Summer is getting away from me...

Hope all you creative people out there are in enjoying your summer. Summer in Chicago had been filled with hot and humid days and nights. We had three 90 degree days last year and twenty three this year! It has been a scorcher this year. I am not complaining mind you because come February, I’ll be wishing we were in July again!

My summer has been really busy. Let see it started out with baby sitting a fawn in the back yard for a month or more. I could not do any weeding in the back yard because baby and mommy moved in and decided to stay a while. They love Hostas for more reasons than one. They eat them for breakfast lunch and dinner and when they are not eating them, they hide under them when the flowerbeds are full of weeds. In the spring we watch for a sale on mulch at Home Depot. This is a really great sale on Cedar Mulch for the flower beds. We got 100 bags again this year! We did a pretty good job lay out that first 60 bags or so but then the Deer moved in…We still have a stack maybe 30 left. I will get them in the beds before the snow flies.

In late June and early July we had visitors from Denmark, Bjarne, our Norwegian cousin and his Danish wife Ingrid. It has been 6 years since their last visit so they decided it was time to come to go on vacation with us, “Smith style.” We took them to Michigan to experience our Annual Smith family camping trip for the first time. It was an interesting trip packed with lots of fun and full of memories.














This is after a few bottles of wine on one of our first evenings camping. We were enjoying our selves and making plans for what we will do when we go to Denmark in September. My siblings and I have decided that we should all go visit them. We have talked about it and talked about it…it is time to do it.
The last quilting project that I showed you was a wall hanging that I will be taking with me and I have not finished the quilting. I need to do it next week. September 9th will be here before I now it.
 
In the mean time I thought I would show you some of the other things I do besides Quilting. I have been doing embroidery and digitizing for industrial embroidery machines for about 12 years now. I had purchased an industrial embroidery machine to be used in my “Retirement career”. I had hoped that my computer career would last a few more years and I would do my retirement career part time. Well as many of you know things have not worked out real well lately with the computer career so I have been ramping up my sewing career a notch or so. I am re-opening “Stitchin’ on the Fox”.

I have been going to the Long Grove Farmers market on Sunday Morning and talking to people about my embroidery company. I have demonstrated may uses for embroidery which do not involve a Tee shirt or a hat!

These two panels are examples of what I do with my embroidery machine. The first one is of a 50 year old wedding announcement! My brother-in-law and sister-in-law celebrated their 50th Wedding Anniversary. I really had planned to give them the panel on the right. It is Corinthians 13:13, “Faith, Hope, Love but the greatest of these is Love” which I digitized and embroidery on a Heritage lace panel.

Greg and I went to, Apple Valley Minnesota for a 50th Wedding Anniversary celebration for them the first weekend of August. I had hoped to find that Carolyn had saved her wedding invitation and somehow I could get a copy of it so I could digitize it and sew it out for them but I made the other design just in case I needed it. I also waited to sew the design until after our visit so I could verify what color thread I wanted to use when I sewed it. Gold was the color of choice for a 50th Wedding Anniversary but…if it was really going to clash with their décor, I would use something else.
After visiting with Carolyn on the evening before the celebration, I found out that she indeed did have their invitation and I could even get her to let me borrow it without too many questions! So now…my decision was made, I will do her invitation as I had hoped. Then Saturday evening at their celebration, Marilyn, Carolyn’s a very dear friend (and Carolyn’s quilting buddy) got up to speak at the dinner and say “Grace” before we ate. She spoke a very moving small speech which included the Bible verse Corinthians 13:13! It brought me to tears (everyone probably thought I was nuts if they noticed…) after looking all week for just the right bible verse for them and almost decided against using it!
So I returned home and sewed them both! Happy 50th Anniversary, Mike and Carolyn Gerkin!