Every Blooming Thing in May

Yesterday had me on the hunt for some woven fabric, and that was my highest priority. Still, I'd stitched enough on the Stitch sampler that I decided to brave the more difficult stitches. The first one was this little flower, stitched with a buttonhole stitch in the center, and then bullion stitches all around. I wouldn't say I've mastered the stitch, but it's looking better than the first ones I did a while back.

The next little flowers were done with cast-on stitch, which is quite a bit harder, and gives me fumble fingers to a greater degree. The first one wasn't bad. I had a little trouble with the one middle-right, but it's good enough. (My life's motto: My best is good enough.)

The next one went a little less well, but I'm still calling it good enough. I had the stitches too close together in the middle, and the little yellow French knot was nearly lost under all the pink floss. I was able to find it and bring it back to the top with a little fancy needle digging.

Not surprisingly, the last one was the best of the three.

They aren't perfect, but I'm happy enough with them. I doubt taking them out and doing them again would yield any better results. Practice makes perfect, and I need lots more practice.

So, now I've hooped it up in the next position, and I'm ready to go again. There are a few more of these fancy stitches, but the cast-on stitches at the top are probably the most challenging of the whole piece.

Having spent too much time on that, I headed out to the fabric store a little later than I'd planned. I found just what I was looking for in this woven charcoal gray. I believe this is a Kaufman fabric. What I noticed about the bolt label was that it came from India. I'll need to get this one washed too, and then I'll be ready to start my project sometime later this month.

In my perusing, I came across this one. It isn't a woven fabric, and so I won't be using it in my quilt. Still, I liked it. I'll use it for something else.

Back home, I needed to water the flower pots, and so I took a tour around to see what's blooming. The bleeding heart is finally getting some real flowers.

The Andromeda is looking fantastic.

One of the azaleas is starting to open. This one is so brightly colored, I actually have to back off on the color saturation in Photoshop.

The flowers on the clematis are beginning to open. We had two clematis vines when we first moved in here. The other one quickly died, but this one has been a hearty bloomer every year.

Some of the rhododendrons are starting to open...this peachy one is usually the first.

Surprisingly, I noticed one flower has opened on this purple one as well. The rest of the buds are still tightly closed.

Also, the lilac is very close. I expect it will open in the next day or two.

With the pots all watered and happy, I finally made it into the sewing room around 2:30, which gave me just enough time to make it most of the way across the next section of the pansy.

I had the sixth of seven 4 x 4's laid out for sewing when I quit for the day.

I'll have plenty of time to finish that off today. If I can get well along today, I just might have the mosaic finished before Sunday, which is my goal.

Smitty has been playing a five-year-old's game of  "just five more minutes" at the end of the day. We get the kitties in well before dark. He'll come straight to the door and then walk on by, begging me to chase after him. The game is much more fun for him than it is for me, and so I just ignore him for a few minutes. And that makes it no fun at all, so he comes to the door and meows to be let in. And how bad can it be, really? When I saw him a few minutes later, he was here.

Ahhhhhhh...this is the life. And he's tired after being outside for most of the day. So funny.

Today Sue and I are meeting up for oatmeal. I'm not sure if we'll walk or not since Sue informed me that she'd injured her knee. She was going to decide over oatmeal if her knee is up for walking. We'll probably cut it short if we walk at all. When I get home, I'll get back to the pansy. I'm really hoping to get it finished before we take off for the beach on Sunday.