Happy Thanksgiving

Our family has so much to be grateful for this year and every year, and we are thankful. The best thing about the holidays is spending time with family and friends, and we'll be with family today. Hope you will too. Happy Thanksgiving to all my blogging friends!

Embroidery Group Monday and Dishcloth Tuesday

Yesterday was Embroidery Group, and I worked on the candy corn blocks. They seem big, but the blocks finish to about 3" x 4", I think. All of the blocks are oversized right now, but they will all get squared up eventually.

I finished up 10 candy corns yesterday, 12 more to go. I still have pumpkins and candy blocks to make, plus a few odd ones, before I can start putting the quilt top together. It's time consuming to make these blocks because of all the prep work, like any applique block.

My kids have raided my dishcloth stash recently, so I figured it was time to make some more. I want to use up my odd bits of leftover dishcloth cotton from earlier projects. Last week I worked on using up the last bit of a mustard color in these two dishcloths. Still had several yards left over, so I cast on for another dishcloth, used up the rest, and now it will sit and wait until I get down to the last several yards of another little ball.

Coincidentally, Wanda over at Exuberant Color  has also been knitting dishcloths, and she shared with me her pattern for a diagonal knit dishcloth. I've been Christmas shopping this week and decided some of these dishcloths in Christmas colors would make nice little stocking stuffers. Finished this one this morning.

I cut my soap into bars this morning too. For the last year or two, Adult Ed at the local high school has offered some different classes on making soaps and lotions. I've wanted to try it, but there was always a conflict. This year I managed to get into the first class on lotions, lip balms, and deodorant. Teacher did all the work, we got to take samples home.

It was easy and fun; so I decided I'd try basic soap making next, but the class was already full. Hopefully I'll catch that in the spring.

In the meantime, last Friday was the class on making milk soap. Another fun class, but a little more involved. I used goat's milk for my soap, but others used cow's milk, and I read you can use coconut milk too. I was a bit nervous working with the lye, which is required for soap, but it was fine. It won't really burn a soft ball sized hole in your arm if you get a granule or two on yourself by accident. But you do have to exercise caution, the same as you would if you were handling bleach or ammonia. The other thing about lye is the fumes, but the way we added it to the frozen milk, the fumes dissipated quickly enough so it wasn't an issue.

The teacher provided us with a small plastic container with a lid to use as a mold, and also so we could take our soap home. We lined the container with a plastic bag, and that's why the end pieces look like they're cracked. They're not really, it was just the folds in the bag. The plastic bag made it easy to pop out of the mold. The soap is now the consistency of cheddar cheese, and it has to cure for a month before I can use it--to harden it up and also for the ph to come up to the correct level.

When I took the soap out of the mold, there were a few little stray bits around the edges that came off; so I scooped them all up in my hand and washed my hands with them. I was thrilled to see that my soap actually lathered up and behaved like, well, soap. It worked! I scented it with grapefruit essential oil, so it smells really good too. Can't wait to take a shower with it, lol.

Catching Up To Autumn

The lovely summer weather we had this year continued right through October and into the first week of November. Lots of places set record breaking warm temps in October. Then we had a cold snap. Temps were frigid, and we had one night that was 19 degrees. Wasn't ready for that.

We like to go leaf peeping every fall, and this year we visited the northernmost quadrant of the state--Madawaska, Presque Isle, Caribou and Holton.  This is probably the most spectacular fall foliage I've ever seen, but it was from last year, not this year. The end of September was supposed to be the peak viewing time for that zone; but, for whatever reason, they called that wrong because there just wasn't much color in the trees. There wasn't much else to see up in that area either except for lots of potato fields.

The weather was gorgeous though, and we did take a short hike into Baxter State Park to see one of the falls. My younger son likes to get right on the edge to take photos. Scares me half to death to watch him.

AND, there were 3 Marden's stores up that way, and we hit all of them. I bought a bunch of fat quarters in greens, oranges, purples, and yellows for a machine embroidered applique quilt with a Halloween theme that I've wanted to make for a long time. (No matter that Halloween has passed.) My LQS has an ongoing Monday morning embroidery group; so I signed up. That was the motivation I needed to get started, and now I'm rolling along.

The pattern features ghosts and witches hats, moon bats, cats and spiders, and candy corn and candy. It's been a fun quilt to work on so far, but I still have quite a bit of work to do. It measures something like 55 x 63 finished.