It's a gloomy, grey, wet and rainy day today. I finished cooking some soy chicken breast and all in one veggie....potatoes, carrots, celery and peas all cooked in very little water and seasoning and butter added. The chicken breast I had frozen and seasoned....I sliced it and stir fried in very little olive oil and then add the soy...delicious....





Oh and then half of my book order came. The knitting books for me to learn. I will get in my bed directly to read them....I ordered them from ..amazon.com ..so much cheaper and no postage. Dazzling Knit, Modular Knit, Modular Magic and The knitters handy book of patterns by Ann Budd. The last book will probably be the favorite with the mittins and cap and easy things. ...and the book is spiral bound, nice.



I ordered four quilting books from ...overstock.com..wow! great prices and hardly any shipping...oh I think there is no shipping on this eigher..good deal..this one that came is all about circle quilting..called Circle Play and I had bought a special circle tool to make circles when I bought "Circle Around". I have another book to get to go along with these call "Wedgeworks"..now do you see why I don't have time to do any designing? These women are keeping me busy hahhahahaha

Oh, when I get ready to do my circle thing. I have ordered this neat gaget called the curve master to make perfect curves. I already have their zip and bind and stitch in the ditch tool...they are wonderful if you quilt a lot. With the zip binder set you no longer have to pin and with the stitch in the ditch..it does it perfectly with the guides and stuff..

I hope my neighbors don't hate me too much. Yesterday and half of today the woodcutters were here and they took out 5 trees. Hubby was so sad. He had planted two of those trees, 30 years ago. We had gone in the woods behind us (then) and rooted them up as babies. These were pine trees and the roots were breaking the sewer lines in our side of the yard and lifting up the street. After one big sewer bill we had decided to cut them down. Here's hubby so sad...oh he'll get over it.

Another pic of the damage and the other half is in the back. Son came by and said his friend will get most of it for his bonn fire and party in the woods...well that worked out. It was much cheaper doing it this way in fact a few thousand. I bargain real good hahahaha.....


Well now that all the main things are done around here that I have to supervise hahah...and I've gotten the fabric fusing and fabric painting out of my system. Its now time to finish a UFO. The Orange Peel by Karen Stone has been waiting. I had started it some months before I discovered Melody and everything went up in the air hahahaha. Anyway, I did have a very good start with it so it won't be long before you see a new project.

By this time you must all realize that I don't do any designing or teaching or puplishing anymore. At this stage of my life, I have adoped the attitude....if I see something that strikes my fancy...I go do it. The work has all been done. All I have to do is read and have fun. My stuff sells no matter who's idea it is hahahhaha....ain't I bad? That's not to say the design bug won't bite. It's just to say I'll do it when it does. Isn't retirement great?

Oh oH, do you know what I found out years ago? I found out that your best customers are your friends. yep!! That's because I have always had this motto...."busines is business"..(I learned that from my grandmother, who was a merchant. I used to work in the little grocery store that she raised us up on. ) I do my arithmatic and put a price on the item or in my price book. Anyone who comes by can look in the book or on the item and decide if they can afford it without telling anyone.

Mrs. Mel's Book

Mrs. Mel asks, "Where is my book?" she then goes on to say she has a free on line book that one can read and download anything for free. Sounds too good right? Well surprise! it's good and it's free lol. I didn't go to blogbinders. I just downloaded what I wanted and edited in word printed the pages on magazine quality paper and hole punched and put the pages in a 3 ring binder.

I enlarged the tulips and slipped it into the front plastic of the binder...behold!




This is the inside front cover. In the pocket on the left are extra pattern pieces and on the right is the latest lesson of today.


Inside the binder I have several lessons or information all seperated by a pink sheet. I will have to get some tabs. Here is the fushia lesson..


Here is another lesson in dyeing pastels...I even add the lovely colorful chairs and just things that I like of hers.



This is the inside back cover. I have the patterns in the pocket. There are quite a few lessons in there. A good reference to have at the tip of your finger just in case you are dyeing, fusing, or whatever.

What do you do with left over meat sauce? You make pizza of course. I make a real herby dough. I put italian seasoning, sweet basil, oragano, salt, black pepper, sea salt (that's the only salt I use) red italian pepper seeds. And here we rolled out the dough. Here you can see the herbs in the dough.
I made three. I know the boy is going to smell the pizza and coming to get his. Here are two ready to go in. I bake most everything that doesn't require a pan on my stone tingies. So now I have to wait 20 minutes to get a stone to put number 3 on.
Ahhhh look at these yummies.

And a close up.....

I had some of everything left. A little dough, some sauce etc. I had some summer sausage from the gift basket which I cut up. I rolled out the left over dough. I oiled some foil with olive oil..put the circle of dough in...sprinkled it with parmasean cheese, piled the rest of the sauce and sausage and topped it with mozz. cheese and wrapped it up in the foil and baked for 20 min. Then opened the foil to let it brown...OMG, it was delicous!!!
I promptly named that puppy, "pizza calzon" and I have lots more sausage and can make quick sauce if I have to hahahahha...

I hate making salads but I love to eat them. I was so longing for a salad today and have not taken the required time to teach the newly retired hubby how to make it yet. He did clean up the mess I made though.

I used three kinds of lettuce, romaine and two other soft ones (not iceberg)...I took some of each (washed) put in spinner, spun and flung it in a bowl. I have a little chopper and into that little chopper I fung one at a time and in turn, you gussed it, flung them with the lettuce. ..and they were...2 apples, 3 stalks of celery, one entire cuke, 1 and 1/2 slices of pineapple left over from my garden of pines, 2 carrots, a bit of sweet onion, 3 very large navel oranges from my orchard of 5 orange trees, (I cut them in 4, trim off the fronts, cut underneath each wedge, chop chop in three and yeh, fling..juice too). some crumbly white cheese my jewish friend gave. I don't know what it's called but it's so good..a few walnuts crumbled...(notice: no tomatoes! I refuse to pay top dollar for bad quality)..Then I made the dressing (I do not buy prepared dressing) olive oil and wine venigar and some italian seasoning a tiny bit of brown sugar...The salad was delicious. I made enough for two days, maybe three.

Tonight I watched Master Piece Theatre while knitting (I have taken to that habit suddenly hmmmm). This episode is in six parts called ...Blight House...ohhhh I did enjoy the first episode...can't wait for next week (I hate that).

I made some eggnog biscuits the other day...I made biscuits and just put the eggnog instead of milk in it, thats all lol...hey it could happen and they were good ..eating one right now ....

Getting ready to quilt two of the Melody patterns. Here the backing is attached....




I have put two of them on. I just pinned the tops and bottoms to the backing...



Here is the cornflower one is all quilted and some fashion fabric beads have been applied with a palette knife.



A close-up view...


Another view....click on pic to see a larger picture....


I have also been working on my triangle tango sweater and I finally understand here is what I have done so far....


Another view. This is my cheap 1.84 a skein yarn from Joann's (red heart). I'm just practicing at the moment and then I will use my expensive yarn that I got cheap on the web. This is really fun. I really don't have that much experience as a knitter...so I'm real happy with what I'm doing so far. I have done 10 triangles and working on the 11th. I will make it a bit longer though. It really goes fast.

Today is what I would call a "Winnie the Pooh" day. It is blustery!!! A good day to quilt, create or whatever.

I have so busy lately, I haven't had time to blog much but I'll be back shortly. I somehow lost my cookies to my blog and couldn't get on but I figured it out lol. My pc was running slow so I decided to clean up and thus deleted all the cookies lol. Well every now and then you have to get rid of old stuff true? Today I will be quilting the Melody quilts and one for a customer so another busy day ahead. I will post pic later on.

Oh, here is the little green sweater I finished and Molly is modeling. Today is a good day for it. This is the second Item I have knitted. The Triangle Tango coat of many colors is next. The yarn is coming in....

Wheeeeee....I finished the Melody's tulips. I started where I left off yersterday around 2.00 pm and finished 11.30 pm. I did the first tulip just like the pattern and then the me came in hahahhaha....I gotta do it my way. Melody wont' care. Here is the progression earlier as I worked. I can see where the red meets the purple is going to do something. I just don't know right now. I can feel it ..but I don't get it yet.



Here I got some more done. groundwork etc.



Here it is all done. Remember where the red met the purple on flower number 4 in the foreground? I need to adjust and extend the red shape...I knew it!! I added some fru, fru and confetti and basically kept the tulips down to three parts, except for the first one. I am real happy with it.



Here are all three Melody patterns. By Jove, I think I got it now!!!! I will take my time and decide how to quilt them on the long arm. I will probably use a verigated thread. I will post a pic of all three when I'm done with the quilting and binding etc...I really enjoyed doing these. As you can see, I did them one after the other. Not ususal for me lol. I used hand dyed fabric purchased from Melody. The only hand painted pieces are the sky pieces on the left in the tulip pattern. Those are from my stash that I painted.

Well, I have the little dog sweater 75% done. Now I need a circuler needle and the one I have is too long in the back...so I put that to the side and decided to work on the tulip some more. I think one tulip a day is quite sufficient lol....oh boy, lotsa work.

I thought I'd wonder around my orchard today and take some pics of the lovely oranges. There's nothing like a fresh orange right off the tree. I ate a navel one and picked some regular ones for juice.



Another view...this is the navel tree...

My trusty pickers.... Dude (front) Teddy and Tinkerbell.



Molly was too busy turning over pots to find lizards to help....

Today was...get over it day...hahhahaha. I took my coupons and took off to JoAnn's. I didn't need the coupons. They had a good sale on. After a little shopping...a book and some black and white fabric...I saundered on down to Michaels....I have been reading so much about knitting that it's beginning to tweek me...I did one knitted sweater years ago when I visited my sister in England and she taught me the basics. I'm good at reading instructions so I bought enough yarn to bring home and copy the exact sweater she knitted for me....she did the lavender one, I did the pink one...not bad I think for a first timer. I did like the knitting but am involved in too many things...well, you know?




A close up of the yoke. My knitting was a bit looser than hers. I refused to do the button holes. I waited until she came to visit me to do it for me. Do you see any buttons? Of course not!! hahaha ..I'm waiting for her to do it ...I still wear the sweaters ..minus buttons and all.



This is the lavender one my sis did. The pic didn't come out too good. It's night time. It's a lovely color..no buttons eighter...



Now here is the new kit. This is what I intend to knit in my spare time. Notice it's laying on top of my next project. Melody's Tulips. It's all her fault...the knitting, the fusing...you know how contagious she is...


Now I' have to beg her for the instruction for those cute shawls she knits for everybody and that nice top she knits to wear over her t-tops...she is such a good habit to not break....