July 14, 2026

 Let's talk about cross stitching first today! It's almost 8 p.m. and I haven't taken a single stitch. I thought I'd be back in the house by 7 a.m. and be stitching by 8 a.m. Didn't happen.

The best thing was . . I found a chart I'd been looking for and thought it was one of those charts I would never get. A while back, Tanya from The Scarlett House had shown a piece she had stitched for her sister and the name of it was "She Feeds Them Well". Her sister loved feeding the birds! I have a friend here who has dozens of bird feeders out and she has the prettiest birds that come to her feeders. She's always doing something nice for me and I thought she would love having She Feeds Them Well hanging in her home but I couldn't find the chart anywhere. I missed a couple of them on eBay so I asked Tanya and she told me The Attic should have them. I wrote them, they do have it. I called, gave them all my info and it's on its way to me. 

I can't wait to stitch it and give it to her.

The first thing I did this morning was go through four or five boxes of "stuff" that had been piling up downstairs. Took two bags of trash out, found a few things I had wondered where they were and cleaned up that whole area. That felt good!

Then I made pdfs from three charts I'd like to stitch soon. Liberty and Freedom, His Grace and Freedom and new charts from Teresa Kogut so I think those are going to be my Wednesday projects for a while. I chose a piece of linen and got it loaded on a scroll frame, got all the floss pulled and my bag packed for stitching with Debbie tomorrow.

I seem to have a bad case of startitis.

• Come to the Garden - A friend asked me if I wanted to stitch that with her. I love it and it's funny because the name of the chart is about a garden and I find myself wishing my garden wasn't taking so much time so I could stitch more!
• GH 1857 - I started that a couple of days ago. It's one of those I can't put down when I start so there have been a couple of nights with very late stitching.
• Grateful, Thankful, Blessed - I have only made a few (less than 100) stitches on this one but I would love to have it finished for Fall.
• Toile Flag - This one is so pretty . . elegant looking. My goal is to have it finished for next summer (Independence Day).

There are plenty of WIPs I'm trying to work on too. It's weird to me how I can work on WIPs for weeks and then all of a sudden, I want to start everything and create more WIPs. 

For dinner, I made the eggplant/ham casserole and added zucchini. I also made the Caponata. Both were delicious but we love eggplant. Vince was out scouting in the garden and he said we have five more eggplants almost ready to pick. 

There were maybe 10 peaches left so I used 5 of those and made a peach cobbler. It was so good. Glad I don't make that often!! We didn't have vanilla ice cream to go on top so I made a warm "caramel" sauce - same recipe that goes on the fresh apple cake. Oh, my, it was so good and I don't even want to think how unhealthy it was.

I'll get 2 or 3 hours of stitching done now. I have to go to bed fairly early - tomorrow is my day to make a road trip to Debbie's.