a crochet project for my "finish it up" list

Next, in my quest to get my half-done projects finished up, it this crochet afghan.
Several squares are completed, but it's been so many years ago that I started making it, I'm not sure what my plan was for the layout.
The squares measure about 10". I think I'll just keep making them until I run out of yarn and then figure out how to arrange them.

The pattern is called "Popcorn Hearts" and came from the book "Woman's Day Prize Winning Granny Squares".  Not a difficult pattern but you do have to count and pay attention to get the popcorn stitches in the right place.

I will give you an idea of how long it's been since I have worked on this.  The post card below was used as a bookmark for the page the pattern was on.

It's from my younger brother when he went to St Croix (Virgin Islands) on a work assignment.

Can you see the postmark?   

1999!

Okay, that's 19 years!  I have no idea even what baby I might have had in mind when I started it.

That kid is probably starting college now.

Surely I can finish before it hits the 20 year mark!

another Ikea cart

This little Ikea cart (Raskog) had been sitting in it's box for months...waiting for me to put it together.

I bought a turquoise one for my sewing room a couple of years ago. It's been so handy and they are just so cute...I couldn't resist buying another one.

Pretty easy to put together but I did make the same mistake as when I put the first one together - putting the side bars in upside down.  It could have been used that way but I took it apart and turned them or it would have been bugging me forever.

I really did have a need and a use for this one.  I had switched from using a computer desk to using an old antique family dining room table as my desk. (belonged to my great-grandparents) 

Of course there were no drawers...so no where to store anything.  This little cart is the perfect solution.  Bills to pay on the top shelf, receipts in the middle, and supplies in the bottom.

I can roll it close then just push it away when I'm finished.

Now I need a solution for another problem.  See that piece of poster board leaning against the wall under the table?   It's hiding a bunch of tangled, dangling cords.  I hate seeing them.

 I need to rig up something better to hide that mess but I can't seem to come up with any good ideas.

Maybe a stiffer board painted the same color as the wall? A fabric covered screen? Any ideas?

hexie quilt finished

I started making English paper pieced hexagon flowers a few years ago.  They are hand sewn so it was a good project to carry in my purse to work on in waiting rooms and on car trips or at quilt group days when I didn't want to lug my sewing machine around.

My idea was to use my least favorite fabrics to make the motifs...thinking it would be a good way to use them up.

Eventually I just got tired of working on it and was wishing I had been spending the time using fabrics that I liked.

I had enough finished to put together a smallish quilt so that's what I did.

After hand sewing all the flower shapes together, I pinned it to a piece of peach colored cotton chintz fabric (left over from a long ago home decor project). 

Then I machine stitched around the outside edge then trimmed away the peach fabric behind, so it wouldn't be so thick.

Next, a thin dark blue border plus pieced together peach fabric borders. Machine quilted.

The binding came from the "free stuff" table at one of my quilting groups...folded, ironed and ready to use. It was even the right size...with about 13" to spare.  A raspberry color with polkadots!

 I like how it came out...much better than I imagined. 

Someday I will make another one but I'll put more thought into the color scheme.

I had enough of the peach fabric for the back (pieced together too but you can hardly tell it).

I sewed the three leftover flower motifs back there too.

This one is the right size for a donation quilt...which is what I had in mind for it after I decided not to make any more of the hexie flowers.

This is the third project I have finished since I vowed to complete all my UFO's ( Un Finished Objects)!

what's growing around the yard

I have heard that if you have tomatoes getting ripe by 4th of July then your garden is doing good.
I had one cherry tomato with a blush of red on the 4th, but now a week later they are really starting to ripen.

I also have zucchini and cucumbers.  Actually I have two kinds of small tomatoes.  The ones in the photo below are called "black cherry" tomatoes and they are more of a purplish color than the photo shows. They are okay but I probably wouldn't buy them again.

I have one jalapeno plant...again the photo is a fooler...they are not that big, just closer to the camera.

And my favorite tomatoes..."sweet 100's cherry tomatoes.

Here's my Hens and Chicks.  I don't know if that big one is ready to bloom or just glad to see me!

My poor planter blew off the porch last fall and had cracked in half.  I slopped a generous amount of cement epoxy on each half and glued it back together.  It adds interest, I think.

This is a flower bed I thinned out last summer.  I like the new combination of zinnias, crocosmia, and gladiolas. 

Lonnie is not having much luck with his Better Boy tomatoes this summer.  The tomatoes keep disappearing just before they start to get ripe.  

I think it must be squirrels getting them because there are no half-eaten ones laying around.

Lonnie is so aggravated, he just gave up on the tomatoes and quit watering them. I felt sorry for the plants and have been giving them a drink.

Maybe the critters will get tired of green tomatoes and leave us a few.

Lonnie's new gadget...closed caption phone

Both my husband and I have some hearing loss.  We both have hearing aids but we always use the closed captioning when watching TV. 

When he's talking on the phone, Lonnie has the most trouble hearing a high thin voice and also someone with quiet low tones.
Time and time again he will ask someone to "please speak up".  They will do it for one or two sentences then they're back to their normal way of speaking.

When he saw an add for a "closed caption telephone"  he was ready to order it right away.
He didn't buy his on Amazon but they are available there.

It arrived in a couple of days with an instructional DVD and plenty of information on how to get it working.    All you need is an internet connection and phone service to the house (phone company, satellite, or cable company phone service).

It was easy to set up and there are lots of instructions right on the screen for all the functions.

It will even caption the messages left on the built in answering machine.

You'd think this would surely be expensive, right?    Nope it's free (except for buying the phone).

Captioned Telephone works with a no charge captioning service where specially trained operators use advanced voice recognition technology to generate captions of everything the other person says. There are no monthly fees or service agreements and your monthly phone bill won't change.

Internet Protocol Captioned Telephone Service (IP CTS) is regulated and funded by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and is designed exclusively for individuals with hearing loss.

So actually only the person with hearing loss is supposed to use the service.

So far it works good most of the time.  There is a slight delay before the words come up,,, but it's really meant mostly to help understand a word or two that you didn't quite catch.
There isn't much punctuation in the captions and quite a few misspelled words. Lonnie had one call where the captioning just stopped in the middle of the conversation.
Overall he is happy with it and would recommend it.

It helps even more that the receiver has better clarity and some noise blocking.