Livin' La Needle Loca

...and it's a WIP-it Wednesday. This morning's sunrise had no sun, but I took a photo anyway. About an hour after the photo, the rain started. I put streamers on our Christmas tree and it's ready to celebrate the new year. I'm hoping to make it until midnight, but i haven't been sleeping well the last few days, so I'm not sure if I'll make it. Happy New Year! WIPs Roll Call Worked On: To All A Good Night (cross stitch) Started 12/24; about 50% done. I had hoped to finish it by the end of the year, but there are two hills in the design that needed to be filled with stitches. It took a lot longer than I anticipated to complete them. My Recipes (cooking)   I added a few more recipes from the scanned  hard copies. I now need to scan more to continue this project. No Work This Week: California Red Poppy Handspun (spinning) [ Ravelry ]  Primrose Path (cross stitch) Website (o...

...AKA catching up because I keep forgetting to blog. :) It's still way too chaotic for me to keep a regular schedule for pretty much anything. The workers have been jack hammering for 5 days. Fortunately, they did not work on the weekend, so we had a couple of days without the noise. However, they started up again yesterday. There's a trench outside our front door and the studio floor has a trench through it. I know that another bathroom will be great in the long run, but right now the cats and I are on edge most of the day. So, catching up on eye candy, here is our garden path this month: Our lemon tree and orange tree have gone a little nutso: When it rained in November, I took a few photos of rain drops. Raindops on our dragonfruit plant: < Raindrops on a rose petal: I had a craving for mincemeat pies after Thanksgiving and made some mini-pies from commercially-prepared mincemeat and crust. They are yummy! I froze some...

 ...Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!

 ...which is going to double as eye candy today. I finished stitching another Christmas ornament. This is Santa's Flight: Specs: Started 11/22/2020 Finished 11/27/2020 Pattern: Shepherd's Bush from the 2009 Just Cross Stitch Ornament issue I'm adding it to the stack of finishing work. We had a laid-back Thanksgiving. I actually let the Husband help with some of the cooking. (I know, shocker!) We had a wonderful FaceTime call with the Daughter, followed by an early dinner. And now it's time to swap over to Christmas. I started my online shopping today. ;-)

...with photos of the latest finished objects. I finished the Jamaica handspun [ Ravelry ] and the close-up: Specs: Started 4/27/2020 Finished 5/7/2020 Falkland (4.2 oz.) from the Yarn Wench 154.2 yds., 11 WPI This is the Black Grape handspun [ Ravelry ]: and the close-up: Specs: Started 5/2/2020 Finished 5/8/2020 Falkland (4.0 oz.) from the Yarn Wench 118.75 yds., 8 WPI I also sewed more masks on Saturday 5/9/2020: I also finished the front side of the Bee Joyful scissor fob and baked a loaf of bread. On Sunday, The Daughter came over for Mother's Day. She drew this on our driveway and gave me a bouquet of flowers. We did the appropriate physical distancing and wore masks. I really miss hugging her! .

...sigh. I'm still trying to get back into the swing of posting. I was able to capture the sunrise this morning. There weren't very many clouds, but it was still pretty. It's just going to be the Husband and me tonight. I have some munchies and some champagne for midnight. Today marks the end of the 2019, the end of the decade, and the official end of my employment. I start the new year as a retired person. I'm not sure what retirement will look like, but I plan on making the best of whatever comes my way! .

...plus a Tour de Fleece report. Thursday 7/4: I spent the day bouncing from one project to another. I finished spinning Mission District [ Ravelry ]: and the close-up: Specs: Started 6/9/19 Finished 7/4/19 Sparkle - Superwash Merino-Stellina (4.0 oz) from Dragonfly Fibers 270.8 yds chain-ply; 15 WPI I started spinning the Mermaids and Fishtails Phat Fiber sampler [ Ravelry ] from May 2018. I worked a little on my weaving and a little on my knitting. Friday 7/5: I went through my stash looking for blue fibers to put aside for a weaving project. I ended up tidying up the storage containers for my handspun. I finished spinning the Mermaids and Fishtails Phat Fiber sampler [ Ravelry ]: Specs: Started 7/4/19 Finished 7/5/19 Yardage and WPI are all over the map. I just wanted to get it spun! Tour de Fleece Day 1, 7/6: Started the tour by spinning an art yarn. This is Copenhagen: and the close-up: Specs: Started and finished 7/6/19 Falkland...

...I ran out of time yesterday to post. I was trying to make my Ribbet app (Mac OS) talk to Flickr again, but it just wouldn't connect. I use Ribbet to edit all of my photos and it's usually easy to save edited versions directly to Flickr. However, with Flickr's latest upgrade, many things are still not working correctly. I gave up and went through the browser version of Ribbet to upload my photos. The majority of my 3-day weekend was spent working on the Shimmering Points Wrap [ Ravelry ]. I finally threaded all of the heddles. I had set-aside the number of heddles needed for each shaft according to the iWeaveit program. As it turned out, the number wasn't quite right, but that was no biggie. As it turned out, I found a couple of empty heddles in the mix, where I pulled 2 over instead of one. Fortunately, the pattern is correct, so the empty heddles can just hang out where they are. The pattern calls for 2 threads per slot in a 12-dent reed. I started sleying the...

...and due to Flickr's server upgrades, I don't have any new garden photos for the post because I can't upload them yet. May be next week. In the meantime, here's a photo that I took of a neighbor's flowering bush: My Google searches failed to discover what kind of bush this is. It's pretty, though. If I ever find out what it is, I'll add the description to Flickr. Up this weekend: It's a 3-day weekend...hooray! My plan is to finish threading the heddles for the weaving project and start threading the reed. If all goes well, I might even finish that...who knows! In April, I received my camera assistant (Arsenal) that I purchased on a Kickstarter campaign. I have not had enough time to play will it yet. It's on my list of things I might do this weekend. Just having an extra day to do things will be heaven!! .

...we wish you peace and prosperity in the coming year. As for us, we're happy that 2018 is in our rear view mirror. We look forward to a more positive year. Sunrise this morning:

...I managed to get a photo of the sunrise. Thursday 12/27 After quick trips to the V.E.T. For Sombra for a lab test, and to the post office to pick up flat rate boxes, I spent the day wrapping cookies and biscotti for mailing. I got 8 boxes ready for sealing and postage. Friday 12/28 I sealed the packages and generated postage through PayPal. (I love using PayPal for this!) I delivered the packages to the Post Office. Hooray! After that, I did some house cleaning and then attacked my studio. I spent a good deal of the afternoon putting things away and then vacuumed. It's amazing all the little nooks and crannies that fiber will find its way into! I took a quick trip to the fabric store to get supplemental fabric for my mother-in-law's quilt. When I got everything home, I pulled out all of the components and realized that the resulting quilt would be lovely, but not lively. The whole purpose of the quilt is to brighten up her room. Back to the drawing board. I...

...I honestly can't tell you why, other than not having enough hours in the day to do what I want to do. Since I missed Eye Candy Friday, I offer an orange dahlia as an apology: Weekend report: I finally skeined the Apricot Orchid 1 handspun [ Ravelry ], but I haven't taken any photos yet. I'm making headway on the Hawaii handspun [ Ravelry ]. I have about half an ounce left to spin on the singles. I did a little knitting on the Charred Teal Shawl [ Ravelry ] The majority of my weekend was spent working on my quilt.  Finished sewing the rest of the first (dark color) sashing on all the squares that were cut out.  Sewed on the second (light color) sashing on the same squares.  Sewed the miter seam on 50% of the blocks. This is going a bit slower because I'm doing them one at a time, as opposed to the chain sewing I did on the sashings. We picked the apricots from one of our trees. We froze a bunch of them, gave a big bag of them to the Husband's br...

...the sunrise this morning was not the best for photos, but here it is. I didn't quite make it to midnight. I crashed at 11:55pm...just couldn't stay awake! At least I made it longer than The Husband - he crashed around 10pm. He had an excuse, though, as he made a round trip (4+ hours) to visit a friend and deliver his goodie bag. That takes a lot out of a person! Instead, we celebrated this morning with a breakfast of Eggs Benedict and coffee. I'm spending the day in the studio and he's trying to decide how to spend his day. Tonight, I'll make Hoppin' John for dinner. It's our traditional New Year's Day dinner. Tomorrow, I'll start deconstructing Christmas and get ready to go back to work on Wednesday. Sigh...vacation is never long enough, especially at Christmas! .

...it came way too soon! And yes, I am posting on a Monday. I decided to do a weekend report now while I have a chance. Normally, I spend my first weekend in December buying any ingredients I still need and then baking fruitcakes and the other breads (like pumpkin). The cakes and breads go into the freezer until around the 22nd. This year, Thanksgiving came early, which meant that I didn't quite have my act together to buy ingredients over the long weekend. Instead, I did the Trader Joe's run (nuts, butter, white chocolate chips) and the Smart and Final run (flour, sugar, chocolate chips, waxed paper, containers) on Saturday. I have been unable to find the candied fruit for my fruitcakes locally. The Husband kindly checked a few other local stores for me, but was unable to find the orange peel. Between the two of us, we checked 8 local stores and only found a couple of citron and lemon peel containers and no orange peel. On Thursday, I gave up and ordered from Amaz...

...and December is almost here! Thanksgiving dinner at The Daughter's went off without a hitch. On Wednesday, the drive to her house took a little over an hour, which is quite good considering it was a work day for many people. I only forgot one ingredient and she had a suitable substitute. While I cooked, she ran some errands and bought the last minutes items we needed for the dinner, I made the stuffing, the mashed potatoes, the pumpkin pie, and the cranberry cake. I prepped the yam and apple casserole for baking the next day. On Thursday, she set the tables and I got the turkey into the oven. One of the guests was charged with appetizers, so we didn't need to worry about that. Another guest brought a vegetable and The Daughter prepped a second one and the salad. There were 12 for dinner - the Husband's parents; The Daughter's aunt and uncle and their family, and one of The Daughter's friends. It was a great group of people and we all enjoyed our time toget...

...and the marathon run to Turkey Day is in progress. I'm at the "making lists of lists" stage, both for Thanksgiving and for Open Enrollment at work. I'm going to try winding up the open enrollment stuff today before I leave for the holiday. Tomorrow will be full-on cooking for Thursday Mr. Turkey should be defrosted by now (I hope!).  I made the dry brine on Sunday, so the flavors should be well blended by now. I made the cranberry sauce on Sunday, too. Tomorrow before I leave for The Daughter's, I'll get Mr. Turkey cleaned up and into the dry brine. Tonight, I'll get the perishables at the grocery store...that should be a blast as there are lots of people who do the same thing. Yay? I need to pack-up whatever I need that The Daughter doesn't have to prepare the food. Tomorrow is cooking day. Besides getting the turkey into the dry brine, I need to make the stuffing, the mashed potatoes, the gravy, the yam casserole, and bake two desserts. ...

...some personal issues have taken precedence the last few days. Nothing catastrophic, we just needed to focus on ourselves for a bit. Fortunately, crafts can help you mellow out when you need to. The Daughter and I touched based about the things we need to do for Thanksgiving dinner and how many people will be there for the meal. You guys, it's next week !!  I updated my T-Day lists. I need to make the full-on grocery list now that I know what we're going to cook. I actually bought a few of the non-food items when I went grocery shopping on Sunday. My plan is to buy Mr. Turkey on Friday and start defrosting it in the refrigerator. It needs to be completely defrosted by Wednesday morning. I continued to spin on the merino-silk that I started at Spin-In on the 4th. I worked on the Mermaid when my knees needed a break from spinning. I also worked on the small cross stitch piece that I keep in the living room. Photo processing continues. I have finished Day 2 of the Grand C...

...and I haven't posted since the first week of December. Needless to say, things have been busy in my world. If it's any consolation, my Flickr account has suffered as well. The best I could manage was to post to my Instagram account , which was also shared to Facebook. So, let's play a little catch-up. Here are some photos of the last 3 weeks. Spumoni slices Chocolate-Espresso slices Mexican Wedding cookies Sugar cookie snowflakes Biscotti Cookie Packages in process Cookie boxes ready to mail Christmas tree on Christmas Eve Tomato cage trees in the backyard And finally, the last sunset of 2016 I hope to get back into regular blogging in 2017. I wish you all good health, prosperity, and peace in the new year. .