Something for the Weekend ~ Summer Candles, Summer Reading

Good morning! It is absolutely pouring here today.

 With flooding.

"Raining cats and dogs"! My meet up with L for health food store and flea and tea are, we think, canceled. My Jeep is sitting in floodwater up to the wheel rims.. Oh well I need to vacuum anyway I suppose.

This will blow through and it'll be hot and sunny by morning. So---I have summer stuff to share: You know I love scented candles year round. I actually use more in the summer because the open doors and windows waft the scents away. This year I'm somewhat making do, couldn't go out to choose in person.

Above are White Tea and Sage [I thought this was Sea Salt and Sage! But the tea has a nice gengle aroma too]; and Trader Joe's Peony tin candle in a recycled lemon design holder.

This was a birthday gift. Big multi wicker in Sea Salt for dining room table.

I love how the colander becomes a lantern with dotty holes when lit.

This is on deck for August, ordered online. Weird but I love it, very authentic and evocative of summer gardening. ''Tomato Leaf/ Vine.'' The big jar now holds sea pottery shards, I found the small tin online. 1801 Candle Company. here

And this is my last of my stock of the beautiful and exotic "Havana " scent candles, BB&BW. It's perfume-y and rich, maybe amber? I only light it when I have [the now very rare] guests or if the house really needs a scent boost.

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Summer reading.

I treated myself to a printed  on paper copy of Country Living this week at the grocery store. It's a very old favorite, now just a shadow of the dynamic Americana it once purveyed.

My mother loved magazines! Vogue was her fave, and The New Yorker, but we also got [besides every fashion mag imaginable, including foreign editions], every home decor magazine. I didn't care much about the fashion reports ut I loved the home styling mags.
Country Living inspired my  love of quilts and flea marketing, antiques, and country cooking, and my country  cottage style. This issue is fun, not Nashville-y as the last time I bought it. I'm not a country music fan, mullets and pick ups and she left me and my beer soaked brain by the lonesome road? No.. This issue featured summer camp style--hahaha. Not lakehouse or Adirondack, but like kids' sleepaway camp. Huh. Surely memories of Camp Trippewah or even Cape Cod Sailing Camp cannot actually be a home decorating style? Not gonna happen in my house.

Then I've had this 99 cent thrift shop find out to enjoy with my afternoon ice tea or rose'. You may recall I love books that talk about the seasons, the circle of the year. And that is what this frivolous fluffy dollar book is all about. I enjoy leafing through each season.

For Summer It has Kel's pasta with tomatoes and Brie recipe!

Oh I do hope to get to the reopened farmers Market for some fresh picked tiny tomates and fresh basil and garlic. I have a Brie wedge stashed and waiting.

And watermelon sugar cookies. Someday? For mythical grandkids' visits? I have a big collection of sea life cooky cutters, whales and codfish, beach pails and sea stars. I used to make the cookies for BBQs, with icecream and berries. Any circle cut in half will work for the melons.

Oh and look, another farmers market  idea, a lovely berry pie!

Root ber floats!

useful ideas for thrifting a perfect sundress.

Remember my red sundress find last winter? Who knew we'd never again need a dress like that. [so this book, written 2012 is a smidge nostalgie. But fun.]



Cupcakes and Cashmere  on Amazon

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In the fiction category: this classic of summer reading, the new romance novel by Elin Hliderbrand, 28 Summers  here.  New so SPOILERS WARNING.



This farfetched slightly sleazy romance is based on the movie Same Time Next Year, which I pictured being Jack Nicholson and Dianne Keaton but no, it was Alan Alda [who made a great Army doc but a creepy lover/ leading man, and Ellyn Burstyn, again poor casting.] Anyway I ordered that free on Amazon Prime, haven't watched it yet. Same Time Next Year  [Amazon streaming]  Same Time Next Year [imdb info]

For the Hilderbrand book, I was most impressed by each chapter beginning with  the header noting events of importance that year. Mostly caught my notice because I'd say 75% or more were things I never heard of, lol. And I was there! This motif, that I thought was so very unusual and creative of EH was however, I then discovered,  actually taken from the film, which apparently shows newsreels of each decade.

The descriptions and setting are lovely, but I am not charmed by infidelity, heavy drinking, lovers with wives, mean girls, mean guys and  disloyal friends. And the lifestyle in general is very fairy tale. I spent many a summer on Cape Cod, adjacent to Nantucket and so far as I ever knew, this was not the norm. [Though I suppose ''the norm'' makes for dull reading?]. I'd give it 3 stars, four if you love books about summer loves and good times. The female protagonist is appealing, the hero not, not at all.

Other book mentions: The new Ruth Galloway, by Elly Griffiths, more cheating spouses and unrequited love, not much archaeology. Good news is Ruth seems headed back to the Saltmarkh in Norfolk, creepy lover will be gone. The Lantern Men

New Baldacci: Memory Man- unreadable. Walk the Wire  New Daniel Silva: I didn't even buy, all about the Vatican and popes?! Gabriel must be pushing 80? The Order 
                         
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My deck garden, struggling along.

I suppose the pots will love this rain! Hope they perk up a little.

Oh dear I just petted Mo and he is still very wet. Poor little man.

He has gone back to bed with his dolly and three throws.

If the rain keeps up I'll make chocolate chip banana bread.   Recipe here
If not I'll marinate the prematurely defrosted rib eye steaks and make shish kebabs tomorrow.

Have a good weekend..See you next week!

love

lizzy

gone to the beach.......

beach photos, Same Day Last Year.

"Always swim between the green flags, where the lifeguards are stationed!"

Tiny Baskets Update and a Heat Wave

Hi everyone! It is such a beautiful evening! There is supposedly a heat wave, but it is dry and breezy and really quite delightful now at almost 9 PM. I know I keep saying that, I guess it was so cold and so dark for so long? I just put away my down parka I wear for late night dog walks. EDIT: I was WRONG---91* now before 10 AM. HOT.

I don't want to jinx myself but when we talk about heat waves here I think, Oh those people never lived in Cincinnati or St Louis in the summer---ugh, the heat the humidity and not a breath of ocean breeze, lol, I remember it well from living there.

I did have to keep Mo in today. Not happy!

So I finally let him lie on the deck for like, 15 minutes, twice. Mo can't speak English but he certainly makes himself very clear.

Baby Pineapples is in the mail to my quilter Lori C., so this past week and weekend I focused on my Tiny Baskets.

As mentioned before this has been a FB sewalong, one of my fun groups on Facebook. I chose to use all fabrics given to me by friends. Most were from blog friend Penny, so I asked her if she'd also like to sew along. She said yes, and with the permission of the designer Julie Porter I sent along the patterns to Penny. Her work is so pretty! I'll show you her Tiny Baskets first:

Please don't compare my embroidery to hers, she does lovely work!

Now for my TBs. First I redid and touched up the embroidery.

 I wish I had realized ahead of time how challenging the tiny designs would be. I should have planned for, and taken! much more time and care in transferring  and sewing the designs.

Oddly for such shoddy work the stitches were very hard to pick out, again so tiny. I knew some remedial work was needed when I posted the progress on the group and got very tepid, though kind, reassurances that the embroidery wasn't all that awful, LOL  And up popped, three, four times!, that old dreaded saying about if you can't see a mistake from a galloping horse [!], etc----color me NOT a fan of truisms. With quilting, I guarantee all work will be inspected up close and personal, no horses required.

I think I did better on the applique, I do so love doing applique.

I did a mix of raw edge/ running stitch and needle turn.

Now the project is resting for a few days while I prep the applique borders for Year in the Country. I am thinking Tiny Baskets will be enhanced by a narrow border and most previewers agreed.

Over the years I have tried to get away from always adding borders---they're hard to quilt and often not necessary. But I think this time it is a pleasing touch .[your thoughts?]

I also want to improve my embroidery skills. Embroidery was the first sewing my dad taught me, aged about 5 or 6: Lazy Daisy and stem stitch on his white hankies, so funny. He carried right on using them with my floral embellishments. Years later when I had a very long train commute and worked with a woman  who was a master embroiderer and member of the national guild, I did many embroidered projects---crewel, tiny petit point, counted cross stitch [all of which I threw away in a declutter frenzy recently, but that's another story]. My work was nice. But now! Awful. Chicken scratches. Partly I am having eyesight issues and with Covid-19 isolation cannot just run to the optometrist for sewing glasses, as I'd normally do. Not sure they are even open???.

With the idea of doing some more simple stem stitch and back stitch I downloaded these darling free designs from group member Deborah Cade. Her work is so primitive and very charming. We've been asked not to show whole line drawings online but you get the idea. If I accomplish these, no rush, will  make small pillow "bowl fillers'', a new goal.

Nancy asked me about my continuing quilting since I'd been so discouraged earlier in the year. I am still more or less not starting many new things, and except for Tiny Baskets, No More Sewalongs!  I do intend to finish what I have in work, which could keep me busy for years. Finishing the commissioned project of Baby Pineapples was important to me, so that's an item to check off.

I must say, during this crisis, in this odd, lonely, stay at home new world---having a craft--a hobby [hate that belittling word]--like quilting has been a true blessing, a lifesaver, a reason to go on, to get up each day. For that I am grateful and will tune out naysayers who question why I, we, make one quilt after another. "What for?".

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As we sew we gather our tools: Here is Penny's lovely dish she uses for her needle and thread, in her larger project basket.

And here is my current ''dish'' a big clam shell my daughter brought me to paint and add to the community art installment on the beach.

Time for Mo's walk, as the blue sky fades to violet then indigo now.

love

lizzy

gone to the beach.....

beach pics from Penny's daughter Nicky, lovely South African winter beach, including above.

And a rainbow from my brother out west.

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