Wrapping up June

I did little to no work on the back 40.   I have an unbelievable amount of Spiderwort - which I never planted.   Intentionally at least.  

When we moved in 40+ years ago, the former owner had it at the foundation across the back of the house.    I dug it up and threw it in the woods behind me.  Where all the plants I had too many of them went for years.   Although  the purple blue flowers next to the yellow coreopsis make a lovely showing, once the spiderwort declines the heavy stalks - like fat asparagus stakes - just flop over into big 3 foot round circles, looking messy and smothering anything nearby.   I try to eradicate it every year.   It has roots that look like spaghetti and even a one-inch piece left in the ground will sprout the next season.   I have sprayed every kind of weed killer again and once died down, I remove what I can, cut off at ground level and spray it again.   So I guess progress has been made but not so much headway made.   I still need more stone to complete the path.   Bringing it home from my son’s in a half dozen flower pots at time is  not making a big difference.    And since this is technically not my property - it is a landlocked piece of property owned by the township but it is mine by right of eminent domain - I think and I have been cutting and maintaining it for years…..since it is not my property, my rule is not to spend money on it.   I am close to breaking that rule so I can get the blasted walkway down.   I figure I need about a dozen 50 pound bags which really means 18.  I guess if I spend money on weed killer I can make the small jump to paying for stones.    I may just price them out, even price out having bulk delivered. I know Mr. Wonderful will think I am trying to give him a heart attack moving a 1/2 of stones.  

For WIPGO this month, one of the numbers called was 7 hours on Rosewood Manors Cornwall Cottage.  I love this piece.   Every time I pick it up to work on it I wonder why I put it down.   Anyway, I decided to double up this month and dedicate both monthly assignments to this piece which meant spending 14 hours on it which I did manage to do.    I figured it was the best way to make the most progress and I am happy with what I got done.   One of these years I get it done.  And the inner border met!  I count this as a win!   I think WIPGO for July might be put aside.  I promised myself that in July I would work on Christmas gifts and exchange pieces.   

Temperature Tree is half done!   So far so good.  Having fun with it.  Time to stitch that July branch.

French Alphabet Sampler is moving along, slowly.  I only put in one Sunday afternoon of work.   Between traveling and entertaining grand children, stitching got neglected.  Any forward progress is good.   I would really like to get page 2 finished and be well into page 3 by the end of the month.  Although not as far as I would like to be, I am still on tract for a Leap Year finish!  This is the only piece I plan to stitch on in July other than exchange stitching so I feel sure I can be well into Page 3.  

If not traveling, or dealing with minor body ailments,  I was spending my time with these two.    I had William for the week between school being out and camp starting.  We visited a natural history museum with dinosaurs because all little boys like dinosaurs and we saw In and Out 2 at the movies.  Then I had Little Miss Raegan for a long weekend and we had lunch at a tea room.   She was the perfect little lady.

 

And I still have one more Ohio trip to post.  I tried to incorporate here with my monthly update but there is too too much to share!   

Thanks for stopping by and keep on stitching!

June Update

So far so good!  I have not bought any addition craft supplies, well that is not any purchases that are not totally justifiable.    And yes, Kathy, it is a pledge we make and remake to ourselves on a regular basis. 

I was in OCMD for the Air Show.   We were on the boardwalk just above the VIP tents so we had the best view!  

A trip to OCMD always includes a stop at Salty Yarns. I saw some things I liked and wanted but I resisted.   I did however buy a pair of cheaters which fall into the category of "needed to finish a current project".

That justification is not even a stretch! It is totally legit.  And I have to say, the real cheaters and not the 4 for $12 Amazon cheaters are nicer.   I'd been using 4.0's for some time and had started to  struggle with focusing.  These are 3.0's and  everything is crystal clear!  LOL  20 days and counting on the pledge to make no purchases.  I wonder how long I can keep this going……

March/April/lMay as well as September/October/November seem to be my busiest months.  At the beginning of the June I had a day at home, with no where to go and nothing pressing on my list.  Usual days when I have no where to go, I get up, put on garden clothes and head out side to dig and weed and transplant and then, quite frankly, collapse mid-afternoon sweaty and dirty from the lifting, lugging and  heat.    This particular Monday, I decided the yard and gardens would wait and I sat down to write out some cards, send out from checks (yes, I still write checks occasionally) balanced my checkbook (and yes, yet another archaic thing I do) did my report for my EGA meeting 4 days in advance rather than 30 minutes before the meeting and just generally sorted paper work on my desk.  By 10 a.m., I was done and felt great.   Those nagging tasks that niggle at the back corner of your brain, the ones I tend to put off because I’d rather have my hands in the dirt or holding a needle, were gone.    I don’t know why I make some tasks seem so tedious when if I actually just do them they are no big deal.   I think it is that retirement thing....I'll do it tomorrow.  Just like I used to tell me kids…"you have have the time if you take the time".  Pass the salt while I eat my words!

We have had some beautiful weather the beginning of June. Sunny but not hot.  It carried over through much of one week.   One such day I looked at my infamous to-do list and decided to start cutting the hundreds of 2 1/2 inch squares of holiday fabric I needed for an EGA class in July…and another marvel, not waiting until the week of to start the cutting.   Not wanting to miss the beautiful weather, I took everything outside to work.   It was a great thing to do.  Although more than once the wind did take a square or two and sailed them into the strawberry patch.  

I resolved by the end of the day that once day a week I would do no yard work, go no where, but rather work on something totally different, not necessarily on my to-do list and just maybe I wanted to do rather than something I felt like I had to do.  Mr. Wonderful suggested I take more than one day a week off.   Well let’s not get crazy here, I do have my lists.  He doesn’t understand how I never run out of things to do. Ahhhh, but life is so good.   Two and a half years retired and not bored yet.....just living the good life.

I watched the Queen’s Jubilee as I am sure many of your did.  Just love the Pomp and Circumstance.   And oh that Prince Louis!  Many of us have had a child like him!  He is going to be a scamp for sure.

I caught up on my Garden of Stitches SAL.  I am enjoying this piece but I have hit a wall for the time being.  

I am not necessarily enjoying these 23 rows of modified herringbone stitches.   It is not a quick section.    I will work on this next week and be sure to get my June assignment done before July starts.

I have let my i-Stitch Band Sampler slip behind.  Five or six weeks left until the end.  I'm hope to finish Week 22 today and work on Week 23 tomorrow.  I am done being bothered by not keeping pace with others.......enjoy the journey, it's not a race to see who gets done first.    (Hmmm, this philosophy has contributed to my tons of WIP's)

My band sampler may have slipped but I have almost doubled what I had done on my hexie quilt.  

I am not sure how big I am going to make it.   I will just continue to add to the right side until I say enough....I will not keep adding until I run out of hexies as that would make a Jolly Green Giant sized quilt.  I'd really like to set a goal of September to be done (total fantasy).   Because of the size I think I will pay to have this long-armed rather than me attempt it on my Husqvarna. 

I saw Top Gun Maverick - Awesome.   It was the perfect thing to do before going to the air show with the Thunderbirds in OCMD.  One of my favorite things was the use of the music from the original movie.   The music is so synonymous to Top Gun I would have been disappointed if it was not in the second movie.   

I am working on catching up on both guilds blog posts as well as the website of one.  One guild done/one almost done.  Talk about a niggling task that I put off.  I dread doing the website updates.  They are not needed frequently. It always seems once I learn to navigate the site, there is an upgrade to the platform and therefore the steps change!   But once I get into it, it is usually not as difficult as I imagined it to be before I started.  Just do it Robin!

On the same lines….just when I thought I would dedicate one morning each week to catch up on other blogs and make comments, there is a snafu, more commonly know as some kind of darned update.   Some blogs have a new comment form where I must ‘identify’ myself as "Not Anonymous" but when I do it, it only takes me in a loop.   Ugh!   After a few go ‘rounds, I donned my garden gloves and go sit in the dirt!  So Bloggers, don't despair, you are being read.   Receiving my comments is a whole other issue.

My son gifted me with something.   He has been pulling out the garden edging and the stones in his flower beds and wanted to know if I could use them….thought about half a minute and I had a plan.    I replaced the bricks lining the my garden path in my Back 40 project and dug in the edging and then laid the stone and various pavers and bricks to create a better path through the area.   See, one person’s trash is truly another person’s treasure.   Now I don't need to get out the weed wacker for the path, just a spritz here and there for any grass that comes up through the stones.  One of the things I like most about this area is that I have spent next to nothing on it.   I’ve bought a couple of wine bark bushes and a couple of cone flowers but for the most part the flowers are transplants or seed packs just tossed in to grow.  It is about 98% sweat equity!

And this would be why I don't accomplish as much stitching as I would like to.

Time to get some more stones from Rich's place.   I am babying Monday and Friday this week so I will have more than enough.   I'll keep going until I am done with the path or run out of stones and bricks, whichever comes first.   Got lemons, make lemonade.   Got stones and brick, make a walkway.  Just like stitching, slow and steady wins the race.

Looking ahead to Christmas (what!) it's only June!  There are five of us that are doing an Advent Exchange at Christmas and I have 19 or 20 of the necessary 24 already.  I need to start the ‘assembling process’, make the gift tags and even start to wrap them.  I think I have  this on my August to do list to start August 1st.   Five times 24 is 120 packages to wrap!!

Here’s to smooth sailing the rest of June, July and August.  These are not the Dog Days of Summer, but the Robin Days of Summer.  Much relaxing will be done, the pool water will warm up; this is the latest it has been before a first swim!  Last weekend it was in the upper 60's.   Beautiful weather, albeit not swimming weather.  And much stitching will be done and much enjoyment will be taken from looking about the yard at the results of my hard work in the spring time.   Oh, and yes, William has asked if he could come spend a week as Damma's now that school is out…watch out Damma!   

I'll leave you with some early morning photos of my yard walk.   This is one of my favorite times of the day to be in the garden, when the shadows are long, and the fragrances are strong.   Heck, who am I kidding, I'd prefer to be out here most of the time as is evidenced by breakfast, lunch and dinner on the deck.

Lavender is doing great.

My Dill AND my Hosta are shoulder height!  Probably supposed to do something with the dill, like trim it.....

In addition to strawberries, I have already harvested lettuce, peppers, cilantro and green beans.  Tomatoes are not yet ready.

Volunteer Foxglove and Black-Eyed Susans in my Back 40 area.

Orange cone flower I planted last fall.  Either he is a dwarf plant or he needs Miracle Gro!

My sentinel...Mr. Squirrel.     The colors in here were at a peak last week.....this is an area in need of thinning.

Even out front, the colors abound......not so much the rusty color of the dead azalea blooms.  I just transplants some of the Russian Sage yesterday into the Back 40.   It was being smothered by the shrubs growing over it and I thought, hmm, I know where I can put these!

Time to thin this bed out.   The coreopsis and Shasta Daisies have seen better days. And I'd really like to eliminate all the Spiderwort.   Believe me I have tried but the bugger just keeps coming back.  It does add a nice pop of color and then.....it just falls over and covers everything around it.   The Stella Doro lilies in the background have not yet blooms, but wait until the do......yellows and oranges all over the place!

Thanks for stopping by.   Keep safe and keep in stitching.

R

Alternate Route Needed

I made a dilly or two  or ten mistakes in my stitching for Land That I Love and guess what, I AM NOT frogging it.  I am not even wasting time to look for it.   My order of stitching was down the left side and about one-third across the pattern.   I then decided to stitch across the top border and work down.    Somewhere along the way I thought it a brilliant idea to stitch the dividing bands across - and in retrospect - it is a darned good thing I did.    As I worked down from the top border, I realized I don't have enough space left to stitch the eagle and the vase for the flowers above the first dividing band.....I did find a two thread error on the left but I think I am more like 6 threads off.  Since I knew I wasn't going to rip it out but rather compensate my back side off.....I stopped looking.    No one will know the difference except me and the blog-o-sphere and oh yes, there is my EGA group that I blabbed to.    Deep breathe, calming thoughts.   Decision made, I am over it and moving on.    It has been in time out for two weeks and it is time to refocus on this piece and get to compensating!

It seems after over a year of nothing, I have had a couple or four busy weeks with what seems like something to do every day which always means something is getting neglected.  Sometimes that is housework, sometimes it is gardening and sometimes it is needlework and sometimes it is just as simple as down time.    I took a day last week to do nothing.....well not really nothing.   I did some necessary EGA work, I did some necessary computer work, I balanced my checkbook, I paid my property taxes and than I was done for the day.......and it was only 1:00 .....I spent time in my hanging egg chair on the deck, listening to the sounds of summer, stitching, reading and NAPPING!    It was heaven.   I don’t know about others but I get myself all wrapped around the axle when things I am neglecting seem to take a life of their own.  It felt good to check a few things off my to do list that I had been avoiding.    Note to self, learn to say NO to others and have a me day at least one day a week.

I just finished the Indigo Girl which I enjoyed.  It is a historical fiction novel based on Eliza Lucas Pinkney of Charleston, South Carolina.  A place I need to go back to.    I enjoyed the book and the epilogue even more when the author shared all the  acclaims for Eliza.    I also finished The Old Girls Network.   It was a light, cheery read about two sisters in their 70's that don't get along.   One comes to stay with the other to recover after a health issue.    Their lives are turned upside down and changed forever when I stranger comes into their lives. 

I finished the stitching on the EGA plaid spider.    Early on during this stitch that I thought it was not going to turn out right because I used stash and not the called for colors.   Once I started the  vertical stripes and the plaid formed, I could see it materialize before my eyes. He will be sitting in the bin of finishing that I hopefully get to by fall. 

Other things going on for me......I have the need to lock up my credit card.  I have been on a spending spree for sure.   I ordered new furniture for my family room.....get this.....10 months until delivery......due to Covid related shortages and the bad weather in Texas...apparently Texas is the sofa stuffing producing capital of the world.   

Also ordered new blinds.  Mr. W wanted to know what was wrong with what we have.....um, they are twenty years old, more than a couple of the cloth cellular blinds are torn from the demon cat, and even though I clean them, they are graying at the top.

.....and I broke the news I am getting a contractor to paint the room.   Again this room hasn’t been painted in 20 years  and I promised myself when I stood on scaffolding and painted the cathedral ceilinged room  back then that the next time it needed to be painted I was hiring someone.   It was not fun when I was 20 years younger so now I know it would be really ugly.   

......lastly to round old my spending purchases, I bought new deck furniture....this order has  an eight week delivery.  Mr. W was ok with this order since it will be delivered at no cost and he won’t have to make  a couple of trips to Lancaster County, Pa to pick it up.   ....for these  new chairs, I went for whimsy and ordered turquoise!   

They will match the new mailbox and welcome sign I picked up in Lancaster.  Wait til Mr. W. finds out I am ordering new rugs for the family room when the furniture arrives.   Let’s not even venture the reaction I get from him when I tell him I need his help to repurpose and bring into the current century our 40 year old coffee table.  It's a good thing are opening up again because I think I could  Number 1, drive Mr. W around the bend with my projects, and Number 2, bankrupt myself via the internet if I am locked up much longer! 

 

In other stitching news, I have spend a teeny tiny bit of time on these two designs.   For WinterRose Manor, I finished one page of the page albeit the page with the least amount of stitches.   I started working on the next page which is the right side of the house.    Also put in a few stitches on I Crow.   I am alternating these two pieces at my needlework groups as my take along pieces.  

Another week or ten days and there will be nothing to do in the yard but pick flowers and I will be able to dedicate afternoons to needle and thread.   Hmm,  I keep saying that I am done but I keep finding things to do in the yard and gardens.  On the flower front, I planted all my pots and again  I over brought.   Need to make a note of that for next year.  

Loving walking around my yard and seeing and smelling all my pretties.  Above, picking strawberries this weekend right in my own yard.  Below, my sitting area in my "back 40" project.

Spending time with the grand babies.    Looks like one spoon for Raegan and one for Damma.

Next up, I am diving into the abyss of the Medicare rabbit hole.  I am trying to understand the options and make the right decisions...........I'll send up a flag or fire a warning shot if I am going down for the count....

Thanks for stopping by, stay safe and keep on stitching.