when we last met . . .

Gosh, I can hardly believe that September has come and gone and it's OCTOBER!  

We spent an extra long weekend at Guntersville Lake (the Merkel crew and I).  We came home on Monday, and I left for my sister trip to Alaska!  It was glorious.  We stayed with my nephew and his family in Kodiak, and checked off *all* the Alaska boxes!  We saw bears . . .

I caught a salmon (pink) . . .

Took a three sisters photo in front of the Three Sisters mountains . . .

And saw a LOT of incredibly beautiful scenery . . .

And did a LOT of shopping.  I even found a cute little fiber shop in Kodiak, The Rookery. 

While I was there, I worked (and finished—lots of airplane time to and from Alaska!) on a very cute little Halloween cross stitch piece:

It's October Nine Patch by Primrose Cottage Stitches, stitched on 25 count Vintage Country Mocha. And while I worked on it in Alaska, Ellie worked on it in Alabama!

Her first 25 count linen.  A big deal! Her thirteen year old eyes are much better suited to this than mine. LOL!  I may hand over my Mayflower piece on 40 count linen!  ;)

I continue to work on my Lady Halloween. 

I adopted a method that the gals in my "First Monday" cross stitch group use.  Stitch one strand of floss per day.  And I often find that a second strand follows easily.  It's so doable and you know the old joke . . . how do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time! 

Speaking of elephants, Roll Tide ROLL!! 

Great game yesterday.  I'll freely admit that I was concerned for the majority of the first half.  I was super glad we scored and tied it up right before the second quarter ended. Shew! 30-14 was the final score and I'm glad that one is behind us!

I watched the game with Sarah and Gail, my inner circle stitching sisters! It was our monthly Saturday gathering.  I worked on my cross stitch.  As did Gail.  She's working on this beautiful piece:

Isn't that gorgeous??!  And Sarah shared her finished center of the Halloween quilt she's working on:

I love this SO much!  The colors are just spot on and mostly all from her stash.  I'm so in awe of that fact!

We spent the day together, laughing and chatting and stitching and watching the game.  Before we realized it, it was after 6 PM!  I walked them to their cars and found this scrumptious sky—

Cotton candy clouds!

Coming up it's BIRTHDAY WEEK for me!  Hurrah!!  I'll kick it off tomorrow by working on my Halloween cross stitch; some slow stitching!  Linking up with Kathy's Quilts.

:)

sloooooowly stitching . . .

It was a relatively slow week, stitch-wise.  Our church's VBS started today, and I spent a lot of the preparing for that!  I did get some stitching in, though.  Almost finished up the standing pilgrim on my Coming to America piece . . . 

I have about 90 minutes of free time from my last VBS music rotation to the closing rally, so I'll take this project with me and work on it each night.  Maybe I'll have all *three* pilgrims on the boat finished by week's (or VBS's) end.  

I am still unpacking and organizing things from the move . . . especially Nook things.  In doing some of that, I came across this little snowflake embroidery that was ninety percent finished . . . 

What in the world?  I started this in December, 2019.  I know this because I blogged about it, sharing this photo . . .

I was flummoxed!  It was SO close to being done. I'd pulled up the blog photo to see exactly which metalic flossed I'd used.  Once I'd found that, I began to stitch up the remaining gold spires.  That's when I remembered.  I had used a new product—Sulky's Stick & Stitch Stablizer. The project got too close to a hot iron, and it shrunk the stabilizer, so the pattern wasn't right.  I pulled out my new stitches and soaked the embroidery to get rid of the stabilizer. I left it out overnight to dry . . .

Not terrible!  I'd lost the pattern, so I "winged" it. (Not to fear.  I contacted Mary Corbet of Needle 'n Thread, from whom I'd purchased it, and she emailed me the pattern file today.  Thanks, Mary!!) I hosted a stitcher's group for my Sassy girls on Saturday, and finished up the stitching on it then.

It's not great, because my winging it wasn't great, but I'm glad it's finished.  I don't remember what my original plans were, but I've got some great metalic Christmas fabrics that I think I'll frame it with!

Another thing I found was a bag of HST pieces from my Christmas quilt.  Those weren't quite as old as the embroidery, but still date back a couple of years or so.  I laid them out a couple of different ways to decide how I wanted to stitch them together.  I came up with Harlequin Christmas, Jack-in-the-Box Christmas, and Pinwheel Christmas:

I'm leaning toward the Pinwheels, but all three have eye interest. It's a mini piece ... about big enough for a center table mat.  

In other news . . . more important news . . . family news:  granddaughter Olivia graduated from elementary to middle school *and* was awarded Student of the Year!  Pictured here with my James:

So very proud of her!!  Isn't she just beautiful?!

And finally, because we all know what a sucker I am for a sunset, here was the view from my balcony on Friday evening . . . 

It was pretty brilliant there, but to the south it was soft pink and blue . . . cotton candy skies! The whole western horizon was glorious!

I'll spend the rest of the week singing and dancing all our Magnified VBS tunes. Crooning!

:)

grandsons et al. . . .

Backposted (because how ever many years from now I'd regret not having posted these pictures along with their stories)!

There are eleven and a half years between my oldest grandson . . .

Any my youngest grandson . . .

And they are both just so precious to me!  Sawyer has taken up mountainbike riding, and is on a club mountainbiking team!  

His dad (my handsome son!) is one of the coaches, so they've been enjoying riding trails together, prepping for the real deal.

Ezra enjoys (?!) the company of his sisters.  Bless his heart.  He has four mammas.

Having that many little mamas can be . . . well . . .

Exhausting. ♥  Such a beautiful baby!

Sunsets have been really beautiful in the camp of late:

I will never tire of the canvas of a sunset!

And I found a new local bakery, L'Etoile Patisserie, that is absolutely darling . . .

And their pastries are absolutely scrumptious!

And it's become a favorite weekly stop on my way into work on Thursdays.

Oh yeah.

:)

grand ol' time . . .

So with a crew far away in California, and a crew kinda doing their own thing this year, Todd and I just chilled (on the boat on the lake) and let the pictures of the good times roll in! First, I had delivered the placemats for the local crew . . .

I got a good one of the girls (well, two of them ... Evey had a headache that evening, poor dear) and a good one of the placemats.  So you get to see them both. 

Before I get too far into the Halloween antics, let me also remark that first and foremostly, Sunday was also June Madelyn's birthday!!  No tricks — she's our *treat*!!

Here she is carving her pumpkin!  Sweet girl -- hard to believe she's NINE! Thankfully, a quick trip into San Diego last week saw an end to her cast—after a good MRI! Yay and Happy Birthday, Junie June!

The California crew agreed to themed costuming this year.  They went as characters from Adventure Time.

Marlene, Finn, and Princess Bubblegum.  Too cool for school!

They appeared to have done very well in the trick or treating department!

For the local crew, Halloween is a family affair.  This year the girls and Jocelyn read through the entire series of The Little House on the Prairie.  May I introduce to you Pa, Ma, Mary, Laura, Carrie, and Jack the brindle bull dog . . .

Isn't that fun?  Ma and Jack the brindle bull dog actually stayed home and manned the door, while Pa and the girls hit the trail . . .

They've got their trick or treat bags! It tickles me ... the bags work quite well with the costumes (which again, I didn't make ... though I did hem three of the four dresses!)

And just to make sure you didn't miss this trick . . .

The little treat "Laura" is holding here is Jack the brindle bull dog!  How precious is that ... Ezra's first Halloween!

The local girls also did well in the trick or treating department . . .

It appears those bags were plenty big enough!

So ... good times all around.  Even for us . . .

Perfect sunset for the day; glowing and a soft, pumpkin orange.

And just like that, it's November. *blink*

:)