Pelicans & Geese

   Yesterday we were watching the pelicans and the Canada geese out our windows. This is the closest we have seen the pelicans. They swam up to visit the geese-that was interesting to watch.

  Still frigid cold here. Our temporary fix lasted til early this morning. The furnace has come back on once in awhile this morning-after I pray super diligently (smiles)  I called and they moved us up to this morning early to install the new unit instead of tomorrow. This has been such a good company to work with. She even said they could run out large heaters for us that would heat a room. I said we have a small heater that I have Larry using near his computer.  This company is about 45 minutes to an hour drive way from us.  I will be giving them a good review for sure.

  Our road here has still not been plowed, and we are still in the single digits so too cold for me to be shoveling a path still. hoping tomorrow I can do that.

Stay safe if you are effected by this winter blast.  Another one coming in a few days but I think that one will be south of us.

Happy Mid Week & Weaving Woes

  Happy Mid-week. 

    Wow one of our neighbors has already arrived for this year's longer 4th of July celebration - long weekend. With the 4th being on a Tuesday this year-people are already arriving at the lake. I figured they would start coming in late Thursday for sure but many are already here. A good thing though is we are cooler this morning, a few sprinkles is all we got for rain, but cooler morning is wonderful, although it will change into a very humid day.

  Monday I decided it was time to finish setting up my loom for weaving. It has been at least a year or more since I did the threading and put on all the warp. For some reason, I had a difficult time with the threading, redoing allot of it over. When finished I rechecked all the threads to make sure it was right. Needed a break from it, so there it sat.

  I finished the tie up of the pedals according to the draft (pattern) and started to weave-ugh part of the pattern was all wrong. I was to have little squares in some sections. It took allot of playing around to figure out the mistake in the pattern. This is a pattern I found in one of the Handwoven magazines I was getting for several years-Summer 1985. Never had this occur before with one of their patterns.

  So I was so happy that I was able to figure this out--but then after weaving several inches I see another pattern mistake-now it is in the pattern that is threaded through the heddles ugh 

   The right side section is not making the little squares.  Only way to fix this is to cut the threads and re thread that section-ugh. Do I want to do this? No but Yes I will need to, but decided to weave one towel first and then cut that off the loom and rethread that section, tie it all back on and begin again. This project will make several 40 inch long towels so don't want the mistake in all of these towels. This process will waste allot of threads so decided to weave off the first towel first.

  On a second thought-I may think on this and decide to cut if off now and fix the problem first before weaving more. Frustrating for sure I know I am not happy with this threading error

This is what the weave is suppose to look like (where the squares start) across the whole towel I wove about 4 inches below this trying to figure out how to correct the mistake in the pattern tie up.

This is what the right side looks like-that should be all little squares where there is just 2 and then 1 row of squares. This is very frustrating for me. I know things happen.

  Sorry about the photos, this camera is just not taking good photos for me-you can't even tell that the squares are blue in this above photo. I will be looking for a new camera soon-this distorts the photos when I zoom in-there is no auto focus, the colors are not always true-I should have tested the camera out better before deciding to keep it.

   I did get a decent pre sunrise photo very early this morning-the sky was very red

Here is a photo I took several weeks ago-you can see how it is distorted a bit from zooming in Not as bad as most-I can not zoom photos in for boats on the lake or the eagles at all-sigh

     I thought this was an interesting line up of these Canada geese.

Happy Mid week and if you are in the States Happy Independence Day

T Stands for Tuesday A This and That Catch Up (long)

   Tuesday is T Day over at Bleubeard and Elizabeth's. Find link in my sidebar. We gather to share with each other along with a photo of a drink reference.

  It was busy days for me last week. I drove in three mornings to the woods house to continue packing up Larry's scope repair shop. A friend that lives near there meets me to help-we do pay her for her time. Got allot accomplished. The second day I decided since bitter temperatures were coming in I better check on the thermostat in the house. Good thing I did as the wall thermostat went out. So the next morning early I picked up a new one along with batteries and met another friend that changed it up for me. He would not take any money but he did say "I will be visiting you December to pick up my Christmas goody package though"  That had me smiling. 

  I like to bake and cook etc and since I don't really have anyone to gift with goodies anymore I started making cookies and candy etc to gift this friend and a few of his friends for Christmas. They always enjoy the peanut brittle especially.

  When I got home I needed to clean house as our Wisconsin friends were coming down on Friday to visit us and check out wineries.  Marie always bakes Larry a "real" cheesecake (he gets a keto one from me haha)  As always we had a good visit. We've been friends for around 30 years or so now.  I drank more wine over the weekend with them then I do in 6 months or more. 😀 There are two wineries in Stover Missouri that I have shared in the past-wow they have both really grown. They also went to one on their way down to us and they didn't care for that one at all.

  Here is just some of the bottles we drank-I am wanting to save the labels on these. These are my ticket into T

Our favorite winery this trip was Dale Hollow in Stover, Missouri. on their site is this video

   The last time we visited was two years ago and it was very chaotic at the time. Covid was still around, so everyone was masked, they had an outdoors band at that time and people were coming into the small building to buy bottles of wine to enjoy. So the place was very hectic. I had bought a bottle there and really loved it. My friends had bought a case but their experience was that it was too crazy busy. 

   I really wanted to go again this weekend because I just really liked the wine there.  Wow what a difference 2 years has made. They built a beautiful large building to showcase their wines, have tastings, and/or sit and enjoy wine with friends. They had expanded their vineyards too-Very professional winery. They have won ribbons on some of their wines too. My friends said wow what a difference from last year and they loved the wine more this trip.

  The day before they go back home, we almost always make a steak and shrimp dinner for all of us.  We went into a small supermarket-the same company that bought up the small store nearest me to check out the meat options. Neither one of us took the time to take photos but oh my gosh what a delicious meal She spotted two huge tomahawk steaks.  Larry and I have never been big meat eaters, but it is a treat for us when they come down. Marie and I are both good in the kitchen but I said I have noooo clue how to grill these so this is up to you how to prepare the steaks.  She said she just learned about doing a reverse sear on these-you bake them to a certain temperature and then grill them on a hot grill pan to the desired temperature. They were perfect-Larry and I want just before well done and they eat theirs on the rare side.  I can't even describe how good these were. Marie "nailed it" on the steaks.   I picked up a small bag of mini potatoes and I had frozen green beans in the freezer to complete the meal.

  Then we had the cheesecake 

 Here is a photo from online I found-I have never heard of these steaks before I really wish we would have gotten a photo of ours, as they were bigger than this photo. We each bought one for two people.  I saved the trimmings and bones to make beef broth for later.

As the weather people promised we went to bitter cold with low 20's f Friday evening-that will continue for the next couple of weeks.

   Before our friends arrived I had been working on a page for my journal for AJJ's theme of collage fodder with hostess Bleubeard and Elizabeth. I finished it today (Sunday morning) Hoping this is considered a collage fodder page

clicking on photos will enlarge for better viewing.

  I decided to make a two page spread in my German cookbook mixed media journal and titled these pages November

I used a dried wet wipe that I use when I am painting for the background, added a practice sashiko piece I stitched on one of my hand dyed fabric scraps, stamped trees, stamps, birch bark-one of my last pieces, an eco printed piece I did on paper, November words from the farmer's almanac, and a little leaf in handmade paper from Mia 

   I have a friend that told me once, to know when to stop-and not over do. I decided to use from Crayola a brown watercolor crayon and go over the two tree stampings, a little bit over the bison stamp, and Mia's leaf. I then decided to go over the page that was showing (on the top of journal) and forgot that cookbook pages are Not watercolor papers-lol  I think it did work out ok in the end I also added the green ribbon that came from a liqueur bottle 

   

This page shows the cut out script from the Farmer's Almanac, stamped trees, eco print on paper, the birch bark, little leaf in paper, and I had saved a stack of these utility bills when we lived in Illinois-they used cool stamps on postcards This page I had covered it first with a scrapbook type paper then the cloth I used when painting.

This page has a cut out bear foot print and a cut out leaf from magazines, the stamped tree, a stamp, the sashiko on my hand dyed fabric and the paint cloth.

  A few views here at the lake house.

Sunday morning geese

We love winter squash and this area in Missouri the summers are too hot to find good ones-our friends brought us down these from a market Little things are just special aren't they?

Happy T and new week

Lovely Huge Moon Tonight

  I grabbed my old camera, the moon was huge just over the lake early tongiht. This time I got a soso photo.

  Early this morning just after sunrise when the sun was very very bright-lots of birds. Ducks swimming to the left of the dock and to the right on our grass a group of Canada geese Now and early spring they love to do this.

  This is the only photo I captured today, but we enjoyed a large flock of crows, and watched a pair of eagles flying all over the lake just past the above neighbors dock-probably fishing.  We have heard them singing most mornings now this week-such a joy and a blessing. I missed them this summer when they were raising their family. 

   

  Another fun thing before sunrise is to see and here and the fish jumping out of the water catching food. Some of them are very large.

  At the beginning of lawn cutting season, we bought a battery operated weed eater with wheels-light weight for me. I thought I would cut grass with it instead of dealing with a lawn mower on these hills in our yard. We ended up with someone cutting it for us most of the summer-and then he just quit, along with not completing the dock project with Larry-sigh. Too many these days are so irresponsible.  Sooo the past two days I have been working on getting the grass cut. Works pretty well until I get into a thick patch of grass when it uses up allot of battery life. We do have three batteries we can charge up-so that helps. So far I have about half done. Hope to get more done tomorrow. After this will cut before the grass gets too high. We had allot of off and on rain before Labor Day week.

  I see September will move fast-we have much to do with appointments and working at the woods house.

  I won't be around for link ups for awhile, but will be popping in to see what you are up to.

   The Queen was such a special lady and leader, I found these quotes by her  (just click in the middle of page and video will come on)

  Happy weekend.

T Stands for Tuesday

    Our first Tuesday of July, and the day after our Independence Day here in the States. Welcome to T Stands for Tuesday where we share with friends and a drink related photo in our post.

    Here where I live now,  I have a front row seat looking over the lake to enjoy lots of firework displays. They started Friday evening, and since I enjoy them it's perfect for me. Amazes me still, how I can sit in my own home and watch fireworks over the lake  til I get tired of watching haha Sunday right at dusk the fireworks really began for our 4th celebration, I sat out on the deck for over 2 hours watching. The two homes next to me were shooting them off too so felt like I was in the fireworks. Fun

  Hope you had a wonderful long holiday weekend-those of you that celebrate. I didn't get any photos, but I did make us baby back ribs, brats, potato salad, a strawberry jello with tropical fruits-canned, topped with star marshmallows, and a new to me recipe for baked beans-that I will share for our Food Wednesdays. I had posted this recipe awhile back when I was sharing recipes using cast iron pieces. .

  Not much new happening, I lost most of my flower seeds do to storms, so only a few came up. I water every other day, and weed a bit and that's about it for gardening, do to the very hot days here. We did get a break during the early part of the weekend, but starting Tuesday we will be in the 100's for several days in a row.  This is just going to continue to be a very hot summer for us in the Ozarks.  This is a cycle that occurs ever so many years after a rough winter.

  I have been waiting for a couple stencils to arrive in my mailbox for the sashiko stitched bags One was damaged that came from England so will be waiting for a replacement, but I did receive another set of stencils over the weekend.  Here is a photo of this set, I am liking this artist Pippen. I have an ebook by her as well Now to figure out the best way to mark the fabrics.

  I am not big on geometric designs (which most of sashiko is) but I did like a few in this collection. I have a dragonfly stencil that came that I really love, and I ordered one with flowers.  So I will have a variety of patterns to use for the bags.

  For my drink share this week, I have several to share with you.    I found this 6 pack of cans at the local supermarket that has a huge liquor department. Looking for gluten free I found the pineapple-fresh pressed apple cider.  I could really taste the pineapple more when I drank it warm instead of cold.

     I also bought a bag of this coffee for Larry, a dark roast.

  Lake Views

            Early Sunrise Sunday Morning

 Larry spotted these geese swimming by Sunday morning too. We have been enjoying the cool mornings and quiet lake-early early.  Of course by around 11 am the lake was totally bonkers with boats going every which way on the lake, since Friday. It is the 4th after all-smiles. I have enjoyed watching the neighbors grandchildren playing in the lake and fishing.

Another drink share

   This is a dark gluten free beer that I asked my Wisconsin friends to look for-as I can't find any brands close by. This one was really good, I opened up a bottle to simmer the brats in and to take a few swallows Tastes like a good European dark beer I also add water to the pot-simmer for a bit and then turn off the heat and put the lid on  for 20 minutes or so before grilling in my cast iron grill pan. Plumps up the brats.

My latest cold brew tea with fresh lemons-very light and refreshing, no need for any added sweeteners

Thank you for visiting-Happy T everyone, and Wednesday is Food Wednesdays this week hope to see you there. If you don't care to share a post, I hope you will stop by and visit all the delicious food posts at the link up