Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Hump Day!

Welcome to Hump Day or what some people refer to as Wednesday.  I've been sick with allergies and other monthly problems but was in the office today and guess what!  The tomatoes are in bloom and the lettuce needs another cutting.



I'm finally working again on my test projects which is a hard thing to do when your eyes are having trouble focusing.  I think I might have to take in my cheaters to see if they will help.  But since I can't show you my progress on the test projects, let me show you DeKalb, IL weather as of around 5 p.m. 6.14.17.  I took some pictures when I left my building.  I thought that the cloud formations were interesting.






It's time that I sign off because my eyes don't like to focus right now.  I'll try to post later in the week.

Everybody have a good day.


Monday, June 5, 2017

Manic Monday

Aren't all Monday's manic?  Today especially since it was the first day back to work after vacation.  I'm making through all my emails (100) of them and am now on lunch so I thought I would catch up on some blogging.

My vacation was pretty good.  Didn't do much but relaxed.  The last two days were a bit bothersome since the allergies kicked in and even with my Benedryl Chasers after Zyrtec mornings, I still was sniffling all day.  It's not as bad today so that is good.

I signed up to do a second quilt test pattern and went and bought the material for that.  I am about 1/4 of the way done with the other test pattern so that is good.  I got lazy and didn't even work on quilting stuff for most of the vacation.  Still I should be on track for turning in the results of testing.

Yesterday I did manage to work on my mini owl cross stitch.


That is approximately 1000 stitched.  I want to finish up that last 10 x 10 block (where you see partial stitches) tonight.  I'm debating if I want to start on the Holy Grail one.  I might since I have all but one color of floss for it.  I'll see how I feel.  I need to make sure to spend more time on quilting right now because of the test patterns.  In the hot weather, however, I prefer to work on cross stitch.

I came back to work and couldn't believe how large my AeroGarden was.


Theresa, my friend who works at the Graduate School convinced me to snip it because the lettuce was just sitting there.  Hopefully that will rejuvenate it.  :)  That being said, here is a picture of my first lettuce harvest.  Not a lot but enough for a side salad.  The leaves are nice and tender and tasty.   Yummmmm.


That's the report for today.  Everybody have a great day.

Thursday, June 1, 2017

Vacation Thursday

That's right.  I'm on vacation or staycation as it is called and I should be very productive.  Notice that word should.  That should tell you how my staycation is going.  That's ok.  I am relaxing and that IS what a vacation is all about.  So what have I been doing?

Well I've been catching up with some of my gaming friends on the internet.  Offering sympathy to some and congrats to others.  I signed up for a second test pattern from The Quilt Pattern Magazine.  I know.  I must be a glutten for punishment since they BOTH are going to be due around the same time period.  I have been going through old pictures (Throw Back Thursday after all) and I am slowly been working on projects.  So let's get to the pictures shall we?

I posted on Facebook my group of pictures for Throwback Thursday.  I thought my cousin in Alaska might be able to identify them and that led to a nice back and forth conversation on Facebook about the pictures.  They are from my mother's side of the family and Gayla (my cousin) is from that side and has done quite a bit of research into that ancestry.  Thanks to Gayla I found out that my Grandmother Chamberlain (Mertie Christman) had sisters and brothers!  Really?  I never knew that.  We only ever knew Grandma.   It turns out that Grandma's siblings in order of birth were:

Besside
Mertie (grandma)
Effie
George Ray
Elizabeth
Hester

WOW!  That's a lot of new relatives, especially knowing that they had children and married, etc.


This was my throwback Thursday collage.

Then I found out that the kids were Grandaunt Bessie's.  This is Grandaunt Bessie.

This is Grandaunt Bessie and was also the throwback Thursday photo that Gayla posted. :)


We also talked about trading off some recipes which led me to look around AND I found some of my mother's recipes that I inherited had recipes from some of my relatives.  I love how mom would make notes and rename things.  For instance she had "Ethel Koltz's Pistachio Salad" and then at the bottom of the index card the recipe was written on it said "Ethel is married to a 2nd cousin in Hinckley.  Great people!  I love those notes!  Now Gayla has some new leads to look up since I remember that the 2nd cousin was called Harold.  It will be interesting to see what she can find out.  I also ran across an older cookbook.


Mom also made notes in that cookbook.


The check marks were recipes she was interested in making and the note about the sorority refers to the time she was a sorority cook as well as their housemother.  She drew two salaries for that and had fun.  She did that AFTER she retired (for the first time).

She also liked to makes notes in the back of the book.


Perhaps after my tomatoes and lettuce are ready to eat I'll be putting in a recipe (or at least their picture).  Speaking of their pictures, I snuck into the office this week before anybody was there and took these pictures of the progress of lettuce and tomatoes.



Aren't they doing great?!

I didn't let those things distract me from trying to do some crafting.  Besides signing up for another test project (and yes I am working on them), I collected up and got organized another project for cross stitch.


I have only one skein of floss to get but am having trouble finding it.  I need to double check the pattern and make sure that I didn't mark down the wrong number.  The other skeins are all wound up on the bobbins and put into my plastic storage for the project.



The company I got the pattern from also included cards which have the symbols already printed on them.  So I took some of the floss and put them on the cards.  That way I don't have to carry around the big box if I don't want to.  


That's all for now.  I hope everybody has a great day.

Whew! Time for a break!

I have been busy these last few days.  I even got out my sewing machine and did some 9 patch blocks so I could continue on with Fleur.  Do y...