Daily Flossing

Happily, I'm not going to lecture you about dental hygiene this morning. No, we're talking about my obsession with embroidery floss, which cost me about half a day's sewing yesterday. There I was stitching along on the Dancing Chickens block, and I finished the section that was in my hoop.

And, coincidentally, I'd just told my friend Wendy how I ordinarily limit my stitching time to two lengths of floss (which, when separated, works out to six lengths). Sometimes I do more though...like when I'm coming to the end of a piece...and then I just want to keep stitching, and stitching, and stitching until it's finished. Well. I wasn't quite finished with this when I quit yesterday, but the interior is finished.

This morning I'll finish off the running stitch around the outside edge, and this one will go into the finished pile.

With that so close, I decided it was time to trace out the last three blocks for "A Year of Hearts." I started these blocks last April, and I started with April's heart. Now I've stitched the whole year, and I'm circling around back to January, February, and March.

And when those are finished, I'll be ready to start something new, which is why I spent so much time with my embroidery floss boxes yesterday. 

I've had my eye on this Crabapple Hill Studio pattern called Pieces of the Past. I've been watching a woman on Instagram stitch this. She identifies herself on Instagram as "barteldes_regina" and she does the most beautiful embroidery I've ever seen. This pattern has been in my to-be-stitched pile for a long time, and watching her has inspired me to get started on it. It makes me think of my grandmother. This is the picture of the finished quilt from the Crabapple Hill Studio website.

When I bought the pattern, I also purchased the floss kit that goes with it, and so I spent some time yesterday making sure I had all the floss skeins and looking for any duplicates in my stash. I don't want to start a new skein if I already have one going in the same color. And this ended up taking way more of my day than expected. 

And that was only the beginning of the fiddly things I had to do yesterday. You know how you get little tasks piled up that will only take a minute or two...only then you have a dozen or more of those little minute or two tasks, and it ends up taking hours instead of minutes. Well, maybe that doesn't happen to you, but it happens around here all the time. And just one of those tasks was to fill the bird feeders and replace the hummingbird feeder I brought in when we left home in September. I didn't want it getting all icky while we were gone, and so I brought it in. Then, I never put it out, and the hummingbirds have been buzzing around the window. And you know for their size, they are ferocious little birds. I could hear them yelling, "Hey! WTF?" So anyway...peace and quiet on the bird front now.

While I was out, I noticed our little dwarf Japanese maple tree is putting on its best show of the season.

On beyond, you can see the other maple tree, completely dressed in red now.

So it was around 3:00 before I made my way into the sewing room yesterday. Smitty was waiting, tapping his paw impatiently.

As long as we're taking pictures, he was practicing his poses for his latest gig as a whisker model.

Or maybe it was a white tie model...I forget. His talents are in high demand.

With so much of my time yesterday taken up with flossing, I only finished one block for the Garden Sunshine quilt. This is September's block:

There are two blocks for October, and I had the first of them cut and laid out when I needed to quit for the day.

When I left the sewing room, I covered it with a protective shield because, you know. Mice.

So today is the day I've told myself I'll start quilting the Wine Country quilt, and I will get started on it. But I'm going to finish the blocks for Garden Sunshine first, and then I'll have that one caught up. Quilting probably won't get started until later this afternoon. Also, it's a CSA pick-up day today, so I'll have to head out for that this afternoon. There's just one quick housekeeping chore to do, but sewing will take up most of the day. I'm looking forward to finishing off the Dancing Chickens block, and so I'll start there.