MYSTERY CLASS PROGRESS

I haven't had much time to work on this - in fact I haven't had much time to do much of anything lately. For the last 2 months, when I'm not at work, I've been helping my Mom get ready for a move to a retirement community. She moves in a couple of weeks. Dad will be transferred from his current location to the health care unit in the same community once she gets settled in. It has been quite the adventure sorting through their house. They've lived in this house for 50 years and it holds lots of memories. Mom has done amazingly well with all this change. First she had to deal with Dad being sick, then deciding that she needed to move, finding a place she liked and then getting ready for the move. Dad is improving in his current location but is VERY frustrated that he can't help Mom with the move. Hopefully by the end of February they both will be in the same facility. She will be able to walk down the hall to visit with him instead of getting in the car and driving to see him 2-3 times a day. That will truly be a blessing.

ANYWAY - this is supposed to be a stitching blog. So, let's talk stitching!

The first picture is the top left corner of the canvas. I've done the green curly que thingy but have not finished the white section yet.

The picture above gives you a close up look at the border that Ruth had us do on the entire canvas. It took forever for me to get it all done due to the lack of time to stitch but I love the results.

This shows the whole canvas with all the borders finished. I hope to work on it some more tonight.

We are in the middle of blizzard - 11 inches of snow on the ground and it is still snowing so hard I can't see the house across the street. We are supposed to get 10 -15 more hours of this. As soon as I post this - I am going to start testing recipes for next week's baby shower. I am trying a baked french toast that you make the night before and bake off in the morning. I also am looking at an eggs florentine casserole. The shower is set for 10 AM so I am doing brunch food. I will let you know what recipes make the cut. At least the house will smell yummy.

Happy snowy stitchy Saturday.

VIOLA!

The crab canvas from Viola is finished!! Woo and Hoo! The top border seemed to take FORever. I finished it this afternoon and will send it off to PFOS for finishing soon. I hope they do something spectacular and over the top with this one.

Since it was a rainy, cool day here in Ortville, I kept right on stitching. I started the tooth fairy pillow that I showed you in the last post. I forgot to take pictures of my progress. Sorry. I'll post pics later this week. The two scoops of ice cream are stitched and I have started on the cone. So far it is a quick stitch, which is a good thing. I need to have this puppy stitched and to the finishers ASAP. I am co-hosting a baby shower for the mother-to-be (my niece) in early October and the pillow HAS to be ready to present to her at the shower.

Hope everyone had a great holiday weekend. We went to visit friends at their river house yesterday. In addition to a day of sailing, sunning and visiting, we had a picnic. I contributed 2 dishes from my favorite television chef - The Barefoot Contessa. The first one was her sagaponack corn pudding. This is one of my go to dishes and it hasn't failed me yet. The second dish was her zucchini gratin. I had never tried it before but boy am I glad I did. Oh my! It was fabulous. You should give it try if you are like me and have an abundance of zucchini.

Farmer's Markets & Strawberries and Cream Coffeecake

A new Farmer's Market opened up right down the road from me at the end of April and I am just loving it. All the food vendors are required to be either organic or pesticide free. This new market carries produce, honey, eggs, free range chickens, goat cheese, lamb, seafood, beef, pasta, bread, and pastries. It also has a section with crafts, plants, soaps/lotions and amazing cut flowers. In addition to purchasing our usual produce favorites, I have also tried at least one new thing each week. Last week, I tried cheddar cheese made from goat's milk. OHHHHHH MMYYYY! Absolutely fabulous. Yesterday, as I shopped, I sipped on sunflower tea. Interesting flavor - I didn't like it enough to bring any home, but it was worth the try. I brought home a new variety of turnips to try instead. I have discovered a couple of things over the weeks. (1) You can't beat just picked produce. The broccoli I bought had been cut at 5:00 a.m. and I bought it at 8:00 a.m. It tastes entirely different from what you find in the local big box grocery store. (2) Eggs from free range chickens are gorgeous! The shells are various shades of brown, white, blue and green. The yolks are bigger and are the most incredible dark yellow color. (3) Some people just don't understand the concept of a farmer's market. It still amazes me when I hear folks ask the farmers WHY they don't have any tomatoes, peppers, cantelope, or watermelon yet. You can get those items in other areas of the country by the end of May - but NOT in or around Ortville!!! AND I overheard one woman yesterday screeching from across the marketplace because the farmer wouldn't take a credit card for her $4 worth of cut flowers. PLEASE! It is a farmer's market - bring cash. It would be nice if you brought your own reusable bags too. How hard is that? Sorry - sometimes it just makes me crazy.

My goal yesterday was to be one of the first folks to walk through the gate of the Farmer's Market. One of my favorite vendors has had the most incredible strawberries lately. It is almost the end of fresh strawberry season here in Ortville and I HAD to have 2 quarts for a new recipe. I needed these strawberries to make a new recipe from my latest copy of the Baking Sheet . It arrived in Friday's mail and it included a recipe for Strawberries and Cream Coffeecake. It looked and sounded so good - I just knew that I had to make it sometime this weekend. Thus the need for strawberries. I wish you could smell the goodness wafting out of my kitchen right now. I am drooling on the keyboard as I type. It smells so GOOD. I will let you know if this recipe is a keeper or not.

These are the snapdragons I got at the market. I hope you can see how vibrant the colors are. Orange, pink and light purple. They really jazz up my breakfast room table.

UPDATE: The coffeecake is really good. I would definitely make it again. The only complaint I have with it is that the crunchy crumb topping looses it's crunch after a couple of days. It doesn't affect the taste - it just isn't crunchy anymore. Of course, that could be related to the high humidity here in VA.