Cape Cod Horror Story

An innocent stitcher is minding her own business at 5a.m. She is stitching along on her Cape Cod Girls Sampler and from out of the blue red dots show up on her fabric. There is no explanation for this occurrence. There is no trace of blood on her fingers, no animal appears to be bleeding around her.

She looks above her expecting to see the ceiling covered in blood like something out of Carrie or Scream but no, just dust and cobwebs. There is no red substance that could even pass for blood anywhere in the vicinity of where our stitcher is sitting.

(see the dots right there at the center top?)

(picture taken with a Blackberry, excuse the poor quality, paranormal events are not easy to photograph)

Our stitcher spent several minutes freakin' out and trying to figure out exactly where the red substance originated to no avail. It showed up out of no where, marked the fabric, and poof, gone. There is no trail of red dots anywhere in the house. There are two bright dots photographed above and a scattering of dots on the flip side of the fabric.

This stitcher is perplexed to say the least. Coffee, Coca~cola, tea, any number of substances could have ended up on this fabric at any given time, but randomly--out of thin air--these red dots appeared.

I'm pretty sure the dots will be out of sight once stretched and framed. They aren't that close to the stitching, but in this rare case I only allowed two inches at the top and bottom because I cheaped out and didn't buy the larger cut of fabric, that cheapness might have saved me in the long run, less of an area to get spotted.

This stitcher is kind of creeped out at the moment because if a red substance is just materializing in my house, I mean, could it be my house is finally fighting back at my slacker housekeeping skills?

Well unfortunately I'm not freaked out enough to do a deep cleaning so it really sucks to be my house at the moment. Since I have no shame I'm willing to just stitch around the red substance while wondering to myself, "Self, WTF just happened?" If dust bunnies, hair- animal or human, coffee, tea, anything had appeared on the fabric I'd have had some kind of explanation but red dots from no where? I'm at a loss and probably need to contact Ghostbusters or Tangina from Poltergeist. Although I can't imagine her ever uttering the words, "this house is clean" under my roof.

Dear Fairy Godmother

A.K.A.- Siobhan

I want to thank you for a pretty sweet weekend. Actually unless you had set me up with Viggo or Nikki Sixx, I'm pretty sure it couldn't have been any better.

(For those of y'all wondering where my pictures are, well they are currently trapped on my camera due to a fractured memory card, damn it all! I'm hoping the pictures can be saved, but it's going to take some work. For the time being you will have to take my weekend wrap up on faith-- of course there is picture proof at Lisa's blog.)

Saturday morning Siobhan picked up Sharon and I early, early. We drove over to the Strawberry Sampler, Siobhan's LNS, and sat in the car in the parking lot because it was 8:00a.m. and the Strawberry Sampler was closed--she wouldn't even let us grab some Dunkin' Donuts coffee while we waited, but it was all good, because who should come driving up a few minutes later but Primitive Needle Lisa. Lisa parked her Bug and jumped in the backseat with me and I have to admit, she didn't seem scared at all, even when I asked her if it might be possible for her to set up text message alerts regarding her design progress. I thought it was a good idea, just sayin'.

We then pulled out of the parking lot, headed to Dunkin' Donuts, OMG, what a treat that was this weekend. We don't have a Dunkin anywhere around me and that's really a crime, I wanted to lick the bottom of my coffee cup, but that's another story.

We then headed out of town towards Amish country and well, if my memory card is fractured it's probably because I was trying to covertly or as the Yarn Harlot would put it, "Kinnear" some Amish and well it's probably damning their souls to hell and I shouldn't oughta do that, but you know, there's Amish guys in fields, on horses, cute kids wearing milking hats, girls mowing the lawn in their sweet Amish attire, so yea, it was more than my obnoxious self could handle. I clicked, and obviously the evil was smote from my camera. I should add that the Amish I wasn't able to snap pictures of have Siobhan to thank because she blew by them like nobody's business.

We talked poor Lisa's ears off and she was a good sport as we were picking her brain about her super top secret design releases. If only she hadn't forgot my cell number I'd keep y'all up to date with the text alerts, I'm sure it was just an oversite on her part. ;)

After a while we pulled into a driveway. Whose driveway you're asking yourself? Well none other than Kathy Barrick's! Yep, not only were we allowed in the driveway, we were invited into the house and to her credit, Kathy didn't seem the least bit frightened. No alarms went off, no nets were dropped over us, we were allowed to roam freely through her beautiful home and we saw her studio where the magic happens.

Kathy had a sweet brunch set up for us, I know she was thinking food would calm the crazies, but it didn't shut us up, we bugged her about her upcoming designs and guess who else was there, Carol Sims, model stitcher extraordinaire. Talk about stitching nirvana--I am not worthy. It was just a, how did the spousal unit put it, hmmmm, a Super Fantastic Kathy Barrick Day.

After taking the tour we jumped back into our cars, and to Lisa's credit she got right back into the backseat with me, so it's possible I'm not as stalkerish as I think I am. We grabbed Panera for lunch and then we invaded Eldreth Pottery and we went all the way back to the Strawberry Sampler(yes Kathy was with us) where there is a trunk show of Primitive Needle Lisa's designs and she got to see it all displayed. We also got to see Siobhan's awesome framing.

It was one absolutely fabulous day that I will well not to sound lame but I will cherish. It was a day spent with good friends, hopefully new friends, and there was food and some needlework talk, everything I love.

Things I learned:

That when telling a story about a crazy family person I might need to stress at the beginning that it's true as when I was finished everyone became silent waiting on the punch line, uh, no, that's the story, it's all true.

That Kathy reads my blog! I showed her my Strawberry Blonde and she referred to it as Tomato Blonde, whoops! But she liked it, she really liked it.

That I can wear a white shirt and manage not to spill one thing on it all day long. I had soup with Kathy and Lisa and didn't dump it down the front of my shirt.

That the septic issues in my house are obviously my fault as I clogged the toilet in the hotel.

That while I managed not dump food all over me on Saturday, on Sunday I dumped a whole coke in the middle of DC National airport. I am so cool.

There's more to report but I'll wrap this up right now and try to work on my camera.

Tomato Blonde?

Happy Independence Day to all my fellow Americans and Happy Saturday to the rest of the world.

I haven't been doing a lot of stitching lately, but when I have been picking up needle and thread it's been to put a few stitches in CHS Strawberry Blonde. I am using an unevenweave fabric, Osnaburg, that I found at JoAnn's. I started Strawberry Blonde back in January, 2007. I haven't made much more progress. But I am once again in love with this piece of stitching. The unevenweave of the fabric it's 28x34 I believe makes the stitching interesting. Since this is a primitive design I thought it'd be ok to experiment a little and I thought I was darn forward thinking in finding this fabric near the quilting fabrics at JoAnn's and determining might be just right for cross stitch, back in 2007.

At $3.49 a yard I thought it was worth the risk, we'll call it adventure stitching. My one concern, and what has been my only concern, is that the unevenweave is giving my ginormous strawberry a distinct tomato look but I do believe the more stitching I do the better it's going to look. I may just get this finished before the end of summer. Whoops, said that outloud, chances are I won't touch it again until who knows when.

No I'll keep stitching because I'm loving her lots at the moment.

Yesterday in my mailbox I found this package from Amanda, what a treat!
Yes my picture has a bluish hue, I thought it was the lighting outside but I do believe my camera is slowly biting the dust. What you see are some of her cool notecards and envelopes, some peppermint lip goodness and a Moleskine Cahier pocket sketchbook. Sweet! She liked the name I came up with for her rhubarb/tequila drink. Rhubarbarita...although she ended up going for Soulepapa's suggestion of the Ruby June. She sent me this as an honorable mention. Thanks Amanda!

This was the beach last Sunday. I'm pretty sure people are going to be elbow to elbow, feet to heads, all across the beach this weekend. Unless we go early we won't be going.

No big holiday plans, some eatin', some chillin', some stitchin'. I'm planning on starting

The Primitive Needle.'s Simply Live and SAL with Missy and it's the HAED SWIP SAL over on the BB so my Dark Waters will see the light of day for a bit this weekend and of course I'll continue to work on my Tomato Blonde. I'm curious to see how the bird next to the large strawberry is going to stitch up. Fat, thin, normal like the chick at the bottom.

Happy Holiday Everyone and I say if it's not a holiday weekend in your corner of the world, make it one. Open a bottle of wine, a bottle of icy cold root beer and celebrate waking up in the morning, breathing in and out, the blue of the sky, the green of the grass, there's a lot in this world to be happy about even among the mess!