Hello, everyone.
There was a puppy visiting last weekend at our place. He wandered into the room with an arrangement of the little pincushions on a small shelf-stand. They must have been fascinating, as an hour or two later I found one on the living room floor. Slightly damp.
Obviously the pinny collection needs to be contained.
Views from all sides of the vase of pinnies.
They're now puppy-proof, sitting on the big table in a glass vase. And he can still play with his doggie toys.
Hello, everyone.
One of the things being done around here is testing the best way to use various purchased embroidery designs.
My software was recently upgraded by the maker (Hatch) and an automated laydown stitch was included on the new version.
This photo shows both versions of it: plain coverage vs coverage that clings more to the stitches and skips over blank spaces in the design.
In the event, I liked better the one with the holes. (Test fabric is an old towel that is now used as a rag.) The design is one of the Hatch freebies, with a different letter in the middle.
This next one is testing a cactus design on a coozie.
Yes that is the same T design, this time not optimized for the terrycloth. The new one is the prickly pear arrangement on the other side of the blank.
It's so much fun making things on my embroidery machine!
The hot summer weather has not stopped various creatures from making their rounds. The squirrel feeder has been getting attention regularly. The garden, which has been cleared out for a few weeks, got an unexpected visitor recently: a roadrunner. He apparently was just checking things out, and briefly forgot that to fly out he needed to step back from the fence.
Today I am putting up a picture of something I saw from yhe freeway while driving. I don't know what it is. Some kind of weather radar?
It's clearly visible while driving north on I 35 in Texas.
My readers are invited to chip in on the comments if y'all have an idea what this device is.
This is a pretty flower being trained as a small tree. It's located in Chillicothe, Missouri.
There will be explanations in future posts, I promise!
When we visited the park to feed ducks, we saw a duck that had a different facial pattern from Muscovy ducks we've seen in the past.
This guy has a different pattern of the red decorations on his head. There were others like this one as well. Are there color varieties among Muscovy ducks, like there are among the more standard ducks?
I had twitchy fingers by the time our week of Grampies Camp was done. I just wanted to sew something! So I stitched together some long, skinny scraps, divided the long thing into thirds and sewed the thirds together. Came to a stopping point with that one. Picked up another pinny top and put it with a blues and greens shell print scrap for the back. Quilted both pieces with some scrap fleece. Then it got a little crazy with beads. What can I say?
As usual, I used 6 pound test Fireline to sew the beads. It's a braided line and it feels waxed. Knots beautifully. The only (small) drawback is that it will wreck the blades of your good scissors. Fortunately, the same department of the store that will sell me big spools of Fireline will also sell me a line cutter. Mine is by Rappala and it deals very well with the fishing line that I bead with. At the time I got the cutter, it was only $3.50 or so at Walmart. But that was a few years ago, they might be more now.
one of the fun activities was duck feeding at the local park. There is a mix of domestic white ducks, some that look like a variety of Muscovy ducks with the red marks on their heads, some domestic geese, and some wild Whistling Tree Ducks which are native to Texas.
The ducks are observant and they come running for the chunks of food. The first time, DGS was a little nervous around them. The second time he did fine.
