On Green Beans, and Wax Beans, and Beets, Oh My!:

I can’t believe it’s been twelve days since I blogged last. I wanted to fire up the computer each day. As I cut green and wax beans and beets and corn and… or I did other needed household tasks, I would think about turning on the computer. But I never did get that far.

I missed you, you know.

I miss reading the blogs of others. I miss reading my emails. I miss knowing what is going on.

I missed telling you what is going on around here, even though there hasn’t really been anything going on around here except canning veggies.

I have been planning my gothy attack on the Halloween treasures in the stores and making plans for more goth and/or fairy/wood nymph costumes for my collections. A lady can’t have too many wings, don’t you know.

We are not done with the canning, alas. And shopping for gothy stuff is still going to be a future trip.

We have been watching ‘The Waltons’ (The seventy’s TV show.) on DVD as we can our fruits and veggies. I got a good deal on the first eight years of the show a while ago and they just seemed to fit the mood of canning, like they did in the old days of the depression. We are on the Fourth year of the show and I wonder if we will finish the canning or the DVD’s first.

I know that the world has been moving forward with out me the last two weeks and I miss it a lot, but I have to say that it is a lot easier to just do the canning without the daily interruptions I let in when I turn the computer on.

It won’t be too much longer, I hope, before I will have the time to blog again with abandon. See you all then.

On Why I Started Blogging:

I started blogging back in May of 2008 to try to connect with other people. There were friends and family that I could connect with but not on all the levels that interested me. I had ideas and thoughts that the people around me found odd. Not bad, weird or sick ideas. Just not their cup of tea.

In some ways my blogging has opened up a dialog here at home that was impossible before. The people around me found that I was not as different from others, or themselves, as they once thought.

That said, they also found that my having a new group of people in the world to converse with let them off the hook. They didn’t have to talk with me about the things we used to talk about as common interests. I might slide into talking about gothy things.

Mountain Man watched as my relationships with friends and family had ups and downs, but mostly downs. Watched as I reached out time and again only to be ignored.

In trying to expand my circle of friends, it seems I have only reduced the numbers around me here at home.

I love and care about my internet friends with all the friendship and caring I do the other relationships in my life. I don’t know how to turn my back on others and it is not in me to learn how to now.

I've had a lot of fun here and learned a few things here also. I wouldn't give it up for the world.

But saying that, I have not been the friend I once was. I don’t have the time I’d like to right now to sit and hang out on the web. The veggies won’t can and freeze themselves.

So instead of feeling guilty and frustrated. I’ll just say it out. I got some things to do and I can’t do a daily blog right now.

I’m not abandoning blogging for ‘face book’ or ‘twitter.’ (I don’t even have an account with them, or feel the need to check them out.) I made myself crazy last year trying to fit everything in and just lost sleep.

So friends out there in cyber land, I’m not out playing with my other friends. I’m working at home and I’m hoping to find more time when harvest time is done.

On If its Monday, than I was Lost:

The plans I had for the last week all went in the ash can. I was sick with some head cold thing that blossomed into a major, many day migraine. I’m told it is Monday the fourteenth and my computer agrees, so I’m moving on from that point and giving up the last week as lost.

On the good end of things, I lost some weight while I was sick. How much is still to be determined. I’ll know more after I’m through re-hydrating.

I have nothing to show you because nothing on the project front was accomplished. Mountain Man is so glad that I am up and about, he has agreed to help me with the coffin building today because it is supposed to rain later in the week. Weather is a factor, have to work on it outside because it is too big of a project for his work shop area indoors.

I dreamed about embroidery patterns while I was sick. Some were far to complicated or far fetched to replicate on my crazy quilt, but some of them will make the final cut.

I’ll start to read and catch up with what you have been up to on your blogs and emails a little later today, Mountain Man wants to work on the wood this morning.

I’m back in the real world and I think its Monday.

On Going Crazy:

Mountain Man is now down off the roof. The leak around the chimney is finally fixed. It should not rain or snow inside any longer.

We went to the home improvement center this morning. I got the plywood and a few of the other things I needed to build my play coffin. I had to compromise on a few things. But I think in the end I will still like the results.














I started the Crazy Quilt yesterday. I got out my multitude of embroidery thread and set to work. I also found some test pieces of embroidery I had done in years gone by and I will be using some of them for some for the patches in my quilt.

I started with a square of backing 14 X 14 inches (I like to have an inch around to work with on a project like this.) and started pinning pieces of fabric, folding in the edges as I went, to cover the backing. The finished pieces will be 12 X 12 inches.















After I got all the pieces to cover the backing. I started to embroider it together. You don’t have to have pieces with colors that go together. They can clash a bit because you are bordering it with other colors in the fancy stitching. Do try to have colors that don’t clash or blend in too much in the embroidery stitching and have fun just going wild.

Wherever two fabrics meet, stitch it down with fancy stitches. One color, two colors, three colors, four or more. Mix and match, use a color from the other side of your square by matching the thread colors, or go with new and different color combination all together.















I don’t use an embroidery hoop for this, but lots of people do. I free stitch and use my imagination, but you can use any stitches you choose. Just make sure that you stitch the fabric down enough to hold the seams. You use a lot of different stitches here and there, and/or add different kinds of stitches alone or in combinations. Criss cross, square, circle, or wavy stitches. Just go Crazy!

On Collecting the Pieces:

I am loving this pre autumn weather. I’ve been outside a lot lately. This morning it was cutting back the spent whips that the Husta flowers had grown on.

I do like the look of the spent whips, but they are growing along the front walk. And when it rains, as it is supposed to later on today, they just whip your legs into a soaking wet mess as you pass. For me Autumn is like the spring for most of the people out there. I come alive in the Autumn.

I have decided on what kind of patchwork quilt I’m going to make. It will be a Crazy Quilt.

For those of you who don’t know what a crazy quilt is, I’ll explain.
You take a whole lot of different, mostly darker colored, lush, rich fabrics (like velvets, satins and brocades)and cut them in odd angular shapes like the scraps you have after making an evening dress. You sew them down at all angles onto another piece of plain fabric and then, where the fancy fabrics over lap, you embroider colorful borders between the two.

You can also embroider little pictures of flowers, animals, or the like on the larger patches in the empty mid spaces.

Most of them were made in 9 X 9 inch to 12 X 12 inch squares and pieced together with more embroidery, then given a border and backed with a plain piece of fabric that was not meant to be seen. They were rarely ever stuffed. And were mostly used as throws for the piano or a chair.

Mostly they were a place to show off a woman’s embroidery skills and to have a bit of fun and whimsey on.

I rummaged through my stash of fabric and I have enough to get started and I should be able to make a few squares before I need to buy more. That will give me time to look around and find some second hand dresses that are past their prime (Okay, stained or torn beyond repair) and cheep at the thrift store. And I have more then enough embroidery thread to get me through this quilt and more.

It will be another slow going project, but I’ve been wanting to make myself one of these for years. I think it will look just wonderful on my coffin when it is done.

On Labor Day 2009 or Hoping for a Rainy Day:

It may be Labor day for most of you. Now you will be readying children for school, change your mind set from summer to autumn, (Or winter to spring for my friends in the southern hemisphere.) summer vacation to work.

But as for the Lady Deathwatch… She is making darker plans.

I spent the better part of the day drawing up plans for a coffin. Since I don’t want to have to do all that work just for one day ‘Halloween’ a year. I took the time to draw up something I can use year round. I have wanted one for a very long time.

I will be able to use it as a hope chest or a couch/day bed (With the one side in front removed) in the off season. (I do like to multi-task you see.)

I’m making it of plywood, covering it with fabric and painting it black. It will look better than it really is because I will also hide the inner wood with satin fabric and stuffing. It won’t be as good as some people can make because I don’t have those kinds of skills. But for me and my needs, it will be just fine and I can’t wait until it is finished.

Of course I still have to buy the parts, cut and build it, cover and paint it before I can add the hinges, handles and other parts that will make it look just right on the outside. Then there will be the bedding and scrunched satin lining to put together for the interior.

It will take time and care but I feel ready for a larger project just now. I hope to get it done by Halloween of course. But if I don’t, none of it will be lost on a Gothy woman like me.

I can’t wait to sleep on it’s comfy bedding, laid out in my finest Goth night dress. What a lucky Victorian Goth Lady am I.

For now, I’ll start on a nice quilt to dress it up. Mountain Man is still busy on the roof, you see. When he is done in a few days I’ll get the parts for my coffin. That is, unless it starts to rain first. Then I’ll be off shopping for parts.

On Falling into Autumn:

I just love the Autumn. Those of you who know me, know that fact already.

Autumn had been tickling at my nose and singing soft and sweetly to my heart for a few days now. And yesterday it enveloped me in earnest.

I walked out the door to go to the vegetable garden, like all the other days there are crops, and check on what was available for the days food prep, and I got lost.

No, not in the physical. I knew right where I was… but my mind went elsewhere. I followed a bumble bee, and a butterfly, and a toad. I watched the light from the sun play in dappled puddles on the ground and bushes of the woods. I was thinking about the blog of Sooticus the other day, I think.

It was the light that drew me in. In the Autumn the trees and plants start to wilt and shrink back readying themselves for the color change. Space and air, light and views appear that had been hidden in the summer months.

Sooticus was finding ‘Urban Fairies.’ I went hunting in the woods for Fairies and their friends. Wood nymphs, Elves, Sprites, Ents, any or all of them would do. I peeked around trees. I crept along the ground looking for little foot prints or lost belongings, any evidence at all of their inhabitance in my woods.

And although I didn’t find anything I could hold onto or show to anyone else, I did get I glimpse into their world.

I had been looking for a while and I was getting a bit tired. I lay on my back looking up at the canopy of trees, not wanting to leave the woods just yet. I was watching the picture show of shapes made by the leaves in the breeze against the blue sky. And that is when it happened… A Fairy climbed into my hair to watch the show with me.

I didn’t move or even speak. I acted like it happened every day to me, but in reality it had been a while since it happened at all and a long time since it happened on a regular basis.

I waited and listened. They started to talk to one another, in that tinkilly way that little folk talk, talking with the bugs and birds chattering all around. I listened and marveled with all my might as I watched the show of leafy silhouette pictures playing over head.

And then they were gone. A hawk had flown over the trees.

I got up and shook the detritus and old leaf matter out of my hair. But I was left with a feeling of loss and loneliness that only having been with fairies and the like and having them steal away in an instant can bring. Having one moment been full of their company and trust, when they are gone, you feel the weight of the space they left behind. But at the same time you feel happyful from just having been so close to their world.

On Lady Sweaters Knitting:

I have the pictures. Mountain Man was on the roof yesterday doing pre winter repairs and upgrades. It was the first time all summer we had enough days in a row of nice weather for him to get the job done.

Yes, that is me in my newly finished ‘February Lady Sweater.’ It took five tries all together. The first one was a size thing. (I had only done a third of it by the time I ripped it out. I have a larger boob thing going on then the pattern allowed, she had more stitches in the back.) The second was a matter of not enough purple yarn. (I add the variegated on the next go round.) The third was a mistake in the shoulders. The one arm was too big and the second arm was too small. The forth was that I had lost weight by the time I made it and it was too big to the point of falling off my shoulder. And now the fifth time out, it is finally done.

I love it in all its purpley goodness. I got a compliment at the grocery store this morning on its debut out in the real world. They even wanted to know where I got the pattern. www.flintknits.com By Pamela Wynne.















The color is not quite right in the pictures. It really is a little more to the red side of purple then the blue. It is made from just some bargain acrylic yarn I found and liked the colors.

I am back to making mittens along with other unfinished projects. It feels so nice to have my hands on some knitting that is not wedding related for a change. I’m not good with dead lines and all that. Now, I can knit at my own speed again. Knitting Heaven.

Thanks for all the well wishes these past few days I was sick.

On Ups and Downs:

Life is like a roller coaster. The wedding had me up and after I came home I got sick and I was down. And now I’m coming up again, that is I‘m starting to feel better.

I did get a few things done while I was sick in bed. I finished making a the February Lady’s Sweater, that found I had to rework and set aside last spring. (Pictures tomorrow.)

I wrote a bad story. I did pencil book puzzles. But mostly I slept like the dead.

The house is a mess and the laundry pile is growing to a dangerous degree but somehow I don’t mind it, all because I’m feeling much better again.

Gotta’ go and do some dishes before they start to tempt mice into the house.