On July 1st I celebrated my 67th birthday, time does fly when you get to a certain age for me it was around 45 since then the days just seem to pass in a flash. For my birthday I went to my favorite beach. 

The day was perfect for the beach though a little too breezy but the sun was shining despite the gathering clouds which passed by quickly. Before the beach we had lunch at the Funky Pelican and then I finally got to walk the Flagler Beach pier, something I have wanted to do for a few years.

When we were finished walking the pier we headed further north to a quiet more secluded beach that I  love, while Flagler beach is nice its very close to the roadway and I didn't want to hear the sound of cars over the surf. We took a quick detour at an interesting looking thrift shop where I purchased this sweet little pitcher.

That's my son's leg in the photo of the rocks on the beach and naturally he is texting a few people.

I brought my Greenman embroidery with my but it was so windy I managed only 3 stitches before I abandon him for a walk along the shoreline. 

On the way home we stopped at a Ukrainian Bakery and picked up several slices of cake to try back at home, I didn’t think to snap a photo of the cakes but I did get the counter case.

I also picked up some potato and cheese perogies which I will cook over the weekend. It was a wonderful day but it’s always good to get back home. My daughter in law and son left around dinner time, they surprised me with some lovely flowers. When the lily opened fully it was larger than my hand and smells lovely.

A few beach finds this trip 3 pieces of beach glass, some lovey Hag stones aka Holey stones, and a few shells.

The tree service still hasn’t come to remove the fallen trees they were scheduled for Saturday but called and said it would be Monday, I reminded them it was a holiday and they said no problem. I am not confident since they didn’t show up last weekend and rescheduled so I ask my son whether he would rather go with another company.  If they don't come Monday I will call one of the other companies that gave estimates.  On a positive note my son didn't have to hang around all day, his wife's birthday was Saturday and they were able to spend the day together.

The stitching progress on the Greenman embroidery is coming along nicely, though slower than I had thought. but any stitches is progress.  

I have a few stitches to put in the Lunar Flow piece the pattern by Cozy Blue, I have changed some of the stitches from the original pattern, mostly the French knot fillers and satin stitching the leaves.

I will be linking my post at Kathy's Quilts today for Slow Sunday Stitching, to see what other talented bloggers are working on the link is here https://kathysquilts.blogspot.com/2022/07/slow-sunday-stitching.html

For July I am taking part in the #stitchandshare with @lolli and grace 31 days of creative prompts for stitchers on Instgram.  https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/stitchandshare/

Later in July I will be taking part in the Moon Crystals SAL for the Snarky & Modern Facebook Group if interested here is a link for information https://lolliandgrace.com/blogs/blog/moon-crystals-a-new-stitch-along-for-the-snarky-modern-facebook-group

More Hag stones and the beach glass I am going to put these in my new little pitcher.

Stitching on a Sunday, Fallen Branches and a Pear Tree.

 It's been a busy couple of weeks with all sorts of things going on.  I'm happy to say I have hired a new lawn service to cut my grass.  I interviewed the company on Thursday and they were kind enough to point out a fallen tree branch in my yard.

Luckily it didn't fall on the house but a bit too close for comfort so this week I will be looking for a tree service to either trim the branches or to remove the tree entirely, which I would like to avoid.

The photo above shows where the branch snapped off and fell from, quite high up. Unfortunately one of the problems with the Water Oak tree is branches tend to drop off and trees have been known to just fall over.  Before we moved here our previous house had a water oak in front of the house and branches fell off all the time.  I would never hear them fall but when I would step outside there it would be lying in the driveway.  I didn't hear this branch fall and I have no idea when it fell. 

On a positive note the new lawn service cut the grass Saturday and did a wonderful job trimming around the boulders along the driveway.  So that's one thing out of the way that needed to be done.  One other positive note is the pear tree has quite a few pears on the branches.

I am quite happy to see so many fruits, though I didn't really have much hope for them because whoever planted the tree never gave the location much thought because the big oak tree and surrounding trees have blocked out most of the sunlight, however, in the autumn my neighbors cut down most of the trees in their yard so more sunlight finally reached the tree, and I gave it a bit of fertilizer in the autumn. 

So all those lovely March flowering branches gave way to several pears appearing on the branches.

All the leaves have now been blown away by the lawn service and the flagstone now shows through, eventually I will snap a new photo.  I am hoping once the branches of the oak tree are trimmed more light will get to the pear tree and next year she will fair much better.

I found some time to do some hand embroidery, I worked on both the Moon Flow and the Greenman pieces.

On the Moon Flow piece I stitched more of the light colored moon phases. While stitching them I noticed I didn't finish the little flowers in the center, I stitched the stems and leaves but forgot all about the flowers.

On the Greenman piece I stitched more of the Ivy leaves, not much progress but those few leaves took me more than an hour to stitch, but any progress is progress and I will be stitching more on the greenman today for slow Sunday stitching

I will be linking my post over at Kathy's Quilts today https://kathysquilts.blogspot.com/2022/05/slow-sunday-stitching_0384173884.html

This week I drove over to the local library to pick up a book waiting for me, Traveling with Pomegranates by Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor, it's a large print book so I can see what I am reading.  Too often I pick up a book and the print is so light or so small I can't see it even with my glasses on so when a large print book is available I check it out.

It's been a very quiet Memorial Day weekend so far, the weather was supposed to me lots of rain, but it came early on Friday and rained for several hours non-stop, tomorrow is Memorial Day here in the United States, the unofficial start of Summer.

 

April Showers Bring All Kinds of Things

 The month of April is moving along quite nicely, with bouts of heavy rain and wind, hot humid weather and chilled nights into the 40's. I'd say a typical Spring in north central Florida.

On Monday the 4th of April I had surgery to remove uterine fibroids. I was at the hospital at 6:30 in the morning and home by 2 in the afternoon, all went well in the surgery and as usual by day 4 at home I was hit with the overwhelming need to sleep, which I did till Saturday evening when I finally started feeling better again.  Thursday was horrible weather wise, the air was so humid I think you could have moved it with your hands, I had to use my inhaler to get in some air which in turn loosens up the lungs and has me coughing for days. This always happens after I have general anesthesia, I think my lungs finally start working right again and it taxes my body and all I want to do is sleep. In the meantime we were hit with torrents of rain through most of the morning, it was a fast moving storm and by afternoon the sun was out, the air much drier and comfortable, by Friday morning it was quite cool.

My progress on my hand embroidery pieces is coming along at a slow pace, lost the entire week to sleep so I didn't dare pick up a needle.

Moon Flow by Cozy Blue above I actually worked on Wednesday afternoon while I was feeling alert I am ready to start the moons, which would have been started the next day but didn't happen by then I was just weak and sleepy.

The progress on the new Greenman is coming along at a slow and steady pace which is fine with me.

I am in no hurry to get this completed though missing just about an entire week of stitching does begin to get annoying but recovery comes first and stitching while foggy headed isn't an option.  I feel tired but clear headed today so I should be able to get some stitching done today, in fact I plan to take my work out to my patio table and soak in some sunshine, fresh air and do some slow Sunday stitching. Which is where I am posting my link today over at Kathy's Quilts https://kathysquilts.blogspot.com/2022/04/slow-sunday-stitching_0799150108.html

Between stitching I have a few Spring issues of magazines that I want to read later today.

I wish all of you a wonderful day whatever you choose to do.