SHE'S A FICKLED WOMAN. . . . .

Mother Nature, of course!

On Friday evening I was so tired of hearing about

Irene on the radio and tv that I decided to walk

out onto the deck and see the sky for myself.

 What I saw was one of the most beautiful skys

I had ever seen at this time of year.

 Have you ever "painted a sky" on wool

to use in a pictorial?

Wou7ldn't it be wonderful to use this as

a color plan?

 So peaceful and serene.  It made me wonder

what mother nature was thinking.

 This is a lady of miracles.

She gives us great beauty to enjoy and

it's all free!

Saturday evening was another story!

She turned her back on us and gave us an

angry sky.

 Even tho the sky looks angry there is

still beauty in these clouds.

 The sky had gotten very dark and

the clouds were rolling, the wind was

blowing and the trees were swaying.

 It was raining steadily but not hard.

I love the clouds so I stood for quite some time watching them as they

rolled by forming picture after picture.

Actually, the storm did not hit this area to badly.
We lost power for about 4 hours and
it did rain heavily during the night.

Irene was an uninvited guest at my grand daughter's
wedding that was supposed to be today.  Due to the
location, it was cancelled and they were
married in a private ceremony yesterday.
We will hold a family celebration
several weeks from now.

So, onto "Plan B."  We have made reservations
at a seafood resturant in Hagerstown for
"all you can eat" crabs.  I can think of nothing better
on a rainy Sunday afternoon that all you can
eat crabs.
Hope everyone is safe and well and that
Irene leaves us in a hurry.
Doris

IT'S TIME TO HOOK!!!

It's finally happened!  I think the Mojo is back!  Yesterday for the first time I really enjoyed hooking.  I really cannot imagine me without my hooking frame set up with a large rug in progress.

I have been working on my large pictorial for some time now and I think it is about 85% finished.  I felt as tho I had hooked myself into a corner.

I am not going to show the whole rug here since I did that some time ago.

 When I finished hooking the man's face I knew that I had a problem.  I needed something for his shirt that would balance color with the rest of the

piece and that would show thru the bird cage properly.  I could not use green because of the grass that surrounds the wagon and the wagon itself.

My "rule of thumb" when encountering a hooking problem is

not to de-hook but take the piece off of the frame and

let it rest for a week.  At the end of that time I lay the piece on the

floor and take a good look.  Usually by then the piece will tell me

what it needs.

This piece told me it needed a soft blue.  Something in the "steel" gray family or like worn out jeans.  I took a trip to Grant Street Woolworks and found exactly

whaat I needed in Linda's "odds and ends" jar.  I only need

a very small piece and this was perfect.

Thank you Linda.

As I am sure you know, I cannot go a whole week without hooking

so when I took the pictorial off of the frame I had to put

something on it.  Since the pictorial is being done with a #3 cut,

I decided it was time to take a break.  Instead of getting out

one of the large pieces already in progress, I started a new piece.

 This is Edith O'Neal's Lion.  I have had this piece for sometime

and have been anxious to see what I could do with it.  I am using a number of cuts but mostly #8 and #8.5.  Quite a change off from a

#3!

 As yoou can see, I have not finished the face at this point.

The face is hooked with a #6 cut and some #3 around the eyes.

I know that Lion's have amber eyes but with the brown/amber of the

beard I thought green eyes looked best.

Close up of face.



Close up of beard.  The beard is a #8.5 cut and is done with a brown/amber tweed and accented with a red/brown/orange plaid. The Lion's body is being done with three different dye lots of Dottie Ebi's Spots #1.  These materials are quite interesting because they were dyed by two different hookers.  Two dye lots are over Woolrich's while wool and one dye lot is over Dorr's yellow.  It is interesting for me to see the difference in the wool from one dyeing concept to another.  It is also interesting to see the difference that dyeing over colored material makes.  I hope you all try this sometime in the near future.

In the meantime, we have had some wonderful weather.   Hope all of you are

out enjoying this weather bonus.  Eloise has been spending

her mornings on the deck where it is nice and cool.  Of course she

has to greet the neighbors and their dogs as they

walk past.

Hope everyone keeps hooking and enjoys the short time left

of our summer.  When school is back in session (today is the first day here)

you know summer is about over.

Next week our family has a wedding and a

crab feast.  More on this later.   Have a great week.

Doris





UP TO MY ELBOWS!

In tomatoes, that is!  This is about one forth of the harvest of red tomatoes from Saturday last week.

There are also yellow tomatoes.  I love the yellow ones.  They are so sweet and juicy.

 The tomatoes in the bowl on the left are cherry tomatoes.  We estimate that we had about 500 of those.  Very small but did they pack a flavor!  The best we have ever had and, of course, the label got thrown away so we don't know what variety they are so we can plant the same next season.

Some really nice eggplants.  Since I can only eat so many veggies I googled eggplants and found that I could freeze these.  It is very simple.  Peel the eggplant and cut into thick slices.  Blanch in lemon water for no more than 4 minutes, cool and freeze.  I am hoping to make some eggplant casseroles this winter and some eggplant fritters.

In this pot is tomato sauce.  I took many of the cherry tomatoes and put them in the food processor.  I did not puree them but left some small chuncks since I wanted the  sauce to have some texture.  I added chopped onion and green pepper.  I spiced the sauce with bay leaf, oregano, and fresh basil.  I let it simmer for about half an hour.  I ended up with 4 containers of sauce.  I froze three of them and kept the 1 out to try.

To this container of sauce I added, garlic and garlic oil, some more fresh basil and about a dozen shrimp.  I heated it just long enough for the shrimp to cook and I served it over spaghetti.  It was yummy!  It makes me know that I can add many things to this basic sauce and have many different meals.  One of the nicest things about the sauce is that by using the processor you can not even tell that the skins were left on the tomato, after all, that is where a lot of the flavor is.

Now I have time to go back to my hooking!!!!!  Have a wonderful week everyone.

Doris

. .FRUSTRATION AND A TRIP . . . . . . . . .

Frustration has been the word of the past few weeks.  During the time that I was not posting Mr. Blog decided to update how you blog.  Oh my goodness, all of these changes for an old lady make for smoke rolling out of the ears.  Richard finally figured out how to get the picture on and so I am now going to try to update.

I took a trip to Grant Street Woolworks several weeks ago.  I did not take pictures of rugs.  Kathy (woolfind) always does a good job of that.  Instead I chose to "Take the Road Less Traveled" to Chambersburg.  I wandered up Maryland Route 11 instead of taking interstate 81.  It is a lovely senic drive and probably only takes 10-15 minutes longer and no trailer-tractors to contend with.

This is one of the lovelist stone houses on the way.  In the spring and summer it is doubly beautiful because the occupants have planted the whole property in the English garden style with climbing roses all along the fence.

 This is the new building, just finished, at the Hagerstown Regional Airport.  It is a very large airport for the town size but occasionaly Air Force One land there.

I love old barna!  This is a really nice one.  This farmer raises goats and the pasture is full of them.  They are really interesting.

 This is one of the older homes on the route.  Very picturesque and so peaceful looking.

Crazy lopsided picture taken out of the side window.  It really is hard to take good pictures when driving.  Look at the "Gingerbread on the porch.

This is the airport again.  A mistake to have it on twice but I can't figure how to get rid of it!

A beautiful day with soft puffy clouds floating the the sky.  When I was a kid I loved to look at the faces, the animals, and the castles in the clouds.  These looked like big marshmellows and some looked like cotton candy.

There are lots more interesting barns and houses on this route but no place to pull off of the road to take pictures.  I do enjoy the ride.

In addition to that, I have been elbow deep in tomatoes.  More about that later.  Also I have started a new hooking project.  When I run into a problem while hooking my rule of thumb is to take the piece off of the stand and let it rest for a week.  Usually at the end of that time the piece tells me what it needs.  Of course, I cannot a week without hooking!  Sooooooo, instead of working on one of the many "already started" pieces, of course, I started on new design.  More on this in the next post.

In the meantime, Joan, Richard and I visited our favorite Mexican Resturant last Saturday and after Richard is finished mowing today we will venture out for another luncheon in one of our favorite places.

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend.  The weather today is perfect!

Doris