Friday Finish

I finally finished my third sampler

for my heritage wall.

This was the pattern by Blue Ribbon Designs

called Little Quakeresque.

I just added all of my

great grandfathers names & information

amongst the rows of motifs.

My maternal great grandfathers first,

then my paternal ones.

 

I chose this frame because I felt it 

somewhat mimicked

the motifs in the sampler.

Even the framer said this was a great choice.

Here it is up on my Heritage wall.

Then above it I hung the sampler I stitched

with mine and Bob's information.

Two up now. WOOHOO!

The first sampler I stitched is the one on the left.

It will stay here until I decide where to hang it.

The second one from the left is my Valentine stitch,

but I still kept it out because the colors looked pretty.

A little bit of Autumn tucked in...

...here and there.

My tribute rug to Peepers our cat watching over us.

A few dusktime pics.

Am loving my progress thus far.

My next one I am stitching is

 Laura Vorgensen, and it will be a long one.

Little Quakeresque took me 6 months,

and Laura is much bigger.

Much bigger.

Oh well...I knew this was not going to be 

an overnight process.

Will continue to stitch away.

At least I have something to show for now.

In other news,

Bob and I caught a bug from his aunt

who came in from Vegas.

We went and visited her and she gave it

to everyone who saw her.

UGH

Not much else going on.

Just still plugging away on the

last block of 

Halloween At Hawk Run Hollow.

This is a full coverage one...

and when I mean full coverage...

the entire block is stitched.

Will be glad to put this one to bed.

Hope everyone enjoys their weekend.

Any plans?

Heritage Blessings To All!

Janice 

September CupboardScape

Today's monthly CupboardScape

is just all about the colors of Autumn.

My favorite colors of the year.

 

In other news,

my two favorite girls came up to see me

on Saturday.

My daughter Michele and granddaughter Mikayla.

I took them to lunch at a restaurant 

along the river that they had never been to before.

I forgot to take a pic of our wonderful view,

but did take these of the food we ate.

I had Walleye.

Michele had a candied jalepeno smash burger.

It was so spicy hot she could not eat it all...

but she said it was good.

Mikala had Walleye Picatta.

All of us had Clam Chowder soup too.

Everything was good,

but no freighters went by...

maybe that why I  did not take pics of the river.

Sunday Bob took a rare day off from the store.

We went to is cousin Jimmy's house to visit with

his aunt who came in from Vegas.

His uncle no longer can travel far.

They live a stones throw from us.

Bob's aunt will be here for a week.

It was nice seeing her.

Bob made his lamb stew again,

 while I baked a blueberry cake.

They had fried chicken from the party store

in town, which is always good...

with baked beans and potato salad,

along with Tabbouleh which is a Lebenese salad.

Bob's cousin made the Tabbouleh.

He is Lebenese as well.

His dad and Bob's father were brothers.

We eat it with Syrian(Pita) bread.

Well have to go get me some breakfast.

Its a work day again for me..so back to the grind.

UGH

Hope everyone has a great week!

September Blessings To All!

Janice

Autumn Mantles

Autumn is fast approaching here.

Let the Fall decor begin.

Today both of my fireplace mantles....

and a look back at others from our gift shop.

Hope you enjoy.

 

In other news,

Tuesday morning was a rare treat for me

driving into work.

Started out my drive at 5:30am and noticed

the bright full moon with a bit of fog while 

getting into my car.

Here is a map of my drive.

If you look to the right, this is the town

just to the South of us

called Algonac.

We live about 1.5 miles North of town

 along  the St Clair River.

The straight line is the marsh I drive through.

The lake I drive around for a bit is Lake St Clair.

Anyways, back to my story. 

The fog disappeared once I got into town

as I was not driving along the river.

However it came back as I approached the marsh.

The moon started getting orange by then.

With the color of the moon and the fog

this reminded me of an old horror movie

when they would show the moon 

in a foggy cemetery.

It was an awesome view.

Driving past the marsh now heading for the lake,

the moon was getting bigger and more orange.

Again reminded me of a big ole Halloween moon.

Turning now to the SW and then due South

the orange moon was directly in front of me

setting down fast.

By the time I got to work the moon had already set.

As you can see I drive in all four directions

on my hour long drove to work and back. 

In other news.

Carla commented that she cannot wait for 

my Halloween decor.

So sorry to disappoint you Carla,

but I did not do my themed Halloween this year.

I thought moving the gift shop I would still 

be able to do them, however our antique store

is a building built in the 1800's with high ceilings.

We added LED lights,

with only one light switch for the front half

of our building. 

Bob could not remove the lights in 

the gift shop part, therefore

I could not add the lights I wanted to.

So no decorating going forward.

If you remember from years past,

 I had to start planning

my next year's theme each Summer before

 because I had to have

 my wholesale orders in for both Halloween

and Christmas by January.

Thus planning was done in advance.

 I did have a them and was already working on it.

By last December we knew we  were selling 

the gift shop so I did not order anything

for this year.

We were not sure if there would be enough space

since the "new gift shop" area is much smaller.

Therefore I did not purchase any Halloween

or Christmas for that matter this year.

Any hoot...if you followed all of that...

my theme was going to be a

Halloween Extravaganza.

I wanted Bob to make some Carnival games

out of wood of course, and I had planned on 

the space to sorta look like being inside a tent.

Here is a look back at the 4 years 

of Halloween mantles

from our gift shop.

We were in business for 4 years.

2020 Gone Batty

2021 Witches & Witchcraft

2022 Haunted Hotel

2023 Mad Scientist

I sure wish I could have done my them this year...

as I sure do miss my shop....

Mantle Blessings To All!

Janice

 

Sunday Starts

Not only am I in Fall mood,

am feeling Halloween too. 

Not sure what drew me to this Kathy Barrick pattern.

Am not really a pink person...but I wanted to

stitch this witch.

I am only going to do the center.

The floss colors were totally different from this picture.

UGH

I wanted to stitch the colors in this...

which is why I bought the pattern in the first place.

It took some time, but I chose my own colors

 by looking at the picture.

OK so here is where I first started.

Thought if I did this on a gray linen,

I could skip all of black in the pattern.

Got this far and was not feeling it

AT ALL. 

My second go round.

36 ct Crypt cloth.

Much better....even though now

I will need to stitch all of that black background,

which will take some time...

so not sure if it will be done in time for this year.

There is always next year and I am in no rush.

The colors are much darker here

 than in person though.

Next up is Penny Pumpkin.

Am using my own color conversion with

floss I have on hand.

When I make mine into a pillow,

I will make sure you can see all of the pennies.

Will also not be adding in the pinks.

Am doing this one on 28 ct Wren.

This linen has a gold and green undertone to it.

Perfect for a Autumn stitch.

I have the top border almost finished,

and started on the side.

Normally I do not do the borders all the way

around first...but wanted to this time.

I also changed up the pennies.

There were only 2 colored pennies that repeated.

I decided to make 4 different ones repeat.

The colors I chose were...

 Weeks Dye Works

 Onyx (black) & Arrowhead (white).

Classic Colorworks 

Autumn Spice (orange) & Baking Tin (gray)

DMC 781 ( gold)

In other news,

Judy asked why I did not add the letter "J"s

in Laura Vorgensen 1853. 

Well the pattern did not add them in....

which I was surprised because this sampler

pattern was a reproduction from an antique sampler.

The letter J came into the English language in 1634.

Obviously Laura herself decided to omit this

letter from each row of the alphabet she stitched.

However on the other hand....

many samplers from the 1700's to early 1800's

also omitted the letter J.

Again not sure why Laura why omitted them,

as this was her sampler the pattern designer 

created the pattern from.

Jeanie asked if Turkey Trot was a pillow.

Yes the pattern was made into a pillow,

and I intend on doing the same once finished.

A few posts back Cathy thought we sold our store.

Yes Cathy we sold our gift shop.

We had owned two stores and our parking lot was

between the two buildings. 

We still have our antique store....

however this one is for sale now too.

We would like to both retire.

When we were approached to sell the gift shop

last December, we agreed to it.

We closed at the title company in January.

The sale of this building paid off our mortgage

on both buildings.

With the cost of doing business now,

we made the right decision even though it 

was bittersweet at the time.

We still have a portion of the gift shop in our

antique store...so I still make stuff to add in there.

I hope I have answered everyone's questions.

If not, please remind me.

I so appreciate everyone taking the time to comment.

Myself am not able to get to my blog reading

daily, but I do try to catch up when I can,

because I know you all like receiving comments

as much as I do.

Off to make breakfast.

Well Chef Bob is actually making 

blueberry pancakes & breakfast sausage on the grill.

The pancakes come out so much fluffier.

Then I will finish up my house cleaning

and stitch on Laura Vorgensen some.

But I must write out my birthday invites first.

We are having a surprise 90th birthday party 

for my mom in October.

It will truly be a surprise because her birthday

is September 30th. 

Sunday Blessings To All!

Janice

Whippy Wednesday

Hoping you like my WIP's

for this month.

 

Let's start with Quaker Block.

Instead of using one color,

I chose to use three.

I changed out the crown at the top.

Inserted the date 1656.

Any clue on why I did that?

What is the significance of this date?

Let's play Final Jeopardy with the theme song.

Do Do Do Do 

Do Do Do

(Not even sure if there are words to the song) LOL

Any hoot the answer is:

What is the date the Quakers arrived in the US.

So since this is a Quaker block...why not add the date

they came to America.

Am loving the colors I chose for this stitch.

No rhyme or reason. 

Just picking as I go.

Turkey Trot is next.

When last I showed this one,

I had the first turkey finished.

Added the remaining acorns on top,

plus another motif.

Finished the top border.

Started on the last turkey.

This is my lunch stitch. 

Laura Vorgensen 1853 is the pattern

I chose to add my parents name,

and their wedding date.

while also adding the name of the church and town.

They were wed in a church on a hill.

This is where I left off the last time.

If you remember I wanted to see all of the letters.

Then when I picked it up again, did not want

it to be all of this blue.... 

So I frogged out the letters "E" and "F" 

in blue and went back

to the ghosted color.

I am only going to stitch two or three rows

 of the alphabets, instead of the six rows.

Decided this because it is such a large piece.

I need room for my personalization on this one.

Now this second row is very time consuming because

there is lots of confetti (color changes).

Each one of these letters takes me 

over an hour to complete. 

On the pattern this row is actually the last one.

Notice there are no letter "J's" in these.

The first row is the entire alphabet and numbers.

Next row I chose ends with the letter "W". 

I work on this one most Saturdays and Sundays.

Although very time consuming this piece

is very relaxing to stitch as I dont have

a timeframe on completing like the 

big Halloween one.

Speaking of Halloween...

Finally block 11 is completed on

Halloween At Hawk Run Hollow.

YAY!

I love the ghosts  coming out of

the locomotives smokestack.

I did change the color of the sign.

The pattern called for the lime green

of the grass, however the picture had

the gold color.

Me thinks this was an error in the pattern,

so I went with a gold floss that was in the mix.

This is my go to stitch nightly after dinner.

Left side.

Right side.

One more block to go.

Once this piece is finished,

I wont frame it right away...

but I do want it framed eventually.

I also have the pattern for 

Houses of Hawk Run Hollow,

but I am in no hurry to start another big

project right away.

Have something else planned for a monthly stitch.

Plan on starting this in October or November.

Just not sure yet when.

Stay tuned on that.

It will be a Sunday start at some time. ;-)

In other news,

yesterday was the worst fog ever.

I could not even see driving down my little street

to the main road it was that foggy.

I almost turned around.

Could hear the freighter in the river,

but could not see it...and they usually

turn on all of their lights in the fog.

Got better as I got closer to town which is a mile.

Hoping today is not the same.

 Chef Bob made Lamb Stew for dinner last night.

For those of you who like lamb,

this was his best recipe to date.

Bob is half Lebenese on his dad's side.

He made it just like his dad would have.

It was awesome and I am glad I have some to 

take for lunch today.

We have been going to a local meat market

monthly now to get our meat.

This market has monthly specials 

and for $100 you can pick from 5 meats.

This month one of them was lamb.

Let me tell you, the meat is always fresh

and it lasts almost a month for us on what we pick. 

We have been doing this for 4 months now.

Am spoiled now.

I dont want to go back to grocery store meat.

You order the day before and it is cut fresh.

Well have to get ready for work.

Hope everyone is enjoying their week thus far.

Please take a moment today

to remember those who lost their lives

this terrible day on 2001 when at

8:14am our great country was first attacked.

May we never forget.

God Bless The USA.

Happy Wednesday Blessings To All,

Janice