Fun Project

Good morning, my friends. Here we are again at Friday. The weeks are seeming to fly by right at the moment. Is it just me or does time move faster as we approach the end of the year? And let me just say I've been ready for the presidential campaign to end for at least the past six months. (Probably I was ready before it even started.) Just a few more weeks, and then we'll get a reprieve.

After finishing yesterday's post, I went to work finishing up September's "Joy in the Ordinary" block. It still needs borders.

There was just a little floss left threaded on my needle when I finished the brown hanger, and so I hooped up October's block and finished it off there. When this one is finished (probably this morning), I'll add borders to both, and I'll be caught up on this project.

From there, I had a bee in my bonnet to bake some biscotti. I had a half can of solid pack pumpkin in my freezer I wanted to use. Enter this Pumpkin Biscotti. I was in the mood for biscotti, and I figured someone had probably tried making it with pumpkin. I found this recipe on the King Arthur Flour website. When they came from the oven, they looked like this:

They're yummy dipped in your morning coffee. Not too sweet, and a nice hint of the pumpkin flavor. I took issue with some of the methods used in King Arthur's recipe, and so I riffed of theirs and created my own version.

When those were finished, it was time to get busy sewing. Arriving in the sewing room, I found Sadie ready to help out.

But then she got a bad case of the "adorables," and she was no help at all.

Smitty had to take over.

She's useless when she gets like this.

This is a fairly complicated applique pattern. It's not quite as detailed and difficult as McKenna Ryan, but it's approaching that neighborhood. I read over the instructions again and studied the patterns. When I thought I had it all figured out, I went to work constructing the first lady on the wall. As a reminder, this is the picture from the pattern cover.

The applique is surprisingly large, and so I need larger scraps to make the different pieces. It occurred to me to start in the middle of the background and work my way out from side to side with the ladies. I worried I'd run out of space if I started on one side and worked my way across. So, I trimmed the background and then folded it in half, pressing a crease down the middle to use as a guide.

Then, I went to work creating the middle woman. Just now I realized I'd reversed the colors on her hat. Oh well. It doesn't matter.

From there, I created the towel. The top of the towel is lined up with the top of the wall, and then the lady is fused over the top of that. Also, I added the tote and the flip-flops, and she was mostly finished.

There was still time in the day to create the lady to her right. Here she is. I'm tempted to remake the bag. I don't like how the orange liner blends in with the orange of her towel. I'll take another look when I get to it today.

Here's how they're looking so far. There's a drink glass between the two, and I still need to create the flip flops for the woman on the right. From here, I'll continue moving to the right.

As I told my Facebook friends yesterday, it's reminding me of a sign we saw at a BBQ restaurant when we were traveling in South Carolina.

Before I go today, I need to take care of a little blog housekeeping. For some reason, I haven't been receiving comments in my email lately. I thought y'all had stopped speaking...like a hurricane muteness had befallen the nation, or something like that. Happens all the time, right? But then I took a look at the comments last night and found that about a dozen had gone to my spam folder. Some hadn't come at all. Well. That was disturbing. You might know that the reason I always leave the first comment is so that I can "subscribe" to replies and receive them in my inbox. Apparently, Blogger is onto my tricks, and they've thwarted me again. 

Okay, so I decided to try turning on comment moderation. If I do that, Blogger is forced to send me notification of comments so that I can decide whether to publish them or mark as spam. It's not my favorite way to set things up, but one must do what one must do. Sorry for the extra step.

And that brings me to the end of what I have to say today. We're going grocery shopping this morning. Mike has gone back to bed in preparation, and that gives me some time to work on my slow-stitching. I know some of y'all are in clean-up mode after the storms. This too shall pass, but for now it sucks.