Summers should be for vacations and swimming and sitting
on the porch stitching wool cardinals! But more about that below-
I love working in the garden and pruning the flowers. Unfortunately, spring ended this year with an abundance of rain so our garden was late to plant. Also some weird looking worms got our entire first patch of sweet corn. We never saw that coming and we have been growing corn for 40 years.
This was the first year we had no sweet corn put up in the freezer.
We are sweet corn deprived.
Last year the coons got the corn in the blink of an eye. It was gone before we knew it was even close to ready. We used to have a farm Beagle and she kept the coons out of the corn each year. They were never a problem, ever. She even loved corn on the cob herself but she never bothered enough of it to be a problem. Unfortunately, she passed away of old age a few years ago.
Now we have no beagle and no corn.
Not even in the freezer.
To make matters worse, the neighbors horses got out the other day and wiped out our entire second planting of sweet corn. The corn was up only about 6" but the rows were freshly cultivated and the horses thought it looked like a great spot to roll in the dust. They literally wiped out everything in the patch. It would be pretty funny if our freezer wasn't so empty.
It's going to be a desperate corn situation around here very soon.
Also, we only have 4 asparagus plants left. We are not sure if the horses ate them the other day or stepped on them but they have all disappeared.
The tomatoes and pepper plants are doing OK so far but everything is much later than normal.
This summer has been such an exception to the normal summer around here!
Bad garden!
Bad horses!
Too busy to enjoy anything!
On a bright note-
It has been a crazy year working on new designs and fabric lines.
I am also updating all of our older patterns with color.
Here is one I worked on last week- Cardinal Wool Embroidery. It's no secret that I love cardinals. I am a Missouri girl, born and raised even though I did live in Iowa for four years.
Missouri is home to the Cardinals. This was the original table runner I did for this the Cardinal Wool Embroidery pattern in 2005.
Recently while playing with the designs I did a few more wool runners and quilts.
The cardinals are so vibrant made with Weeks dye works hand-dyed wools.
Here's another thought- a cardinal quilt.
You can make individual blocks and hand-stitch them together.
The one on the left below has a single red wool border with
Weeks
wool Candy Apple 2268 HT - the same wool that was used on all of the wings.
It's brighter so it really stands out.
The one on the right has all black wool border with a strip
of the same red wool stitched on as a sashing.
I love the look of the black hand-dyed wool backgrounds.
This one is Weeks Dye Works wool in Kohl 3900
You can get the pattern here-
Downloads will be available very soon.
Which idea is your favorite?
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