Episode 19 - Chatty

 Complete show notes for Episode 19. Thank you for watching!

Knitting

Project Name: February Lady Sweater
Started: May 2024

Finished: July 19, 2024

Designer/Source: Flint Knits.  I still had my copy from the last time I knit this sweater.  I guess it's no longer "published" but I'm sure you can still track down a copy. 

Yarn: Yarn purchased from Temu and the label has Chinese written on it.  So ? I can tell you that it's 95 percent alpaca and 5 percent acrylic.  It is SUPER soft. 

Colors: Red/burgundy

Needle Size: US #8, 5 mm; US #10 (6mm)

Made For: myself. 

LOVE this sweater and the yarn. 

Project Name: Monkey Socks
Started: Nov. 12, 2023

Finished: 

Designer/Source: knitty.com

Yarn: Forbidden Fiber Co.

Colorway: Tale as old as time, on the Fortitude base (Superwash Merino).

Needle size: U.S. 1, 2.5 mm

Made For: myself. 

What it looked like at the last update:

Up next is my passenger princess socks

Project Name: Passenger Princess Socks
Started: June 3, 2024

Finished: 

Designer/Source:Vanilla sock pattern I use.

Yarn: Patons Kroy Sock Yarn

Colorway: Midcentury stripes

Colors: Peach, blue, cream, vintage looking colors.

Needle size: U.S. 1, 2.5 mm

Made For: myself.

From previous update. I had to rip back a bit because I was creating holes in the fabric by accident.

Cross Stitch 

Fully finished: 

Project name: Bunny stitch "The Meadow" kit

Started: March 3, 2024

Finished: July 3, 2024

Designer/Source: Bothy threads

I debated with myself about passing along the chart but I think I'm going to hold on to it, just in case. 

Up next is 

Project Name: Love and Prickles
Started: July 20, 2023

Finished: July 23, 2023

Designer/Source: LindyStitches.com

Floss: Called for DMC

Fabric: 28 count evenweave in "Ivory." Fabric purchased from Hobby Lobby.

Made For: myself. Maybe ... 

I have a tentative plan to finish it on the top of a trinket box from Hobby Lobby, #299743L

The other Love and Prickles I started ... 

This is the variegated floss I'm contemplated on using for the one flower. Still undecided if I keep using this fabric or go with an 18 count aida. Now that I've had some time to sit on it I think I may be leaning towards the aida. 

***************************

Project Name: One Piece 

Stitch count (via pattern keeper) as of Aug. 6, 2024: 2,582/9,029 (28.6%)

Started: March 30, 2024

Finished: 

Designer/Source: Cross Stitch Bay on Etsy. Chart no longer available

DMC Floss: 310

Fabric: 14 Count Aida purchased at Walmart

Needle Size: 26

Making for my son. 

Previous update

What the finished piece should look like:

---------------

Project name: Crested Porcupine

Stitch count (via pattern keeper) as of Aug. 6, 2024: 601 / 64,152 (0.94%)

Started: June 27, 2024

Finished:

Designer/Source: Purple Stitching on Etsy.

DMC: 167, 168, 169, 310, 317, 318, 413, 414, 415, 433, 437, 451, 452, 453, 524, 535, 611, 612, 640, 644, 645, 646, 647, 648, 762, 779, 840, 841, 842, 844, 927, 928, 934, 935, 939, 3021, 3023, 3031, 3032, 3041, 3072, 3371, 3756, 3787, 3799, 3828, 3863, 3864, 3866

Fabric: Half yard of 14 count Aida purchased from Forbidden Fiber Co. 

Needle Size: 26

Stitching for myself.  I know it is going to take years. Story about Porkie is here. The follow up post is here. The story is towards the end of the post. Scroll down. 

Quilting

Project Name: Sandpiper quilt

Started: Jan. 21, 2023

Finished: Let's call it July 12, 2024. 

Designer/Source: It's Sew Emma / Fat Quarter Shop

Fabric: Fabric from the Solid Fat Quarter Club

Colors: A different color palette each month.

Made For: Myself

i would definitely make this quilt pattern again. I think it would make a great scrap buster. 

Youtube channels I mention: 

@mudpuppystitchery‬ ‪@leann.stitches‬ (Forbidden Fiber Co.) ‪@javagirlstitches‬ ‪@lindystitches‬ ‪@knittingtraditions‬ ‪@professorstitch9171‬ ‪@logcabinstitcher7274‬ ‪@craftycatstitcher6658‬ ‪@Thehighfiberdiet‬ ‪@institcheswithebony‬ ‪@katiethenovelstitcher‬

I ordered my needle minders from Sweet Autumn Stitch at https://www.etsy.com/shop/SweetAutumnStitch

Oh look, it's raining again ...

I mean, "Hooray! July is here!" 

*ahem* 

I meant to write yesterday. The day got away from me.  I spent the evening working on my bunny stitch. 

I told my hubby that the closer I come to completing this stitch the more goof ups I make. 

Over the weekend I started stitching up the bee. 

And quickly realized I had made some mistakes stitching up the leaves.  I thought "I can make this work." until I realized I couldn't make it work.  

Bah!

So yesterday I spent my lunch hour ripping out stitches.  

Ugh ... no matter how I try to rip out a large number of stitches, it turns into a mess and then the mess takes longer to clean up than if I had been able to just take the threads out. 

Last night I diligently worked on this little bee and put the final stitches in around 9 p.m. 

Finally! Now the back stitching can commence. 

This cross stitch project has been my main focus. 

When I wasn't working on my February Lady Sweater.  Mostly I've been working on my sweater in the mornings, before getting ready for the day and work. 

I am done with the sweater body.  Yay!  Time to start the sleeves.  I have just over four skeins of the Temu yarn to work with.  I'm optimistic that each sleeve will need only 2 skeins each. 

I had the idea that I would write a post at the beginning of the month stating what active projects I have, and what I hoped to get done by the end of the month.  Overly enthusiastic, perhaps. The list will help me get things in perspective since I'm still kind of all over the place, project-wise. Frankly, until I get this bit sorted out I don't feel I can move forward and make a flosstube. 

So things that are currently in the works/percolating along. 

Knits

February Lady Sweater - I would like to get this complete by the end of the month

Monkey socks - Another project I'd like to get done by the end of the month.

Princess Passenger socks - No deadline since I'm only going to work on them when I'm a passenger.  I will pick up stitches on the heel flap in the house.  I don't think I'd be able to do so in a bouncy vehicle. 

Quilts

Sandpiper quilt - I have the top all sewn together and the backing sewn together. I'm debating on whether to put a label on, or not.  The binding still needs to be cut. I would like to have this done by the end of the month. 

Just picture all my squares with sashing and borders around them.

Yes, this is my quilt backing, all in a heap. I think the color will look fantastic with the front. 

Dancing stars quilt - I have about half the quilts squares to sew, still. ... I think I'm going to hold this one until August, unless I get the other things done. 

I have no current photos of completed squares. Sorry. 

Sewing projects

I now have fabric for five WIP project bags.  I want to make them by the end of the month.  I could maybe accomplish this.  It's something to strive for. 

Spinning

My spinning has been pushed so far to the back burner that I haven't touched it in months.  I would like to spend one evening each week of July spinning my little heart away.  Currently the Tour de Fleece is going on.  I've never been good at following any kind of a-long, so I didn't even try to start it this year. 

No current photos of the wool I'm working with. 

Cross Stitch

Currently there are three cross stitch projects going. 

Bunny stitch before the back stitching. 

Where One Piece is. I haven't touched it in a while.  The goal is to get it done by Christmas, at least.  If not, then February next year. 

You may be surprised to read that I *finally* started my porkie cross stitch.  I decided to make it a birthday start.  Well ... I started it during my birthday week. 

It's not much but it is a start. I was still a bit intimidated to start it, and then I just went ahead and set up the aida cloth on my q-snap and started it. 

All the colors ... all 49 of them. 

I've been on the hunt for a porcupine needle minder.  Most of what I find are hedgehogs or images that really don't look like porcupines.  I may end up making my own.  Though I'm not sure how I will go about it. 

Project Name: Porcupine cross stitch

Chart purchased from Etsy: Purple Stitching
Started: June 2024, during my birthday week, 

Finished: 

Floss in called DMC colors: 167, 168, 169, 310, 317, 318, 413, 414, 415, 433, 437, 451, 452, 453, 524, 535, 611, 612, 640, 644, 645, 646, 647, 648, 762, 779, 840, 841, 842, 844, 927, 928, 934, 935, 939, 3021, 3023, 3031, 3032, 3041, 3072, 3371, 3756, 3787, 3799, 3828, 3863, 3864, 3866

Needle Size: 26

Made For: myself. 

Against my better judgement I kinda kitted up a few more cross stitches up that have come across my social media the last month or so. ... I'm really tempted to clear the cache, so to speak and take them out of the bucket until I get less projects on my plate.  As I keep reminding myself, there are no deadlines or urgent reasons to work these projects. So I just may file the floss back in to my storage system and put the charts away for now. 

My WIP bucket. My February Lady Sweater is in the blue daisy bag. 

I have this other project going.  It hasn't been touched for a while.  

A month ago, or so, I saw something on a few flosstubes and I thought "Hey, that's a good idea."

What, you may be wondering ... 

Putting a master set of floss on floss drops and sorting them by color families. 

I don't remember who came up with the idea but it took flosstube by storm, I think. 

This is a set of floss from Temu. The colors match DMC.  It's amazing! 

So my idea is to use this floss for my master set of colors and fill in the few that may be missing with regular DMC.  Also, if I need some floss in a pinch, I can use the floss from my master set. 

I think it will also be helpful to make color subs in the event I'm not wild about a color listed on a chart. 

I don't know how many I have put on floss drops yet.  I sort of burned out on it after a weekend of punching out floss drops.  I think I might have done some damage to my punch. Or, the card stock I was using for making themed floss drops was thicker than what I'm used to.

I'll post more in-progress project photos on my Instagram

Something just happened and I lost the tail-end of my blog post. I guess that is my cue to go work on my back stitching. 

Let's have a coffee date!

 This type of blog post is for when I have a lot of little things I want to share, or when I feel the need to catch up. 

So, grab your coffee/beverage of your choice and join me. 

It's been a while since I've written.  I have a few of little tidbits to say, so let's have a quick coffee date!

If we were having coffee ... I would give you a bit of a health update. I'm better.  I'm not going to say I'm healed.  Not yet, anyway. I've seen a handful of health care providers over the last few months, including one specialist. I've done a lot of reading and research and I've started some supplements that I think will help my body in the long run. Having a bit of a medical mystery going on has been incredibly frustrating and I think it's going to be a long time before I can say I'm healed. I have something going on that I think is the result of the long-term infection. So, for now, I'm better than I was. 

In the meantime some of my pep has returned and I don't feel a constant feeling of being worn down and exhausted. Just the regular exhausted. 

If we were having coffee ... I'd tell you my hubby woke me up one morning a few weeks ago and said "get in loser, let's go buy you a greenhouse."  

No, it wasn't really like that.  We were on vacation and it was a Friday morning. ... He walked into the bedroom, noticed I was awake, (I was processing being awake) and he said something along the lines of "Hey, let's go get a greenhouse for your birthday, and build it over the summer." Totally unexpected and a heck of a way to start the day. But I loved the idea and got up straight away and downed some coffee.  I've been wanting a greenhouse for such a long time. 

So we went and got me a greenhouse! 

We started working on it that day and thought we'd take our time.  It pulled together so much easier than expected. I belong to a few hobby greenhouse groups on the book of Faces, and to hear some people talk ... 

My husband got the foundation set up. (You like my sassy stance?)

Then the walls and roof went up lickity-split. 

The next day we finished the little things and ran to town to get materials for shelves. 

As soon as the shelves were complete I started moving a few things in. 

I'm really excited for the next seed starting season and I want to try my hand at starting some perennials this year and plant them in the fall. 

Unfortunately, we have had rotten weather the last several weeks. SO much clouds and rain. Which means not a lot of sun or desire to spend time outside.  In fact, last night the region had the next round of nasty storms go through. I've been keeping an eye on newsy things online and seen/saw there have been a lot of washouts, flooding and people needing help with flooded basements, etc.

This morning the newsperson said today is the 12th anniversary of the major flooding of 2012. THAT was a crazy time.  Maybe you remember hearing about the seal that was out on the highway? 

My work building flooded as well.  

I'm ready for things to dry out a little bit, for a little while. 

If we were having coffee ... I would say all the rain has been good for the garden, but it's also making the garden not grow very quick. It feels like the garden is a bit behind right now. 

AAAAnnnnndddd ... I don't have any recent photos of the garden. 

These are from a couple weeks ago. 

I have a few things that I'm experimenting with.  In this photo you can sort of make out the "little greenhouse" as I'm now calling it. I debated on taking it down. However, I have a few garden things that I need to store somewhere and I'm not willing to start filling the new greenhouse up with things that will make it cumbersome to be in there. 

I do like seeing all the green in the yard and all the trees. 

Way in the back I have cucumbers and squash plants growing in the containers in the back.  

Sometime soon I will take proper photos of the garden. 

If we were having coffee ... I'd chatter about how my crafting hasn't gone like I planned this year, thanks to the health stuff.  For a while I didn't touch anything.  Then crafting was sporadic.  

I was feeling a little bit of stress an anxiety about this.  Then I remember/reminded myself that there are no deadlines on the things I'm working on.  Only goals that I wanted to reach by the end of the year. 

With reminding myself of this I started feeling better about the whole thing. 

A few nights ago I completed the last block on my sandpiper quilt. 

Now to assemble the quilt top.  I have the sashes and borders ironed and ready to go.  I'm debating on the backing. Go with something wild and unexpected, or be sedate with my color choices for both the backing and the border? 

I do want to update my goals list.  That will be for another day.  I need to gradually get back in to the habit of writing. 

If we were having coffee ... Speaking of goals ... Social media is reminding me that the Tour de Fleece is just around the corner. Do I bother with it this year?  I can't remember if I did anything with it last year.  I haven't touched my spinning since ... February ?  Back when I first learned to spin (100 years ago), and heard of Tour de Fleece, online teams and whatnot were not nearly as ... "fun" as they are now.  Tiaras and T-shirts with fun logos and the year stamped on them.  Looks like TONS of teams you can choose to spin on, and a butt-load of prizes and giveaways. 

The one spinning group I'm a member of on Fa*ebook has been pretty quiet for months and months. I don't know what's going on there. I suspect there was a change in adminning and the new person may not be as active on social media. That's fine.  At this point I'm using social media now mostly to look at pretty things or to be inspired.  Sometimes to know what is going on. 

If we were having coffee ... Books ... I started listening to an audiobook yesterday, "A Single Thread." I'm about an hour and a half in to it. The voice actor is good. I heard about this book from a flosstuber.   It's been tough on the book front.  I haven't known what book genre I want to listen to.  I've started listening to a few audiobooks but haven't finished them.  One, "Speaker for the Dead," I had started listening to a few years back, and never finished it.  I started listening to it again and with being more "seasoned" of a reader, or more life experience (whatever you want to call it) I found myself hearing what  the author is saying about a few things and it basically left a bad taste in my mouth and I wasn't really enjoying the story anymore.  

If we were having coffee ... I'll give you little update on the chickens.  

We rehomed our older girls and Roo.  Someone called us up and asked us if we have any adult roosters available.  We said yes, and then said "Hey, do you want his girls, too?"  

"Sure, the person said."

We still have a Barred Rock rooster and 10 hens. The hens are fat and sassy. The rooster is a jerk to me.  It's the first time I've had a roo that sees me as a rival, I suppose you'd call it.  I have to walk around with a stick in my hand, at the very least. Otherwise he feels like facing off with me. My son named him but I can't remember the name, for sure.  James Charles?  I guess it's a youtuber, or twitch streamer? ?? I no longer know who or what is it and happening. Or, trending ... 

There are also some babies that joined the flock this spring.  Totally adorable.  They don't care for being held, though.  They are free and wild buns, apparently. 

Speaking of buns ... Feffer is still with us.  I think he's at least 6 years old now.  Maybe 7? 

He goes through spurts of being friendly and wanting scritches, and being an aloof bun.

Regardless of his mood, he's my good little boy and I tell him that every morning when I go out to see him and the chickens. 

I'm trying to think if there's anything else I want to ramble about. I'm sure there's something and I will think of it as soon as I hit publish. 

Crafty news I'm going to break up a little bit and put in a few blog posts so I don't overwhelm myself trying to write one massive blog post. My hope is that breaking this up will help me update my goals list, figure out what I'm working on, what other things I want to make, and maybe make a gameplan so I can get my ducks in a row and be bit more organized on the things I have on the mental "I want to make this" list. Like, I want to make some project bags and have the fabric for them.  Then there's a few little things I want to make that are crafty and will help me while I'm being crafty. Like a phone pillow and a little fabric ort tray. Oh, that reminds me ... do I want to buy the snaps or should I just sew the corners? I doubt I'll ever travel, so maybe there's no need for snaps.  See, what I mean? 

Okay, I think that's everything I want to blather about. Yeah ... I'm off to go get my ducks in a row. 

Later! 

Happy Valentine's Day!

 Happy Valentine's to all. 

My husband and I celebrated with a meal at home.  He cooked filet mignon and I made a salad to go with it.  Homemade ice cream for dessert. 

My man can cook a great steak. 

In my Facebook memories for this day a photo of us from one of our first Valentine's Day dinners popped up.  

I know we went to a supper club that is well-known for it's prime rib. 

My mother-in-law took the photo and told us to have a good time. 

We were such wee babes.  

Here we are, 27 years later. 

We first met when I was working at Wendy's. I'd say it was love at first sight.  Though it probably didn't seem like it, at first. We exchanged phone numbers and talked on the phone for hours almost every night before we went out on first date. Our first date was memorable.  The engine on the old Monte Carlo caught on fire and we had to pull over, by Pattison Park, and pop the hood and throw sand on the block to extinguish the fire.  Yes, we did continue with the date and went to a pizza joint in a town I don't remember.  

He said when he drove me back home I jumped out of the car so fast he thought he'd never see me again.  I remember being so excited that I couldn't wait to get on the phone and call one of my girlfriends to tell her how the date went. 

Happy Valentine's to my soulmate, and that we have many, many more. 

I can say soulmate because we've been together *forever.*

In other news ... I've been feeling a bit low the last several days so I haven't been writing or posting the #fiberuarychallenge posts over on Instagram. The recent weather kinda blows and I think the barometric pressure is sapping my energy.  Then last night I didn't get a good nights rest. 

And since I can't sit still unless I'm sick in bed, I've been working on my quilt blocks. 

The next set of my Dancing Stars quilt blocks

 The next block in my Sandpiper quilt

I also started my Emotional Support Chicken.

Project Name: Emotional Support Chicken
Started: Feb. 13, 2024

Finished: 

Designer/Source: Knitting Tree LA

Yarn: Scrap yarns in my stash and Red Heart

Colors: Brown and Saffrom

Needle Size: US #7, 4.5 mm

Made For: myself. 

I also finished my Harvest Cardigan.  I'm saving it for the next podcast I record.  You will just have to wait to see it. 

Spinning fiber also happened.  Not as much as I would have liked. I'm falling behind! 

Oh! I did have some fun mail today.  I ordered a floor lamp for my spot in the living room. I think it's going to work out. It's nice and bright and it is positioned such that it's not blinding anyone else in the room. The price is also very reasonable.  Less than $40. 

Earlier today I went to town, to pick up mail at the office and take care of one thing.  I swung up to Harbor Freight and picked up a generator. 

Guess you could say it's a Valentine's Day gift for the man of the house.