The Week That Was

 Some weeks have a tendency to just fly by-- last week was like that. All I can tell you is, I have been very busy, just not sure what I did!

    Each week before I write the blog, I check through my phone photos -- I do take pictures daily and I'd encourage you to as well. It makes a great diary! I do not have grandchildren yet, so when I bring out my phone, my friends know they are going to be treated to "works in progress." Heehee.

   Here's what I found this time:

   It appears a lot of baking has been going on. This is mostly the artist-in-residence's work-- her baking career started very young, and my role is mostly "sous chef." This relationship started at the tender age of 10, when she famously asked me in all innocence if I knew how to use the oven. We like to start our holiday baking early and have a freezer full of goodies ready for all the guests.

My sister gave us a "Delish" magazine special issue of Christmas cookies. The head chef asked me to mark the pages of ones that we might try-- I marked all of them.

For the first batch, we picked these swirl cookies. My mother-in-law used to make these every year-- the grandma that my artist sadly never got to know. Her spirit was with us. :-)

Then, as sous chef, once I get done finding and measuring ingredients, I make sure the scraps don't go to waste-- this is what I made extra from a beautiful apple pie. I freehand cut the leaf-- impressive, huh! The main pie came out so nice, there was a question if it would even make it till Thanksgiving, but it is safely in the freezer-- for now at least.

Next up, there was a chance that my beautiful Innova longarm was in danger of becoming a clothes hanging rack for awhile there! You might remember we moved it to the bedroom to give our artist a studio during the pandemic. I finally got this summer birthday gift quilted. I was going to cover it with beautiful swirls-- I just really lack courage, and went with straight lines. I've been watching a ton of feather videos on YouTube. So I tried on this little scrap... what it wrong with me. JUST DO IT!! Next up, I am going to quilt the background areas of my Oak Leaf tablerunner, DO OR DIE!

Then I have Set 7 of Carefree Highway well under way-- the Great Northwest. Some of the State flowers are very strange to me, to say the least. It looks like another planet to this New England girl. Doing my best to digitize them. Oregon Grapes, anyone?

Did you know Sagebrush has flowers?

 

Those two will stitch out today-- Washington is done. While it stitched, I have just about cut out the entire CHICKEN QUILT. I will be stitching chickens galore while the others are on the embroidery machine-- the pleasure of having TWO or even THREE machines going at once is one only a machine embroider knows. xox

The next video on my new YouTube channel is going to upload today. I have free templates for you to show you how to make finished pieces out of 5x7 stitchouts. This is an ALL-MACHINE technique. Christmas gifts, perhaps?

Thank you to all who subscribed on YouTube and watched--we are comfortably above 1,000 which tremendously helps San Fran Stitch in SEO rankings-- the Christmas free stitch-a-long is your reward and it will start the Friday after Thanksgiving. Watching myself on video has been the gift that keeps on giving-- I find it hilarious-- you really don't know yourself until you can sit back and watch the antics. I really appreciate my friends who are so patient with me! Feeling grateful.

As always, we end with this-- the FUN parts of that corner are now done. I'm not in love with the turkey that remains to do in that octagon there. Some of you expressed concern when I mentioned this might end up in a drawer. So I really need a break, but at this same time, I intend to pick it back up again in the spring and the goal is to have it framed an on my wall by September 1st?

I am serious behind on the dreaded backstitching-- some parts of this seem to have backstitching around every stitch. Just look at the corn!

The apple lady in the center still needs to be completely backstitched. I gave her her face-- just got tired of her blank expression. Faces are hard-- one tiny stitch at a bad angle, and you have a sourpuss in the center of your piece! I think she came out great. 

I'm hoping to get the dreaded turkey done and completely finish the backstitching I can by Christmas. Then it gets some drawer time for  the winter and spring. Some of you asked why I do this-- the machine embroidery queen? I wish I knew. I picked it up in June and haven't put it down since.

So now that I've done my weekly review, it appears I have accomplished a lot last week after all. I guess if I had 24 hours a day to sew, it would still not be enough nourishment for my creative soul.

xoxo

Carol