Beachy Keen

We are heading out for some beach walking, relaxing and a bit of rock-hunting.
One project I am taking is a knit Little Red Riding Hood doll from a pattern I purchased from Hand Made Awards. The doll comes with a pattern for a wolf puppet and a basket of food. Too cute. The other patterns are cute, too. I am still working on the Alan Dart Gingerbread House...it is slow going...the candy-canes are a pain...the pattern is not hard but it requires carefully watching each stitch. Not my idea of relaxing beach knitting. :-)
Have a great week.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Penelope's Bedroom

This is just a goofy little sketch on a 3x5 card I made last night. She looks like a Penelope to me. :-)

Peter Hunt Inspiration

Look at this unique little desk. I found the pictures at an auction site online. The desk had sold but the pictures are inspirational. This desk is the work of the artist Peter Hunt or one of his helpers. Information about him can be found here and here (click on the link at bottom "Peter Hunt by Andy Jones" for a pull down article).

Sort of trompe l' oiel letters on the writing surface. The painting style is folk art, Peter Hunt called it peasant style painting. Peter Hunt's painted furniture was very popular in the 30's and 40's, selling at Macy's and Gimbel's department stores and commands high prices now as well.

I love all the hearts along the side and the hearts at the knees on the man's knickers.

Above are two pages from "Peter Hunt's How To Do It" book. I found a copy by chance at a library book sale a couple of years ago. I had never even heard of him before that.

Produce

Look what we are having for dinner. :-) Our first beans are ripe, we are still getting snow peas and just beginning to see the tomatoes. Yum! I made applesauce today, that I am freezing for winter--1/2 bushel of Transparents. I'm a little sick of seeing apples at the moment but we are having some of the sauce for dinner with the veges.
Yeah for summer!!

Walking

I am in awe at how easy a sewing machine attachment makes this sewing project a breeze. 

I was so frustrated with the top-stitching on the other pillowcases I made just recently. My 19 year old Singer would feed thru at different rates and pucker up the stitching around the top where there are several layers.

In my machine's instruction booklet I read about an attachment called a walking foot and thought it might help but I'd never heard of them. I sure didn't figure I'd be able to find one after all this time. Well, what a surprise when I found a box of Singer attachments at an antiques shop's clearance area.

Oh, lovely day, for five bucks I became the proud owner of this box of gems.

I didn't even know for sure that all the attachments would fit but they looked right so I brought them home.

Here is my magical walking foot. Such a simple gadget. It makes the feed dog and all behave and work together. Not a pucker in sight. All frustrations gone--now that was a splendid find, wouldn't you say? Happy Day!

Cupcakes

Small flagged cakes.

Happy 4th!!!

Hope everyone has a great 4th!

We had our fireworks last night and the parade on Monday.

So it is a picnic tomorrow with cupcakes!

Happy Birthday America! :-)

Ready for the 4th

I just finished this shirt for Em yesterday. She begged to wear it before the 4th of July--I'm so glad she likes it. It is a pattern that I came up with on my own. This is the test shirt--using fabric I already had and I love how it came out. I took a shirt of Em's that flared out and used it to get the basic width. I made a paper pattern and tried it against Em. It seemed like it would work, I had to make sure that the armholes didn't gape open and thankfully that wasn't a problem. This success gives me great courage to work out other patterns. The applied star in the center is very reminiscent of a dress that my mom made me when I was little. It was dark blue dotted-white fabric with a large white embroidered star on the chest. The only problem I had was the top tubing that the straps run through. When I sewed the bias tape around the armhole I sewed over the opening of the tubes--oops. I had to fiddle and re-sew that portion.

Pink and Refreshing

Lemonade is one of my very favorite summertime/anytime drink. Um-yum! I found a great idea for making and drinking it here on Wee Folk Art, a really cool site for felt projects galore. I changed the recipe slightly, so here is my version......


Garden Lemonade
1 quart mason jar with lid.
Fill the jar 1/3 of the way up with ice cubes.
Add the juice of one lemon, the squeezed lemon cut-up into pieces, 3 Tablespoons of sugar, and a splash of grape juice (for pink lemonade).
(I like to add back in the pulp from the squeezing process and remember to roll the lemon around on the counter before cutting to squeeze to release more juice--at least I think that's what it does)
Finally, fill the jar up with cold water and shake.
Take to the garden or anywhere.

This is extremely yummy and refreshing.

Easy Peasy

All pitted and packaged. These cherries are all ready for the freezer

 awaiting a cold, frosty day when turning on the oven sounds like a good idea. :-)

This is the whiz-bang gadget that made the pitting so easy. I love it!

Find it here if you are interested. It worked fine on sweet cherries too.

Felt bird

Inspiration found here for this little bird.

The pattern for the bird is in the book, embroidery design is made up in my own little head.

Peaceful & Calm

Lakeside puttsing.

Quilting complete

A couple of pics showing the stitching up close.

One of my favorites--the red dotted square.

And finally the backing fabric, a red mini flower.

I hope everyone had a great weekend.

A trip to the AQS quilt show in Ohio is how I spent Saturday.

We viewed about 400 quilts, yikes,

might have missed a few, jabbered and shopped.....great fun.

Grannies

I just learned to make granny squares. They are such fun to make, soothing and rhythmic. 

Meg taught me on a recent trip and I've been cranking them out. I in turn taught Em and she is now making them.

I've been using my familiar wool palette yarn from KnitPicks in fingering weight.

I am working out an afghan the size of a doll's bed (theme of small size here).

The colors are from the center, Serrano, Petal (discontinued), Sky, and Pool.

I am not planning on washing this afghan much and that is the only drawback in using the wool.

Unless you have Superwash wool yarn you are stuck with cold water, hand-washing.

You can just barely see our tent in the background.

We had it set up in our backyard, tucked into the treeline.

We had a dab of cooler weather and we enjoyed ourselves outside with campfires, s'mores and flashlights.

Not so much with the bugs and cot-sleeping. :-)

Camp Mail

Camp mail to be delivered.

The girls and I have been inspired  for many years by the mail that was delivered in Tasha Tudor's household.

She called it the Sparrow Post and the letters were very, very small.

There is a picture of these wee letters in the book "Tasha Tudor's Heirloom Crafts" on page 143.

Strange Nature

Isn't this a funky seed pod on this jack in the pulpit?

Indian Doll is Done!!

Here is the final doll.

I fiddled with the carpet thread hair and cut all those fringes.

I wet the fringe with water, twisted and pulled so it would dry all wonky.

I really liked working with the chamois leather which I picked up in the auto section at a big box store.

It is normally used to dry cars off when hand washing and drying.

WIP---Indian Doll

Here are the small moccasins that I've made. The beading is tricky...really small and wiggley.

I made pretend teeth out of Fimo clay to decorate the dress.

Here they are without the staining and glossy coating that I've since added.

They are a little creepy. (but that makes me smile)

Lovely Pie Cherries

Picking pie cherries....

Processing pie cherries with cherry pitter. I froze two bags of cherries for next winter. :-)

Cherry crisp! It turned out a bit tart but nothing that a little vanilla ice cream can't fix.

We went back to pick more and found that they had been all picked.

Maybe this next weekend they will have more ripe.

Update--Snow Peas

Yes folks, you see them here---our first few snow peas.

It has been so hot and stuffy here that I'm surprised they have produced blossoms and pods.

Knitting Bag

A cloth bag that I made for Meg for her birthday. I got the information on how to put the zipper in on a tutorial here but I then boxed off the bottom so it would sit nice. I left it soft, with no interfacing because I wanted the bag to squish up in a purse easily.

Stuffed

I got the Indian doll stuffed yesterday and her face, beaded.

Indian Toy Doll

The girls and I have started our annual summer camp activities. This years theme is Native Americans of Ohio. We hope to visit the mound builder's sites, such as Serpent Mound and a few others. Meg and I have started making Indian dolls of chamois and Em has made a beaded leather pouch.

The three books that I am using for the doll project are "Native American Indian Toy Dolls" by Katie Newton, "Dolls & Toys of Native America" by Don & Debra McQuiston, "Rag Dolls and How to Make Them" edited by Dorothea Hall. I mixed patterns for the doll from the Rag Doll book and there is plenty of inspiration in the two Indian doll books for faces, dress decoration and so forth.

Bloom and Grow

We finally have several blossoms on our snow peas. Aren't they a pretty pinky, purple.

Lots of lettuce for dinner. :-)

Lay Your Head

A pair of pillowcases that I just finished. Grand Revival "Kitchen Rose" was the fabric that I used and can be found on sale here, although I didn't get it there. I don't remember where I got it, but the tutorial I used for the pillowcases was found here. The internet is an everlasting joy, a buffet of ideas and I'm just loving the tutorials all over the place. Thank you everyone for sharing!

Blue Ribbon Pie

I got some rhubarb at our local farmer's market, Saturday and wanted to make a pie. I had made a rhubarb/strawberry pie earlier this month and wasn't quite happy with it. Perfectly good pie but I didn't like the strawberry in it as much as I thought I would.

So, I looked for recipes online and found a wonderful, super-dooper recipe. It is located here. It has a special secret, the sugar/flour part of the recipe is placed, half on the bottom crust and half on top of the rhubarb right before the crust goes on. This makes the bottom crust kind of sugary crisp. The juice from the rhubarb gets to the bottom a bit later in the cooking process so it doesn't get soggy.

The crust I use is oil-based and very easy to make and roll out. The recipe comes from my mom. :-)

Two-crust pie crust

2 cups flour

1 1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup salad oil

1/4 cup milk

Mix gently with a fork and roll out one half at a time between two sheets of wax paper. Peel one side of wax paper at a time, flipping gently to the second side before placing on the pie pan.