Saturday, August 28, 2021

Busy August In My KYROTIME!

 Where did August go?!

I've been busy which makes time go by quickly, maybe I need to slow down with my KYROTIME in the sewing room but it brings me such pleasure & makes my heart sing.

I'm having fun with the 'A Very Merry Un-Christmas an ornament collection from Hattie and Della & The Rusty Crow with an Alice In Wonderland theme. These two alternate every week for an ornament with the theme. Last week was this Tea Time pattern, then Rusty Crow did the Chesser Cat that I'm working on now. This is a free pattern of the week for just that week so jump in & have a look, I'm enjoying these ornaments!

Ornament #1 - Tea Time

This ornament made me think of my granddaughter Madison as she gifted me this teapot 10+ years ago. She told her dad that it reminded her of Grammie & could she get it for me. I was delighted to receive it & have teatime with it. 

Are these not the most whimsical miniature flowers to view?! This cluster fell of the hoya plant that has been on the greater room mezzanine for the last couple of years. The hoya loves the morning sun that it receives & has been flowering for months now.

The lighthouse embroidered quilt that my girlfriend Liz started before she passed is now done!
It was one of the many WIPS in the trunk that she sent me, I've finished two others of her quilts too!
Makes me wonder who I will my UFOs to get finished! lol
The border took a long time as each 6" block has 30+ pieces to it but I wanted the design to keep with the nautical theme from the embroidered lighthouses. I'm pleased & I'm sure she's smiling down on my creation of her work. The quilt finished 57" x 57" & will go into the sunporch next year & has gone off to have anchors quilted into it & a navy blue binding to finish it off when it returns!

Block #8 Nestled Inn designed by Heather Moylan Anderson of Country Ramble.
One more block to do then the border & this BOW is done!
With fall closing in I have a couple of fall creations I want to make.

I designed this 30" x 18" hooked rug with crows & ravens to enhance the Kathy Schmitz Maryland fabric collection. You'll be seeing a lot of things made with that collection in the blog visits to come.
I love her designer style & have for many years, soon I'll be working on a Baltimore panel style quilt from that fabric collection as we transform our season into fall/winter.
It keeps my hands busy at night now that the lighthouse quilt is done, just needs the binding another nighttime project & I don't mind working on dark fabric with the wonderful invention of the ott light!

I played one morning making this simple 11.5" x 35" runner with my favourite blue & white toile. Who am I kidding, I love toile in every colour combination but only had these squares to play with I put it together from scraps that I was left out for another project that has not gotten done yet. The border & binding are leftover from Edyta Sitar's BOW quilt that I completed this summer. This runner will fit my kitchen sideboard for the summer. 

This is the back of the runner & as you can see this is an older 10+ yrs old fabric & the rich colour was not so stable in the folds!

Gone is my theory that fabric will last longer than the lettuce in the refrigerator... it did last for quite a while but this shows you why your quilts must be opened, aired & refolded another way!

I used this designer's fabric & loved the colour but the hand feel to the fabric is so different from the RJR or Northcott fabric feel. Over time things do improve that are being manufactured & now with the cost of quilting fabric skyrocketing, one must expect quality fabric!



Bill saw this at one of the many airport shops that he was in a couple of weeks ago & laughed & thought of how much I would love this rabbit. I do have a fondness for rabbits.
And I loved this character tea towel!!

I hung Mr. Rabbit & his radish find, from the kitchen sideboard & it still makes me giggly when I view him sneaking off with this radish! lol


August has had dog days of summer for sure with the high humidity here. Bridget still wants to play ball outside & it does do her in as she's so competitive with her brother Baxter.! Look at that tongue!!!


Her tongue grew & her head did not! It really shows when she's hot just how long it really is!

Then she falls to the ground & pants hard to cool down in the airconditioned house.
We laugh every time because we know she does that but we forgot to tell Dianne their 10-day sitter back in October, she thought that she killed the dog playing ball with them too long!! lol

Bridget does play hard & feels it way more than Baxter that barely breaks into a pant & can run longer & harder than her. They are so different in every way & we have enjoyed them so much.

Speaking of rabbits, I was online with our quilt shop Edge Squared Quilting, Bev does a live showing of fabric with pricing & you can purchase it that night to Pick up later or she'll mail it to you via Canada Post. I purchased two of these panels to be gifted to baby girls. I used black/white polka dots for a framing border to fabric from my stash & voila it all came together is now off to be quilted with little flowers for the Pretty Bunny!

In my flannel stash, I had enough bright pink with black cats on it to do both quilts & a cribsheet of one set & a cute bunny fabric for the other set.  Warm & cozy flannel for our harsh cold winters.

I pulled out a VIP vintage print panel that I had made up a few years back of Alice with her cat & rabbit to continue with the theme of the week of ornaments that I'm doing now. I love creating different vignettes to look at in different areas of the house throughout the changing seasons.

Here are some photos our son Nick took when he was here on vacation.

Baxter & Bridget in tandem with playing stick.

We all stopped by to see if the covered bridge was finished with its upgrading & it was!
I never left the truck because the mosquitoes were bad & I didn't have deet spray!

You can see the newer boards that were installed to keep this beauty alive! Such a great thing to see covered bridges still being used today!

The daylight gnomes & their home by the bay.


Nightime with the gnomes!!

Another beautiful sunset in our backyard!

Daytime, I wish I would have finished the window, it is now foiled & just needs flux & sodering to complete it!

Nicholas really captured the nighttime life of the gnomes in this photo!!


Cooling off in the Miramichi Bay with playing stick!


These two are so much fun to watch as they play with each other. 
Thank you Nick for taking these photos for us & I hope that you too enjoyed watching Bridget & Baxter at play. 
We'll have the last of our sons & DIL's coming in September, completing seeing our family of 'Our Three Sons' finishing before fall arrives on September 22nd.
It is so good to have them here as the last time together was their wedding on October 11th which is Thanksgiving this year & their first anniversary!!

I found this saying in one of my journaling books.

Marry the right person. This one decision will determine 90% of your happiness or misery.
H. Jackson Brown Jr. (writer)

How true. 
Thank you for stopping by for this visit, I hope you do pop in again to the east coast living that I am so enjoying & love sharing with you.

Cynthia 

Friday, August 13, 2021

Friday the 13th Oh My!

 Yes, Friday the 13th was the date in Port Dover Ontario that all bikers would descend upon that small town, my father-in-law included, on his Harley Davidson. 

I'm not superstitious of that day & will do my best to not let anything negative happen & carry only positive thoughts!

The month of August is flying by we're near mid now & thoughts of Autumn through advertising are everywhere I look. I love the fall the best however I'm going to savour what is left of this hot humid, mosquito-infested summer & think of these days next February when the snowdrifts are so high I cannot see out my 1st-floor windows! Oh, Canada I love your seasons! 

The second wave of kids arrived for a week's visit & we all had a wonderful time if we stayed inside...the mosquitoes were thick & the females were thriving on biting us!

Leslie thinking hard on her next move, Nick trying to distract me from taking this pic of the two of them! The sunporch is very inviting this time of year.
Everyone had a great laugh though! Nicholas was happy to see his chess game again, it was in one of the many moving boxes in storage. We finally opened the game table to accommodate the glass board, the table was a great find at Open Door Antiques in Chatham NB.

I'm enjoying the Pampered Chef cookie pan to cook all of our bacon on for our BLT sandwiches & morning bacon & eggs.

Baxter loves having company come to visit & even more fun if they like to throw a ball outside!

Nicholas did a photoshoot with the outdoor gnomes, notice the beautiful castiron urns that were a fantastic find at the Hospice Charity Shop in Chatham NB!

This is a nighttime shot of the same gnomes with the oil lanterns lit. We found those lanterns at the Open Door Antique shop, one of my favourite places to find a good find!
It looks so mystical at night, poor Nick was eaten alive with mosquitoes but we found fantastic handmade Itch Soother Salve from Bee 'n a Blossom in Point Sapin NB. It relieves better than Benadryl!! It's handy having Pam the owner of the product's at the Coop in Pt Sapin, stop in to see the quality products she makes, I give them a 5 star!
Back to the photo, thank you for your patience Nicholas, I love the pics!

Fresh farm eggs from Pt Sapin too!

I love the different colours of them! Bill blew out the eggs & I sterilized them. I'm going to Hodge Podge them inside & out to keep them for decorating for many years to come.

Bill needs to blow out some more eggs for me to fill the vintage egg basket!

See the different sizes & colours, I love it!

And yes, I'm going to put all my eggs in one basket! lol

Bill has been busy!
I'm the last one to go to bed at night & as I walk down the hall to the bedroom I gag on the smell of the Boston's dog farts. If you have ever owned a Boston terrier you know the smell that they make from their short snouts taking in the air to release it at the other end! 
So with that being said, he went to work!
He removed their crates & added a piece of elevator flooring to stop the scratching of the paint when they moved around in their crates. With the bottom secured, he started working on the top!


He drilled out a hole on their ceiling to attach a venting mechanism to release all those fart gas smells!

Remember how their crate housing inbuilt was done inset the understairs closet? 
Well, the exhaust hose was then sent through & Bill drilled yet another hole in the closet floor to the basement. Then through the rafters in the basement & out to the garage!

Once a hole was drilled there, here attached an elevator venting fan out to the garage! The fan is on an automatic timer to vent the Bostons crate area to the garage. Hopefully, this will do the trick for them & my dreaded walks down that smelly hallway. lol
Thank you sweetheart for all you do to make my life more pleasant to all my senses.

Bridget, the major gaser, was watching Bill & wondering want all the noise was with all drilling for the exhaust venting. 

Baxter would not leave his crate for fear it would disappear again. lol Notice the vent cover on the ceiling, it looks great!

Dorice & I were in Winners this week & I found four bowls to go with the Halloween set that I've been collecting over the years.

The skeletons look very dapper in their elegant attire! 

This is a bowl from several years ago, each piece is different but they are all from the same collection.

They are made in England still & have not been offshored & at $5 apiece for this china I find it to be great value & I love black & white!

Here's block 5 to the Harvest Moon BOW I'm doing. 

And I've now finished block 6! Riley the Racoon lol

Here are the blocks I've completed so far. I'm still working on the border of the last BOW Wild & Wonderful, so many pussy willows to sew down! It is a gorgeous wallhanging & I'll be glad when it is done.

Have you ever had the perfect nightie? Well, I did for many years & time has worn it to threads!
You males reading this might have had a perfect 'night shirt', I had a request to make one years ago for Harry, my English friend.

I purchased this nightie many years ago in St Mary's ON, it was a cotton handmade one that once had glitter to it so I thought I'd use it for a sundress but then the glitter was gone & it was my soft cotton summer nightie.

It was getting so delicate that just putting it on I could hear it rip apart!

So apart it was, I took it apart to make a new fit me perfect summer nightie!

See how the cotton is disintegrated? I hung it on the line for that wonderful smell, maybe the sun-damaged it too.

The good thing is I now have a perfect fit pattern to make another & another...

Thank you for stopping in for a visit & I hope you have a wonderful Friday the 13th day!
And are enjoying the tastes & smells of this wonderful summer season.

Cynthia