Happy 4th of July--I have photos!

I popped in to let you know I am still alive and well. I have been enjoying my vacation immensely. I am on Day three of five, and it's blissful.

Thursday morning, I met my mom at the orchard for berry picking. We got 14 pounds of blueberries in an hour and a half. Mostly pretty good, though I did figure out the ones on top, if they were dark and fat, were better than any other ones. We also got 4 quarts of black raspberries. I will never again waste a raspberry. They are such hard work! So fragile and so well-protected. I am still digging thorns out of my palm. SON OF A GUN. I had every intention of actually doing something with them when I got home, but I was so tired, and so filthy--red from the elbow down, wild hair, red stains all over my shirt--I just kinda collapsed into the shower.

Yesterday, I took my mother to the Pennsylvania Dutch folklife festival in Kutztown, Pennsylvania. It was a nice day. The food, on the whole, was good; being from sturdy German stock from Western Pennsylvania, and having a grandmother whose sole purpose in life seemed to be to shove as much starch, butter and sugar in us as possible (BTW, mashed potatoes with a quart of whipping cream and a pound of butter in them are truly awesome), I got a lot of traditional food growing up, but we never ate the ham and dried apples and dumplings I accidentally ate yesterday, not realizing the apples with dumplings had ham in them. I've learned my lesson; I will ask if things look similar to other things, but have names in German, because my German is not that good. Other than that, though, it was nice. My mom treated me to a lamp for my sewing room with patriotic sheep on the shade, and a necklace made from a Chinese coin. Best of all was that I got to meet Diane Phalen, the artist who does the beautiful paintings of quilts. I have several in my stash. She signed two little prints I bought for the sewing room that I will change out with the seasons. It was a joy.

Today we intended to go to the beach, we got in the truck, drive two hours to the beach town, stopped for BBQ, and got to the beach, and it was closed. It was full. There were no other public beaches open, so we came home. SO is kinda annoyed, but I told him I had fun with him. I wanted to see water, and we ate our BBQ as a picnic at a little marina, plus I was spending the day with my buddy. I told him I'd have fun eating a boloney sandwich behind a Walmart with him. That's just how it is, LOL.
No more trying to get there on a holiday. Lesson learned.

So I've been stitching. The photo at the top of the post is a Secret Shop design from Sanman Originals. I started it Saturday, finished it Wednesday, fun, festive stitch.


I finished SNN's November 2007 on Father's Day. It was a pretty fun stitch. I worked on this while visiting with Regina. It was a good design for beach stitching. Simple. I had to change it a wee bit because I ran out of perle cotton for the trees. I am not buying a skein of Weeks Perle for three stitches. You can't even tell







Chancey is modeling the finished patriotic bandanna. I put it on her yesterday and told her she was absolutely beautiful, and she pranced and ran back to show her Daddy Jim. Silly girl. She did not want to behave while Mom was taking her photo, truly an American diva, LOL. I also have photos of Master Robert in it, but I have to pull those off the camera. She looks a little uncomfortable in the picture, but she was excited. She thought she was going bye-byes, and she loves bye-byes. Both of them wanted to go to Kutztown, but, as I'm getting older, I realize it really is not that fun to take them everywhere, especially in crowded places. They get hot, I worry about people stepping on them, and they aren't allowed everywhere. So they got to stay home and watch the kitties yesterday. They take their job very seriously; to them, the cats are uncivilized hooligans who fight when the dogs are trying to watch Animal Planet or E. I guess when you have no thumbs to turn up the volume to drown out the bickering so you can find out the latest wrinkle in the Michael Jackson horror story (and it really is sad and confusing), you're gonna referee some fights. The cats just tend to ignore them though, but the bickering ends, no one gets scratched, and I am pretty sure my dogs know enough about the entertainment world to have a blog.

Have to run. I hope you have a blessed holiday. Eat plenty of hot dogs and potato salad. Eschew any apple dishes you don't recognize. Wear suncreen.