Necktie Skirt,Chicken Hawks,T-Shirt Surgery and Guest Chalkboard Poet

Yes, it's 3:00am. This is the second night in a row I woke up after midnight, and I've lost count of how many in the last couple weeks, and I'm really starting to feel the effects of no rest and no sleep. I'm in a perpetual bad mood and the puppies are running around with no one keeping an eye on them. This is what woke me up earlier...

It's one of those squishy neck massage things.So, I hear this noise ...and notice that, yes......the puppies laid it right on MY pillow next to my ear, and I'm trying to open my eyes and it's very hard, but I do manage to open them. Trying to get up and out of bed was harder, but eventually I manage that,too. Except my hand feels like it has something on it; what is it? It looks like......it LOOKS like.....well, that's just crazy, but it looks like GRITS*ahahahaha* I laugh at myself and think I really need to wake up..OR..go back to sleep. Because I'm dreaming. They couldn't have carried that 5lb. bag of grits all the way to my bed! Could they? Then I notice 2 puppies trying to be very very still,and when we locked eyes, they slithered off on their bellies like little furry snakes and ran away to Daddy who's sleeping on the couch. I look back down at my bed...my sheets..my pillows....and it's beginning to register. They were chewing on the neck pillow. Yeah. Next to my head. I reach up and pat my hair. Yep. That causes millions of little white pills to flutter down and.......what's THIS? something else on the sheets that looks like HAIR.....a horrible thought flashes through my brain; did they eat my hair,too?? OMG...they chewed off chunks of my HAIR!! But I have this reddish brownish grayish hair, this hair is shiny silver. So I reach over and grab a handful of this silver hair....and it stabs me and it HURTS. I lean in closer and carefully touch a piece of this shiny hair.....OMG. It's steel wool. And a lot of it. STEEL WOOL. They chewed up steel wool in my bed. Where in the world did they get it from??? Well, I'm up for the day it looks like, because now it's 4:30am and there's steel wool and static-y styrofoam or whatever they fill those squishy things with...all over my sheets and pillows and I'm in a REALLY bad mood now. So, I'm going to go make some coffee and come back and show you some photographs and after the sun comes up I'll clean up that mess. Maybe. I thought of getting out the vacuum cleaner at 3:00am and waking up the whole damn house...the puppies LOVE the vacuum cleaner and bark the entire time I'm using it. Not just in the room I'm using it in, but they have to run through the house back and forth knocking over furniture and people so I thought using the vacuum at 3:00am would be the best way to let everyone else know what was going on....but I realized that the house is nice and sort of quiet and I'd better take full advantage of it. Not that I'm not above running the vacuum at 3:00am..........I've done it before and I WILL do it again, just not tonight. Or this morning....whatever.....


Now might be a good time to show you the chalkboard. My grandson erased the one I did and said he wanted to write a "poem",too. It says "puppies are the goodest thing in the world. He wrote that all by himself, and drew portraits of Cosmo and Wanda. Ya'll know this was done before I woke up with "grits" in my bed. And the same grandson,who was also awake at 3:00am, said "sell those dogs,Meme, they're BAD!"...wow."sell my dogs!" "well, just give them away,then" "You want me to sell them because they're bad?" "yeah" "but you're bad sometimes" ...he had to think about this..."what if I said "let's sell Aiden?" "okay, you can keep the dogs." Thanks for allowing me keep my puppies, Aiden!
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I finished the little necktie skirt for my granddaughter. It's just so cute! I still have a lot of ties left. Wouldn't they make pretty checkbook covers? Or maybe house slippers. I just found lots of free patterns for both. I always loved the crazy quilts made from old silk ties embellished with all the pretty and fancy embroidery stitches. There was this beautiful one made into the obvious best choice for ties......a Grandmothers Fan with lots of black velvet and burnt orange silk. Ah, well, slippers are more my speed these days :D
While I had black thread in the machine I started sewing on this old black t-shirt. I'm going to like it better as a smock top :D

I started with this......and got the scissors and bravely cut without a plan.


Here's what I had by the time I ran out of thread. It still needs to be fitted under the arms and some shirring around the bodice....I need a little happy face/smiley face necklace or pin to wear with this :D
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This lavender blouse...what can I say? I don't wear long sleeved woven blouses like this. Mostly because it's always too hot, but also because they're pretty claustrophobic. So for cheap/free clothes, I don't worry much about getting out the scissors. I found a blouse I like here..

*UPDATE* My face is red....no wonder I couldn't find it at the other site.......it's not there! It's at Anthropologie here!
good thing I saved this photo for reference because now I don't see it on their site. They do have a lot of cute clothes! The ones I looked at a couple weeks ago are already on clearance.......


cut the sleeves short, and save them to make the collar..


I was able to match the seams........


I was brave and just started whacking off pieces of it...I saved the collar and cut it in half and pinned it to the new lowered front....


And here I am at this point when I ran out of thread. I hate when that happens. So that's when I threaded it with black and finished the necktie skirt.
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My nephew almost stepped on this bird, so he picked it up and put it in his workboot. When he came over to show me, he said he found a baby dove. He said "dove" so I saw "dove". Later when he was leaving, and Hoss hollered at him that he left his workboot on my dining table with the bird in it, Aiden said "you have a bird? I wanna see!" so I peeked at it again. But I got a good look at it, and said "Alex, I think it's a hawk not a dove!" At least, it's not a dove...lol. So I looked up photos of some online and it sure does look like one. Maybe a red-tailed hawk,too. Hard to tell, it didn't appreciate us touching it or even looking at it, but I got some photos anyway.
It's very young. Doesn't it have a huge beak?


It also has a huge wing span. The colors looked like the hawk photos. It has pinkish feathers here and there and on it's tail. Alex named it Henry.


It's tail feathers are huge, but it didn't like us touching it's tail. But who does?

Yeah, it looks like a Henry. It's too young to fly, fire-ants would've had it to the skeleton in less than half an hour. Let's hope it survives somehow.

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Mimosas in the front yard. They smell so nice......


Celeste is growing strawberries in one of my chamber pots outside. We can't believe some varmint hasn't eaten these yet......


I planted hollyhock seeds last year, and look! one lived and is blooming! It's a sad specimen at only a foot and a half instead of about 6 feet tall, but if it lives I'll set it in the ground.

Well, it's after 6:00am and Aiden is asleep finally, and I'd better have a little talk with the puppies. Or not. They've forgotten all about it by now....one is asleep on the love seat, and the other is asleep on the couch. All 4 legs stuck up in the air, doing the little rabbit chase in their sleep.


Kudzu