Cucumber Harvest, Day 1

Day One of the cucumber harvest yielded 21 cucumbers! I just might have to buy a canner if this keeps up. There are TONS of baby cukes on my plants.

What have you been doing this summer?

In May and June I watched many baseball games--my son's team, Sharon Elks, came in first place in the Sharon Farm League with an undefeated record! We (we = me, my husband, my parents, my in-laws, my sister-in-law, my grandparents, family friends) really enjoyed watching the games--and really enjoyed the great coaching by my son's coaches, Coaches Voytik, Shaffer, and Weisen. These men were patient with the kids and really taught them baseball skills and sportsmanship.

For the Fourth of July we were at Kibbe's Island near Tionesta. This is a nice campground for families, and they have a tremendous firewords display. We went up last Friday and came home on Monday evening. It really was a relaxing weekend. Andrew was so busy with his friends--fishing, playing baseball, swimming, and riding bikes, that Michael & I hardly saw him! We all had a great time.

Now it's time to catch up with the weeding and the laundry! Followed by lots more summer fun.

2 New Patterns!

I have two new patterns for sale--"Crown & Tulip Four Patch" and "Bee Skep Pillow."



"Bee Skep Pillow" is made entirely of wool, although I think a Woolies flannel from Maywood would be terrific for the body of the pillow. If you don't have rick rack, or aren't a fan of rick rack, embroidery stitches would work just as well to show the 'layers' of the bee skep.



"Crown and Tulip Four-Patch" is wool appliqued on a cotton background. I had a nice plaid which I cut up to make the crowns. I used the colors in the plaid as a starting point for the other colors used for the applique.

These are both great applique projects for spring! They are both smaller, doable projects you can work on in the evenings after you've spent the afternoon cleaning winter out of the garden.

On an entirely different note and to follow up from my last post--Andrew's thumb is fine. Wrestling is over and now we're in the middle of baseball.

After a long time away . . .

Happy Valentine's Day! I realize I'm one day late, but compared to the fact that I'm 6 months late with a post, I think that one day isn't too bad--it's all relative.

To celebrate Valentine's Day I made my own "heart tree" using red and pink fabric scraps I had, and steam-a-seam 2 double stick fusible web. Basically I cut two squares the same size (5", 3", 2", etc) and made sandwiches of fabric, steam-a-seam, and fabric--with the wrong sides of the fabric against the steam-a-seam. Make sure you peel the paper off of the fusible web! After I fused the sandwiches together with the iron, I cut out hearts. I used regular thread to make a loop to hand the hearts. This was a simple, fast project. I really liked my "heart tree"--it added some color to our snowy winter. Here are some close-up shots:

Yesterday and today Andrew has been home sick with the stomach flu. He also has a broken thumb--he broke his thumb at wrestling practice about a month ago. This afternoon he gets an xray to see if he can stop wearing the splint. Fingers crossed!