A Finished Project
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A Finished Project

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One of my goals for April was to complete an unfinished project. Here I am, skating in at the last minute having just made the final stitches on a cross-stitch project this morning! Now I just need to find a frame so it’s totally complete.

I almost gave myself a pass on this particular goal as the final days of the month came around and I was only about halfway finished. But I was within “inches” of knocking every single item off my list of “April 2024 Goals.” March had been a less-than-stellar month for getting things done, so I had marked off time on my calendar in April to accomplish every item on my list.

Then the weather took a turn toward sunny and perfect for outdoor stuff, and I wanted to be outside doing fun things instead of inside doing fun things. So we created a trail in the woods for the dogs–.25 miles so far with at least another .5 miles planned out. And we played hooky on a Friday to go hiking–nearly 15.5 miles of perfection where we saw absolutely no one else. And we got started on our firewood for next winter–a never-ending project. And we took a lot of walks to a couple nearby ponds to watch the eagles.

But I couldn’t “spike the ball on the 1 yard line” as we say, so I got busy stitching last night and this morning.

The original pattern (found here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/762974522/paw-heart-cross-stitch-pattern-paw? utm_medium=SellerListingTools&utm_campaign=Share&utm_source=Pinterest&share_time=1590328378000&utm_term=so.slt&epik=dj0yJnU9d0ptN0dLcGFJN01fQUtrdFRYZ3lQcXJIYzFkZGdFM04mcD0wJm49MDBjc1VaMFM5aE5MN2ZNM3hPdUFOZyZ0PUFBQUFBR1l4R2JN ) did not have the quote included. I searched for a fitting quote, and the one I found perfectly fits Nevy’s personality. Luna isn’t one to care about doors/gates being left open. Though she is 1/8 husky, she’s not a wanderer. She’s a homebody. Nevy, however, sees an open door as an invitation to bolt outside, run down the driveway, and run up the neighbor’s driveway for a visit. He could just run through the woods between our homes, but it would seem he’s a polite fellow who doesn’t just come tearing out of the trees to greet people.

I thought about graphing the quote myself but then thought maybe there would be a website that could do it for me and maybe it would be free. Turns out there is a website that will graph out your text for free. Here’s the one I used: https://stitchpoint.com/eng/tool/alph/cross-stitch-writer.php .

Now on to May! Will I knock one more item off my unfinished items list, or will I answer the siren’s call of the outdoors too often to accomplish anything inside?

Blazing A Trail
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Blazing A Trail

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Before we jump into the adventures and fun of the past week, here’s a photo of the endangered Blanding’s Turtle that we saw on a hike last Saturday at the Rogue River State Game Area (near Sand Lake, MI). This is the second Blanding’s Turtle we’ve seen. The first was near Fife Lake, MI.

This past week has been a fun one. We started the week by working on a trail through our woods and swamp. After three hours on Sunday afternoon, we finally had the first half of the trail complete! Luna dog was thrilled (as was Nevy) to have a new trail to explore. Luna was especially thrilled that she can now get to the nearby ponds on state land with only one glimpse of a road (that she avoids walking on by dragging me as close to the trees at the side of the road as possible).

The trail passes several swampy areas (where hordes of peep frogs peep loud enough to cause hearing damage), a tree that looks like a dragon, and a hobo hut that I spent quite a bit of time working on while Hubby did the more laborious work of cutting down limbs and trees in the middle of our planned trail. (I’m looking forward to Bonus Grandson visiting this summer to help finish the hut!)

The fun continued on Monday when I tried a new bundt cake recipe. (This one: https://www.sugarandsoul.co/pumpkin-bundt-cake/) It was super tasty, though my frosting looked nothing like the poster’s frosting. My frosting all pooled on the plate underneath the cake. I also had little lumps of powdered sugar sprinkled throughout since I desperately need one of those sifter thingies.

Our daffodils finally bloomed, though the weather has been chillier this week. We’ve even seen a few snowflakes today. I’m not certain how I feel about the snowflakes. As they aren’t going to accumulate into anything we can ski on or snowshoe in, I think I’d rather not see them!

There has been little time for crafting, but I have been taking little time at the end of the day to listen to audiobooks while I work on a small cross-stitch project. I’m doing this one: https://www.etsy.com/listing/762974522/paw-heart-cross-stitch-pattern-paw?utm_medium=SellerListingTools&utm_campaign=Share&utm_source=Pinterest&share_time=1590328378000&utm_term=so.slt&epik=dj0yJnU9X2ROMFJvZWVZUlR1VzBCemQ4eVcxVkw4bi1QZjRNU20mcD0wJm49Z3c2WDRJTXA0R1ZYclpsZW5mNklQQSZ0PUFBQUFBR1lqNGtr

(I just finished listening to The New Couple in 5B by Lisa Unger and am currently listening to The Vacancy in Room 10 by Serahina Nova Glass.)

Here’s what I’ve got completed so far:

I chose to use a shiny floss for the red, and I will NEVER use this floss again! I am so glad to be finished with all the red bits as this floss was incredibly difficult to work with. It frayed and knotted frequently. This was #30666 (DMC?).

There will be a black paw print filling in the right side of the heart. Inside, though the pattern doesn’t have this, I will be putting the words “NEVY’S STAIR” (or something similar). I’m going to turn this into a little hanging to hang above the stair on the staircase where Nevy dog goes whenever he’s told to “go to his stair” so we can go outside. He has this stair command because he’s quite a bolter when the door opens.

I’m hoping to finish this project next week.

Now, though, it’s time to head out on a ramp hunt with Hubby. According to my Facebook memories, we found ramps (wild leeks) in the woods (not on state land because picking there is illegal in Michigan) on this day last year. Wish us luck. My plan for this year is to dry them and make ramp salt so we can sprinkle them on stuff throughout the year.

(If you go on your own ramp hunt, make sure not to confuse them with Lily of the Valley which is poisonous!)

A Week of New Things
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A Week of New Things

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The week started with an eclipse on Monday (which we viewed through a cardboard box eclipse viewer crafted by Hubby as the eclipse was just starting), continued with a fancy chocolate cake with chocolate icing and a triple berry compote filling (a first attempt for me at putting fruit filling between the layers of a cake), and ended with a loaf of beer rye bread (another first). The eclipse was fascinating, though probably not quite as fascinating as if we’d been in an area of totality. The chocolate cake was amazing and was consumed much too quickly. The jury is still out on the bread as we haven’t tried it yet. It smelled amazing while baking, though. It will be enjoyed on a hike this weekend with some blackberry jam and Havarti cheese (which is not quite as weird of a combo as it sounds).

We enjoyed long hikes over the past week to the ATV trails near our neighborhood (where we found a chunk of rotting deer carcass up in a tree…guess who’s looking over her shoulder a bit more often while hiking now?) and to the pond where the eagles like to hang out. We finished a huge 2,000-piece puzzle and spent three nights working on an escape room box. We spent a couple evenings working outside getting started on our firewood situation for the coming winter (yes, I know SUMMER isn’t even here yet) and clearing and marking a loop trail to and around our swamp. (The peep frogs are out now, and they are LOUD!) Luna dog will love the new trail through the woods. She much prefers walking under the trees to walking along the road. I can’t blame her. I’d much rather walk in the woods myself.

One of the eagles soaring over the pond

Looking back, it’s been an exhausting but fulfilling week! I’m looking forward to the weekend and the miles and miles of hiking we have planned. Tick season is coming soon, and we want to have as many miles logged in the woods as possible before those little bloodsuckers appear.

I think I spent approximately 15 minutes in the sewing room this week, so reaching my goal of completing one unfinished sewing project this month might be tricky. I am working on a small cross-stitch project that I might just have enough time to finish. Fingers crossed.

Meanwhile, during those 15 minutes or so, I added to my latest scrap project and now have two large sections completed. For this project, I’ve cut 4″x6″ rectangles of paper in half on the diagonal and am sewing strips of fabric onto these triangles. Here’s a peek at what the project looks like so far.

(Can you spy Piglet?)

I will probably need to make at least two more sections to end up with a decent-sized lap quilt. I think I may finally be making a dent in the box of scraps, though I have not used up many light-colored scraps in this quilt.

Eagles!
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Eagles!

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I set a goal for March that I would finish one unfinished sewing project. Did I do that?

Nope!

I ended up starting another project. (A cross-stitch project that I only ended up working on for about 30 minutes before a phone call interrupted my evening.)

So what have I been doing instead of sewing or knitting or cross-stitching?

I’ve been taking long walks to watch eagles.

We have a pond behind our house where an eagle (or two) occasionally visits, but, just down the road (and down a driveway and a trail through the woods), there are two ponds and a handful of little swampy areas created by some very industrious beavers where a family of eagles seems to like spending their afternoons watching the water.

Prior to this year, we’ve walked to these ponds that are on state land on occasion, but this year our old girl Luna has decided that walking to the ponds is the only walk she wants to take. She’ll pull me in that direction, setting her butt firmly on the ground and refusing to move if I even attempt to steer her in the other direction. So to the ponds we’ve gone…over and over again.

And we’ve seen the eagles over and over again, and every single time is just as exciting as the time before. We’ve heard them chattering to each other. We’ve watched them as they sit in the trees watching the water. We’ve seen them swooping low over the ponds. There are four. One is younger–perhaps 3 1/2 to 4 years old based on its plumage. The other three have their adult plumage.

The largest pond

On our treks to the ponds we’ve found owl pellets, studied and walked carefully over the beaver dams, inspected the temporal/ephemeral pools, and discovered that we can walk to a network of ATV trails that are perfect for hiking that we didn’t even know were close enough for us to get to on foot.

Despite minimal time for sewing, March was a delightful month full of long walks!

I did, finally, pick my knitted afghan up again towards the end of the month and add several rows. I’m now slightly more than a third finished. As I’m doing a moss stitch pattern of K1, P1 over and over and over and over again, this afghan is taking a long time!

This is not stubborn Luna. This is Neville, who likes to pace and whine in impatience when we stop to watch the eagles.

More Gnomes
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More Gnomes

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Oh. My. Goodness. It is March. This year is going by way too fast, but I’m not complaining. Even though we’ve had an incredibly mild winter—can we shout ‘hooray’ for the 60+ degree day we had last week where we were able to have the slider open all day?—I am still so ready for summer.

Notice I didn’t say spring?

Spring is my least favorite season. Spring here means mud, mud, and more mud. When the snow melts on our dirt roads, we get mud. Lots of it. It’s like a spa visit for our dogs’ paws every time we venture out. It makes cleaning them up when we get home extra time-consuming. We can’t snowshoe or garden, ski or keep a clean floor (because mud!) in spring.

If I were to rank the seasons from my favorite to my least favorite, we’d have autumn in first place, followed by summer, then winter, then spring.

The only good thing about spring is the peep frog rave happening in our swamp every evening. The sound of their deafening peeping means warmer weather is on its way. I never thought I’d grow up to be the steward of about a million peep frogs, but here we are.

So GNOMES…

Way back in the late fall, I suddenly found myself enamored with gnomes. I truly have no idea where this feeling came from having previously been…well..not actively anti-gnome…more like gnome-meh. I could take them or leave them.

But then I went a little gnome-crazy. I put together a gnome table runner (see this post: https://wordpress.com/post/lazysaturdayquilts.com/1512 ), then pondered how else I could incorporate the little men into another project. Finally, I settled on this:

Having minimal drawing skills, I perused Pinterest for gnome-themed coloring sheets to use as patterns.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, basic coloring sheets make excellent patterns to use for fusible web projects.

After scaling the images to the size I wanted, I quickly traced and ironed and cut and assembled the gnome blocks.

Then came the tedious process of blanket stitching around each piece of fabric (except for those skinny gnome legs).

As usual, after I finish a project, I like to nitpick about little things I would do differently if I could do the project over again. For this project, I would definitely use a different color for the gnomes’ noses. The nose fabric contrasted well when I laid it up against the beard fabric in the light of my sewing room. It did not stand out when I hung the hanging on the wall in the living room.

I enjoyed making this hanging so much that I planned to make other seasonal hangings featuring gnomes. Then the holidays happened and all the busyness that comes with those.

As life slowed down in the New Year, I got sucked back into working on depleting my scrap pile. It has been my goal for the past several years to get the scraps under control. I don’t know what’s happening, but I think they are reproducing every night while I sleep. My goal for March is to complete one of my unfinished projects. As there are four scrap quilt tops in various stages of completion cluttering many surfaces (including the floor) in the sewing room, my hopes are high that I’ll be able to see the bottom of the scrap bin someday soon.

A Quick Project
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A Quick Project

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A few months ago Hubby and I started listening to Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. Our library did not have the audiobook, and neither did either of the online resources to which our library card gives us access.

(Side note here: I recently asked ChatGPT–something I thought I’d never use–if it was considered okay to end a sentence with a preposition, which, as was drilled into my head over and over as a child, was something we were never, ever, ever supposed to do. For example, ‘…neither did either of the online resources our library card gives us access to.’ Well, ChatGPT informed me that placing those pesky prepositions at the end of a sentence was actually totally okay now. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to do that?! I couldn’t even do it in the above paragraph for fear that all of my English teachers and my mother would come busting through the wall Kool-Aid man-style waving red ink pens!)

Anyway, I digress. We were listening to Project Hail Mary via some strange playlist on Spotify that appeared to have several other audiobook files in there as well. It seemed highly suspect, but we weren’t about to question anything. We got halfway through the book–listening while Hubby worked and I sewed or on our drive to new hiking trails–and then IT WAS GONE, leaving us with questions and Rocky and Ryland Grace’s lives hanging in the balance.

Amazingly, I found a website that seems totally legal (fingers crossed) yesterday and we were able to get back into the plot. With the temps in the single digits and teens, the sewing room/office is shut up tight, so unless I wanted to lug the sewing machine, ironing board, iron, and one of my recent projects out to the living room where the fire is blazing in the fireplace, sewing was out of the question. I did not want to do this. (Truth be told, I mainly did not want to have to vacuum up the lint and strings that would litter the carpet after an afternoon of sewing.) Instead, while Hubby turned one couch into his office, I turned the other into a cozy place to knit.

I’ve been working on an afghan for what seems like ages, so I added a few rows to that. (Three rows, to be exact). After growing weary of K1P1 for nearly 1000 stitches, I switched over to working on a new dishcloth.

I’ve had the same cone of cotton yarn for what seems like forever and have made countless dishcloths from it. If I ever run out (which seems unlikely!), and purchase another, I will have to keep a count of how many dishcloths can be made from one cone.

I chose this pattern: https://www.knittingunlimited.com/2016/09/dishcloth-11-mock-honeycomb.html.

I do like the honeycomb pattern and think it would make a pretty pattern for an afghan. However, should you ever choose to use this pattern and have no idea what the “K1uls” instruction means, as I didn’t, I highly recommend watching a YouTube video so you don’t have to pick out an entire row like I did because you misunderstood the instructions. I also chose to leave a few rows of the pattern off as the dishcloth seemed to be getting rather large.

Gnomes
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Gnomes

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I must admit something.

I’m not really sure what gnomes are.

Well, I know what they are. They’re those little statues that hang out in yards and have, occasionally in the past, been toted around by contestants during a leg of The Amazing Race.

But what are they? Who are they?

I’m thinking they’re sort of like dwarves…of the Snow White kind? I’ve been wracking my brain for the past few minutes wondering where they even came from. I’ve read a lot of fairy tales, which seems like the appropriate place to find some mention of gnomes, and I’m coming up with nothing.

So if like me, you have no idea about the history of gnomes, here’s a link for you: https://authenticprovence.com/stories/a-history-of-the-garden-gnome/#:~:text=Small%20gnome%20statues%20began%20appearing,were%20always%20made%20of%20clay.

I’m not certain when gnomes became popular with quilters and crafters, but I do know they’ve been showing up in projects for a while…often, unlike their yard-dwelling friends, with no visible eyes and only a prominent nose popping out from their voluminous beards.

I wasn’t much of a fan…at first.

I don’t know what happened to me this autumn, but I got hooked on gnomes and quickly sewed a gnome wall hanging and a table runner.

Let me tell you the story of the table runner. (I’ll share the wall hanging in another post.)

I looked up gnomes on Pinterest and discovered a cute runner with three gnomes and some birch trees. I followed the link and printed out the free pattern pieces. I did not print out the directions at that time.

That was a MISTAKE!

When I was ready to begin working on the project, I attempted to follow the link and received numerous warnings that the site was not secure. The directions could not be found anywhere! Thus, I had no clue how large to cut the pieces that needed to be pieced together before the templates could be used to cut these pieced sections to the proper size. I also had no idea how to create the weird birch tree blocks.

I would not be deterred by these roadblocks! I would persevere!

And that is when math class and ratios came to the rescue.

Having the template for the pieced-together gnome bodies, I knew how tall the gnomes were to be. I pulled up a small photo of the runner on my computer screen and grabbed a ruler. I measured the different pieces that would make up the gnome body on the computer screen, then did a little math magic to determine the needed size for each body section plus seam allowances.

Unfortunately, this math magic did not work for the strange birch tree blocks. And, if I’m being honest, I kind of didn’t like the birch trees anyway. So I made star blocks instead.

I quilted random swirly designs over all of the table runner, except for the stars and the gnomes’ noses. I really like how that design turned out, though my hands (particularly the one I had surgery on in October) did get tired while quilting.

Here’s the finished runner:

Loons
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Loons

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I set myself a teeny goal a couple days ago. As I hadn’t stepped foot into the sewing room for several days, and all the parts to my Loon wall hanging were gathering dust first on a table in the living room, then, strangely, under the piano–we’d moved the project there when we needed the table to play Gloomhaven–I knew I needed to set a goal before something disastrous happened to all that work I’d done cutting and wonder-undering.

(Gloomhaven, if you don’t know, is a cooperative game where the goal is to kill monsters. We have the more basic Jaws of the Lion version, which has so many bits and pieces and rules that we’re still discovering new things 9 scenarios in. I can’t imagine how complex the original version is.)

My goal was this: to sew the borders to the background fabric. It was an easy task that shouldn’t take me too long. I could easily finish before I needed to get dinner ready.

But once I got started, I kept going. (Dinner was a little late that night!) I thought I’d just iron down a few pieces. But then it became apparent that there were many overlapping parts that nearly everything would need to be placed before any ironing could occur.

So what started out as just a few lines of straight sewing turned into this:

I made a few changes to the original pattern. Inspired by the colors of autumn outside our front door (and hours of leaf blowing), I chose a fall theme when choosing fabric for the trees. The original pattern used all green for the trees. As I didn’t have a separate scenic fabric for the top half of the background (behind the loon), I added my own scenic extras. I added some extra plants in brown behind the black plants, a few cattails, and a pair of duck silhouettes flying away in the distance. The original pattern was mainly done in shades of grey and black, but out of necessity (since I didn’t have a lot of different fabrics in those shades in large enough pieces), I added a bit of color in the border with the blue fabric.

Now it’s time to do some quilting. UGH! I know this project will linger in an unfinished state for a while as I procrastinate doing the part I don’t enjoy by starting yet another project.

It’s Turkey Time!
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It’s Turkey Time!

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Halloween is over and the pumpkins and witches and bats have been stored away for next year. (This may have happened a little sooner than planned due to an unfortunate tea spill that forced me to wash a table runner!) Unlike the stores, where Christmas decorations have been lurking in the aisles since Back to School season, I refuse to participate in the glossing over of Thanksgiving.

As I’ve been a little preoccupied with other tasks this week and haven’t made much progress on any of my Unfinished Objects, I hope you enjoy these older projects now hanging up in honor of Turkey Day.

(I’ve always thought the fancy lady turkey looks a little like Flo from the Progressive Insurance commercials.)

Our Thanksgiving will look a little different than usual this year. With two kids living downstate who work schedules that don’t sync up well for them to be able to make a trip up for the holiday weekend or even for a day, we are heading their way sometime before the holiday for a dinner out at everyone’s favorite sushi restaurant. Not your typical Thanksgiving fare, but it is, strangely, the one food that everyone can agree on.

Tiny Houses?
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Tiny Houses?

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I watched this great video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c_QFbZoLG0&ab_channel=Dave%27sCraftRoom) on making a 365 Tiny Houses quilt on YouTube this past week and am now contemplating whether I want to slowly lose my mind doing a house quilt! Then I came across another video by Dave (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0_x2-rp-V8&t=1931s&ab_channel=Dave%27sCraftRoom) which made me guiltily remember my EPP hexagon quilt that is nowhere near as epic as his. As it lies languishing in a box somewhere, I know I have no business contemplating another new project while my “To Be Finished” pile is about to topple over.

To be honest, it’s not really a pile at all. It’s more of a sprawl. It sprawls from the sewing table to the floor to the edge of the ironing board to boxes in the closet to a table in our living room. The room formerly known as my sewing room that morphed into an office when Hubby started working from home probably a decade before Covid made it popular, looks like a fabric store exploded within its walls. Poor Hubby must navigate the minimal visible flooring around piles and boxes and dog beds to get to his little corner every morning.

I should probably do some tidying and sorting. But that would mean even less time to work on projects.

Speaking of projects…

Last week, I ignored the messy room and all other responsibilities to work on one of my Unfinished Objects AND start a NEW project. (Which had the effect of making the mess GROW.)

Project #1 – I pulled out these 14×14″ squares (that strangely look like rectangles) and my scraps to make two more green squares and one more blue square. I’m not sure how many more squares to make. I’m low on purple scraps and would like at least one more purple block. I have plenty of purple yardage, but I’m not sure I want to cut into good fabric to make a block. I may put this project away until my scrap pile gains some more purple. It’s a work in progress. Who knows how it will end up?

(In the background you can see the Christmas Cactus and Dragonfruit plants that have grown better than I ever expected them to!)

Project #2 – I began working on a wall hanging titled Loon Creek. (A Pine Needles quilt design by McKenna Ryan.) I’ve had this pattern for a long time and finally decided, after much deliberation, on the fabric I wanted to use. I’m using only fabric from my stash, so I’m not sure my “loon” will look quite like a loon. I’m also thinking about changing up the background slightly as I didn’t have any mountain scenery fabric as was shown on the pattern.

(Those random brown strips are tree trunks waiting for some tree tops. Nothing is sewn together or ironed down yet, thus it looks a little wonky.)

Have you done a large hexagon EPP quilt or an epic house quilt? Let me know in the comments if you have and how your sanity fared!