Halfway Through the Year

   It's  July 1, and the beginning of the second half of the year already.  It's also my son's 42nd birthday.

I still find it hard to believe I have a son that old, until I try to climb all the flights of steps up to my sewing room.  We've decided to install a stairlift, and I'm excited about that. Less strain getting up the stairs. might mean I start stitching more!

  My smocking chapter's little retreat went well.  Most of us finished the baby bonnet (not me) and almost everyone had a finished Verdun blouse by the end of the second day. (not me. ) I had inadvertantly left the house without my pattern. One of the other ladies traced a copy out for me, but it turned out to be too small, and since I didn't have the original multi-size pattern with the grading lines on it I wasn't able to fix the problem.  I have since traced off a new, enlarged pattern and will see about getting that finished before our next meeting on the 14th.   The drawn thread bag was a bit of a debacle- I couldn't figure out how to do one of the stitches, and was having a really difficult time explaining the process to others, so one of the other members took over for me.  Most of the ladies have finished their bags in spite of my lousy teaching efforts. (not me)

We start another big project at the next meeting; a stitch along from Smocking Arts Guild of America called "Just Pin It".  This is a sampler that has several portions smocked with various stitches and some blank ones where we can display the different pins we collect at conventions and such.  I believe you can get to the page of stitch alongs without signing in, but might not be able to open the actual pdf. 

I watched the lightning bugs rise from the lawn this evening.  They came out around 9pm, and it was still pretty light out so the display wasn't as "good" as previous years.  Lightning bugs might be my favorite part of summer.     The water department has parked one of their big diggers in front of our house again, which means my least favorite part of the year "construction time" is about to rev up again.  I can not tell you how glad I will be for this lead remediation work to be finished in our neighborhood!

Enjoy your Fourth!  I'll be grilling something and attempting to avoid the mosquitos.