Livin' La Needle Loca

...and tomorrow is September! Time is going way too fast for me. (Found this post that for some reason never got published - should have posted on 8/31/18!) I mentioned that I took photos of my brother's farm when I visited mom last weekend. I have a 3 photos from his farm that are OK to post; the rest are for his personal use. He has a fuyu persimmon tree with ripening fruit: This cactus with one remaining flower - it sort of looks like a mini sun: and his jacaranda tree is still flowering (many of the trees around here no long have flowers): Up this weekend: It's a 3-day weekend...hooray! There is the last bit of cleanup to do surrounding Tica. In the last week, we discovered that most the cat mess we were living with was due to her and her declining health. Sombra is much neater, except when she drops food on the floor! Fortunately, the place mat I have under her food bowl catches most of it, so it's fairly quick to clean up. I need to give the b...

...I'm trying to get back to a regular blog schedule. We'll see how well I do. I've been talking about the Rosewood Wrap ( Ravelry ) on and off for several months. After having it on the loom for more than a year, I finally gave up on my original plan and went back to something basic. Here's a glimpse of what it looks like now. I'm much happier with it now. I'm working on the last few inches and might get it off of the loom this weekend. I'm still making progress on the attic windows quilt. I've finished all of the appliqué work that I can. There will be more to do when I assemble the top. I've started to add pre-made appliqué dates to a few squares. Here's the latest photo: WIPs Roll Call Worked On: Charred Teal Shawl (knitting) [ Ravelry ] Half-way through contrast color #4 in section 3 Look Through My Window quilt for me (quilting) Added some iron-on appliqué dates to a couple of squares; Still working on the cross-stitched s...

...and we're recovering a little from last week. I'm still looking for Tica when I get home and then remember that she's gone. We've carefully put away the extra food bowls and got rid of the second cat box. Sombra doesn't seem to notice, but it's hard to really know if she notices that there is something different. Tica had distanced herself from Sombra in the last few weeks -- she didn't sleep with us any more and picked a new favorite sleeping spot far away from daily activities. Sigh. We miss her little cat face. I took Friday off to drive to my mom's in Santa Maria. I had to renew my drivers license and I could not get an appointment locally before it would expire (right after Labor Day). I called on August 1st - the earliest appointment was 9/21! I got an appointment in Santa Maria on 8/24. My mom was happy for the visit and I was happy to get my license - REAL ID version - renewed. My DMV appointment was at 11:40 in the morning and took abou...

...and we had to put Tica down yesterday. :( Tuesday night, her body was making funny noises and she was having trouble standing up after sleeping. Her breathing was some times labored. Then, she slid down the bed stairs because she couldn't handle the fine muscle movements to step down one at a time. She was still eating and drinking, but purring had lessened and she was walking more slowly. The good news was that she didn't seem to be in pain. The Husband and I agreed that it was time, before she started experiencing a lot of pain. We made an appointment with the vet for the morning. I called The Daughter to let her know. Before we left, we had her spend a few minutes with Sombra (our other cat). The we took her to the courtyard where she likes to wander around and drink from the water bowl that we keep filled for her. She chewed a little grass, drank some water, and went potty in the dirt. The Husband and I both took her to the appointment, but The Husband had to lea...

...it's been a week. The Husband continues to deal with his father's estate and taking care of his mother's situation. Any one who has been in this situation knows what a time sink that is. I've been holding down the fort at home. Our cats are both old - Tica is 17 and Sombra will be 17 in a couple of weeks. Tica has been losing weight and is looking like a bag of bones. I had taken her to the vet in May to have a bad toenail fixed. She looked skinny then and the vet said if she lost more weight to bring her back in. She's lost even more weight and now she's hungry 24/7. I took her in on Friday afternoon and they palpated a mass in her abdomen. They took some blood and urine to check things out. They also managed to do a needle aspiration of the mass for cytology tests. Well, the news came back yesterday and she has lymphoma. Because she's so old, already frail, and gets really stressed when we take her to the vet, we decided to forgo chemotherapy. She...

...blog and run. Baby scarlet runner beans: Canna lily leaves: Society garlic: and Gomphrena globosa "Firecracker": ...

...almost forgot to post! Yesterday I mentioned how I got around some appliqué issues using fusible interfacing and fusible bonding web. Here's the butterfly block where I added two butterflies using fusible bonding web. The fabric that I chose for this block has a blue sky and clouds background with butterflies interspersed. It really didn't have the butterflies I wanted. I had another butterfly fabric that had the butterflies I wanted, but I didn't like the background. So I took the butterflies I wanted from one fabric and added them to the blue sky fabric - they are the side-facing monarch butterfly and the front-facing swallowtail butterfly in the block. When I do the machine-quilting, I will quilt over the edges of the butterflies to make sure they stick. WIPs Roll Call Worked On: Charred Teal Shawl (knitting) [ Ravelry ] Still working on contrast color #4. Look Through My Window quilt for me (quilting) Finished the appliqué pop-outs for now. Working on th...

...and I could swear that I did an Eye Candy Friday post last week, but I don't see one. Guess it was in my imagination! If I had done the post, it would have included dew on strawberry leaves: potato vine flowers And this morning glory: My weekend report: Worked a little on St. Charles, the current needlepoint piece in process. Put the next mermaid's linen on the stretcher bars and set up my clipboard for holding the chart copies. Re-sleyed the rigid heddle loom for the Rosewood Wrap [ Ravelry ]. Wove about 10 picks and did the hemstitching. Wove another 10 inches or so, with the Blue Heron rayon metallic yarn and periodically adding 5 picks of the Cleo yarn. I'm much happier with this combination and look forward to finishing this piece. Figured out an issue with some of the appliquéd blocks for my quilt. Some of the items had far too many edges to be appliquéd smoothly in the traditional method. Enter fusible interfacing and fusible bonding web! For...

...sorry, no photos today. I had a choice to make this morning: take a photo or go to Trader Joe's to buy coffee. Coffee won! I'd hope to report work on some of the longstanding WIPs in rotation, but the only things that got any play this week are the quilt and the Charred Teal Shawl.  I actually worked on the shawl twice this week. It was my car project to Half Moon Bay and my Craft Coffee project on Monday. The quilt is coming along. I sewed the sashing on the computer-printed squares. I also added a square with Flying Dumbo to represent Disneyland and one with alpacas (and maybe llamas) to represent spinning. I wanted to add a square for either Art Deco or Frank Lloyd Wright because I love both styles. Until yesterday, I hadn't found anything I truly loved for either style (or didn't cost too much to cut up). I finally found a cotton dinner napkin printed with a FLW design - score! It's on its way! I don't know whether I'll add any more squares beyo...

...and the weekend report. I at least thought about posting yesterday, I just ran out of time. I was busy processing photos from our Saturday excursion and barely finished before I had to meet someone for coffee. The Husband suggested that we go to the coast on Saturday. Since we wanted to beat the crowds, we left relatively early and got to Half Moon Bay around 10:15am. We found a nice little cafe and had some breakfast and coffee before we headed out to the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve. We've been there before and really enjoyed it. First, we headed to the tide pools. It was already quite busy, but not so busy that I couldn't get some photos. We saw seals lounging on the rocks with cormorants flying about: We found a very interesting rock in one of the tide pools that looked like it had its own little tide pools: And some shells: We took the Bluff Trail and got a different view of the ocean: and the seals: and a flock of pelicans! We took t...

...and I'm looking forward to doing something other than spinning this weekend! Our tomatoes are finally coming in! They are really late this year. Our first ripe one was a casualty of some critter. So far they haven't gone after the green ones. While it was a little cooler this morning, I didn't expect to see dew drops in the garden. The Husband has planted a bunch of petunias to add spots of color in the garden. The kangaroo paws continue to thrive under the apricot tree. A hummingbird decided to photo-bomb my dew pictures. I took one shot after another and managed to get three OK photos. Up this weekend: Work on the quilt and get the next mermaid's linen onto the stretcher bars. I'm expected another feature fabric to arrive today or tomorrow. I'll need to get that square sewn as well as finish the Tour de Fleece and name blocks. I need to stash dive for cross stitch fabric to start the San Jose State square - I've already pull...

...as with all Tour de Fleece months, I did a lot of spinning! Finished: 7/7 Cool Sunglo handspun (spinning) [ Ravelry ] Falkland (4.4 oz) from The Yarn Wench 61.4 yards 2-ply, plied with Dream in Color Classy in Cool Fire super-bulky 7/8 Summer Grass handspun (spinning) [ Ravelry ] 2.4 oz Layered batt from Caliope’s Fiber 14.9 yds corespun and auto-wrapped with green thread Super-bulky 7/11 Hawaii handspun (spinning) [ Ravelry ] 4.0 Camel-Silk from Greenwood Fiberworks 228.9 yds. chain-ply, 16 WPI 7/14 Summertime handspun (spinning) [ Ravelry ] Falkland (3.8 oz) from The Yarn Wench Skein 1: 67 yds. chain-ply with beads, Bulky Skein 2: 44.7 chain-ply, 9 WPI 7/15 Lizard Queen handspun (spinning) [ Ravelry ] Falkland (4.1 oz.) from The Yarn Wench Skein 1: 39.1 yds, thread-plied with 1 strand green and 1 strand purple rayon thread, Bulky Skein 2: 48.4 yds chain-ply, 8 WPI 7/18 Plumgolden handspun (spinning) [ Ravelry ] Merino-silk (3.9 oz) from The Yarn Wench 182.4 yds. chain-ply...

...and hello, August! Now that Tour de Fleece is over, I can get back into a more normal craft-mode. I have a few things that need to get back into rotation so I can finish them and move on to something else. One of them is the St. Charles needlepoint project. Here's what it looks like right now: I am working on a long stitch section in the interior (the V-shaped, light blue section in the bottom quarter of the piece). I need to stitch the other 3 quarters before I can move on to the next step. The stitches are fairly straight-forward, it's just a pain to have to turn the piece each time I finish a quarter. The alternative is to stitch the complete quarter before turning the piece. That method makes it difficult to tell where I am when I have to come back to the piece after a rest (read: when I got bored with it and put it away for several weeks). Anyway, I want to finish it so I can move on to a potential State Fair needlepoint project. It's just an idea at this...