A Little Dinner and Some Stitchin'

Gentle Friends,  I tried for a couple of days to get this post up and finally, here it is Tuesday... it goes live.... oh well... we had a very quiet at home kind of weekend...except for the continuous fireworks blasting all over the City all last week and then Saturday night all night long. They finally stopped for the most part around 4am.  Then there were more on Sunday night and again last night.... you'd think at some point they'd run out.  The weather has been glorious the last few weeks in the upper 50's and low 60's with tons of wind blowing down off of Twin Peaks... I love the Summers here by the Bay!!! It gets so chilly that after the sun goes down I flick on the heat to take the chill off the rooms.

We started off the Holiday weekend Friday evening running down to South City to the In-N-Out for dinner... a quick 22 minutes in the drive-through and it was home again for a delicious fun meal.  Usually, I don't like the fries they serve, limp and greasy, but from TikTok, I learned that if you order them "well done" they are really very tasty, super crunchy, and not greasy!!

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I also got some stitching done of the Beatitudes...

... a change I made was to add in an additional green color for the trees...  everything the same green was becoming monotonous...

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That's about it for today sports fans, things are about the same, we're still working from home.   My Director wants everyone to stay away from Berkeley until after Labor Day and I'm fine with that, I like wearing sweats every day!!

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Thanks for stopping by do stop again.  Stay Safe!

Good Thoughts! Good Words! Good Deeds!

edgar

.... and it's the 4th of July

Gentle Friends, just a fly-by post for this mid-summer holiday...

... I thought I'd paste a snap of the stunning Rita Hayworth to let you know that TCM is showing some great films today... "1776," "Yankee Doodle Dandy" and "The Music Man."  Fun musical films for a stay at home type Holiday!!  Stay Safe!!

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Good Thoughts! Good Words! Good Deeds!

edgar

A Little Cannin'

Gentle Friends, wrapping up my Summer Jamin' here are yesterday afternoons snaps...

... finally got to the point that my big ole spoon stands up!!  I filled up 20 8oz jars ...

... ran them through the boiling bath...after cleaning my big pot, and yes, it's the same pot I used to make the jam in... after making sure all the lids had popped tight!!

... and have ended up with 19 full jars of some pretty tasty jam!!  I kept one jar out for us and popped that sucker into the fridge.  These will make nice little gifts this winter.

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There you go sports fans.  Thanks again for stopping by do stop again. Stay Safe!

Good Thoughts! Good Words! Good Deeds!

edgar

A Little Stitchin' and llittle Jammin' and some Roses......

Gentle Friends...  a little stitching on Beatitudes... here's a snap...

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I got the plums on the stove and it filled my biggest pot to almost overflowing...

... just before the first boil...

... just after the second boil...

... now almost finished, this is after the third boil...Now just once more and then to fill up the jars!!

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You might remember that we usually get new flowers for the house each week and this week landed on some really interesting roses...I usually go for the yellow-orange variety but this just jumped out and was such a different shade of violet!!  They are really very fragrant also for store-bought flowers.

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There you go sports fans.  Thanks for stopping by do stop again. Stay Safe!

Good Thoughts! Good Words! Good Deeds!

edgar

A Little Jam a Little Finish and Some Virtual Cocktails.....

Gentle Friends...it's now the lazy fog enveloped days of Summer here by the Bay and once again I'm rattling the pots and pans to make some jam.  Last Sunday a good friend our ours brought us a few pounds of wonderful Satsuma plums... I asked him how much his tree was producing and he said that about every other year there's a bumper crop and this the year.... so far he's gotten over 100lbs of plums.  Yesterday we headed over to Berkeley where he lives and he gave me about 16+ lbs to make some jam with...  so...

... with a trunk full of plums we headed back home and last night I got busy and stoned the fruit...

... I have two of my very largest mixing bowls full of fruit!!  Today I got busy making some jam...  I'm using Natasha's Kitchen recipe for Plum Jam.  It's a super recipe, no peeling, no pectin just some sugar and fruit!!  I made some a few years ago and it was delicious!!  It takes a couple of days but it's so worth the effort.  I post other snaps later.

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Last night I finally finished up the puzzle I've been working on for the last couple of weeks.  I made sure to only do about 5 or 7 pieces a night to make it last but then I just pushed through and found I was missing a piece... I found out that I had some help... if you look sort of dead center you can see that a piece of the puzzle was "taste" tested by one of the Who Hounds... I think it was Smokie,   but here's a snap, and that sucker is still wet!!  It was a fun puzzle to put together.  I think I need to have bigger puzzles with more pieces so that they last longer....???

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My work is having a virtual Zoom Cocktail party tomorrow afternoon and I've hauled out some Bourbon's to decide which to make into some Old Fashioned's or a new to me drink "Revolvers"... which are made with bourbon, Kahlua, and a dash of orange bitters and an orange twist... sounds delish!!

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That's about it for today sports fans.  I'll post a snaperoo of The Beatitudes over the weekend.   

Stay Safe!

Good Thoughts! Good Words! Good Deeds!

edgar

A Little Summer

Gentle Friends, once again as the seasons change, for me to post a bit of Vivaldi...  it's the first day of Summer so here's a fun version that "explains" a bit about the music and what's going on...

Enjoy!!

Good Thoughts! Good Words! Good Deeds!

edgar

A Few Roses and a Little Stitchin'

Gentle Friends,  as you might remember we buy flowers weekly for the house... since most of the florists and smaller flower stands have been shuttered up for a few months we'd had to depend on the flower from Safeway (our grocery store)  Now, usually they will last a few days but recently we had some last for almost two solid weeks... and these tea roses have been blown and lovely for all of this week, I did find a petal on the floor this morning when I was taking the snap, but I recut the stem, removed most of the leaves and I think we can get a couple more days out of them.....

... we'll pick up some new ones in the morning...

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I'ver been stitching away, not as quickly as usual but I did get all the grass-finished up and started on the couple... I'm going to change up some of the colors as this is a really brown/green sampler and a few hits of color won't hurt...

... I've already changed out the floss for the pants and her eyes from the Hickory Sticks called for to Blacksmith Blue and a pale blue DMC that was sitting in my stitching basket... more changes to come!!  Whoops, I almost forgot I also changed the Hickory Sticks for the bird to a WDW Kohl so it's now a blackbird...  Hickory Sticks by CC is the default colour for so much of this piece.....

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Have a super weekend.  Stay Safe!

Good Thoughts! Good Words! Good Deeds!

edgar

A Little Start

Gentle Friends, I made a start on my next project...

... Little House Needleworks - "Beatitudes" - I'm using 40ct linen, PTP Legacy and the called for flosses.  I finished up the small bottom section and now it's on to the top portion.  This should stitch up pretty fast and then off to the framers and ready for gifting at Christmas!!

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Thanks for stopping by do stop again.  Stay Safe!

Good Thoughts! Good Words! Good Deeds!

edgar

A Birthday

Gentle Friends... today would have been my mother's 94th birthday, she was born in 1926 in Greenville North Carolina, and born at home.   Here's one of my favorite snaps from her childhood...

... she was two and this was taken on the side yard of her home in Greenville...  and who hooks a goat up for a picture???  When I was rooting around for that snap I found this one...

... taken when she turned 20 in just after WWII in 1946...

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There you go sports fans,  Thanks again for stopping by do stop again.  Stay Safe!!

Good Thoughts! Good Words! Good Deeds!

edgar

A Little Finish

Gentle Friends, I finished up Agnes and here's a snaperoo...

5/4 - 6/6/20

Blackbird Designs Loose Feathers 2013 - "Agnes Platt's Strawberry Sampler"

40ct Lakeside Linen "Vintage Lentil"

This was a fun little sampler to stitch for the Spring. The changes I made in the floss was to substitute GAST Rhubarb for GAST Holly Berry and GAST Chamomile for GAST Parchment.  I changed the red to soften up the color and the Parchment because it was really too close in color to the linen and just disappeared.  

Along the bottom the three motifs I made other changes... the first motif was full of Queen Stitches and I stitched it as charted but after I had finished it just looked clumpy and I was not very happy.   So I re-stitched it with only cross stitches and modified the image a bit.  

The second motif of vase and flowers I also stitched as charted but once again I wasn't very happy with the result.  After looking at it for an evening I decided to frog the stitching and to rechart.   The vase as charted from the original sampler was uneven and wonky, my recharting evened it all up.  The third motif is as charted.  

I also added an extra strawberry to the vine at the end on the left.  I also usually don't stitch the original stitcher's name when I stitch historic samplers, as I make too many changes to the original charted piece... but with this sampler, I like the placement of her name so it worked for me.

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There you go sports fans.  Thanks for stopping by do stop again!  Stay Safe!

Good Thoughts! Good Words! Good Deeds!

edgar