A new season is starting!

Today was still muggy and humid when I went out to go to Livvie's today. It was a great day when we came back over here for lunch and about an hour of pool time. Around 2 pm we had a typical summer downpour...

And yet, there is a real cold front coming to us on Sunday! I endure Houston summers for the pleasure of the remainder of the year. We will have some fall color in December, and a few cold days in February when chicken and dumplings might be considered a must. Chili is acceptable at any time of the year in Houston, but we generally save it for cooler weather.

Best of all, we've been enjoying new tv shows! My favorite so far is Hawaii Five - O  A friend ;) told me it will be rebroadcast Saturday if you missed it on Monday(CBS). Bluebloods the new one with Tom Selleck and Mark Wahlburg is due to start in a few minutes.

I may have an exciting adventure to share after tomorrow.

Sunrise Sunset Swiftly Fly the Years....

Today is our daughter's birthday, and since she is older than 29 I won't say by how much. But last Sunday as we were sitting next to each other at church I was thinking that it really doesn't seem that long ago that I was going to church with my mom and grandmother. My attention was on the sermon, so that thought just skittered through quickly and was gone for then.

Later, my dh and I planned a dinner for our daughter and her family. Today*Thursday* is the day she stays late at her office. So we had the dinner last night. I fixed chicken and rice, a dish she'd liked as a girl, and one that can stay in the oven a little longer if traffic is heavy. Peas a veggie Livvie loves, salad and her favorite cake.

Every week on Thursdays she gets to sleep a tiny bit later, because her hours are shifted so that she can answer the phones in the office until 6. She works for an international company, and although she talks to people around the world, the majority of the business for her office is here in the US. Sleeping in is a good way to begin your birthday. I made sure to post a HBirthday to her Facebook, and called and left a message on her cell...today was busy for all of us. :) The world has changed so much since I was the granddaughter until now, when I'm grandma.

My Grannie was born before the turn of the twentieth century. She grew up in a time completely different from the time I  did. No electricity, no indoor plumbing, no cars, no tv, no lots of things that I consider pretty good stuff now. My infancy was filled with illness, in fact if there hadn't been antibiotics it likely I'd never have survived. Life is so fragile in those early years.

This all is starting to seem pretty random to me. Premiere episodes of my tv shows are about to begin, so guess that is enough for now. I wonder what the world will be like when Livvie is the grandma.

Tra La the Witch Rug Sold, Oh Happy Day~ October sold! :)

I just got an email saying that my witch rug of Lori Brechlin's October design, as made into a backing by Kris Miller of Spruce Ridge Rugs sold for its opening bid!  I am so excited, I could dance! I had a great time hooking this rug, and hope it brings much happiness and fun to its new owner. Now what new pattern of Lori's will I get?

LOL, well, maybe I can put off shopping for awhile. I do have those wonderful birdhouses to hook.

Sometimes things just work themselves out

Okay this is a TERRIBLE picture, but I had to take it while I still had some of the wool left! I've been sitting here looking at my unfinished brown wizard rug. Unhappily, because the  background needed to suggest a deep forest to match my mental picture of what I was trying to create. The wizard has stopped and is looking behind him, before turning to disappear from sight. Once I began cutting strips and filling in the areas of the background it was perfect to me. Isn't that a wonderful feeling when your mental picture and reality converge? It has been sitting for a long time, because I couldn't find the right background wool. Then rug camp came along bringing the wonderful stacked jack-o-lanterns rug from Maria, and I also worked on the rug that will be for our granddaughter's birthday next February, the Karen Kahle design, Waterlilies. In fact, this summer was the first for a long time, where quilting didn't eclipse hooking.

I finally began palette dyeing in May. It has taken me 5 months to get to Yellow Green, so this wonderful wool nearly was overdyed several times earlier... but it would always have disappeared in my "creative piles" just at the time I needed to find it to presoak. I can be looking right at something and not see it. If you are the same you understand. If not, well although there are times it is a curse,  but sometimes it saves something special from being used or thrown away. Of course this wool was never a candidate for the trashbag. ;)

What is he looking at? I hope you will feel he is searching your soul. His face is the merging of a human and owl face. I especially love his eyebrows, which are somewhat like proddy, but merely very long loops cut to twist this way and that.

This jacquard wool is a piece of Pendleton wool, that was transformed via my Jam Jar with extra Khaki Drab added to my yellow green formula. The large white area will be a luna moth, my nod to LOTR movie where a luna moth is a messenger to Radagast, the brown wizard. This design is an adaptation of April DeConick's Santa for 2009. She used that rug to teach us value hooking at the Kirby Circle. I hadn't started dyeing my wool yet, and had more brown than anything. A brown Santa seemed sad. So with April's permission, I adapted her pattern to be a wizard instead. The beautiful lavenders of his cap were a swatch pack from April, to add an extra memory of the class and her teaching for me. This rug will be finished as a pillow most likely.

Quick and Easy Breakfasts from Grocery Store Staples

Ok, so not everyone keeps flaxseeds in their fridge. We do have them and so do people who are aware of how good flaxseed oil is for their heart.  My favorite breakfast didn't make this list, Honey Nut Chex, blueberries, and a cup of vanilla yogurt or soy milk. It just says summer, and starts the day off with a smile.


 Quick and easy breakfasts    For those of us on the run first thing in the morning, it will taste great and take less time than the drive-thru!

A thank you to Cheryl for her Generosity

Cheryl  McKenzie had a contest for at picture finished of one of her rugs  to be sent to her. I really didn't remember, but had finished her rooster from the Peaceful Valley series for my sis in March, and wanted to show Cheryl how I'd done it. I love Cheryl's designs and also have the sheep from Peaceful valley and a couple of her quilt square designs. So after a couple of contacts by email and Facebook, she told me I'd be getting a rug pattern from her as my prize. Her next series of rugs was based on Bird Houses, so I requested one of those, expecting a smaller pattern of one of the individual houses. Wow, did my face light up when the package arrived this week. This is the largest of the rugs, that shows the individual 4 small houses altogether in one rug. This rug is almost as large as my retirement rug, so it will be awhile in the working. But what a fun rug this will be to work on! My dh and I have been birders(backyard variety) not checking off a lifetime list(other than verbally to each other). Still we have always fed birds to draw them in.

I haven't decided for sure, but think it would be fun to hook this as if the season is autumn. The colors would be wonderful to work with, and because we have lived in northern states it would whisper to us of lots of memories of our younger lives. Winter would be fun too, but it would change the look of this rug so much... I remember looking out the dining room window at my grandparents home at their bird feeder. Once that opens, it can bring several versions, grandpa filling the feeder, or feeding his "pet squirrel", snow swirling around and lots of hungry birds at the feeder or eating off the ground, and so many others.

Cheryl was in the midst of family illness and injury at the time this was all going on. She went the extra mile at a time when she was already dealing with so much. So gratitude for her gift really doesn't seem like enough. I can be such a drama queen, that her quiet dignity was quite touching to me, and inspires me to try harder. I do thank her with my heart and will enjoy working on her design. Nostalgia will be with me while the loops are pulled one at a time. The good old days of our life...

Catching up with a much overdue thank you!

I received a box filled with wonderful treasures a few weeks ago. I'm not sure if it even got mentioned here. Our AAPG An American Primitive Gathering celebrated it's 2nd anniversary and I receive gifts from my friend Merrie. She was stupendously generous, and I've long admired her work. She gets some of the credit for the beautiful red in my TX palette, as it is based in part on her favorite shade of red.

She sent me lots of wool, what hooker doesn't love that. But she sent two categories of it. Some for hooking and a couple of good sized pieces for the dye pot. I'll make sure her generosity is returned with one of the tertiary colors that will be coming up soon. Or maybe a neutral. She sent me a new color of dye that I haven't had a chance to use before, but it was on my list for my next order. A wonderful np of lavender, filled with lavender and backed in the most wonderful upcycled tweed from a gent's coat. She know what I like!
Charm squares, a kit to make a cat toy, the market bag itself, walnut shells for filling pinkeeps, even a swimsuit for our granddaughter. One of those great ones that help prevent sunburn... Tags, a pin for my hooking apron... well, a girl couldn't possibly ask for more. All of it "artfully" arranged on a rocking chair made for my husband's mother by one of her uncles. So now 4 generations of toddlers have rocked and used it like a very tricky step stool. Plain and simple, we'll keep it till she's older and has a babe of her own.