I Love Thursdays

It's the one weekday I don't have to go out and don't have to work.  A whole day just stretching in front of me to do as I please.

So I made pudding.

We overbought on milk this week, so I did one of my big pudding makings.  Two boxes of Chocolate Fudge Fat-Free pudding mix and 2 boxes of Cheesecake with 8 cups of milk.

Swish it around in the mixer a little.

And there's dessert for 3 for a week.  Just add a little Cool-Whip Free and a few toasted pecans on top, and it's very handy.  I'm going to pretend all those lumps are supposed to be there.  I think they're chocolate chips.

Mike made an excellent salad for lunch, and then I spent the rest of the day in the sewing room, vacuuming, cleaning, and embroidering a couple of shirts.

This was my first try on the faux smocking designs.  Well, really the 2nd after I did my first one upside down.  No pictures of that.  I thought you had to do it on pleated fabric, but so many people were embroidering it on T-shirts that I thought I would give it a try.  These are designs from Applique Junkie.  There are so many new designs, it was hard to pick just a few.  I got the bunnies, foxes, sailboats, and hot air balloons.

I love the look of it, but I think these designs are a little too much for baby shirts.  It covers this 18 month shirt, and I even left off the top and bottom rows.

Also, the bottom wavy lines showed through the top stitches in a few places, but I don't think it's enough to detract from the overall look.  Very different.

I then did Graysen the little yellow gingham chick  from Planet Applique that she had on a burp pad when she was a little baby.

I hope I have time to make some yellow bloomers before we mail the latest package.

The best part of the afternoon was playing around with and (I think) conquering this intimidating-looking thing.

It's a ruffling foot  for my sewing machine that I bought last year, and my first attempt I didn't give it enough time and patience, and it was confusing.

I read the directions carefully this time and then watched a YouTube video on it, so I knew a little bit more what to do.  I have a Babylock machine, but the people there recommended the Bernina foot, and it fits my machine nicely (after a little trial-and-error time on my part).

I first did the gathering settings, gradually going from tight gathers

 to more relaxed ones and lots of looks in between.  I wrote down the settings so I'll have a better idea of what I want when I start a project.

Next I tried the pleating ones, and that's what I really like.  It makes a pleat every 6 stitches, and you can control how deep a pleat you make.  You can also do one every 12 stitches, but I think I will hardly ever use that one.

My favorite thing is pleating or gathering directly onto another fabric.   I can see myself doing this a lot.

 This piece took about 10 seconds with no measuring or pinning, and no taking out basting threads.

I've bought pleated ribbon before, and now I see I can make my own.  It will take a little practice and slowing down to get it just right, but I believe I can do it.

I finished my rooster and hen and got it delivered to Ann who seemed to like it.  It was fun to do.

I'm playing around with crocheting my dishrags now instead of knitting them.  The knitting pattern just will not behave every time, and I end up getting a lopsided square.

I still think the knitted one is prettier with the lacy border.  Maybe I could try adding a crocheted border around the other one.  Or maybe not.  It's just a dishrag.

I got back into emptying toy boxes from the attic again this week.  This barn is old and about used up.  It's silo is missing as well as most of the animals, but it has such sweet memories for us.

It was Gray's 2nd birthday present on December 28, 1973.  We had it waiting for him when we got home from spending Christmas with the grandparents.

This is one of my favorite pictures.  He had grown up so much that year, becoming a big brother and handling it so well and was just returning from an 8-hour trip, from Alabama to South Carolina, but he sat down in that chair and played forever.

Nope, forget going to bed.

I put this video on Facebook, but it will be hard to top it for sweetness.  I sent Graysen one of Emily's old Cabbage Patch dolls I found in the attic and told her to video Graysen's reaction to it.  I couldn't have asked for a better one.

I just got this video.  This phone was also in the box of old toys I sent.  I believe Emily got this for her first Christmas when she was around 11 months old.  We think her  first sentence was "Do it mySELF,"so she now has a daughter who is just like her.