A quiet Saturday afternoon in the studio, plus knitting and cooking

The Village Houses is finally done, wrapped, and on its way to the new baby girl in my family.

All those watercolour flowers and leaves I painted are coming in handy.

The next one up for finishing is the turquoise Woodland Animals which is about lap sized. I cut the binding strips for it this afternoon and I will sew them on when I’m in the mood for easy sewing. Since I gave my oldest grandson, Ollie, an I Spy quilt about this size, I though this could go to 7month old Gussie.

My husband put up another hanger for a plant in my studio window. It’s a bit high; I’ll need a stool to water it, but it’s out of the way at least and the ivy will trail down eventually.
There are 2 air plants in the glass globe.

It’s such a sunny room and with not much shelf space, I can’t resist hanging the some plants.  Do you know, the hangers actually came from at least 30 some years ago when we had that first macrame craze, lol.

I really don’t save a lot of stuff. I guess these were tucked away in spare plant pots.

Anyway, when you can’t garden outside anymore, it’s nice to have the indoor plants.

I barely got these out in time just now. Well I burned a few. It’s my newest addiction - roasted chick peas. I cooked the chick peas from scratch this morning and I made hummus at lunch. The flavour is so much better than canned and homemade hummus tastes so much better too. And it’s so simple. Today, I had crackers and veggies with hummus. One of my favourites though is a toasted lettuce, hummus and tomatoe on whole grain bread.

I finished the stitching on the birch trees piece and had time to start this hoop of various textured fibers which will be used in the foreground.

I’ve been having difficulty posted videos directly here. If you’d like to watch a short video of free motion stitching on this you can click on the You Tube icon above right and  watch it there.

Next up, I’m adding a few leaves to the tops of the birches and then getting started on foreground foliage below. The hooped  textures that I’m stitching above will be used for the very foreground below.

I’m past the heel in the second stocking having finished the snowmen and having just started trees. I’m not  super happy with the snowmen- they’re pulled a bit tight. It’s the only motif where I had to carry 3 colors. I will add the eyes, nose and buttons with duplicate stitch later.

As a friend said, it’s only being used by my grandsons once a year and I’m sure they’ll be too excited to notice anyway.

With all my You Tube watching lately though, I’ve since picked up a couple hints for stranded knitting. Arne and Carlos, knitters and designers in Norway is a good channel. They do a lot of knitting designs and design yarn patterns such as the color patterns on Regia yarn.

Yesterday, we took the 2 hr+ run to Moncton to Hone Depot looking at showers. We are going to remove the tub in our main bathroom and put a shower in it’s place. You see with my back and hip issues, I find it quite difficult to get my leg over the tub and I only ever shower now, as much as I once enjoyed my soaks it’s no longer comfortable. 

We are considering a shower surround kitchen on top of a shower base;  however, today, I also got an estimate from a local store to do tile above the shower base. With labour and a few other things, it’s not much more. You see, there’s a window that I don’t want to cover, do there’s sone extra things to consider. We’re thinking on it. It’s a very small room and I already bought flooring on sale. 2 boxes is all we’ll need.

I will do sone before and after picks once we get to it.

I made a quick stop at the Fabric Cupboard and only picked up a few little things, including a couple batik fat quarters that could work well in my artwork. The little pattern, Split Charms, is on a postcard. I thought it would make a fun little baby quilt.