I'm Back and Still Stitching.....

Well, we made it back from our trip to South Dakota late Thursday evening, however I have not been the mood to do any blogging. Now that I have sat here and waited for Blogger to upload my pictures, I know why i put off doing it. Came home to 108 e-mails and 98 Blogs in Google Reader. but by the time I got to reading blogs there were 113. Forty of the e-mail got deleted before I even read them.

The trip went well for having to travel 9 hours by car. We have made the trip so many times that we have various places to stop along the way that have become traditions. One stop is a VF Factory Outlet in Nebraska City, Nebraska. I got a bargain in some Bass sandals. Their price $50 on sale for 50% off and then they were running a Memorial Day sale of an additional 40% off everything thing. So my shoes cost me $16.04. Almost went back and bought one in the other 2 colors. Can you say shoe lover. LOL.

As I mentioned previously the dog mostly sits or lays on my lap the entire trip. She must have gotten tired of laying down. Here is a photo of her sitting up asleep leaned up against the car door. Morris took this picture while he was driving along. I was too close to her to take the picture. Dogs can be such funny creatures.

Our destination was to visit with Morris's family in South Dakota. We stayed with his 85 year old mother. She still lives basically alone, but Morris's brother is there almost everyday and does some of the cooking for her. We had not been there since they put in new carpeting in the house. Very nice carpet and they had rearranged everything. My first reaction was to look around the living room to pick out my place to stitch. Sure glad that I took my little Ott Light. She only had one lamp in the living room, so I picked a spot on a couch in front of the big picture window and plugged in the Ott Light. Went out to eat several times, cooked several meals at her house, and made tours of the cemeteries. Morris also has a sister , 3 nieces, and 1 nephew that live in the same town, along with great nieces and nephews and 2 aunts. We had a cookout at one niece's house on Sunday evening. Visited with one aunt on Tuesday night and the other one on Wednesday morning.

Wednesday about noon, we left to go see his cousin Jackie and her husband Richard. They are basically our same age and they grew up together. We had discussed going on an Alaskan cruise with them this summer. Jackie changed jobs and has not very much time available to do something like that and we found out that there is going to be another baseball trip to NYC, so we decided to postpone it for at least a year. Jackie lives about 100 further north in South Dakota up near the North Dakota border. Their house is on Lake Mina about 10 miles west of Aberdeen. Really nice area and several years ago we used to have family reunions there the second weekend in August. Have not done that for several years. We both really have missed having that time to get together. Basically we just hung out with them for the afternoon and evening and left for home about noon the next day. It is about 11 hours home from there.

Here are some photos of Jackie's lake area.

View of the lake from the deck steps.

Richards fire pit down by the lake. They recently did some new landscaping and decided to put in this fire pit. Jackie said that Richard would stay down there all night if she would let him. He and Morris went down and built a fire and had Smores. YUM!!! It was rather chilly, so Jackie and I stayed in the house, watched the Royals get beat by the Twins and I crocheted. Now Morris has the bug to build a fire pit similar to this in our back yard.


Here is the cutest Lighthouse that Jackie had set up down by the lake. The light actually works and is set on a timer and goes round and round like a real lighthouse. It is so neat. I can just her my sister Nelda say "I want one". She also has a lake house and it would be perfect for her location too.

We had a very nice time in South Dakota, but I think Morris was anxious to get home. He was worried the yard would get ahead of him and he would have problems getting the tall grass mowed. We had been having lots of rain. While we were in SD it was very chilly and very little sun. One day it only got to 55 and was windy. Driving home, we had rain all through SD and clouds most of the rest of the way. Heard of big storms in western Nebraska as we were driving through there.

Jackie is grandmother to 2 with another due later this summer. They live about 5 hours away from her and she really misses them. On the way home I decided I needed to stitch her a little "thank you" gift. On Friday, I ran to the LNS and bought the stuff to do this for her. When I was at Monday night stitch therapy, I finished it. Ordered a frame and left it to be framed.

Ask Me About My Grandkids

Designer: Lizzie Kate

28-ct Natural Brown Linen

WDW and GAST Threads

Even with marginal lighting I was able to get some stitching done. Ran into one problem with Quaker Christmas. I put the outline of one motif in the wrong place and had to frog it. Between poor lighting and having to frog, I put QC aside after a few days. It was a little difficult to see at night when I lost some of the natural light. Still made some good progress. It is getting harder to get a good picture of it since it is so big. I had to stand on a foot stool and shoot down on it to get this picture. I am on the last page. Click on the picture for a bigger image.

A true stitcher is never without a couple of extra projects to work on if problems are encountered with the planned stitching. With the limited lighting I struggled to find a project that I could see especially at night. Did a little stitching on my M Design -- Little Witch. She got an arm out of WDW Chartreuse. Not enough progress for a picture. I finally settle on another project that I done little to no stitching on for close to a year. It is on R&R 28-ct Antique Cotton. Hands To Work-Best of Blessing.
Just from looking at the photo it is hard to know of the progress. I stitched the sun, lots of words, the fish and the male figure. Also finished the lake water, started the tree branches and some border. It amazing the difference from stitching with Belle Soie silk and then go to GAST threads that this one is stitched in. The dark border, words and tree branches are in GAST Dark Chocolate and I had trouble getting good coverage. Too spoiled by the silk and its good coverage.

With the dog riding in my lap most of the time during the car time, it is difficult to stitch, so instead I crocheted. Here is my work. I am about 2/3 done with another baby afghan like the one I finished earlier in the year. This one is for my niece. The other thing is a dish cloth made from a different pattern than I had used before. This one is somewhat simpler than the other one and I used a Sugar and Cream thread that is dyed so it works up in stripes. I like the look. Just need to weave in my ends. In the background of the photo you can see a smidgen of the fabric for a dress I finished cutting out today. It is to wear to a wedding in less than 3 weeks. Need to spend some time on it. Haven't actually done much sewing in several years. Hope I remember how to.

Saturday late afternoon, I went with Anita and Reina to a nearby town shopping and dinner. Ended up at a yarn shop. Bought some wonderful yarn for another baby afghan. Very nice shop and I could lose myself in there. Also bought a crochet book that had a pattern for a shopping bag. Not only do I like shoes, but I am also a bag lady. Lots of plans, but not enough time to stitch let alone do any crocheting.

I hear some thunder, not sure what the weather is doing We have had storms east of us tonight. Yesterday it was rather scary. Here where I live had heavy rain and 60MPH wind, but in other areas that also had softball- sized hail. Broke out car and house windows, damaged cars. One car dealer had every vehicle in the lot damaged. My plants survived. Finally got in some green pepper plants tonight in the mud. Bought some other flowers Saturday, but they are not in the ground yet. Maybe later this week. Just checked the radar and I think we are going to miss out on the storms for tonight. Good!!

Had a scare a little bit ago. I forgot and went to look at somethng else before I got this post published and when I came back to the create mode, everything I had done was gone. However, I was saved by the autosaved draft copy. So I better hit the publish button before I have to do this entire post again. That would not be a good thins since it took me a long time to get in the mood to so this one.

Happy Stitching!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!