What Do You Do When It Is Beyond Hot Outside!!

Why.... you knit a shawl! I'm doing this in a design called "palm fronds", but in many ways, it is closer to what I call "feather and fan". The pattern is simple - only a repeat of four rows - over and over and OVER.... until you get it to the length you desire it to be. I'm knitting it on either 10 and half or eleven needles and using Noro Silk Garden in Shade No. 84....

Now THAT'S A Cucumber!

My husband is growing lots of vegetables this year - tomatoes (which the deer are slowly demolishing) which is upsetting us! We've gotten to eat two red ones so far. The others are being eaten by the deer while they are green. So we've been picking them off and trying to ripen them in the windows.. And he is growing broccoli, and green peppers and these huge cucumbers! He picked off a couple of them and they were big, but this is a monster - LOL!

Topsy/Turvey....

This sampler comes from a book I own called "Historic Samplers". This one is by a young girl called Mary Hill. Quoted from the book... "Mary chose fairly bright colors, especially the reds in the top alphabet. There seems to be neither rhyme, nor reason to most of the second and third lines except for the date at the end of the third. It appears almost as if she practiced only the letters she liked. Some of the words run together almost like one unbroken word - so carefully did she employ her allotted space. The spelling of "needle" as nedle may have been an accepted variant in the 18th century, but the letters in the entire line had to be stitched so closely together to get all the words in, one is tempted to imagine that she dropped the second "e" to save space. It is possible too that she may have stitched some sort of code into her sampler. This notion is derived from the three sets of numbers stitched upside down and the three letters executed in unbelievably meticulous eyelet stitches, two of which are upside down as well. It is also possible that a sibling turned it upside down to work on the same piece."

I'm having such a good time stitching this sampler!

Cooler Weather and New Stash!

What could be better! After two weeks of extreme heat and humidity, it finally cooled down yesterday - over 20 degrees cooler! So my walk last night and tonight was quite pleasant. I also received some new stash in the mail today. With the designer CHS closing down, I thought I'd better nab some of the charts I wanted quickly before they were gone forever! So I ordered 3 charts from my online shop, including one I've never seen before. It is called Visiting Bird. You can see it above, along with the linen I will be stitching it on - Lakeside's "Meadow Rue". In all the years I've been looking at CHS designs and I've never, somehow seen this one.... But I'm so happy I did and I cannot wait to start stitching on it later tonight!