A Finish and Some Works in Progress

A new blog post, shocking, huh? Always the unexpected around here. The Monkey Sampler

Midsummer Night Designs

28ct Sandcastle Lugana

DMC

According to my records I finished Midsummer Night's Monkey Sampler on July 21st.

This has been my take along project for a LOOOONNNNGGGG time. It was pretty much the only project I worked on while I was at my momma's since it's stitched on 28ct and I could see the holes in the fabric even in the poor lighting. That green yard just about did me in but I perservered and now it's finished! It always feels so good to put those last stitches in a project. Then again, it takes me forever to finish a project so a lot of life happens while all that stitching is being done. This project has been to Tennessee twice, once when I went home for my dad's memorial service and the second time most recently when I went to stay a week with my mother when she was released from the rehab center. She has COPD and had to learn how to breathe again, and also to learn how to live with her new best friend, her oxygen tank. This particular project has also seen a lot of time at Panera while I wait on kids to do whatever it is kids find to do at the mall for hours on end.

Liberty Sampler

Hester's Needle

32ct Natural (or maybe Raw) linen

DMC

My new take along project can be seen above, Hester's Needle's Liberty Sampler. I really thought I was farther along on this than I am. Let's keep our fingers crossed that there's a lot more quality Panera time in my future.

When I started this piece a few years ago I wasn't quite ready for the satin stitched band so I just did good old cross stitches. I debated frogging this band and stitching it as charted and then my sanity surfaced and I decided I liked the little Xs just fine thank you very much.



Rachael Holmes
Heartstring Samplery
32ct dyed by me linen(more aged actually)
A Potpourri of fiber from the stash

Heartstring Samplery's Rachael Holmes is seeing a lot of stitching time at the moment. This is a fun sampler and I got over myself and just pulled threads from the stash to see what would work with Beth's color palette. It's kind of liberating to pull out the handy dandy DMC color card, a fiber conversion lists and dig through the stash and find what works.

Black'd Skie
The Primitive Needle
40ct Vintage Pear
Pure Palette Silks

This is my progress on Black'd Skie. It's been a bit slow for me but it's due more to having the wrong magnification of readers, I was using 2.00 and that's just way too strong. I had misplaced my 1.50 and those 2.00's gave me a headache every single time I tried to stitch. So I found my 1.50 and now I'm back to happy headache free stitching.

I love the Pure Palette Silks. I am not an expert on silks, I rarely use them, but I really love stitching with these.

Halloween Queen
Notforgotten Farm
28 or 32ct fabric from the stash(it was unlabeled)

DMC


A few weeks ago I started a project that's been on my to do list for a year or two. Notforgotten Farm's Halloween Queen. I found a piece of linen in the stash and gave in to the urge and made a good start on the Halloween Queen.

In the Garden
La D Da
36 or 40ct Lambswool(that's a guess)
DMC


And another project seeing a lot of needle time, La D Da's In the Garden. This is another project I've had the chart for for ages and decided to see if I had a piece of fabric that would work and dug around in the old fabric drawer until I came upon this piece that I'm pretty sure is 40ct lambswool but it's possible it's 36ct. I did a floss toss and decided this could work. I had thought about using GAST but didn't have all five colors so decided to go with DMC.

Last week I made my first trip to Needle Delights, my LNS, in ages. It felt like coming home. I dropped off three pieces for framing, my Cape Cod Girls(changed to Gulf Coast Girls), Salem Remembered and my 13th Colony Bay. I ended up bringing my 13th Colony Bay home with me for a bath. I had no idea it was so dirty until Tonia put it under the light on the framing table. OMG! I wanted to throw up it was so dirty. I was extra, extra glad I stitched 13th Colony Bay with DMC because washing it was no problem and I was mortified at how dirty it was. I thought I had been careful, kept it tucked away in a baggie in a drawer but I did stitch on it forever and I stitch outside when it's nice. I enjoy stitching outside but this piece was definitely a wake up call that only DMC projects will be worked on while sitting on the porch or in the backyard from now on.

That's all the news from here at the moment. Hope everyone is managing to stay cool this summer because the air down here along the Gulf is a force to be reckoned with.

Independence Day

Happy Independence Day to all USA readers of the blog! The spousal unit and I took an early morning drive east and found ourselves in the picturesque little hamlet of Seaside, Florida. It's a pretty little seaside town, aptly named. This is their post office and it made my heart sing when I saw it all decked out in it's Fourth of July finery. I don't have a lot of red, white and blue in my home but I do love 1776 and all that jazz. BUT this morning seeing this sweet little post office and all the people representing in their red, white and blue, I almost cried because what I saw in Seaside was what the American experience used to be. They must have had a parade at 8 a.m. We didn't know anything about it and just drove in that direction. It was small town America at it's absolute best. People were smiling, laughing, the bookstore and all the local businesses were open, this was like 8:30 on a Sunday, in the South, and it was pretty cool.

Below you can see a shot of the beach at Seaside. Their shoreline is a bit different than ours. They have the white sands but have left their dunes untouched even with the building of homes and businesses. They have worked hard to leave as much of the natural world untouched as possible and still build a thriving little tourist town around it. While I am not a huge supporter of planned communites because I do believe to each his own Seaside does it quite well, mixing in the planned neighborhood along with funky eateries and art shops. If we ever win the lottery we are moving here. That's about the only way we will ever get there but we love the 30A lifestyle.
A couple of weeks of ago my friend Pam and I went to an estate sale. She scored a stack of art books and on the cover of one titled Artist's Journal there was a painting I loved. The original artwork was by JoSonja in 1997. Since the art magazine was all about learning to copy the art inside the magazine I hope JoSonja doesn't mind that I begged the Spousal Unit to please paint me that painting. Since it's Uncle Sam and Mermaids it seemed quite appropriate. Also he painted it for me, not to sell or anything and the only copyright notice I found was not to mechanically copy or reprint the artwork so I hope his painting doesn't violate any copyrights.

This was the best picture I could get this morning. I think he did a pretty great job!

Last week I went to my momma's to check on her. She had been in a rehab facility learning how to cope with her COPD and when she came home she was a bit overwhelmed so I went home for a week. I had intended to rent a car for the trip because we have kind of old vehicles and it's a long drive. Unfortunately the line at Enterprise Rent-a-car was really long, so we went to lunch. Somehow over club sandwiches and fries we went from renting a car to buying a new one. We pulled into the Kia lot thinking to buy a Sorrento, we love that sock monkey, and then we saw Enik! Six hours later he was coming home with us and then two days later I drove him to Tennessee. I hate how much I love this car.

For your viewing pleasure:

YouTube - Ghetto Hamster Deluxe - very funny ad

I tried to add the video to my blog but couldn't make it work so a link it is.

Have a happy and safe 4th!

Heat Index 104 And

...it's not even July yet. I wonder if all the oil in the Gulf has anything to do with the heat, you know increasing the speed of global climate change?

I made a beach run this morning to check out the condition of the Gulf in my town since Okaloosa Island in Ft. Walton Beach was covered in tar balls yesterday. The pictures on the local news were just awful.

Photo Galleries : Northwest Florida Daily News

For more local news on the oil and just in case that link doesn't take you to the photos here's my local newspaper links and the local news channel:

Northwest Florida Daily News

pnj.com Pensacola News Journal Pensacola news, community, entertainment, y


WEAR ABC 3


But as you can see below in my fuzzy picture, not sure what happened, the ancient Coolpix just didn't want to focus this morning, but it could be haze from the heat too, anyway, the water is clear for the time being. There was a huge skimmer ship on the horizon and I tried several times to get a shot of it and they were all big time BLURRY. I gave up. And I'm posting the two pictures below this one all for the benefit of the Florida Department of Tourism:

The water is so clear at Gulf Islands National Seashore between Pensacola Beach and Navarre Beach that you can see the shells. See them shells? Do you see them? The water is clean for the moment.

Look there's some toes in desperate need of a pedicure. But there is nary a tar ball floating around my feet.

I have learned a few things over the last couple of weeks. For most of my life I have been a huge supporter of Jackson Browne and his causes. What I never knew was how exhausting being an activist can be. It can take a toll on your life, your mental state and friendships. A week or so ago the spousal unit and I saw tar balls, many, many tar balls in the water and on the beach at Gulf Islands National Seashore. At the time I didn't have the oil on the shore or oil in the water numbers in my phone, at the time I didn't know we would be the only two people in the area to witness this. We took our crappy camera to CNN at Pensacola Beach and showed them but no one checked it out. We got busy with our real lives and I forgot to notify the local news, I thought I had taken care of it on a national level, I mean seriously.

I finally got around to posting a picture on my local news channel's Facebook page and one of the comments was "why didn't I show landmarks for exactly where I was". Excuse me, these beaches aren't named, they don't have bathrooms, much less a trash can. There are no landmarks, 20 miles of white sand and the occaisional parking lot here and there. I learned to be more specific about where I'm taking the picture.

Anyway, that particular weekend every time I mentioned oil or tar balls, friends would say, "Our beach is clear, quit whining, enjoy it while you can". While I appreciate clean beaches, I can't let go of what is happening and what can happen. Last week as tar balls and oil flooded Orange Beach, AL (or was it Gulf Shores?) Anyway, I heard a national news correspondent comment that people on Pensacola Beach were breathing a sigh of relief. A SIGH OF RELIEF? People this is not over, it hasn't even really gotten started good as far as coming ashore. We can't breathe sighs of relief, we need to yell, scream, holler and yes, pull our hair out because nothing is being done. After reading about the Mexican oil rig in the 70s I'm beginning to wonder if anything can be done beyond letting the well empty itself out.

I'm beyond frustrated with the governor of Mississippi. He's like the mayor of Amity in the first Jaws movie. He will not believe the oil is a problem until a big black tidal wave washes ashore in Gulf Port. I understand he wants people to come to their beaches, I understand that their beaches are clear, run some tourism commercials then but quit acting like the rest of us are making up the possibility of something catastrophic being out there just on our horizon. It is very real.

I heard this morning that there might be a 40 mile dead zone in the Gulf. Do you know how much sea life resides in 40 miles of water? I don't have exact numbers but let's go with A LOT.

We have lived here 13 years this July 4th. We do not see dolphins every time we go to the beach. It is so infrequent that when we see a dolphin we squeal like tourists, it's that rare for us. Every single time we have been to the beach in the last few weeks we have seen dolphins. And not just a random loner dolphin, we've seen pods of them. I hope Mother Nature is keeping them safe from the oil, keeping them ahead of the deluge. I've seen so many dolphins lately that I no longer think it's exciting, I'm starting to think it's creepy. That's how rarely we saw them before now. I see them so much that it's creepy.

Last night we were at the pier and a guy caught a shark. It didn't hold the normal excitement for me. It was bittersweet. There was one part of me that thought, "wow he caught a shark, cool" another part that said, "well at least he saved it from death by oil" and then my final thought was, "what if this little guy is one of the last of his kind". Shouldn't the healthy fish be left alone for now? Shouldn't they be given a chance to get to safe waters and mate and breed and survive?

I've never been a person that thought animals, especially fish, shouldn't be eaten but now as more and more sea life is endangered due to oil and tar balls and dispersants, maybe we should let them be. I know right now while everyone says Gulf seafood is safe, I think for the time being when I get my fish and shrimp cravings I'll take my chances with good old Captain D's or Red Lobster. I hate to not support my local fish markets but I'm erring on the side of caution.

60 Blocks of Summer Challenge

I joined The 60 Blocks of Summer challenge on Flickr. My first two blocks can be seen below:

I made these blocks using the tutorial found here:

Oh, Fransson!: How to Make Paintbox Blocks

I thought this challenge would be a good way for me to become besties with my rotary cutter, ruler and sewing machine. I don't have a specific project in mind and honestly my fabric stash is pretty random so I'm just going to work on different squares and see what happens. I may get a sample quilt out of the challenge or lots of smaller projects. Either way my sewing skilz should improve immensely.

I forgot to take an updated picture of my A Haunting Mermaid from Carriage House Samplings so I'll do that another day. I have made a tiny bit of progress, I mentioned how time consuming being an activist is didn't I?

Gulf Islands National Seashore

Yesterday we took a drive along Gulf Islands National Seashore. We found this bit of debris in the water and fished it out: It's coated in dispersed oil. It's thick and gunky and a nasty piece of business.

Here is a picture of the this piece of whatever coated in this mess.

Here are tar balls

Do you see how much of this crap there is? No matter what anyone says this will not be easy to clean up. This is one section of beach and no news people were here. We told CNN about it and I have yet to see it reported. Even our local news isn't reporting it. They are all hanging out at Casino Beach in Pensacola instead of driving a few miles up the coast to see the real story.

This gunk you see on the beach was floating in the water. You couldn't step anywhere without coming into contact with it.

Of course we saw hazmat guys up the road behind the million dollar homes where uh, no tar balls were reported. We saw no one on this stretch of beach and we came back a few hours later and it was worse.

Plastic buckets and shovels will not clean up this mess. It's huge, it's ridiculous, and I'm beyond furious. We can't begin to imagine how this will be cleaned up. It's just too much.

I have emailed our local news and CNN and am telling everyone I can about what we've seen. The story is not getting out. There was a sea turtle nest marked just a few feet from this and this stuff was scattered so far along this beach. I can't begin to capture it with my crappy camera.

I am not doomsdaying, I am not saying the sky is falling but I am saying that we are being misled about how easy this is going to be to clean up.

BP Left More Than Their Footprints

Well this morning tar balls started washing ashore at Gulf Islands National Seashore. This is the most gorgeous stretch of beach you will ever see. So what are tar balls? Tar balls look like dog doodoo or dukey or poo or whatever you call it. They are brown and shiney and warm. How do I know they are warm? I stuck my toe in one when I thought it was a piece of driftwood. Whoops. I just gave Tony Hayward, BP head another excuse for what these could be.

The green in the picture is June grass, it's a yearly occurence and used to be the bane of my existence. I will never ever complain about the layer of swamp grass in my bathing suit again because next time I swim in the Gulf my bathing suit will be full of tar balls. I'll take June grass any day.

More seaweed and June grass and tar turds, uh, balls.

And more. I wish I could have gotten a picture the length of the beach to show you all just how many of these there are. I wish I could make everyone see what we have to lose if we don't change our dependency on oil. And yeah, I'm embracing my radical ways once again. We as a society have failed the earth, our children, and future generations all in the name of "get me there faster" and convenience. An inconvenient truth, yep sure as hell is.

I left my footprints.

This picture is supposed to be of some surfers getting in their last ride before the Black Tide hits. Maybe if you biggify it(that's Annette's word) you can see them.

Yep that's a tar ball next to my footprint. Maybe we could give the BP execs a tar ball enema? Because that's just about where I want to stick their well.

While walking along the beach I saw the very edge, the curved edge of this perfect sand dollar peaking through the sand. I expected to only pull out a piece of it but amazingly enough it was in one piece. I posed it on a piece of drift wood and was reminded that even when one is having apocolyptic thoughts, end of days kind of crap, some beauty can be found if you only take moment to see it.

In my younger years I was an idealist. I had this vision of the person I wanted to be, I defined myself a certain way and somewhere that girl got lost. She became the person she used to ridicule, the person who quit looking beyond her back yard. The person who accepted the unacceptable just because that was how it was supposed to be.

When I was pregnant with my oldest son we lived in Ohio, there was an oil refinery in town. I didn't know what that meant being a transplanted Tennessean. One day at lunch, I worked at one of the local hospitals, I was talking with a coworker and mentioned all the strange cancers young kids had and the fact that every one my age was on fertility drugs in the lab where we worked. She begin to tell me about the oil refinery and how she blamed it for the infertility and strange cancers. I quit drinking the local water and started buying fresh produce and eggs from the local Amish farmers. I read Diet for a Small Planet and I Shopped for a Better World. I became a vegetarian. I tried so hard to make a difference and then somewhere along the way, I just started accepting, I ate a bacon cheeseburger. Life was what it was, I couldn't change anything, I couldn't make a difference and I was so tired. I surrendered to life and became just like everyone else.

Now 23 years later, I have found that inner activist. I have found my flower child. Over the next few weeks and months, I plan to change. Somehow, someway I'm going to make a difference.

Don Henley wrote in the book Heaven is Under Our Feet, and I'm paraphrasing because I can't find the book, it's in the garage somewhere, that sometimes you have to give people what they need not what they want. Basically, we're back to the inconvenient truth. Living greener is not convenient, it's not even pleasant and honestly I don't know if it's even doable. But I do know this, we can all make changes and I learned years ago when I wanted to boycott another company over their infant formula practices that some companies have their brand everywhere. You think you are boycotting only to discover that you have a house full of their brand only it's cloaked and you've been unknowingly supporting them after all. So I don't think a boycott of BP is realistic. I never buy gas there, the only times that has ever happened was when I was on the road and it was my only option.

The Gulf is my Walden Pond and I've let her down. I've lived a life of convenience and made choices that weren't in her best interest. I hope over the next few months to make some serious changes. Can I do it? I don't know, hell I don't even know exactly what to do. I just know that things have got to change, people have got to change, we as a society have to make those hard choices because they are right and not choose the easier road.

I hope with all my heart that the Gulf will be able to revive herself and flourish again. I have seen some interviews that offer a lot of hope in that direction but I fear that this is going to be just too devastating for her.

Reading, 21st Century Style

So I recently acquired a B&N Nook. But I didn't get a cover, so to keep it from getting all scratched up and because I'm broke, I needed to come up with a cover for it. So last night I grabbed the two skeins of Red Heart closest to me and fortunately they matched, one Spring Green and one, a variegated, that no longer has a label but it's got a nice mix of blue and green and yellow. I found my N hook and did a chain of approximately 40 chains, holding both strands together and then half double crocheted each row. I somehow decreased or increased as it's a bit wonky at the bottom, I'm going to try to block out the wonky, but I'm very happy with the results until I can either purchase the cover I want or make a better cover, I have fabric to make one but this was much faster:

Missy's Nook Nook

Red Heart 100% Acrylic Yarn

My own pattern such that it is

Meet Nell, my Nook

I even remembered to leave a little hole in the bottom so I can charge Nell in her Nook Nook.

Charging Action Shot

Who is that in the background? Could it be the single funniest human being on the planet, Stephen Colbert? Why yes it is. My new favorite tote bag from B&N. Yes I am a dork.

I refuse to rant about oil today. The situation is what it is. I'm going to disappear into some escapist fiction courtesy of Nell and forget about BP, oil and just lose myself in the page, uh screen.

"Very, Very Modest"

I am going to preface this post by saying that it will not all be a Gulf Coast in Oil Crisis rant. There is stitching and some thrifting so if you have been avoiding my blog due to my enviromental rants, well there's something for everyone here today.

First business:

A BP official, that British dude, stated to Sky news, that's a UK news channel, that the damage to the Gulf of Mexico due to the oil spill will be "very, very modest." Now does someone want to tell me what that means? I mean I understand that he's saying that the damage will be minimal but this is a from a man who will not allow accurate measurements to be taken of exactly how much oil is being gushed into the Gulf on a daily basis because "they(BP) are focusing on clean-up". So how in the hell does he have a clue what the damage will be and that it will be modest?

So we hear that that pipe thingie is working, well if going from 210,000 gallons of oil a day to 170,000 gallons of oil a day is working, well we are in a world of trouble. Do I need to point out this all started on April 20th? It's now May 19th, that means we are closing in on a month of astronomical amounts of oil being pumped into a body of water 618,000 miles in diameter not the 17 million miles of the Indian ocean.

Let me paint a bigger picture for all of you reading this sick and tired of the story as it's not glamourous and doesn't affect anyone but a bunch of beach bums who probably should live in the real world and vacations? Why I'll just go to the Caribbean. Well let me enlighten you folks. A lot of the sea life that lives in the Gulf migrates back and forth between the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. Do you understand that everything is connected? That grouper caught in the Caribbean in a few months could possibly had been a grouper eating smaller fish who had consumed oil a few months before. Do you know how toxic that makes the fried grouper sandwich you are getting ready to consume sitting in front of the beach grill on St. Thomas? I hadn't even considered the whole migration thing until my friend Chelsea pointed out. Her mother has a dive business and they travel all over the Gulf and the Caribbean. All the focus is on the oil and the obviously affected sea life, we need to pay attention to this on a much larger,deeper scale.

It is being reported that oil has reached the loop, the Gulf Stream, that means oil could be in Key West by Sunday. Is anyone paying attention? Is anyone connecting the dots and most importantly are the people making the decisions doing the right thing or just sweeping all this under the rug because what's done is done?
This is a close up of my CHS A Haunting Mermaid. She's quite pissed off about the whole situation and I have been trying hard to focus on her being what any BP official sees when they close their eyes and if they don't fix this mess she will haunt them to their dying days.

Here's a pic of my progress. It's a horrible picture but hey, isn't that what you've come to expect here from the Ranch? Crappy camera, unskilled photographer and no freakin' lighting! Click to make bigger.

So I started my Jane Atkinson some time last year, above you see meager progress. Want to see the true awesomeness of Jane? Of course you do. Go check out Margaret's progress on her Jane, I think she just started stitching her last Friday, I kid, I kid. She's been working on a little longer than that but not by much: Days of a Sampler Lover: See Jane's leaves

On Monday I had planned to stop by the local thrift store but the neighbor I dislike was just walking in so I came on home. She makes me want to puke and the thrift store is small, so yesterday I popped in a for a quickie look around and found a few things.

What you see above is The Golden Rule by Lutterloh out of Germany. It's the 1969 edition. It's a book all about making your own sewing patterns from just the measurements of your bust and I think your hips. I had to have it and since it was just 25 cents well it was in my budget.

Need sometihng to wear to the beach? Lutterloh has you covered.

Going shopping? Well whip up one of these ensembles and be the Belle of the Mall.




Then I saw these placemats. They are not my style, there are eight of them and the set was $5 but I couldn't leave them there. It's so wrong that someone made these and someone passed them on to the thrift store. The embroidery is so delicate and the backs are so neat.

And then for $1 I ran across this table set:

Yep, kind of uh, well, funky? There are three napkins and three coasters all stitched with this boat.

Then there's the tablecloth, with a Dutch girl stitched on there and the other end of the tablecloth has a windmill and the person made a niftly little bread basket liner with the Dutch girl stitched on it too and for a $1 I had to give them a home.

I may not be able to single handedly save my beloved Gulf but I will declare myself the Protector of All Misfit Stitching! Think there's a pattern for a stitching superhero suit in the Lutterloh binder?