Story Time

 The holidays are a time for family and cooking those special dishes everyone loves and waits all year to get. It's also the time, at least in my house, for the annual Christmas eave gourmet dinner. 
The Children when they were small and adventurous, would badger the chef until you'd break and tell them what was on the menu, my ex, or have fun with them by playing "Can you guess?" That would be me. I almost miss the constant kitchen traffic and queries of "What cha' making?"

When The children's father would cook it was lobster, crab or Prime rib. The first year we got live lobster and let the kids race them across the kitchen floor, with much laughter and joy. This is where we learned the lesson of "You don't name what you eat" It makes it hard to cook and eat them later.
The ex was all "More for me!" but I could see the the look of betrayal in the eye's of my child. 

They ate only the sides that year, of which there was plenty but that isn't the point is it?

Speaking of those sides, of garlic mashed potatoes, a large salad, Buttered broccoli and a cheesecake of which only the flavor changed from year to year. The ex had definite idea's on food.

I on the other hand liked to experiment, and for the most part my family would eat my experiments happily, no complaints, no leftovers. Every once in a while the food gods did not smile on my efforts, usually when I was not feeling well or was distracted beyond the usual big dinner, 3 kids and a husband variety. Those disasters didn't happen very often and when they did they were pretty epic.

Like the time we had to ditch the Beans because the child didn't realize the can of mushrooms should not exhibit an attitude when opened, it spit at him, and he threw them in the casserole anyway. Good thing he mentioned this behavior before we all ate!

The time I over cooked the shrimp and we could have played table tennis with them, they were so chewy. Or the year the oven door decided after 40 years it had had enough and fell off, dumping the entire roast duck A'la Orange on the floor. Breaking the pyrex, splattering lava hot orange sauce and duck parts  allover the kitchen floor my arm, one leg and leaving a divit in the linoleum, to remind us all to be very careful when using the oven. The same oven the ex swore up and down he had fixed and I must have "Done something to" the last time it flopped open after the loose spring finally broke. I had been holding it closed with a wooden spoon to bake for a month before the supposed fix. needless to say it didn't take.

Disasters aside, I'm a good cook and I like to try things I have only had or made in the restaurants were I worked before marriage. The year I decided to make Greek Youvetsi Arni a lamb shank stewed in tomato sauce served over Orzo. Roasting anything well takes hours and people get hungry, and by people I mean my family, so i decided to make a few side dishes and appetizers as well as the annual Christmas cookies, so the kitchen was a right mess. We had my ex's sister and friends over so there was even more confusion and noise,  extra children and glasses of wine. Every time I would take cookies or crab cakes out of the oven, they would disappear, so I was getting a little crabby. In order to not starve before dinner, I was hiding a couple of whatever in a cabinet, it kept them out of the blast zone and safe from the ravening hoards. 

I used to cater weddings and business meetings so I know how to feed a crowd but nothing keeps up with pre-teen stomachs. I had prepped most of the cookies stuff the day before and the dinner was pretty straight forward, hunk of meat in tomato sauce and herbs in large roaster in back of oven 3hours and your done. the rest was scoop on trays bake and serve. everything was labeled, except the salmon roe.

Between the making and the baking and the whipping of things the roe got pushed to the back of the counter, where one of the kids wanted to know what the pink stuff in the bowl was. Being busy I assumed it was one of mine and told them to try it and find out. Them not being one of my children, they did.
Ruining the joys of Terramosalata for them forever after. Though possibly teaching them an important lesson, Grown ups are not to be trusted.

Well that was fun

 So new update

it's not almost done

Something was not working out for me so 

I tore it apart.

very carefully

on the good side I was gifted a lovely Burgundy velvet skirt that just looks luscious as a border so 

I finished hand sewing on the corners before I tore it apart

of course because, reasons.

I'll get back to you on that when I have it figured out.

The plan is make it wider?

fix the blocks that bug me.

I want to embroider silk ribbon vines in the velvet borders

hopefully actually finish it and not take a year doing so.

And here is what would have been the last block

Had I not decided to shred that idea.

Embroidered water vase, Brass instruments, silk ribbon Flowers.

Almost Done

There Almost done sewing it all 19 blocks together, now for the corners

I feel the need to make it square.

 

The last two Blocks

 We are in the home stretch on this part of the project

The last two blocks are done

Bead Spider and web sewn with fine silver thread surrounded by greenery as is very common around here 

At this time of the year they are huge and covered with dew so at least you can see them before you walk through them.

The satin stitched Octopus was sewn over an outline and some padding of chain stitch, the coral rocks are an old piece of tatting from my mother-in-laws stash and some small charms and beads

And the last Block which is not yet done 

I have 2 sre folded flowers and leafy DMC branches in the white

A DMC embroidered vase with water streaming out is done but the seam treatments around it are not

and I have an idea for the dark panel but haven't gotten much farther than that

Thanksgiving was lovely but I still need to clean up a bit from the chaos of the run-up to the day and the day itself.

There is also all the stuff I need to do in the studio, customer quilts to be finished and projects to be started. There never seems to be enough time in the day to start, let alone finish, but it all seems to get done eventually, so I won't sweat it here.

More Tumbling around

More Tumbling Blocks are afoot
I am even sewing them all together

Here we have a sword pierced sacred bleeding heart picked out in satin stitch and goldwork, a basket of SRE flowers and a nosegay of blue SRE posies

Turkey-work moth, an Antique Tatted purple glove surrounded by SRE flowers and a Bullion Bee, Lacy Bead Owls ,seam treatments with more beads

Phases- Goldwork in couched Silver passing thread and couched braided silver flat cord, Glass Bead Pineapple,
Stumpwork Swan and lily pad

All seeing Eye made with Beads, Fairy in satin stitch with goldwork wings,

Satin stitch mouse climbing down a branch

Satin stitch cat, split stitch fox, Yellow SRE flowers and a woven wing butterfly.

 

I am so tired of this BullShit

 My Mother is a hippy so when I say "I have been protesting since birth" it is not hyperbole.

I have protested the Vietnam war, Nixon, birth control, women's rights, nukes, the gulf war, the Afghanistan war, LGBTQIA+ rights, abortion rights, women's rights again, Abortion rights again, no kings, worn pussy hats, carried signs, written letters called congress critters and seen some shit.

Because a bicycle ride through Lincoln park was our mode of transport back in the day, I was in the Chicago Riots at 4 years old. I have smelled the sting of pepper spray and felt the ring of the billy club against the metal frame of a purple schwinn.

And still, and still I have never feared the government......until now.

What will it take for america to wake up to this insanity? To the atrocities being done with their tax dollars, in their name, with a secret police reminiscent of the brown shirts of nazi fame?

It preens on a stage in front of men who should know better, about how strong they are

I have never before seen such an embarrassing display of weakness and incompetence

It rhymes already, it quacks, it beats unarmed protesters in the streets

It rappels onto the roof of apartments and arrests american citizens at 2 in the morning, with flash-bangs tear gas and tactical gear.

It Zip-ties babies in their underwear on a cold night at 2 in the morning

It crows about how it's making it safer and better, but I don't feel safer or better

It shoots protesters running away from them.

it is not out of the realm of possibility they will kill someone, soon.

In Memoriam

 It is my sad duty to relay that after a long illness my mother in Law Robin Paula Bernstein has passed.

She was feisty and jocular until the end. Her body failed her in the wee hours of Wednesday morning,

Passing peacefully at 2:34 am. She was attended by her son Adam and myself until the end.

We will Miss her gentile council, feisty nature, calming presents and sardonic matter of fact out look.

Everywhere she went she made friends, with neighbors delivery people, stray cats and humming birds

To the wonderful staff at Evergreen Memorial Hospital. We thank them for their reassurance and gentile Professional care.

"Weep You No More, Sad Fountains"

By John Dowland

Weep you no more, sad fountains;

What need you flow so fast?

Look how the snowy mountains

Heaven’s sun doth gently waste.

But my sun’s heavenly eyes

View not your weeping,

That now lie sleeping

Softly, now softly lies

Sleeping.

Sleep is a reconciling,

A rest that peace begets.

Doth not the sun rise smiling

When fair at even he sets?

Rest you then, rest, sad eyes,

Melt not in weeping

While she lies sleeping

Softly, now softly lies

Beginning the blocks

Here they all are so far sewn into blocks

And arranged on the floor

This is about 1/3rd of them, 

I haven't finished the rest yet.

So you will be seeing more as I get around to them 

but unless they are stunning 

I don't know that I will be showing the individual diamonds 

as much as I have been 


Below are the individual tumbling blocks if you care to peruse them

I wish I could bunch them up a little more 

but Bloggers, gonna Blogger

 

some new diamond blocks

It's just a photo-dump of completed blocks from last month

It's hot out and I am not motivated to be chatty

I am a delicate flower, stay frosty

Enjoy the eye-candy

 

Fixing the original tumbling block, plus 3 finished blocks

This poor wobbly block was my first draft

I was testing out my color choices and wether I could take a step out 

by sewing the 3 diamonds together as a piece.

I decided I didn't like the look of it this way as it was too easy, for me,

to "scribble over the lines" and loose the definition of the three separate blocks which was the look I liked in the first place

                                        bUt

why waste a perfectly good block?  I tried to fix it.  AAAnd I still didn't like it, so I set it aside. 

For about a year (2 actually) and went ahead on other projects and Since I already had the studio to build, I did that instead.

When I had the mojo back for this project, I started again

It's much better now.

Here are 2 other blocks put together, in what I think is, the proper way

They don't look any different you say?

Well good! I did a good job of it then.

Stay tuned for more blocks of diamonds you've already seen.

They are working well together though, I had this fear they would look weird, but I always have that fear. Just because I can name it, doesn't mean it goes away.

I want to finish with the embroidery / embellishment on the rest

 of the diamonds before I put more of the blocks together

Because as you can see by these three I already have a little problem

That is 2 are dark on one side whilst the top one is dark on the other

Sounds like an old Star Treak episode doesn't it......

It was then that our heroine discovered all her dark and medium blocks were not all going the same way

Well Foo!

This means some rows will be dark/light and some rows will be light/dark

Why does this matter? Well I'm not sure just yet

And this is why I need to finish the embroidery first.

I'm fairly certain no one will notice any of this but me.

CQ Tumbling Blocks so far so good!

So here we are again in update land I am trying to get at least 2 of these blocks done a week

I have finished making and binding all my diamond blocks so after they have all been embellished I can just sew the blocks together

I'm now in the process of adding lace, ribbon and what-not to each piece 

before starting to embroider and embellish the individual pieces that will make up each 3 piece block

I Embroidered two Bullion Birds and a bird bath 

with some fancy ferns made from curl of stem stitch

 and lazy daisy stitches  followed by

a seam made from 2 Cretin stitch and beads

This one is a bit plain (For me) >

 I added a line (Lump?) of daisy chain stitches

to continue into the block, then added the spray over each bead cluster

I embroidered a feather stitch along the seam and layered the metal flower onto a lace flower and the fern is from a bigger piece of lace

Placed a bit of ribbon to the seam and a seam treatment of chevron stitch over that with lazy daisy and beads

On this piece I used a satin stitched Bird, was started on felt cut out and tacked onto an embroidered branch

with french knot hydrangeas which were embroidered separately on muslin 

cut out turned under and tacked on. The leaves are silk ribbon and I'll finish the seam treatments with beads later

The Feather was embroidered with variegated silk thread in steam stitch I placed a bead at the top

The seam treatment above it is picked out in alternating button hole with lazy daisy and red glue on beads that I drilled a hole in and sewed on (After all I'm not a heathen!)

The feather stitch is laddered down the yellow seam and there is another bit of slanted button hoe below it I'll embellish those a bit more later

On this piece I ran out of thread for that alternating button hole stitch one or 2 stitches from the end and covered it up wit a bit of daisy lace there are rice shaped plastic pearl beads and yellow glass beads for embellishment

I completely covered the cretin stitch seam treatment with silk ribbon rosebuds and leaves and some glass flower beads

The other corner is a bit of lace and a piece of sequin embellished ribbon lace

 the wings of the dragonfly were done separate on a bit of gauze with gold thread, they are my first attempt at stumpwork wings and not great but good enough for a first attempt I think. the rest of it are a real pearl and a glass button followed by fake plastic pearls.

 I just didn't have the spoons for this last one, I threw a bunch of loose odds-n-ends at it, tacked it on and called it good enough.  

 And thats ok. 

I figure I have 75 diamonds, making up 25 blocks. 

I can fudge a few here and there, and not feel bad about it.                  Right?

I'm still working on that last bit.

It's all about giving yourself a little grace.

Rainbow Scrap Challenge(RSC)

 This months color is Purple,

And here are my blocks

And the 4" square in square

6" 9 patch star

Rainbow Scrap Challenge for June is Orange

And here they are in all their cheerful glory!

Orange never fails to cheer me up

 

Diamonds Forever Tumbling Update

I have also spent the entirety of last weekend piecing 64 more tumbling blocks so I have them to hand, when inspiration strikes

 

The bluebird is sewn in dmc floss

I intend to add som beads but we're not there yet

Dandelion Phouf Dmc and Glass beads

The all seeing Eye in Glass beads on felt sew on with more glass beads

And vines in DMC cotton floss with rayon floss for the white cast-on stitch and french knots, glass beads and "silk flowers"