Bad News

 

Another week has come and gone. They go so fast!

Last Tue I met up with my best friend for the first time since early Feb. and we walked a lot while really social distancing.(Hard not to hug her) It did my soul so good to see her. We walked by two lakes..

And found a sweet little cottage with wonderful gardens..

And we sat in the park with Archie and talked and caught up on everything!

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I hauled out my yard sale frame I bought many years ago. 

I did not really know how to use it. It has little nail heads on the rollers that have tension but the sides I did  not know what to do..

I got lots of ideas on line but then it came to me it has holes on the sides so you can lace or sew it to the frame. I am way to lazy for that business.

So husband took a purtain frame I bought at the same sale that I never use, and took the holders off with the gripper strips and put them on this frame. Voila! it works perfectly! I need new gripper strips but that will be another time.

I have been hooking most nights so I am making great progress on my rug.

As you can see there is a weird squirrel on the top. I have tried to fix it but not sure what to do. And the little circle with a leaf hmmm not sure what that is either. 

I do not know if you can see the acorn I added where there was a weird little thing. 

My BIG project is digging out existing rock gardens and redoing the soil and plantings. There is a lot of sweat in this project as everything has to be done by hand. I planted these probably 30 years ago and I did not know what the heck I was doing but now I hopefully do.

I am transplanting what was there to other places and taking from a garden I want to clean out for good. I do not want to buy more plants the price of plants have really gone up. I bought for our little veggie garden was a bit shocked.

I love when something comes together. I paid a fair amount for the cement crow but because I never had the right place for him he has been living in our bookcase. I found this bottom a long time ago at the dump but never had anything to put on it Voila again! I will put it in my new replanted garden. I just need to find a way to paint the bottom black without it peeling. 

We still go from hot to chilly weather but we have had some really good porch time. We waited all winter for this porch time.

And I made a blueberry pie with the last of the blueberries we picked last year. So good if I do say so myself.

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So the bad news is I have been called back to work. Only for about 18 hours a week but I have enjoyed being home so much. I do not have a hard job but it can be stressful. Maybe I need to rethink things but I need the health insurance they offer so not much I can do I guess.

Have a wonderful week.

If You Don't Like The Weather...

Just wait a minute. So true for us here in New England.

We went into the heat, Then day two the humidity started,by day three we were horrid just so humid!! I hate to be hot!! We do not have air conditioning as it usually passes in a day or two.

And pass it has it went from 94 humid in the shade to 53 breezy and dry in the sun! We are going into the mid 30's tonight! This coming week seems to have lots of rain showers in it which we do need we are dry.

I finally got some clams. My husband does not like them so I took a large bowl and headed out on our porch. yummm

And then we had some Lobster I had them cook it at the store. I picked the meat out and we had lobster rolls on Croissants so good and quelled a craving I had for awhile. 

After the horrid heat broke I made a batch of cookies. These are King Arthur flour choc chip oatmeal. It calls for 3 cups of choc chips. I put a cup of white choc, milk choc, and dark choc. Oh they are a hit. We saw my daughter and family today and they loved them. Bake right to the instructions if you try them it makes a very big difference.

And speaking of my daughter and family, look who got her own phone! Sweet B, my daughter and son in law are so on top of things they have instituted lots of rules and they always follow through. So I am confident she will have fun and not abuse her privilege.

We had fun getting her phone number and texting her. 

Now onto my rug 

Still not a great picture next time it is nice and bright outside I will take it out to get a picture. I have chosen two blues to use for the animals. I have some tweaking to do but I like it so far. Yes the background is going to be on the lighter side. I was told there was a poem that went with this rug does anyone know it?

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Our governor is opening things slowly and kept the stay at home order for at least another two weeks. I think he is doing a good job under very difficult conditions. I am still home and so happy to be here. We go no where and the only people we have seen is our daughter and family every couple of weeks. I know some people feel we should loosen up but they did not live with us when my husband was deathly ill for a year plus. I do not want to live through that again. We are doing just fine here and feel safe.

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Have a wonderful week and stay healthy

Pickle Jar

We were able to get out on the water again this week.

It was just beautiful with the water sparkling. It was a calm wonderful couple of hours.

The wild lady slippers came back again this year. I am so happy they are a joy to look at and so pleased they chose our woods to grow in.

 

We have been gardening most days that the bugs do not 

drive us crazy! It is looking pretty good this is sweet wood-ruffs

My white bleeding hearts are in bloom I have to move them they never seem to get bigger.

And of course my hens and chicks are all tucked in my rock wall.

I love the look. And the best part they were a gift from a friend, (who has passed away now )from her garden. Makes me think of her every time.

Ok the Never Never rug. I have gotten a good start on it. But the funny thing is I had a color plan all set, gathered all the wool, and now I have changed the color plan at least two times since I started!

This is the tree trunk ( my husband does not like that bird there lol)

the bottom was the original plan, the the top was the back ground plan. So I hate the light for the tree and love the darker one so I am swapping the plan, light back ground dark tree. What do you think? Your honest opinion is wanted.

I have just the sweetest friends! I received this in the mail this week.

It is for sorting your strips and keeping organized. She must of seen my mess at Star Island last year lol. I love it and husband is impressed I do not have a pile of strips on the arm of the chair.

Holy pickle jar! this is the before and yes I love to snack on pickles!

This is after, I have a safe place to store my flour and no bugs can get in. On the top I write the expiration date that was on the bag. The worst part was getting the pickle smell out. 

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Some of the family had a gathering this weekend (9 adults 3 small kids not counting us) I did not feel it was the right time for us to break our quarantine but husband had to decide for himself. He decided it was best to wait for a smaller group to break our quarantine with. It made it very hard and sad but we have been through the fire (his bone marrow transplant) and our goal is to keep him as healthy as possible.

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We are in for some heat and humidity not my favorite but this too shall pass. Have a happy healthy week.

It's A Puzzle

My Azalea is in full bloom and just beautiful!

When you go near it all you can hear is BZZZZZZZ!

It makes the wait for spring all worth while.

The birds are enjoying the feeder too, we are getting so many different kinds. (Rose breasted gross beak)

Our Sweet B!!! we met at a park and had lunch, we all brought our own food, social distanced, and enjoyed each others company it was a lift for the soul! The sad part was not hugging ugggg! 

I run a books store and in the same space just separated by a wall is an ice cream store. So I know the college kids she has working for her pretty well, and  we do very well for such a small space. The bookstore is closed but they are doing take out. I slipped into the the bookstore to do some paperwork and yelled an order over the wall for take out for husband. When I got home one of them had written on my ice cream. Awww made my night. Such nice young adults makes you believe in the world again.

I baked the second half of my croissant dough this weekend. 

I had heard about croughnuts. Donuts made from croissant dough so I gave it a try, yummm it was so good and fluffy so glad I only made 4 donuts!

I finished my rug and I love it! Now on to the big one.

This is a biggie 31 x 65 and I have the perfect spot for it.

It is called the Never Never Rug.

The wool I wanted for a background I did not have enough of so I called around no luck, but a friend who owns a store said come on down. Mask on face in I went we did not hug (but we both thought how hard it would be to not to and it was!) I spent my Christmas gift certificate and then some!But to be in a wool store oh be still my heart!

I did some dying this weekend the colors are much more muted than they show here. I did a very dull blue over med gray and a camel brown. I am sure I will use them at some point.

Husband has been working on this puzzle for well over a month and a half! He loves puzzles when he comes in at the end of day. Well he was going though those 1000 pc puzzles every other day so I ordered a 1500 piece yikes and he did it! He has so much patience when I saw it I felt dizzy and went to hook lol. 

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I am out of work until at least June but maybe later. Fine by me I love being home I just miss the social part of life.

My friend and I are going to try to hike together or something while wearing masks and social distancing. We have been in the house so long that it makes my heart beat a little faster when I am out among people.

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I learned how to use Roku sticks to get cable. I still have to pay cable but I am going to return the boxes that we pay 7.95 each a month. I am returning 3 so that will help with the bill. I have a Roku Tv and learned how to do that and we bought 2 Roku sticks for the other two TVs. Walmart 29.00 each so it will not take long for us to recoup our money. It kills me each time I open that cable bill and no we have no premium channels.

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Have a wonderful healthy week!

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Weather Or Not

While I am still not working I did make it up early enough to see a sun rise. We have been getting lots of weird weather lately more on that later.

This is my husband, king of the face masks. He had a bone marrow transplant years ago and had to live in a face mask. Now that we are back in them his cousin and my rug hooking roomie when we go away sent him some she made. He loves them! Said they are the best ones he has worn. She also has a blog you can visit her here.

I miss her like crazy all of our rug hooking outings have been cancelled I have been just sick about it.

Since I have not been called back to work I have been baking!

Yes croissants! so much work but so worth it. I froze half the dough in the freezer for another time as it makes so many. But if you have not tasted one straight out of the oven you have been missing out. 

I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies. Funny thing about cookies if I do not eat one on the day it is made all warm and gooey I probably will not eat one later. 

I did another bleeding batch of wool. I didn't get anything I will use in my current rug but I will use them another time.

And speaking of my current project I am on the last of the border for this rug. I like the results and hopefully will be done soon.

Now the weather! Grrr we got up Sat morning and look what we had.

Anything that was blooming was covered! poor things. 

It didn't last long but it has been cold and windy and just crappy.

I am so done with the cold, I walk just about everyday about 3 miles plus (with lots of hills)while I am still not losing weight (could be the baking lol) I have lost a size so I continue to walk. 

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We have been watching Acorn TV mostly British TV and have loved it so we decided to subscribe to Brit box. We used the free trial and love it so much we subscribed. They are the BBC so much to watch! I pay yearly for both of them you get two months free. 

Paying yearly for both does not come to one month of cable I need to do something about that cable I hate them more and more all the time! 

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Well I guess that is it for now we are still pretty much home all the time. Which is fine I am never bored here but I miss family and friends so much. I hope you are all healthy and doing well.

Spring Is That You?

This is our tallest peak Mt Washington as you can see it has plenty of snow. How beautiful is that??? They had 4 feet of snow in April.

This Weekend the weather was beautiful. We got out on a small pond to see the loons back from their winter vacation. 

This is a small pond tucked off an old dirt road in the the middle of no where. We go there often in the summer is it quiet and does not have one camp on it. But today we drove up and there were 10 trucks!

We were in complete shock! So we looked around everyone was local all NH plates with local dump stickers. I guess everyone was trying to get away from the infiltraters from other states who have taken over here, locals are not so happy about it either. about 90 percent were at safe distance from each other fishing off the banks. We launched out kayaks and headed out. We were not out long when most of the others called it a day and were gone.  It was lovely to paddle and watch the loons. 

My mother's African violet is in full bloom makes me so happy to see it each morning when I am having coffee. She passed away 11 plus years ago I miss her still.

The weather! Well we didn't get the snow predicted yahoo. But we did get a couple of days of rain. So I worked getting a penny rug together, now for the stitching.

I also had time for some hooking my rug is coming right along. I also color planned my next rug and it's a biggie more on that next time.

I saw this and really had to think about it. No I would  not want to read it. How about you?

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Our state is starting to open up slowly it may mean I will go back to work. I have enjoyed being home and not sure I am ready to go back just yet.

Have a wonderful week.