It's Just the Way I Roll

I have to crochet this welcome mat. Does it rock or what? You can find the pattern in Debbie Stoller's Stitch 'N Bitch Crochet: The Happy Hooker on page 260. The designer is Faith Landsman. It will be my first project from this book. I may do two, one for the front door, one for the back. I'm not sure I'll actually let anyone step on it though. Maybe a sign, "Please step around welcome mat" or "Please wipe feet before stepping on welcome mat" or what about "Please remove shoes before stepping on welcome mat". Yes, Home Depot, I'm so there this weekend. The rug is crocheted using Bevis Rope Medium-Duty Jute Twine in green. The flowers are crocheted using different colors of nylon twine. Love being crafty in the hardware store. Makes me feel like a macho crocheter. Which reminds me I never finished my Ericka Knight twine boxes or baskets or whatever from Simple Crochet. Maybe one of those would be a good "finish me this weekend" project.

Thanks to everyone for the scrapbooking advice. I know that the most important things are journaling and getting the pictures on the pages. I get all consumed with my idea of what scrapbooks should look like and forget what they are really about.

Laren when I read your comment I was listening to:

Nova 100 - never more than two ads in a row

Yes, I enjoy pretending I'm in Australia. It's really the best radio station around, at least for my music tastes. It's the only radio station I listen to around the house any more. It's only a problem when I start calling people "mate" or using the word "bloke" in everyday conversation. For example, "Did y'all see that crazy bloke on the beach the other day?" I bored my neighbor to death telling her about the cyclone destroying the banana crop and how Nova 100 was discussing not buying imported bananas, and how bananas are taken for granted, oh, and what a hard hit it will be for the Smoothie business since Smoothies are already $8. Makes me appreciate my $5 smoothie a lot more. Since I live in an area just trying to come back from Hurricane Ivan a year and a half ago, I understand what's going on in the communities down there and hope things are back to normal soon.

In cross stitching news I'm still working on House #8 on Houses of Hawk Run Hollow. We've had a few distractions around here this week and stitching time has been in short supply.

I'm attempting to put my stitching in perspective, like not letting it take over my life, but sometimes when lots of things are going on all I think about is sitting down and stitching. Shutting out everything else around me. Just me, the needle, thread, the fabric and well a cat on my lap because with too many cats to admit to here, there's always a cat on my lap. ALWAYS.

Since it's 37 degrees this morning(I am in Florida and it's March right?) I may restart the Alien Illusion scarf one more time. I'm limiting myself to one knitting project at a time for the moment. The fact that I have 40+ cross stitch projects in various stages, several crochet projects in various stages, I believe it's best to limit my knitting projects, it's obvious I have a commitment problem. Once I finish Alien Illusion, sometime in 2008 at the rate I'm going, I want to make the Poster Boy bag from Stitch 'N Bitch Nation. The image I want to use is from the cover of Jackson Browne's self titled first record(often called "Saturate Before Using" by mistake). It should be pretty easy to create a chart using that image.

See it's already practically two colors.

This one would also make a nice bag.

I do believe I enjoy talking(writing) about projects as much as stitching, knitting or crocheting them. I have so many great plans, so many projects spinning around in my brain. I've been dreaming of quilts lately too. I hate that because quilting is not my all time favorite thing, I enjoy planning the quilt(even though I suck at scrapbooking, quilting is a different medium), I like, really, seriously like, buying fabrics(No I don't have a fabric stash--only buy fabric when I have a project burning a hole in my brain), I don't like cutting out the fabric pieces, I do like handsewing the fabric back together, I don't like making the quilt sandwich and basting but I do love handquilting. Go figure. So somewhere in the middle I will get a quilt or two or twenty made one day. I want to make each of my boys two quilts, one will be their life story up to the point where I make the quilt. House blocks, school blocks, blocks representing their hobbies/sports, states where we've lived. Lots of handsewing and applique. I like this. I want to dye a lot of the fabric myself because I'm dorky that way. I also want to handpiece the back-- have favorite quotes cross stitched in blocks because how can it be from their mom and not have cross stitch involved in it some way, maybe silly things like remember to wear clean underwear, wash behind your ears, etc. Things moms say...