Life goes on

Howdy folks!  Hope everyone had a great weekend.  Things were nice and relaxing here.  Not too much going on (although fun stuff is in the works).  I thought I'd share a photo of my geraniums.  I really love geraniums, and I have some on my front steps every summer.  I decided to dial back on the summer flower purchases this year though.  Only three pots of geraniums, and nothing in the porch baskets.  Just seemed like a good summer for a break.  I'll be back in flower power mode next summer though.









We've been enjoying our usual crew of visitors to the bird feeder so far this year.  And a new guy showed up this evening: an eastern towhee.  I'd actually seen a pair of them in the back part of the yard in February, but this is the first time I'd seen any at the feeder.  Always love seeing new birds on the porch!

I've been up to quite a bit of stitching recently.  Some of it I can't show you just yet (waiting on my first magazine publication, squee!), but here's a sneak peek at a reproduction that I hope to released in February (yup, we're doing some long term planning here).  This is the mostly finished top third of a rather large sampler.  I am having so much fun stitching it, and hope others will be interested as well!  Not only do Adam and Eve make an appearance, complete with explanatory verse, but there's a gorgeous rendition of Solomon's Temple as well!  Like I said, lots of fun.  It may be a little early to start sharing previews, but I wanted to show something I've been working on!

The cats are being, well, cats.  This first shot is a rare snap of the elusive Miss Priss.  Most of our house guests never get to see her sweet little face.  She's so funny, and so very, very shy!

Princess is highlighting the fact that I am not the world's best housekeeper by holding down the pile of 'clean' laundry on my dresser.  At least she hasn't thrown the tap shoes on the floor.  I'm auditing a tap class Tuesday evening to see if I can still hoof a bit.  If all goes well, I may be spending my summer stomping my little heart out!

Dear sweet Lucky!  He looks exhausted doesn't he?  Must be from all that unwanted smashing of buttons on the keyboard.  He can make typing a blog post quite challenging!

Til next time, stay safe, and stay crafty!

Outer Banks Wildlife

Good evening everyone!  We just had some monster thunder rolling through.  The cats get super nervous when its that loud.  Just being inside the house isn't good enough, they have to hide under a piece of furniture too.  Maybe they know something I don't...

In my last post, I mentioned how much I enjoyed seeing the wildlife on our vacation at the Outer Banks.  I thought I'd share a few pictures of that wildlife tonight.

One of the first animal sightings we had was at Cape Hatteras Lighthouse.  Look how close these deer let me get!  We saw deer several times over the week, but this encounter was amazing to me because of their complete lack of fear.

The wild rabbits were the most common animal we saw (other than birds of course).

Oracoke Island has a population of wild ponies.  I'm not sure how 'wild' they really are since they've been living in pens for decades (to protect them from cars and vice versa), but they were an enjoyable sight all the same.

A few miles north of our beach cottage was the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge. It's known as an excellent place to bird watch.

This tri-colored heron was one of the few birds that I could actually identify.  A lot of them just looked like 'seabirds' to my untrained eye.

There were so many pelicans swooping about.  I think there is something prehistoric about the appearance of these birds.  They fascinate me.  We also saw some sort of duck, migrating just off the shore in wave after wave.  There were literally hundreds of them flying past our cottage.  Don't know what they were, but Alton and I were both fascinated.

Speaking of a prehistoric appearance, how about this lovely old turtle?  He was hanging out with a few friends in one of the ponds in the wildlife refuge.

Probably the animals I was most excited about seeing were the dolphins we watched swimming just north of the Rodanthe Pier.  They were swimming near a group of surfers.  This was only the second time in my life that I'd seen dolphins in the wild, with the first time being on our honeymoon in Hawaii.  I could have watched those guys knifing through the waters for hours if they hadn't swam away from view.

That's all for tonight.  Stay dry and stay safe!

Exploring the Alabama Coast

WARNING!!!  THERE ARE SOME FABULOUS SNAKE PHOTOS AT THE END OF THIS POST.  IF YOU ARE A SNAKE HATER, PLEASE DO NOT SCROLL DOWN PAST THE EIGHTH PHOTO!!!

There Dad, you have been warned.  And I'm sticking lots of photos in so that no one will be taken by surprise.  That said, I thought I'd share a few images from a trip Mom and I took to Mississippi and Alabama last month.  It was beautiful, cool and sunny weather for one day on our trip, and we took full advantage of the gorgeous weather to get out and explore the Gulf Coast.

We rented a car in Biloxi, and intended to drive to Mobile and check out some of the historic houses and museums in that city.  The day started off with a bang.  The rental agency had no cars of the class that I had reserved and offered us an alternative vehicle....  a sweet little black Ford Mustang.  No problem!  We cruised down the coast in our fabulous ride, but on the way decided to take advantage of the nice weather and detoured to Bellingrath Home and Gardens.  Since that's where the snakes were, we'll get to that later.

As we left Bellingrath, we saw signs for Fort Gaines on Dauphin Island, a mere 15 minutes from our location.  So we ditched the idea of going to Mobile and drove over a fabulously long bridge onto Dauphin Island.  We toured Fort Gaines, a Civil War Fort, and then explored the rest of the small island.  I have to admit, I was more excited to discover that Dauphin Island was a major bird refuge currently swarming with migrating birds than I was about seeing the old fort.  This is probably evidenced by the fact that I have no pictures of the fort itself.  But there were tons and tons of bird and beach photos on my camera.

I thought this old log right outside of the fort looked really cool.

And instead of taking pictures of the ruined boat hull outside of the Fort, I took a photo of this mockingbird? sitting on top of it.

By the time we finished exploring the fort, Mom had reached her walking quota for the day.  So she sat in a shady spot in the Dauphin Island bird sanctuary while I took a whirlwind hike through the area.  It had rained VERY heavily during the week leading up to our visit, so much of the paths were muddy, or completely flooded and impassible.  I did, however, find a low boardwalk over the swampy water that turned out to be absolutely fascinating.

I stood just a few feet away from this Green Heron and watched him fish.

 Meanwhile, above him in the trees, this brightly colored Prothonotary Warbler (I think) was flitting around.

There were lots of other birds that I did not get decent photos of.  Just a little bit away from the heron, I could see a otter/beaver/marine mammal gliding around in the water.  But by the time I was able to walk over to get a closer look, a group of LOUD people had arrived, and the little critter had disappeared.  I don't understand why people would walk into a bird sanctuary talking at the top of their lungs and crashing around like bigfoot.  You're not going to see anything if you're making that much noise, so why are you there?

Flashing back to Bellingrath: This place had acres and acres of beautiful gardens that are open to the public.  One of the prettiest areas was the rose garden.

I love roses.  I would love to have a garden just swimming with beautiful roses.

So what do you think?  Is this a nice friendly lion, or his he about to turn someone into a snack?

There was also a small area of the property that is considered a wildlife sanctuary.  It was interesting to walk through, but we didn't see any birds, or fish, or turtles.  But we did see....

A big old water moccasin!!!!  Don't worry, this closeup is due to my zoom lens.  I wasn't going to get to close this guy.  We were on an elevated footpath, and he was many feet below us, basking in the sun.  There was a lady next to us who really wanted to bonk him in the head with her empty drink bottle.  Thankfully, her husband talked her out of it.

At yet another location, I saw this tiny guy swimming through a pond.  Based on the shape of his head, I'm thinking he is also a poisonous snake (again, I was on a bridge, he was far away down below).  Maybe a baby water moccasin?

It was at this point that I invented a new game called "Snake!"  You walk through the woods and suddenly shout "SNAKE!" at your companion.  Their job is to guess whether you really saw a snake, or you're just kidding.  Mom really hates this game.  I guess it's a good thing she loves me so much.

That's all for now.  Hope you weren't too bored looking at more of my travel photos. I'm off to stitch a little.

A tisket, a tasket, a really fancy casket

Tuesday was not such a great day for me.  Late Monday night I forgot that eating rich chocolate late at night is a bad idea, and so I woke up with a severe headache.  I spent most of the day in bed, sleeping or being bored.  But there was a bright spot to the day.  This package arrived late in the afternoon:

The first thing I saw upon opening the big box was this:

My very own cabinet!  There was lots of padding to remove, and another box.  Finally, this sweet piece was revealed:

It took me quite a while to figure out how to open all the secret (and not so secret) compartments.  And boy, do I have a lot of work ahead of me to get this thing into finished shape!

I have learned recently that the last of our specialty threads have finally arrived and are on their way to us.  My plan is to work with those fibers on the miniature box we were provided last year, and practice applying papers and fabric to that box before moving on to work on this big one.  So this will be a long work in progress.  Still, I'm excited to have the casket itself with me!

In other news, the eggs that I shared about back in March hatched right around Easter.  I have to say, baby birds are kind of ugly.  I didn't take many photos, because I tried to disturb the nest as little as possible.  Here's one shortly before they were ready to leave the nest:

Doesn't the guy at the very bottom look like he's rather grumpy about being squished by the others?

A day or two after I took this photo, I saw one of the babies sitting in a bush near the front door, with his parents, or siblings, or both, fluttering around in the trees above, chirping away at him.  It took him over a day, but he finally flew away, presumably to live out a happy little bird life.

I love watching this aspect of nature in action!  I'm off to plot designs for my casket.  Stay crafty, my friends!

The best laid plans...

So I had plans for the blog this week.  Tuesday I was going to share my recent stitching, and then later in the week I was going to tell you all about my recent road trip to Delaware.  A stomach bug changed all that, and so I am just now getting around to sharing my recent finishes.  Which means that I have one more finish to share than originally planned.  : )

Stitching progress Chez Patrick has been good lately.  First off, I finally did the trimming and stuffing for a Little House ornament that I actually stitched over a year ago.

I used some Weeks felt for the side, and Crescent Colours rickrack in the recommended color.  The back is a piece of coordinating cotton, because I try to conserve my felt for when it will be seen (it's fabulous, but expensive, you know?).  I'm looking forward to putting this little beauty on my stitching Christmas tree in December.

I also finished Maria Selby Humphrey, the sampler that I started at the end of February.  I'll be taking this to Mom and Dad's next week to pick out a frame.

And finally, I finished the stitching on "Heaven and Nature Sing" from Country Stitches (or With Thy Needle and Thread.  I'm not sure which she has put this under).  I debated whether to go ahead and work on assembling the pillow, but have decided to put that off til closer to December.

I have also finished stitching the model for a Halloween piece I designed myself.  It seems a little early to share that, so I'll keep it for closer to release time (August, most likely).  I am currently still plugging away at charting some more reproductions, and I have started stitching on a small reproduction sampler from The Essamplaire, Isabella Cook.  I've had the kit for this sampler for years, but for some reason the pattern has really been on my mind for the past two weeks, so even though there are a million other things in progress that I could be working on, I pulled her out and have put a few stitches in her in the last two or three days.

Last weekend, my husband and I spent some time with my parents, and on our way home we stopped at my favorite garden nursery.  It's a bit early to buy my favorite flowers, but we did come home with two hanging baskets of blue lobelia for the front porch.  When I went to remove the baskets of dead ferns from last year, I found a little surprise sitting in one of them.  (Background: I intentionally left those baskets up because it amused me to watch the birds taking the dead fronds and fly around the baskets.  Now I 'suffer' the consequences)  There was a nest with a single egg in one of the baskets.  And to my delight, the bird who made the nest is a fan of fiber arts...

Do you see the green thread twined around the front of her nest?  So sweet!  Anyway, I discovered the nest on the first day that she began laying eggs.  Each day for the next 5 days, she added an egg, and now she sits on them for most of the day.  Two weeks from this past Tuesday, I expect to have 5 new hatchlings to admire.  She's a house finch, and so pretty tolerant of humans.  I watch her from the window, and plan to lower the basket a few times to see how things are going (but no touching!).  I am hoping that the cowbirds won't visit her nest this time around.

That's all for now.  Next time I hope to share photos from Delaware.  Til then, have many lovely days, my friends!

This one's for the birds

Hello all!  I'm diverging a bit from my normal subject matter to share some photos of all the different kinds of birds that have been visiting my little birdseed snowman these past few days.  He's kind of a hit.

The first birds to visit the feeder were titmice and carolina chickadees:

Isn't my little snowman cute?  Of course, two days later, he's not looking quite so shapely.  But the brown-headed nuthatches don't seem to mind:

Neither do the carolina wrens (I think I've id'ed this bird correctly.  Feel free to tell me if you know otherwise):

The northern mockingbirds have even shown up, and I rarely see them at the regular birdfeeder:

The wild canaries are back after a few months' vacation, but they have their own special feeder and could care less about the snowman.  This guy is barely yellow right now, but in the summer, they are a brilliant yellow, and a treat to watch:

I've seen plenty of cardinals around the yard, but right now they seem to be boycotting the snowman.  Regardless, the cats and I are enjoying the wildlife show that our little Frosty is bringing to the window!

Have a great weekend!

Ort Report for August and an annoying accident

Hello, everyone!  Hope you're having a wonderful, relaxing weekend.  There have been happenings since last I posted, and I have been far too grumpy and listless to post an update until today.  Two days after my last blog post, I fell down the stairs while carrying a load of laundry.  I could not bear to put any weight on my left foot, and the pain was quite unbearable, so I drug my husband home from work and had him take me to urgent care.  I have what appears to be a fractured toe and a sprained/strained foot.  For two or three days, I could do nothing but sit on the couch and sulk (well, I only sulked a little bit, but I just didn't feel energetic enough to even stitch.  Pathetic, I know).  Fortunately, my foot seems to be slowly mending and I can move around in my little boot, as long as I don't do too much at one time.

On Monday after I fell, I was thrilled to get my receive my kit of threads and goodies for the Cabinet of Curiosities course that I've signed up for.  I won't share any photos, in case anyone reading this is also taking the course and doesn't have their package yet.  Let me just say that it was a wonderful treat to brighten up a rather gloomy day!

Once I got back to stitching, I mostly worked on models for Mom.  I can't show any of  them yet, but hopefully I'll be able to share by the end of the month.  If you look at the state of my ort jar this month, you may notice that the top is full of lots and lots of black threads (think Halloween, hint, hint):

See the birdfeeder in the background?  It provides hours of entertainment to myself and the cats.  Earlier this week, I went out to refill it, and as I hobbled back into the house, I realized that the impatient birds weren't even waiting for me to retreat before swooping in for a snack.  Usually, they are too shy to tolerate my presence on the deck.  Remember how punky I told you the juvie cardinals look?  See for yourself:

I just love his little ragged crest on the top of his head!  And the hummingbirds were not to be outdone in bravery.  I heard the whirring of rapidly beating wings just before I spied this fellow at his feeder:

 It's mating season, so the hummingbirds are going a little nuts, whizzing around the yard as they chase one another away from the feeder.  It is amazing to watch.

I have been doing a little scrapbooking as well as stitching, I even made it to the scrapbooking convention in Charlotte last weekend (it was exhausting on this stupid foot, but I still managed to enjoy myself).  I think I'll save those photos for my next post, though.

The cats have been enjoying my disability.  I suspect that they are happiest when I lie still and allow myself to be used as a pillow.  Of course, when I'm not in the mood for cuddling, Scout might snuggle up with a good read:

At least he has good taste.  I have started rereading The Stand by Stephen King while I'm mostly couchbound.  Good stuff!

That's it for today.  Til next time, have a wonderfully creative day (and be careful on the stairs!).

June WIPocalypse update

I cannot believe we are halfway through the WIPocalypse year!  Six posts down after this one, and six more to go.  Time has been flying by this year.

Since the last official update, I have devoted all of my stitching time to Sous le Soleil.  I know I have posted some update photos since last month's WIPocalypse post, but I'm going to backtrack just a bit.  At last month's post, I was here:

 and as of today, I am here:

 I got a ton done two weeks ago when I injured my foot.  I slowed down some last week (and haven't stitched at all this week due to traveling).  And this little motif right here is the main culprit for the slow down:

This pattern is in French, and for the most part that has not been a problem.  But the smaller specialty stitches you see in this photo are called "Point de rose".  I could not find an English version of this stitch, which is literally a "rose stitch".  The instructions in the chart tell you to 'broder la perle au centre avant de commencer le point' which I took to mean 'attach the bead in the center before starting the stitches'.  Which would be fine if the pattern called for beads.  But it doesn't.  So I made up my own stitch.  It looks, well, stitched, so I guess I'm happy.  I'm calling it personalization.  : )

There's still a ton of work left to do on this piece, but I sort of feel like I'm on the home stretch.  Maybe I'll have it finished by the time next month's update rolls around!  Maybe.  Meanwhile, I have pulled out 3 patriotic patterns that I would like to stitch this summer.  Naturally, I do not have all the fibers that I need for any of the pieces.  I placed an order for the threads about 3 weeks ago.  And I'm still waiting, waiting, waiting.  Hopefully, I'll get the fibers in time to actually start one by the 4th of July (although I'd rather have them in time to FINISH one by the 4th of July).

The house is now almost entirely unpacked.  While sorting through the linens, I came across this:

It's a small piece of Ukranian cutwork that I made about 10 years ago.  I took a correspondence course through EGA and then pulled from a selection of motifs to make my own overall design.  I was really proud of my finished piece, but I had to put it away shortly after I finished it because I adopted my first cat (or she adopted me), and she considered the little runner to be a great place to take a nap.  Now it's on the dining room table and anchored by the two candles.  So far, it has stayed cat free.  Here's a closer shot of the cut and pulled work.

  In other, non-stitchy news, I found this feather lying in our driveway this morning:

It's about as long as my hand from the base of my palm to the tip of my middle finger, and it certainly did not come from any of the birds hanging around our bird feeder.  And it looks so downy, there must be much longer, less fluffy feathers on this mystery bird.  So I'm thinking that this came from a really big bird.  I wonder what it could be?

Sadly, the birds nest that I shared in my last post has almost certainly been invaded by a cowbird.  There is one less egg in the nest, and the biggest egg is even more obviously different from the others than it was before.  I hate that this happened to the poor finches, but I don't know that there's anything I can do but let nature take its course.  Sigh.

And on that rather sad note, I will sign off.  Til next time, I hope everyone has a lovely, crafty day.

Progress and plants

Good morning everyone!  I had intended to have this post up Friday night, but just as I sat down to turn the computer on, the power went out.  For the second time in two weeks.  Ugh.  I hope this isn't going to be a common thing this summer.

Anyhow, the power is back on and I can now share all the silly things I wanted to share two days ago (um, the power has been on since late, late Friday night.  I have just been busy since then).  I had mentioned in my last post that I was going to give Sous le Soleil another week's worth of work because I felt like I'd made almost no progress during the first week.  Then, early Monday morning, I damaged my foot by kicking a stepladder.  Not on purpose, I didn't realize it was in the hallway and I ran into it on the way to the bonus room.  So I spent most of this week lamed up, which is a bad thing for housekeeping and physical comfort, but a great thing for stitching.  So here's Soleil when I last posted:

 And here she is after one slow week and one turbo week:

 Most of the plant motifs you see are unfinished.  I decided to push through with the green and save specialty stitches til closer to the end of the piece.  Then I changed my mind about waiting:

 I am tempted to keep at her for another week and see how close I can come to finishing, but I am also thinking about finishing a pyn pillow from Thistle Threads in the coming week.   My lessons for "A Cabinet of Curiosities" began earlier this month, and I'm somewhat motivated to work on something intimidating as a warm up for this class.  Plus, the pillow is also on my WIPocalypse list.  Hmm, guess we'll see what kind of mood I'm in tomorrow morning when it's time to officially decide how the stitching week will go!

My vegetable garden seems to be doing well.  The zucchini plant has leaves the size of my hand (or larger) and is now sprouting this giant yellow flowers.  And yesterday I saw a few little flowers on my tomato plant. Hopefully, the flowers are a sign that vegetables are soon to follow.  Nothing to do but wait and see!

 I can't remember whether I mentioned on this blog that one of the ferns that I bought to use in our wedding ceremony was taken over by purple finches when I left the plant at my sister's house for safe-keeping.  Well, her fern is now the home of 5 baby finches.  I bought a new fern, which remained bird free, and brought it back to my new home after the wedding.  We hung them on our front porch, and for a month they were just pretty ferns decorating our house.  But earlier this past week, I noticed that there were many purple finches circling around it, and that there seemed to be a battle for control of one of my ferns.  And then we noticed that there were often two purple finches perched in our fern.  Yesterday we took the fern down to water it (and to be sure we didn't water anything that shouldn't be watered) and sure enough, there's a little nest growing in our fern!

One of the eggs is quite a bit larger than the others, and it's speckled.  The others are not speckled.  What could be the reason for this?  Has some other bird snuck an egg into our poor finches' nest, or is it normal for the eggs to different sizes?  Only time will tell, I suppose.

Til next time, I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday weekend (or just a great weekend if you're not in the US).