October Stitching up a Storm

The month of October seems to have creeped in when I wasn't looking.  We are watching hurricane Matthew this week so I'm sure we will have lots of rain, wind and humidity to start us off this month. Last month we started off with hurricane Hermine which brought some rain and a few bunches of mistle toe fell from the oak tree.

I have been slowly stitching the Hocuspocusville Quilt blocks for a little over a year now and began block 10 in September a year from when I began.

block ten

I am currently working on the hand embroidery for the Christmas tree skirt from Gail Pan's book.
Christmas Patchwork Loves Embroidery.

The next 6 blocks will be 3 stars and 3 gifts I plan to change the motif design just a little to make the tree skirt more personal.

I am taking a class at a local quilt shop for the tree skirt it meets once a month for 3 months the second class in October 19th.
Another hand embroidery project I will be working on is a Goddess pattern from Urban Threads, she will be a winter goddess.

Instead of tracing her onto the fabric I decided to print out the pattern onto a stitch and wash away sheet because I wanted to use the snowflake printed pale blue fabric which will be easier to see stitching and I didn't have to struggle tracing it through the fabric.

The last project I want to start this month is from an Etsy shop, Cozyblue, this moon phases embroidery kit has everything I need.

The shop also sells just the pattern as a download which I will probably buy too so I can make another with different fabrics.  I just love the sashiko look of the kit.

Here are links to
https://www.etsy.com/shop/cozyblue

http://www.urbanthreads.com/

A new pattern, some stitching and an unexpected surprise.

I have added another wonderful Crab-apple Hill Studios hand embroidery pattern to my growing collection of not only Crab-apple Hill patterns but Witch themed patterns as well.

This is the first panel in a series of 3 featuring the members of the Salem Witches Quilt Guild.  As soon as the first sketch was posted on the Crab-apple Hill facebook page I knew I was going to buy this pattern and couldn't wait for it to be released. Here is a link to the facebook page have a look.
https://www.facebook.com/CrabappleHillStudio/timeline/

And here is the link to the Crab-apple Hill website just in case you want to have a look around.
http://www.crabapplehillstudio.com/

I am making good progress on the second block of my Hocuspocusville hand embroidery and should

have the stitching completed in the next day or two depending on whether my fingers are still too sore from all the stitching I did yesterday.

Do you ever find yourself lost in the words of a book you liked? I just finished this wonderful story and here I am hours later still feeling the effects the words had on me such an unexpected surprise.

The author's descriptions of the foods, mainly the cooking, prep work, and eating seem to have seeped beneath my skin, I have always view food as fuel for the body and nothing more, yet while reading the book I could almost taste the words.

I have read many books dealing with cooking, foods, spices, herbs etc. yet this book moved me beyond the words, I felt something shift within me while I was reading and now I feel a sense of calm and a sense of saddness...interesting for sure so I am going to check out another book by the author, the Lost Art of Mixing to see what effect it may have, if any.  Perhaps my mood was just ripe for a change.