The Height of Summer!

 It's been a little over a month since I posted -- too long! Apologies. I'll glance through photos, choose the best, and then chat with you about what's happened since the middle of June ....

We spent five glorious days together in the North Carolina mountains on vacation in the same home we stayed in last summer. It was warm, the river was cool, we tubed twice, and fishing was enjoyed. I took a chilly drive up to the top of the Blue Ridge Parkway with my son one morning for the amazing views.

I've been spinning a LOT. There's a casual online event in July for spinners called the Tour de Fleece (haha). I've set a goal to spin enough yarn to knit myself a vest for the autumn. Here's what the yarn looks like:

Shortly after the big family vacation, our son and daughter-in-law and grandson came for a visit here, which was absolutely delightful. Philip worked so hard on our property, but we also enjoyed a day at the beach.

I've been knitting and felting hats, and am surprised both by how well they've turned out, and how inconsistent they are in size. I need to practice more.

For reading during these warming days, as I hibernate in the air conditioning, I've plowed through two of Josephine Tey's books, Miss Pym Disposes and The Daughter of Time. If you want reading that will prey on your brain, make you debate with yourself, and generally cause you befuddlement, I recommend these two. I'm currently in Anthony Trollope's The Eustace Diamonds. I pulled it off my shelf for a reread because a group read/zoom discussion was going on in the Facebook Trollope group, but I started too late to participate. Still, a good read. Trollope's fortes are character crafting and plot development. He's a master!

Lastly, I have finally figured out how to put my little children's book, The Thanksgiving Mice, on my youtube channel as a read-aloud. I've been pondering this for years. Here's the link to the video. Please share it with the little children you know (maybe ages 5-9 or so?) The world needs more silly books about naughty mice, don't you agree? Lisa, I wonder if your sweet grandkids would enjoy it?

In addition, Adam has been sewing up a storm this summer, making hats, suspenders, trousers, and vests. He's revamping his wardrobe. Church happenings keep us busy with friends, and he has only a month left of his summer break before he's back in the classroom teaching middle school science. We are getting old(er), but we don't seem to be slowing down much!

Blessings to all of you! I will survive August, and then we will eagerly await autumn -- hooray!!

Thank you for the reminder, Lisa --

 Hello, all. I popped over to Lisa's blog to read her latest, and realized I'd not posted for quite a while as well! I always think summer will be slower, but it never is. Ah well.

Adam has been on his summer break for a week, and he's hit the ground running in his sewing adventures. There is so much creative energy in the house! It's lots of fun chatting about what he's making, what I'm making ...

I'm sewing little fabric bowls. They are ridiculously easy, and it's silly that I love them so much, but I do. I've made four, and will certainly make more.

Like Kate Jackson, I saved all my little scraps of fabric from the other projects I made. Then I decided to sew them together in a hodge-podge sort of way, and then cut it square, put some batting in it and a back on it, and run some bias tape around the edge. It's not fancy, but it sure was fun!

It was supposed to be a doll's blanket for my granddaughter, but it's really too stiff. It's sitting in my studio instead, being decorative.

This is a new piece of kit that Adam got me for my birthday -- a tapestry loom. I finally admitted that my big rigid heddle loom was NOT going to work for tapestry weaving, and I'm so very happy with this loom. It's made by Grebstk. I'm almost finished with my first piece on it:

I had many more cards printed this past week, from watercolors I'd painted and scanned before.

All of these are pretty new, except the geraniums. I especially like how the sunflower turned out. I sell 5 of them (with envelopes) in a pack. These sold very well at the market today. I thought this batch of 300 cards would last me for many months, but now I'm not so sure!

The chickens have been rather naughty. Mr. Sparky, the new roo, is often too scared to enter the pen if I'm in there. He's spent a couple of nights on the loose. The hens have been quite naughty and started laying their eggs in mysterious places in the yard. Today I discovered 8 eggs under our deck. They may have to spend some time in Chicken Pen Prison, so they remember how they are supposed to behave!

This lovely book is my new, very favorite devotional book. It's all Scripture.

The man who compiled the book, Jonathan Bagster, has combined many various pieces of Scripture for each day, twice a day, on various topics. Combining 7 or 8 passages of the Bible like that takes a deep knowledge of the book, and it's done in such a way that it makes connections among the passages that I'd never thought of before. It has sparked many new thoughts and feelings of wonder and thankfulness for God's Word. 

It's nearly mid-June, the weather is heating up, and our schedule is speeding up. I hope to have some time with the grandchildren soon, which I'm over-the-moon thrilled about!

Happy summer, friends!

I'm Sewing Again!

 WAY back in the day (40 years ago ... 30 years ago ...) I sewed a lot. I sewed my own clothes, and they were just as silly-looking as the thrift store clothes I wear today, haha! But patterns became expensive, and fabric became very expensive, and I stopped sewing.

Recently I've been watching some old Kate Jackson youtube videos. (Kate Jackson, an older lady from Northumberland, UK, not Kate Jackson of Charlie's Angels!) Kate quilts, but she also makes small sewn house decorations: pillow covers, window and door hangings, little throws. So I held my nose and jumped into the pond of sewing again. I followed her video instructions for a Log Cabin pattern pillow cover:

Front (above) and back (below). I prefer the back. Obviously, I did an inferior job coordinating the strips of fabric, and ended up with that whole swath of solid pink ... bleh. But it was a first attempt, an educational moment.

Love the envelope closure - so easy!

I'm now working on pillow cover #2. It will be better, I hope. Here is the Log Cabin front piece, done yesterday:

I also did a little window hanging using a method that Kate calls "pixel pictures." I ironed some carefully-measured squares of fabric onto a square of fusible interfacing, did some sewn seams according to Kate's instructions, and ... tada!!

I was pretty pleased with the result, and Adam congratulated me on my measuring accuracy. It's tiny, no wider than my hand, but I wanted to discover if I enjoyed it before I committed to a large one. Kate has large panels of this kind of thing in her home. She makes pillow covers with them too. She has another method for making a similar project into full-size curtains. I'm not trying that yet!

I'm knitting the final square on my 2nd mitred square blanket!

My foray into sewing has coincided with Adam's new interest in this hobby also. First he worked hard to refurbish my very old treadle Singer machine. Then he bought a $5 White machine at the thrift store. Then he bought a $50 Japanese machine online. He's gone crazy for sewing! He wants to make clothes for him and for me. I'm in favor of that, as long as they meet my high standards for Bohemian Hippie attire :)

$1/yard - not bad! Lightweight linen-like fabric

We've been buying fabric at the thrift store nearby. Apparently a lady donated over 17 big tubs of fabric! She was going to open a fabric store, and changed her mind.

Meanwhile, Leo:

"Mom, I blinked. Take it again."

His favorite spot. Beau's favorite spot too ...

I made kissy noises, and he turned around.

Where's That Winter Robe Again?

 It's freezing outside this morning! I don't mean that literally. It's actually 49 degrees. But after a few 85 degree days, 49 feels like freezing, and I'm wondering why my winter robe and turtlenecks are inside my old trunk. Brrr!

However, it's the perfect temperature for yard work, in my opinion. After I get done on Ye Olde Computer this morning, I'm heading into the Horrible Shade Bed to murder some honeysuckle vines. The elephant ears and iris need rescuing before they succumb altogether.

That's the end of the bed that's already been rescued. I'm inching my way down this long bed. It's taken a couple of weeks, and my hands ache, but it's worth it.

A friend posted an article recently about stress and our health, and I admitted to myself that it was time to back away from some stressful online reading (aka, news). The flipside of that is, I must be mindful to fill my mental time with more positive things. Gardening. Chickens. Painting. Music. More important, I need minutes in the day when I just sit outside (before the mosquitoes take over for the summer) and relax. Look up into the tree tops. Breathe deeply.

I don't remember having to be so deliberative about my mental health (for lack of a better phrase) years ago. Is it because I'm older and more mentally fragile now, or is the world a more mentally-damaging place? I wonder. 

This is an elephant ear hosta. I have three of them. The leaves are huge, but the plants themselves get massive too. It's my favorite hosta.

Granny Marigold, you'll be proud of me -- I actually baked something recently! I should do it more often, but I'm rarely in the mood to do baking. These are Mary Berry's scones with sultanas in them. They were tiny. They'll be in a youtube video soon.

Did I tell you already that Roo Roo died? He was killed by a predator. So I went to visit my good friend and fellow chicken lady, Melody, and she gave me a New Roo. His name is Mr. Sparky. He's half naked neck (which I'm not fond of) and half Wyandotte (which I love).His face it turned away from us, so that's why his head looks funny -- not helped by that red naked neck either!

That's Brownie, giving me the eye ball. She's a grumpy old lady who's only just started laying again. Recently she got herself caught in some bird netting. I disentangled her, and you'd have thought I was murdering her! She squawked and screamed. But when I got her in my arms and petted her, she calmed right down. Silly bird.

Speaking of silly:

All I can say about Leo (full name: Sir Jackanapes Leonitis Spratly, so we can also call him Jack Sprat), is that he's constant entertainment.

One day recently when Adam was off work, he made shrimp burgers. They were so very good!

The other thing I'm doing right now is the farmers market. I'm now the "contact person." Nobody wanted the job, so it fell to me. It's a tiny little market, a few vendors. But we have fun and we make a little money.

So I'm still spending lots of time each week making balms and soaps and painting cards. One of these days I'll back off of those hobbies and do more of what I really love: writing, spinning, painting. Just not yet.

That's all the happy stuff, because we don't write about the sad stuff, right? 😀 We are all here to boost each other up! No worries -- I have my little share of worries, but nothing more than usual.

Time to sip my rapidly-cooling coffee, do my daily Wordle, and head to the grocery store. Then I shall do a bit of honeysuckle murdering, just when it's flowering. Isn't that awful?

Where's That Brake Pedal?

 I'm not sure how the speedometer on Life creeps up from "nice and leisurely" to "uh oh, here comes a curve" to "careening over the edge." But it does. This week I intend to Slow It Down!

Last time I posted was about 3 weeks ago. Since then I've been to Chattanooga and back, visiting kids and grandbaby. We had a church Seder supper and Easter. Adam and I went to the Van Gogh Immersive Experience exhibit in Raleigh. The Saturday farmers market has ratcheted up a few notches too, and I'm making all the usual products for that.

Here I'm showing my grandbaby all the photos I have of him on my laptop in a folder just for his pictures. He was interested!

It snowed in the mountains as I drove back from Chattanooga, but at home ... cascading wisteria.

Easter lilies around the communion table mean Easter is coming!

Adam made matzo bread for the Seder. It was a wonderful experience, and we also ate a delicious pot-luck dinner together.

Here's the farmers market last week. It was much busier yesterday. Folks are eager to be out and having fun in Oriental.

My Lady Banks rose bush is not as full as most years; we had a late frost. But she's still a beauty.

This is a tapestry weave (my second one) that I finally finished. It had many problems and challenges, and I learned a lot from trying to correct them. On to the next tapestry weaving adventure, I say!

Leo is fun every day. The animals -- all three of them -- are pure entertainment in a quiet house.

This may look like innocence to you, but believe me, it's absolute WARFARE. Beau and Leo are competing for the coveted spot on the plaid blanket in front of the window. At this particular moment, Leo is winning. Beau is plotting his revenge. (Don't let his crossed paws fool you.)

The Van Gogh exhibit was fabulous. We did this as Adam's birthday gift, and it was so much fun. We drove 3 hours to north Raleigh, visited the leather store for him to buy some pig skin for book binding, ate lunch at Panera, and enjoyed the "Immersive Experience" of the very creative, very engaging Van Gogh experience. They do a good job of making you feel that you are inside his paintings, I think. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

But I'm worn out. And Adam's Pemphigus illness is flaring up, so he is pretty unhappy. He's been on spring break from his teaching job, but he goes back tomorrow. Then I plan to organize my days well, get things done in a calm way, breathe deeply, take daily naps, and slow Life down. Yeah, I know ... good luck with that!

Oh, and Rest In Peace, Roo Roo, best rooster ever. He gave his all to defend his hens from a predator. We'll miss him.

Looks Like Spring!

We're well into true spring now. Daffodils are faded, as is the forsythia. We've advanced into apple tree buds, fig leaves, tiny rose tips, and blue bells. The temperatures are still quite cool many days, like today, breezy and sunny. Perfect!

I've thought about blogging, but didn't entirely know what to say. Terrible news from Ukraine dominated my brain for many weeks, and now, like the rest of the world, while I still read about it daily my mind is becoming sadly accustomed to the idea of what's happening there. We are numb to their suffering in the same way that they become numb to the fear of the air sirens. A friend-of-a-friend in Kiev kind of jokes about how they opt to sleep in their beds because they're just tired of the bomb shelter.

Our ladies' Bible study group is now studying Elisabeth Elliot's compilation of her newsletter articles called Secure in the Everlasting Arms. Each section of the book focuses on an aspect of Elliot's wisdom, and we're now examining how we respond, how we pray, when we suffer -- or should I say, when God designs suffering for us. We all struggle with this whole idea. It's a good study.

I found some good books at the local thrift store. I finished another Pilcher book (Sleeping Tiger) very quickly, and am now in September, for which I abandoned the Cahill book halfway through. I'm admitting to myself that I now enjoy fluffy romances (well, NOT Danielle Steele) like Pilcher and Mary Stewart, and I mustn't feel bad about not reading Dickens and Austen much anymore. It's okay!

I'm painting cards. Here's my latest favorite.

There's something loose and whimsical about that ink-and-then-dabs-of-watercolor style that I find relaxing and appealing.

Adam taught me how to use the riding lawn mower! Yippee!! I mowed nearly the entire property this past week. A bit exhausting, but I like to help, and he simply doesn't have any time right now to do it. I feel so farmy when I'm mowing on it. I get so much grass in my hair, and I send the fire ants flying when I run over their hills!

I can't really think of any news from here for you. Life is much the same, for which we are grateful. I've always heard people say we should be thankful for our troops, that we sleep peacefully in our beds at night because of our troops. I know very few people in the military; my daddy was in Korea. Adam's dad was in Vietnam, but that was before my time. Now I understand a little, as I think of women just like me in Ukraine, how much they value their soldiers who stand between them and an enemy. How they sleep in their beds, or don't, depending on how far away their soldiers can keep that enemy away. I live in a home of peace, surrounded by a county and state and nation of peace -- layers of peace. What a privilege that is! Thank you, soldiers!

Leo doesn't know he has a blissful life. He's so chill.