September 6,2018

Today would have been our mom’s 99th Birthday. Happy Birthday in Heaven, Hazel!

Her namesake is full of Terrier energy!

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The nights are getting cooler – low 50’s and I don’t want my succulents to get too chilled so yesterday I cleaned the basement in preparation for moving plants down there with the grow-lights and today I worked on the dining/sitting area. Here are a few of my newest plants that my friend, Jane in Nevada whose birthday is also today, sent me for my birthday in July. They have loved the humid weather, as you can tell.

And here is a gift I just received from my friend Carolyn in Washington – it’s my bad hair day chicken as a pincushion!

And as I look around I see projects everywhere!

I wish they were all finished!

The recurring question after I posted the cover of the book was when will it be released? It will be available sometime in February 2019. And here’s the next announcement: we’re currently working on Book Two! No rest for the weary, right?

Next week will be pumpkin picking time! My peppers are not doing so well but take a look at my two tomato plants. They’re huge and full of tomatoes!

I’m starting to wonder if I’ll get to make pepper jelly, however.

Millie says “yawn”.

Betty says “hey”.

And I say Good Night!

28 thoughts on “September 6,2018

  1. Carolyn Boutilier

    thank you for sharing the pictures. Our tomatoes are terrible all vine and few tomatoes but the pepper plants are yielding lots of peppers. wish we live closer we could swap veggies. Last December I made jalapeno raspberry jam and gave it as gifts. Everyone loved it. I did not make it really hot just enough to know that there was a tiny kick to it.Serve on crackers with cream cheese.
    WOW! Book 2 and we do not have the first one. Looking forward to both new books. WE are still in the 90’s and hopefully this weekend we will get a break from this heat but with lots of rain coming in. We do not need anymore rain. My husband has mowed our 5 acres every 4 days since April 1. This a first since moving to the valley 30 years ago.
    Carolyn B

    1. CountryThreads Post author

      Carolyn – wow – that’s a lot of mowing! Yes, with cream cheese on crackers – yum! I also put it in a Sesame Asian salad mix from the store. Yes, wish we could swap tomatoes for peppers!

  2. Kathy Hanson

    Your plants are gorgeous!! Pepper jelly sounds good. I just canned 8 pints of spaghetti sauce with meat in it. Cooking down the tomatoes (it took lots!) and getting it all canned took 6 hours! Will taste great this winter. Loved the pictures of the Millie and Betty. Ah, projects, they seem to be never-ending!!

  3. Jan VanDeWalle

    Wish I had your energy, Our garden is wild with vines this year tomatoes are huge. The row of pole beans is 4 ft. thru mostly vine and leaves very few beans so far hoping the cooler weather will give them a boost. Corn is 10-12 ft tall and falling over in the wind. The vineyards are picking grapes already. The smoke from the fires in southern Oregon are blowing up this way again. We are 35 miles south of Portland.
    Enjoy all your adventures with Reed and your many dog friends. Love the quilts. I am a beginner quilter, mostly raggys so far but am getting closer to the piecing, I like to pet my fabric stash and have a problem cutting into some of fabrics 😉

    1. CountryThreads Post author

      Jan – you’re not the only one who finds cutting up beautiful fabric to be hard! You’re in good company!

  4. Susan Sundermeyer

    You look very much like your mother, Mary. Happy Birthday to her! I pulled my tomato vines up a couple of weeks back. They did terrible this year. When I would go to pick what I thought was a ripe one it would have black rot on the bottom of it.

  5. Virginia

    Love the memory pillow you made of your mother. I agree with Susan..you do look like your mother. It’s been hot hot hot and humid here in AL. My sister in MT has been wearing hooded sweat jackets cause it been chilly there! Can’t wait for cooler weather. I don’t have a green thumb so do enjoy seeing all of your green plants. Can’t wait for your book 1 to come out. Have a great weekend. Keep meaning to ask, “Didn’t you build a brick tower (some years ago) for the goats to come? What happen to that?”

    1. CountryThreads Post author

      Virginia – I visited the goat tower which is in southern Illinois. What a memory you have! I want one of my own of course but that’s not likely to happen – ha!

      1. Janice

        Have you seen the video with the goats jumping on a big piece of spring steel that’s been bent and anchored somehow? The goats jump up and it bounces all around, they love it! Hard to explain but it’s really funny to watch, haha!
        Love seeing all of your project pieces and photos of your mom. You do look a lot like her! Much cooler here in MA today. Been cleaning and rearranging “stuff”. Got to go see if I can find any bittersweet to put on my shelves. I’m hoping to have a dedicated sewing room soon – it will be a “studio” of sorts and I will be able to keep all of my crafts and sewing out until they’re finished! Right!

        1. CountryThreads Post author

          Janice – yes, I’ve seen that video but Rick says my goats are too old to play on it – I think he was making up any excuse he could think of -haha!

  6. Launa

    February can’t come soon enough, Mary! Looking forward to your new book! The cover quilt is beautiful!
    Yesterday was our 60th wedding anniversary…
    Nice to know someone else has UFO’s in progress! Thanks for sharing. Since I enjoy planned color scrappy quilts I like to cut a project ahead and store in Zip Locks so I can just go in my sewing room n sew.
    Your succulents look so healthy. Love your new pincushion.

    1. CountryThreads Post author

      Launa – Happy 60th Anniversary! Not many can boast 60 years although Ricks parents got to 62.

  7. Chris

    Hi Mary,
    Enjoy your pictures and commentaries explaining everything. In April I am going on the Civil War cruise
    with Connie(this will be my 2nd with her). Do you think she or Stitchin Heaven will have copies of your
    new book so I can have her sign it? Thanks, Chris

    1. CountryThreads Post author

      Chris – I can tell her but we will have them for sale. I’d buy one and take it with you.

  8. Diane

    Both of the Hazels have very sweet faces:) Mary, when I clicked on today’s ad it was a really neat hand contraption for people to exercise their hands after a stroke. Really cool looking thing!! It’s great what technology can do for the good:) I am also anxious for books one and two. Today is my birthday and Squeak, Millie’s twin, “bought” me a gift certificate to our local quilt shop. It is going to cool down in Central Ohio this weekend, but rain everyday.

    1. CountryThreads Post author

      Barb – no, Connie is not my sister by birth. I was referring to my sister Becky who I talk about often

  9. Jan Mittler

    I wish our nights were getting cooler……still in the upper 70’s and lower 80’s. Living in Texas is quite the challenge at time. It really is quite hard at times. So enjoy your chicken scratch!!! Vegetable growing season is almost over, the eggplants were baking on the vines. Tomato season cut short due to heat!
    So when all put together…….you quilt in the heat! And then you quilt in the winter also! Keep chicken scratch coming, love to read them and your escapades.

  10. Carol Berry

    Remembering your mother on her 99th birthday. Tomorrow is the anniversary of my father’s birth. He would also have been 99.

  11. Diane M.

    Your plants look really healthy. Our sweet autumn outdid itself this year. My husband calls it the “monster”. It has grown over two sides of our windmill. The bees love it. I went up to the Quilt Expo in Madison today. It seemed strange not to see Nancy Zieman there. Our county fair was a washout over the weekend. We had so much rain that people had to be pulled out of their parking spaces. The grounds are a muddy mess. Hope you had a good day.

    1. CountryThreads Post author

      Diane M. – so sad about your fair, all that work gone! And yes, I’ll bet it was very sad to be missing Nancy at Expo. Can’t believe that’s been a year already. What did you see that interested you in the quilt world?

      1. Diane M.

        One of the exhibits was dedicated to Nancy and Natalie Sewell’s landscape quilts. The quilts were beautiful. Some of them looked just like paintings. Then, I was surprised to learn that Natalie died in July. Life changes all the time. There seemed to be more dealers selling long arm machines this year. Many of the quilts had autumn themes. There also fabrics that have a Japanese name that I’m not sure how to spell. I also found a booth that had punchneedle kits and the lady’s husband makes wooden paddles to mount the pieces on. Thanks for asking!

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