Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Lunch at the Steinbecks

If you are a fan of American literature, you will know that John Steinbeck was from Salinas, California. John Steinbeck is highly celebrated in Salinas now, although that was not always the case when he was alive.  I am a huge fan of his work and appreciate how he wrote of the human condition.  I have loved his books since I picked up a copy of "In Dubious Battle" when I was 12 or 13 years old. 

If you have read East of Eden, you might recall his description of Ernst and Olive Steinbeck's Victorian home  on Central Avenue in Salinas.  The house does exist and is John Steinbeck's childhood home.  The house has been lovingly maintained by volunteers.  To support their efforts and cost of maintaining the home, the volunteers run a lovely restaurant out of the home.  It is really amazing to sit in the home surrounded by the family's photographs and the beautiful antiques.  

The restaurant is quite cozy and I get to have lunch there from time to time.  I am in awe every time  I walk up those steps that I get to walk into a place where John Steinbeck spent so much of his life.  Today I met a friend for lunch at the Steinbeck House. Unfortunately, I was not able to get photos of the inside today.  My friend is very cool and we had a lovely time talking and laughing.  It was really special to have such a great time and to sit in the parlor of one of my favorite writers.  The house is lovely and I have a lot of respect for those who put so much work in keeping it vibrant.

It is hard when your love of books competes for time with love of cross stitch.  I am stitching but not as fast as I would like.  Below is my Apple square for Teresa Wentzler's Fruit Bellpull.  The apples have a lot of definition now.  It is almost time to move on to the next square.  Yay!

I hope you are having great week and that the rest of your week is full of blessings.

Sunday, January 21, 2018

A Stitchy Update

In 2018, I am trying to be a little kinder to myself.  I am trying to make sure that I take at least an half hour each day for creativity, even it that means I am just doodling.  I have put a few stitches in my cherries needlepoint over the past week, a little each evening.  While overall I am enjoying working on it,  I suddenly remembered why I put this piece away.  In cross stitch, things are exact, what with all the counting and all.  You know exactly where a stitch of a certain color is supposed to go.  With mass produced needlepoint, the color is not always clear and the graph may not match exactly the canvas.  This piece also has a lot of confetti type stitching, which gives great detailed results, but can be a pain to stitch.  So while it not totally comfortable for me, I am super impressed with the results, and will love having it around for a long time.  I will also say that I am impressed with the quality of materials in this kit.  The threads are all wool and Persian wool.  It will be pretty when it is done.  My sweet baboo, even commented that he had noticed it when he walked by it the other day on the sofa and thought it was really pretty.

I had been looking forward to a day of puttering around the house today, and getting stuff done.  Alas, it was not to be.  I had forgotten that our handy neighbor was coming to install a new quiet fan in the bathroom this morning.  (I have awesome neighbors!)  I had the noisiest bathroom fan, which sounded like a jet taking off.  I would avoid turning on the light because the noise would drive me nuts.  So a few months ago, I bought a super quiet one at Home Depot.  When I bought it, we mentioned it in conversation to a friend, who said he knew how to install it. He had it installed in 30 minutes.  It is now whisper soft and makes less noise than the heater.  I am a happy, happy girl.

Before he arrived, I decided to take Liesl with me on errands.  True to her schnauzer nature, she is a watch dog and she gets all huffy puffy if she hears knocking.  (Like if there is hammering.)  She will either bark relentlessly, as if the house is on fire.  Or she assumes that whomever is here is a loyal subject who has come to pay attention to her, and will not leave them alone.  So, off we went to Trader Joes.  It was a brisk day, and the sun was shining brightly today.  So while I was out, I decided to take Liesl for a walk at her favorite park, Lake El Estero in Monterey.  It was so peaceful and beautiful out.  After we walked, we just sat on a park bench.  Liesl likes to sit and watch the ducks swim there.  She is not generally a lap dog, but will lay down on my lap on a park bench to watch the ducks.  Today, there was an egret sitting all by himself. I took this photo of him, but I think I was too far away.  I also saw a crane there today.  I have never seen a crane in this part of California before and he was a truly magnificent creature. The crane flew around the lake, and when he did so, his wings made this quiet whoosh, whoosh sound.  It was incredible.  It was such a blessing to have these few peaceful moments.

Sadly, it seemed like there was a string of bad crafty news for a while in the Fall.  Thread Heaven has stopped production.  While I have not used it for cross stitch, I do use it for quilting.  My understanding from a quilting teacher is that TH uses static to keep thread from knotting.  It does work well when I am hand quilting. The next item of bad news is the closure of Nordic Needle.  I was pretty bummed out by this news.   I loved their catalog and had long dreamed of attending one of their stitching retreats and visiting their store in Fargo.  I am hopeful that after all is said and done, that they will be able to maintain an online store, because there are some hardanger supplies that can not be sourced elsewhere.  They had a great selection of Valdani perle cottons which were superb.

The last bit of bad crafty news was local.  The local craft store in Salinas, Beverly's lost their lease on Main Street.  I loved this store.  It had the old timey wood floors that echoed, and it just had a nice hometown vibe.  It was fairly close to where I work, so when I needed a certain item for a project, I could zip over there to pick it up on my lunch break.  But no more...

I was pretty sad about Beverly's closing, and watched the signs advertising the going out of business sales over several weeks.  I could not bring myself to go in for several weeks.  One day, I happened to be over in that neck of the woods for lunch.  I made a quick dash in, just to see what was left.  A fellow quilter and I have talked a lot about the high cost of thread, so I could not believe it when I saw that the small spools of Gutermann and Mettler were 50 cents and the large spools were a dollar.  I picked up mostly neutrals.  If I remember correctly, the rick rack was 75 cents.  I think the bag of stuff came to about 13 dollars.  I did feel a bit guilty though.
All of these businesses closing really made me worried about the future of needlework.  I started to worry about the needle arts truly being an art form which is slowly disappearing.  My opinion has changed, however, now that I have found Flosstube on YouTube!  Wow, I feel so inspired when I watch these videos.  If you have not yet discovered Flosstube, I encourage you to do so.  A great series to get started with is The Real Housewives of Cross Stitch.  Priscilla does amazing finishing on projects.  She is so creative and her finished projects are making me think a bit more outside of the box.  The videos are 15-20 minutes and are a lot of fun to watch.  

My former boss and I use to talk about how wonderful people are on YouTube that will take the time to record a video which will help someone else, generally with no benefit to themselves.  This includes car and small appliance repairs videos, or cooking or crafting.  I have benefitted from watching a number of videos which have been so helpful, from repairing an issue with my refrigerator, to learning how to do a certain crochet stitch.  So I am really grateful to those who invest the time in creating these videos to help someone else out.  I am also grateful to those on Flosstube who take the time out of their busy schedules to inspire someone else.  I think that the future of needlework will be fine.

May your week ahead be filled with blessings.





Sunday, January 14, 2018

Stupendous Sunday

I finished Pumpkin Row by Chessie and Me last night.  Now to iron and sew it into a small pillow.  I would like to have a small basket of smalls on display for decoration.  So this is the first one for the basket. 

Unfortunately, I can not get access to my iron and sewing machine right now.  The cozy cottage is super small, so back in November we ordered a new storage bed and smaller dresser.  The plan was to have more floor space and more storage.  So we ordered the furniture, and moved all of our clothes into my home office/craft room until the new stuff arrived.  There was a snafu on the delivery of the bed, and on the day of the scheduled delivery we were informed that there was an error and they did not have the product to deliver to us until this week in January.  Fortunately, they made it right and sent us a loaner bed, since we had already given our old furniture away in advance of the anticipated November delivery.  In the meantime, the craft room is a disaster which makes me sad when I look into the room.  I miss my sewing machine.  The iron, not so much.  

I remember several years ago hearing that you should only have things in your house that you absolutely love.  I am purging a lot of things that I really do not love, were bought because they were on clearance, have a bad memory associated with them, etc.  (I am giving them to charitable associations in the hopes someone else can love them.)  At this point in my life, I really just want to be with the things that truly make me happy.  So I am painting the walls colors that I totally love and working on decorating little by little with things that I absolutely love.  Many of which I already have.  My favorite color is red, and so the duvet on the bed is red and white buffalo check. It makes me happy.  Plus, I have a few other red accents in the room.  I need throw pillows and was thinking that I would like a red themed needlepoint pillow, when I all of the sudden remembered that I started one several years ago.  It is an Elsa Williams kit.  When I pulled it out I could not believe how little I have left to do.  I have to wonder why I put it away.  I just have to finish the leaf and black section to the left and the rest of the cherries.

I am thinking I might have some sort of weird fruit fetish, because I stitch a lot of fruit inspired pieces.  LOL I have a number of cherry patterns in particular.  It's probably most likely because I am hungry all of the time. :)  In any case, I will hopefully get this finished relatively quickly.  It is actually an easy stitch.  Again, it is the issue of precious time, or lack thereof.

It has been a busy day.  I had to work, plus we are expecting rain this week so we had to dig a little drainage trench because last week's rain mini flooded the garage.  It has been freakishly hot here this winter.  (We had Christmas dinner in the yard because it was too warm in the house.)  It was 70 degrees Fahrenheit today.  I have been expecting it to get cold here like usual but today, seeing my roses in full bloom, my sense of denial has worn off.  Poor Liesl has hair which needs regular grooming.  During the winter I let it grow out a bit more between hair cuts so that she does not get cold.  (Plus she is adorable and looks like a teddy bear.) So today my big craft project was giving her a haircut.  She is not a big fan of the whole grooming process and generally a half slice of Swiss cheese will keep her in better humor for a short time.  She is 10 1/2 now so I respect her patience level and when she indicates she has had enough, I stop and finish up another day. The funny thing is that when she is done, she will prance around the house the rest of the day like "I look GOOD."  She makes me laugh.

May you be showered with blessings!


Saturday, January 13, 2018

Well, It's Been A While...

Life took a wild roller coaster ride in the last quarter of 2017 and beginning of 2018.  I received the promotion I have been working on for several years, took my first ever two week vacation, have been working on some maintenance and upgrading to the cozy cottage, the holidays came and went,  and then working on the monumental tasks associated with year end in my accounting position.  Time has been extremely precious.  

There have been some projects that I have wanted to do since I bought the cozy cottage back in October of 2011.   Time passed quickly and I decided in the Fall that I needed to get started, so I have been painting, upgrading the electrical a little at a time (found the best electrician!), and just trying to make my home a little smarter and more energy efficient.  I had a new LG HE washer and dryer installed.  I can not believe how much less water the new washing machines use.  This is a big deal in California.  So now I am trying to get a little done on upgrading and maintenance every weekend which cuts into a lot of stitching time. :(

As an industry accountant, the last two weeks of December and the first three months of the new year are insane and require working long hours.  (This is a little different than tax accountants, who I am not sure get to sleep during tax season.)  January is the absolute busiest time of all, with long hours required beginning on January 2nd.  I work a lot of nights and weekends during this time.  This was not my sweet baboo's first rodeo, so right before Christmas, he told me that he had booked a little trip for the New Year's weekend, so that I could rest before the wild ride that is January.

There was nothing available in Sea Ranch, our usual get away spot so he booked us one of the little cottages at St. Orres in Gualala. (pronounced Wha-la-la, sort of like Vahl-ha-la.) St. Orres is a cool, sort of funky (in a cool way) inn on the Redwood Coast.  The style of the hotel is Russian, and the inn boasts an amazing restaurant.  The staff is amazing and the owner is very cool.  Each morning a great breakfast is delivered to your cottage in a cool box (included in the price of the stay).  The Pacific Ocean is in front of St. Orres and redwoods behind it. 

Cottage at St. Orres

St. Orres Main Hotel

View of the windows in the restaurant

New Year's Dinner at St. Orres
It is not widely known that from 1809-1850ish, while the Spanish were colonizing Baja California, the Russians were attempting to colonize Alta California.  They created a settlement at Fort Ross (Ross is a poetic name for Russia) in Northern California.  Fort Ross is now a State Park and is just above the Russian River.  The early settlers were fur traders.  While there are several acknowledgements of this early history, the style of the buildings at St. Orres seems to be the most consistent with the style of Russian churches.  

We love the Redwood Coast and its beauty and peace.  Liesl loves it because she gets to walk the scenic trails and gets to go to the beach every day.  Here are her favorite beaches:
 These are not hot, tropical beaches.  The coast line up there is very rugged, and the surf pounds a lot of there, but it is so peaceful.  She especially loves the first beach because sometimes the surf is calm enough for her to put her puppy toes into.

On our little retreat, I was able to work on a little project I have had going for a while.  It is Chessie and Me's Pumpkin Row, worked with Weeks Dye Works threads.  I just have a little backstitching to do and then I will just sew it into a little pillow/pincushion.

Well. off to do a little housecleaning and then an afternoon of accounting. :)  May your day be filled with blessings.