Furstaneeta

Back again.  Lots of things happening, but every time I think of posting, my list of furstaneetas surfaces.   You know furstaneetas, right?  That's "First I Need To", frequently followed by thenaneetas, or "Then I Need To".  I plan to put out my autumn decor, but furstaneeta clear Wiggy's assorted technocrap off the hearth, coffee table and floor; thenaneeta vacuum and dust the living room, dining room and foyer.  Down to the basement to get the boxes of decor, but furstaneeta get past Wiggy's stereo stuff, scattered over the basement floor (my interpretation) or carefully laid out where he can find everything (his interpretation).  And thenaneeta drag the boxes upstairs, while not tripping over the dogs -- Molly supervises, Milo protects me from the Evil Horrible Boxes. (I just live here.  I know I'm not in charge.)

Anyway, the furstaneeta for posting is that I still haven't found my camera software for uploading and editing.  But this will just have to be a photoless post, for now.

I'm back to working on Midnight Watch.  I'd like to get this done and framed by Hallowe'en, so I moved it back up the rotation again.  I'm allowed to do that -- it's my rotation, right?  I also pulled out the 2000 JCS ornament issue, and finished a Pat Thode/Heartstrings Santa I have been promising myself to do for years.  I think he's a bit big for an ornament, so this may turn into a flatfold finish.  This will, of course, necessitate a trip to Joann's or Village Quilting for finishing fabric.  (Darn.  Fabric shopping.  How will I ever survive?)  I bet I have Christmas fabric in my stash . . . but that would be a furstaneeta, to find the stash in the first place.

And in wildlife news, we finally caught and dispatched the skunk that's been plaguing the dogs.  We don't let the dogs out in the back yard anymore until one of us has checked the bushes and hiding-spots for any lurking beasties.  When Wiggy went out late Sunday afternoon to beat the bounds, he saw that same skunk evict an opossum twice its size from bushes in the neighbor's yard.  It was still limping, still showing no fear and still out in daylight -- all bad news.  So we borrowed our friend Dave's Havahart trap, and caught the thing on Tuesday night.  We'll still check the yard before we let the dogs out, though.

There's a craft fair and a cider festival on Saturday at Diehl's Orchard and Cider Mill in Holly.  And it'll be sunny and in the 60's!  Can't wait!  I'll work on that camera software furstaneeta so I can post some pictures.

Arts & Apples. And dessert.

We moved here from North Carolina in mid-May, and one of the first things I did was to bookmark Michigan Festivals & Events, because Wiggy has been telling me about all the fun things that go on over the weekends here. 

Last Saturday was the 45th annual Arts & Apples Festival in Rochester, and since it's so close to home we put it on the calendar.  Wiggy discovered two weeks ago that they also hold an apple pie and apple dessert competition during the festival.  Now, I love to bake -- I do a killer cheesecake, and there's a lemon buttermilk poundcake I make that people in Wilson, NC call "crack cake" because it's that addictive.   But I've never entered a baking competition before, and I thought that this might be the time to start.

So I went through my favorite apple dessert recipes -- my piecrust needs a lot more practice before I enter it into any competitions -- and found a Bavarian apple torte that I'd made once before and thought needed some tweaking.  And I began to tweak.  Brown sugar, white sugar?  Whole wheat flour, or would that be too heavy?  The apples, the spices, the cream cheese filling . . . Wiggy, Mom and several friends ate an awful lot of torte in two weeks.

There were 13 desserts entered, and 12 pies.  To my complete and babbling shock, I won the blue ribbon for desserts!  This is the link for a post from Oakland County Moms with the recipes for my torte and the winning pie.  And this is a link to a story filed by CMNTv, a local cable channel -- you can see what I mean by "babbling shock". 

All the pies and desserts were cut up and sold by the piece after the competition, and I came home with a blue ribbon.  I am still flat-out amazed -- but I'm going to do that again.  That was fun!

Day, interrupted

Well.  Wasn't that exciting.

This time Molly got hit right in the face and chest, poor baby.  She and her brother have had two H2O2 baths, and she still has traces of the smell on her.  I haven't touched any stitching yet because I'm scared that any smell I have on my hands will transfer to the linen.  Something tells me that hydrogen peroxide and baking soda won't make a sampler happy!  So I'm not taking any chances.  I'll probably be able to stitch again on Friday.

There is an arts festival I've been looking forward to -- the Art & Apples Festival in Rochester.  It's a juried art show with craft booths and vendors, and also -- I just found out a couple of days ago -- an apple pie or dessert competition.  I've never entered a baking competition before, but I'm going to enter a Bavarian apple torte in this one.  I'm wildly excited about it.  Wiggy and Mom have agreed to be my test audience, and I'll probably drag a few friends into it as well.  I'm happy with the flavor and texture (just enough crunch, just enough juice), so now comes the part where I tinker with appearances.  Saint Julia, pray for me!

It heard me!

That wretched skunk that was on my mind?  Apparently it reads this blog, because when I let the dogs out at 10:30, it was right there in our yard and sprayed them both.  They've both had their hydrogen peroxide/baking soda/Dawn bath, but I can't tell if they're fully deodorized because the whole freakin' yard smells of skunk.

Shoot me now.

Snapshot of a Wednesday morning

I saw a version of this on Annette's Acre and I like the idea of a "snapshot" once a week.  Thanks, Annette!

Outside my window …..sunshine, a light breeze, and the beginnings of a hot day (for Michigan)

I am thinking about …. the Bavarian apple torte I'm auditioning for a baking competition in two weeks

I am thankful for …… having the time to bake!

I am wearing …..stretchy denim jeans, a lavender t-shirt and battered old moccasins

I am loving ….not having a job to go to (for now)

I am stitching …. DT's Marriage of Minds

I am looking forward to ..... the Kindred Spirits Sampler Guild meeting in a week and a half

I am hoping ….. to find the software for my Nikon Coolpix camera, so I can reload it onto my computer

I am drooling over …. Abigail Colby's Workbasket  Accessories

I am sorely tempted by …..the beginner's quilting class at Quilt-n Friends, even though it doesn't start till October

I am hearing …… WQXR (my favorite classical station from NYC days -- gotta love streaming internet radio) and my cat Five who is snoring quietly on the desk in front of the monitor

I am reading …The Duke's Children, by Anthony Trollope

On my mind ….. the skunk that may have taken up residence under my neighbor's back porch.  Milo hasn't yet figured out that consorting with skunks earns him an industrial-strength bath and exile to the backyard for 24 hours.

Hoping your day is interesting and creative --

Catching up

How did it get to be Friday already?  I swear it was just Tuesday a minute ago . . . wasn't it?

I've been working steadily on Marriage of Minds.  This is not a pattern to be hurried through -- not that any needlework is to be hurried through, but especially not this one.  It's big, it's complicated and it's a bit finicky as to stitches, all of which are good things, and I expect to be many months on this project.  (Our tenth wedding anniversary is in January 2012, and it might actually be finished by then!)  Quite a change from Midnight Watch, with its big sections of fill-in-the-moon.  So I'm taking my time making sure that the branches of the tree are properly placed, and the leaves, and the roses . . . .  Y'all understand.

I've found some really lovely tiny samplers on a French blog, Echevette.  I fell in love with her freebie chart "Tea Time", and I think it would make an exquisite needlecase.   She has a lot of charming patterns, and even those of us who can't read French can appreciate her work -- we stitchers all speak the language of needle and floss, anyway.  (There is a button for a Babelfish translation on the webpage, but personally I think Babelfish makes matters worse, not better.)

Tomorrow we go to Fogler's Greenhouse and Greenmarket in Rochester.  Wiggy is packing up his cameras, so there should be some photos of our adventure.

Woodward Dream Cruise 2010

I was never "into" cars the way a lot of my friends were -- gearheads and dirtballs (as they were called in my high school) spoke a completely different language, and I didn't think I could learn it.  I could tell a Mustang from a Charger from a Barracuda, because those were what was in our high school parking lot, but that was about it.  That was Long Island, in the early 1970's.

Fast forward to SE Michigan, 2010.  The annual Woodward Dream Cruise was this Saturday, and Wiggy and I went off to see it, armed with folding chairs, water bottles, many cameras (that's Wiggy's thing), and umbrellas.  Thank God for the umbrellas -- it rained almost the whole time we were there.  Wiggy ran into a friend of his, who invited us under their tent, so we didn't have to hold umbrellas over the camera.  Thanks, Grumpy!

But the cars.  Wow.  Just -- wow.  Yes, the muscle cars were there and suddenly I was a senior in high school again (hi, Rene!  hi, Tom and Fred and Geoff and all the boys who owned three cars and cannibalized two for the parts to make the third one run!).   And I found myself falling in love with cars that are older even than I am.   1940-something Mercuries; 1930-something Ford pickups; 1957 BelAirs. 

WANT.  I have told Wiggy he can pick one up whenever he gets a chance.

Who knew?  35 years after the fact, I become a classic car buff.

Not much stitching this weekend.  After the Cruise, I picked Mom up at the airport and collapsed into bed early.  Sunday was New Member Welcoming at our church, and then out for a fancy-schmancy lunch at Culver's.  We love Culver's, it's our favorite guilty pleasure.

According to the rotation, it's time for me to put Midnight Watch aside for a while and pick up The Marriage of Minds.  I need to reconfigure my lap stand to accommodate the roller bars first, and I'm eager to get started on this one.  It's big and elaborate and has lots of interesting stitches -- I can always count on Drawn Thread to give me a good challenge.

Midnight Watch 8-19-10

Midnight Watch 8-19-10
Originally uploaded by anyafire1

I've been working on this for about a week, and I'm pretty pleased with my progress. Think I'll take a break from filling in the moon and work on the cornstalk (cornstalk?) on the left.

A Hallowe'en rarity for me

I'm not really a Hallowe'en stitcher.  Autumn, yes; harvest, yes; Thanksgiving, yes; Hallowe'en not so much.  I think because so many of the witch and monster and jack o'lantern patterns strike me as a little too cutesy or twee -- not really my thing, you know?  But I fell in love with Blackbird Designs "Midnight Watch" and have been stitching on it for a week now.  Love the border, love the checkerboard pumpkins, love the cat silhouette against the big full moon, love the whole thing!  It's Hallowe'en, it's a sampler, it's not at all cutesy, and I'm a happy camper.

I do wonder about the floss requirements, though.  The pattern notes state that it requires two full skeins of CC Gingersnap and GAST Gingersnap.  There's no note about extra amounts of any other color, so I assume from that omission that you only need one skein of the other colors.  Now the cat silhouette, the vast majority of the border, the trim on the house and at least one-half of the alphabet are done in CC Blackbird.  I've done the cat and one-third of the border, and I've already gone through more than one whole skein of Blackbird.  I'm thinking it'll take a good three skeins, maybe four, to finish the piece. 

Is anyone else doing Midnight Watch?  Are you finding the same thing about the amount of Blackbird needed?

Why "early Sunday morning"?

Because it's the first day of the week; the day of rest, the day of connecting with your God, in whatever form or location you find God. Because Sundays are also for having brunch, reading the paper, having an extra cup of coffee, taking some time to slow down and see what's actually going on around you. And in my case, doing some peaceful stitching, maybe baking something sweet that will put smiles on the faces of those I love. That's the best part.