I can’t stop embroidering:

Only two flowers to go, but I think I am going to take a break and re-cover the sofa cushions so it will be all ready for it’s new pillow. My fingers are a little sore, they need a rest.

I’ve also started another little project, which I need to finish up on my sewing machine:

This is going to be a little something for my niece. She loves airplanes.

I’m on a roll, there should be a whole lot more to see tomorrow!

Sorry for the terrible pun. I couldn’t help it.

The post office wasn’t hatin’ yesterday:

And I sat right down last night with my remote control and got started. This is just like coloring in a coloring book, only with yarn instead of crayons. These colors are so fun. The linen is really lovely, and the color is just perfect. I’m not quite sure how to photograph orange, it’s a little off in my picture, in reality it’s a little deeper, not so sherbet-y looking. And there is even a piece of lime green linen for the back of the pillow. Now I’m really going to have to recover the cushions on my living room settle, I have the perfect deep periwinkle Susan Sargent print just waiting to be used for this project, and my orange pillow will look great on there.

Of course, then I have to tear down the hideous wallpaper and repaint the living room, make slipcovers for the two wingchairs and figure out what to do with the piano, which doesn’t really fit in our little room, find a new cabinet or stand for the television so I can get rid of the slightly unstable Ikea armoire and get the wood burning stove fixed or replaced, because at this point, a cozy fire will be just perfect in our cute little living room. I’ll also need some art for the walls, I’m thinking about maybe a small wall quilt, or maybe a wall full of small quilts. Oh, and curtains, I have to figure out some window treatments, I have no idea what to do there…

All because of an orange pillow.

I think my post office hates me. No sign of an embroidery kit yet. Once it took 5 days for me to get a Netflix movie, which was sent from Santa Ana. I think sometimes they hang out in the back at the post office, and when they get tired of stuffing the mail in our little boxes, or the clock says "5:00" they just quit.

So, I’ll have to talk about other things. I have some bento box catching up to do. Yesterday’s lunch was not pretty. In fact, it looks kind of gross, but it was very delicious.
It’s Beef Bourginan, a thick slice of bread, cherries and a little banana. Yes, I did buy baby bananas just because they are so cute and fit nicely in my lunchbox. My Beef Bourginan was a little tempermental. I decided it would really be better to eat hot, and, not wanting to risk throwing my bento box in the microwave I put it on a paper plate to heat it up. It exploded all over the microwave, so I had to clean up that mess. It got much runnier after I heated it up, and as I was carrying it back to my desk I dribbled it all over myself. It was still good, though. Just a little dangerous.

Today I can’t wait for lunch because I have this:

These are going to be lettuce bundles with grilled, shredded chicken, noodles with peanut sauce, scallions, carrots and peanuts. I thought I had a cucumber, but alas, there was no cucumber to be found in the vegetable drawer. I have extra peanut sauce and some strawberries too.

The other day my sister shared her stack of books next to her bed, so I thought I would do the same:

I’ve made it through a good bit of these the last few weeks, and several are actually part of our family book club. Yes, I am a little behind on mailing them on. Oops. I try to keep track of all the books I read in a little journal I have, but I often forget to jot them down in there, and then it disappears for awhile and I find it again and I try to catch up, but it doesn’t always work. I’m trying this out, to see if I remember to enter them there. It has all kinds of nifty little features, like a 5-star rating system and a place to write reviews. I didn’t realize that the reviews were made public, so I just wrote a few lines to remind myself what I liked and didn’t like about the books I’ve added. My reviews seem kind of lame compared to the others, I mean, they’re not really reviews at all. So don’t read them, okay? I think you can see my books here.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to see other peoples bedside stacks, so spread the word, take a picture of your stack, and leave a link in the comments. Tell everyone you know! That doesn’t sound dirty, does it? Show us your stack!

When I fast-forward through commercials on my Tivo, I always hold my breath. Does anyone else do this? I have no idea why. I have to force myself to breathe when I hit that fast-forward button.

I always take a knitting break at some point during the summer. I guess it’s partly the heat and partly a need to re-charge the knitting batteries. But now I have a bunch of summer shows saved on my Tivo, so I need something to do while I watch TV in the evening. I’m finding myself drawn back to needlework projects. I’ve done some cross stitch in the past, and a little needlepoint (although I never actually finished a needlepoint project, unlike my sister-I wish she had picture of her needlepoint, it’s really quite beautiful and amazing). I especially love samplers. I don’t know why that is, just something about the alphabet all stitched up in pretty colors and a showcase of various stitches all lined up just so really appeals to my asthetic. I have a Shepherd’s Bush sampler I made 10 or 12 years ago. I’ve never managed to frame it, I should do that. I loved making it, and the pale colors are so pretty and soothing, and I don’t think it’s too cutesy like a lot of cross stitch can be. Plus there are some other interesting techniques in there as well. I think the bottom section qualifies as hardanger, doesn’t it?

I’ve done a very little bit of regular embroidery, and some ribbon embroidery. I think I’m going to try out both again, for my TV viewing projects this month. I ordered this fun kit from Kristin Nicholas:

I was also lucky enough to get one of Hilary’s Stitchettes. I also dug out that pretty piece of pale green linen you can see on the right in the pictures above. I think I might use it for something like the monograms or samplers seen here. I love the red with the natural linen, but wouldn’t they also be pretty as sort of tone-on-tone pieces? Maybe my green linen with white floss? I think I might try it out.

Linen, wool, silk and cotton. Those are some of my favorite words!

I used to cook a lot. I tried out new recipes, I read my cookbooks, I watched cooking shows. But the last few years I’ve become complacent. I make the same things over and over, and while I make an excellent roast chicken, and a great pot of minestrone soup, it’s a little boring. Lately I’ve renewed my interest in cooking. It started with the bento boxes, and coming up with tasty (and cute) food for lunch. And then while I was visiting my family, we picked, literally, pounds and pounds of cherries at my cousins house (okay, well my 5-year old niece picked a gigantic bowl full of cherries, I just grabbed a few off the trees and popped them into my mouth). What to do when you have a lot of cherries? Make a clafouti (or two), of course:

Clafouti is really sort of like a big puffy pancake. In fact, some people were putting syrup on it. I had made it around breakfast time, so I guess that’s okay. I took another one over to my semi-crazy aunt’s barbeque, and we ate it cold. The consensus was that clafouti is best eaten hot out of the oven, but it’s not bad cold. 

I’ve been watching the occasional FoodTV show, and the Barefoot Contessa made a summer pudding recently. It looking so easy and delicious that I had to try it:

It was really easy, but I think there is way too much sugar in the recipe. It’s really, really sweet. Also, Mr. Lucy, when he opened the refrigerator and saw it sitting there, was a little bit scared at first. He thought I’d brought home some sort of human organ. It is a little frightening, but I think the idea is good. I’m going to try it again with a lot less sugar, like maybe half the amount.

Of course it’s been a few days since I’ve posted a bento box, so here is one from a few days ago:

Yum, Mexican food! Not very colorful, but very tasty! Black beans, rice with salsa, and whole wheat tortillas with grilled chicken, avocado and a little feta cheese inside. I brought a jar of salsa to eat with my burritos. I love salsa. This bento box is pretty big. It’s about the size of a brick, and with this lunch inside, it weighed about as much too.

Coming soon: little tiny cupcakes!

After my little freak-out on Friday (a little aside: my first thought, after hearing about the billowing clouds of smoke enveloping our property was, "But they’re delivering the new washing machine on Thursday, where will we keep it if the house burns down?" I have my priorities, don’t I?), I spent the weekend, quite literally, chilling out. The air conditioner was blasting all day and even into the night both days, and I didn’t do much of anything. Once I knew we were probably safe and I would be able to drive home from work without worrying that I was going to encounter an inferno on the freeway, I decided a little relaxation was in order. So I stopped at the bookstore, where I browsed through cookbooks and magazines, eventually purchasing Julie & Julia. Then I stopped at a taco shop for Super Nachos, which have everything on them-beans, salsa, guacamole, sour cream, carne asada, and probably 3 other things I can’t remember now. I virtuously told them to hold the nacho cheese, but go ahead and keep the regular cheese on there. My willpower is impressive, no?

Since I was lazy, I have no finished projects to share, so I took a picture of one of my current works-in-progress:

Mr. Lucy found this at the side of the road with a ‘FREE’ sign on it, and thoughtfully brought it home for me. I’ve cleaned off as much of the flaking white, er, grey paint and cobwebs as I can and I’ve begun painting it a pale, pale blue. I’ve made a cushion but still need to cover it. I think that with the addition of lots of pretty, squishy pillows it will be a nice place to sit on our porch. Currently I would call it shabby-shabby, but I’m hoping to change the balance to more of a shabby-chic. It might just work, don’t you think?

Everything is fine, the fire is out although the air still smells pretty smoky. Kudos to the fire department who just attacked this fire and didn’t let it get too out of control! They did an amazing job. We are pretty relieved here in they hey lucy house. Now I just have to put away all the stuff Mr. Lucy packed in his car.