Knee Highs and Apple Pies

I was out of commission for a little over a week, and didn't go outside much.  Restless inside the house, I turned to a stack of projects to keep me busy until I was up and around again.

First, I finished the embroidered quilt square project...the embroidery part, that is.   

Pretty cute, right?  The rooster is my favorite! 

I decided to go ahead and sew the squares together with some random cotton fabric squares from my stash.  It really didn't take very long to iron and cut them.  Stitching them into strips wasn't as scary as I'd thought it might be...

I felt pretty victorious when I stitched all the strips together.  Sure, I still need to put the quilt batting inside and sew on the backing, but it's almost a little quilt! 

I finished a pair of vintage baby almost-knee socks. 

The pattern is from 1912 and has a nice open weave, although it's harder to see when the socks aren't being stretched by a little leg.

 My FAVORITE project, though, is this Carl Larsson-inspired cross stitch pattern.  I love the shapes and the bold colors.  I am absolutely flying through it.

I'm about a third of the way done.  The original pattern is meant to be an upper curtain panel, but I'm sure I'm going to just frame mine.  I'm enjoying it so much!

Yesterday I was finally feeling like my old self again.  Todd has been taking such good care of me - taking care of meals, doing the laundry and dishes, and helping with my business orders (and surprising me with the soundtrack to Grease 2...score!) - so I decided to thank him with his favorite pie.  Now, I have a standard apple pie recipe, but it calls for quite a bit of butter and sugar.  It's delicious, but I wanted to try a different recipe.  I made my usual pie crust but chose an apple pie recipe that called for a sweet crumble instead of a top crust.

I added a cup of oatmeal to the crumble because I can't imagine a crumble without it, but here's the original recipe. 

I made the mistake of really packing the crumb on the top, instead of sprinkling it.  It formed a pretty solid crust.  It was really good, but next time I think I'll wait until 15 minutes before the pie is done before sprinkling - not packing - it on.

This version is definitely Todd-approved, though!

Have a great week!