Musings From a Three Bedroom Ranch

Update From Wrinkledy McWrinklerson and Froggy McFroggerson

2012-02-08T16:37:00.016-06:00

Other wise known as my February WIPocalypse Update:

First up Wrinkledy McWrinklerson a.k.a. Sarah Elizabeth Brooke:

Sarah Elizabeth Brooke

The Scarlett House

36ct light examplar linen

DMC, Crescent Colours

You can find out more about Sarah Elizabeth at: The Scarlett House

Tanya has some exciting things in the works. So check her blog out often!

If you know me you know that I obsess over finding samplers with family names and Sarah fit my criteria, Sarah Elizabeth was my sainted great grandmother's name and Brooke, without the "e" and add an "s" for Brooks is my other great grandmother's maiden name so I thought it was pretty cool that both great grandmothers were represented in the name of this sampler. I also love the red house and the verse and it's just an all around perfect sampler.

I thought I would be showing you a finished SEB today but that so did not happen as you can see. I think the only thing I accomplished was completing some of the grass. I'm a sad panda. But there's always February and of course my March update so stay tuned!

Now Froggy McFroggerson a.k.a. Prairie Schooler's February:

February

Prairie Schooler

32ct lambswool

DMC

I had to frog the roof of this house not once but twice because I stitched the same exact mistake twice. I don't know what was going on with me at the time but focus and that counting thing were definitely issues. All is frogged and will be restitched in the next couple of days. I hope to finish this before the end of the month, but we'll just have to see about that.

Which brings us to Berthe DuPont. Berthe is pretty darn beautiful in my very humble opinion. She is a free chart, there are 23 parts and she can be found here:

Abécédaire Berthe Dupont 1913 -1 Trésors de boites à couture

I believe the chart is available to purchase from her boutique if you don't want to search the site looking for all the parts. I converted the DMC to Vikki Clayton Silks. I love her silks.

Berthe DuPont

Tresors

40ct Creme Brulee linen from Hand Dyed Fibers
HDF silk

Now to my very slow WIP, it's a triptyche from Heaven and Earth Designs the part that you see is Dark Waters with the top most part being a teeny tiny bit of the center panel(just water and sky). The design can be viewed here:

Bright Skies [FENECH9211] - $14.25 : Heaven And Earth Designs, cross stitch, c

Dark Waters [FENECH9210] - $14.25 : Heaven And Earth Designs, cross stitch, cr

and if you really have to see the center panel just do a search for Dark Waters and the center panel will pop up, it's just more water and sky. I have loved this since I first saw the artwork. It's going to be pretty freakin' awesome when I finish it when I'm, oh, 89.

Bright Skies, Dark Waters

Heaven and Earth Designs

22ct antique white hardanger

DMC, 2x1, full cross

And I have another Heaven and Earth Design started, this is Red Silk Mermaid. I had been planning on doing my bedroom over with a red and white color palette, I started this back in 2007. My bedroom is still not red and white, it's still modern American clutter covered in cat and dog hair. But one day it will be a room de romance. Maybe.

You can see the completed piece here:

QS Red Silk Mermaid [KUIK15523QS] - $6.75 : Heaven And Earth Designs, cross st

When I started this piece my fellow HAED stitchers were just starting to embrace the tent stitch for these insanely large projects in that hopes that they might actually move from slow works in progress to finished projects. So I thought Red here would be a good test stitch for me to see how I feel about tenting. At first, way back when, I didn't really care for the tenting. It felt wrong. Now, after picking this piece back up and working on her here and there for the last week or so, I kind of like working over 1 on the 28ct fabric. I know, it's insane, right? I keep having dreams where my beloved little X comes and flogs me with floss because it feels I have betrayed it. But I have to say I never thought I'd ever be a person that looked forward to working over 1 on 28ct. And I do. I'm loving this process, I'm getting more and more comfortable with it as each stitching session passes. I will still do some of my HAED in full crosses but I think the ones without so much detail will definitely be tented.

I get asked all the time why do you want to stitch HAED, why not just buy the art, and really, what drew me to cross stitch all those many years ago was the fact that my dad could draw anything and my poor hangman didn't even make it to the noose my drawing is so bad. I saw cross stitch as a way to create art on fabric. Sure it's someone else's art that I'm recreating but I still love that process.

And at the same time I discovered cross stitch as art, I also was obsessed with Laura Ingalls Wilder and in The Long Winter she writes about Laura cross stitching. Laura Ingalls Wilder cross stitched! How very cool that information was for this 11 year old. So stitching art is something I'm not going to give up and I do believe that a HAED and reproduction sampler can happily reside in the same house. Like my hero Tim Gunn says, "Make it work!" and I plan to!

Red Silk Mermaid

Heaven and Earth Designs

28ct tea dyed Monaco

DMC, 2x1, tent

For more information about the WIPocalypse check it out here:

Measi's Musings » Blog Archive » 2012 WIPocalypse

This next project is sad yet joyful. Last year I lost a sweet stitching friend named Chelsea. Chelsea was one of the most amazing people I have ever met. She had waited a long time for a heart and double lung transplant and eventually it was her turn. She thrived, she married her long time love, she taught kids how to swim, she crammed as much life into every single day of her life that she could. In July, due to complications, she died. It was unexpected as she had been doing so well and every single day I miss my sweet friend. When I get down, when I start feeling sorry for myself I ask myself what would Chelsea do and you know what? Chelsea would grab life by the horns and make it good! So I am trying very hard to live by that. Life is short, cram as much life into every single day that you can.

Some friends got together to make Chelsea's mom a memorial quilt. The artwork is from Hannah Disney and is titled Chelsea's Gift.

Here's a link to the art on HAED website:

Chelseas Gift - In Memory of Chelsea - Proceeds to Family [LYNN1472] - $11.25

I'm pretty sure my square is the very bottom right corner. This is my project so far and it's not as much as I would like but I'm getting more comfortable with tenting and feel less like I'm going to make a mess of my square.

Chelsea's Gift

Heaven and Earth Designs

25ct lugana

DMC, 2x1, tent

Me and the spousal unit at the beach a month or so ago.

A Kitten Darkly(Yep, I'm lame, named her Darkly from A Scanner Darkly)

This was taken in back in the autumn as you can tell.

My attempt at bokeh. The lights are supposed to be heart shaped. I need to get a 50mm lens. It's on my list!

Anyone loving Project Runway All Stars like me? I want Austin Scarlet to win. I've loved him since season 1 and thought he was robbed.

I don't enjoy 24 Hour Catwalk. I can take it or leave it.

Revenge(ABC Wednesday nights)! My favorite show. Downton Abbey(PBS Sunday Nights)! Also my favorite show!

Also enjoying Grimm(Fridays on NBC) and Once Upon a Time(Sundays on ABC).

And people, new episodes of The Walking Dead start this Sunday(on AMC) check it out on Netflix if you haven't watched it and then we discuss all the zombie craziness!

Please Game of Thrones start back soon! I think it returns in April. (HBO Sunday Nights).

I just started listening to The Final Empire: Mistborn Book 1. The book starts out, the evil overlord has won. I thought that sounded interesting and so far I'm enjoying the first hour of the 25 hours. I have several friends that love this series.

I'm reading The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley(hope I got the author's name correct). It's a nice cozy mystery and exactly what I needed after wrapping up Stephen King's 11-22-63. I loved that book. I will be honest, I do believe Mr. King got caught up in his world building. I think he loved late 50s early 60s and certain parts of the America that used to be. I felt like I was there, but I really, really wanted him to get to Oswald and take care of business, and there's this feeling of impending doom and I wanted it to get it over with already! I was pretty tense listening to this story. It dragged but that dragging was so very important. I didn't give up on my characters. Over all it sucked me in, maybe for ten hours too many but never the less, the ending, that final scene was worth every dragging moment of the story. Really and truly it was.

So that's my life and stitching update for the moment.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my ramblings!

2012 WIPocalypse-The January Edition

2012-01-09T13:22:00.006-06:00

WIPocalypse-January Edition

2012 has gotten off to a very slow start for me, at least in the needleworking/crafting portion of my life. But my mojo has finally kicked in and I found myself working on Sarah Elizabeth Brooke from The Scarlett House. My intentions had been for this project to my last finish for 2011 and as you can see I was no where close on December 31st. I had also thought that my needlework would be less wrinkledy in 2012 but my iron has gone missing so I stretched and flattened as much as I could. I am stitching Sarah Elizabeth using DMC and the Crescent Colours conversion for the grass area.

Sarah Elizabeth Brooke

The Scarlett House

DMC & Crescent Colours

36ct Vintage Light Examplar

A new start for 2012, in an attempt to get more seasonal stitching accomplished, is Prairie Schooler's February:

February

Prairie Schooler

DMC

32ct Lambswool

Not much progress but I still have a good bit of time before February 1st.

I hope everyone has a very successful year of stitching and success can mean finishing that BAP or squeezing in a few stitches whenever there's a quiet moment.

Thanks to Measi and Measi's Musings » WIPocalypse: Basic Info I hope to make significant progress on many older projects and add some new into the mix. I also hope the challenge encourages me to blog a bit more in 2012.

Keep your fingers crossed that my iron shows up between now and my next post which hopefully won't be a month away.

Gettin' Freaky With Fancey

2011-10-31T09:21:00.005-05:00

Earlier this month I finished Pineberry Lane's Fancey Blackett and the Harvest Dance. I love Fancey. She's embracing nature, the squirrels, and just celebrating the joy of the harvest season. I imagine her kitchen is well stocked with herbs for the cauldron and her witch's brew. It's a cozy place, fire going, the scent of sage in the air, a nice harvest stew bubbling on the back of the stove, her Book of Shadows open on the rustic table, bread rising on the counter, and cat or two or five curled up in nooks around the large room. And Fancey, why she's excited waiting on her friends to drop by so they can celebrate the Turn of the Wheel and sharing a Blessed Samhain.

Fancey Blackett and the Harvest Dance

Pineberry Lane

mystery linen-I think it's a 30ct R&R

DMC

I also had another finish this month, Hands To Work's My Beloved Tennessee. I've been feeling a bit homesick recently and this chart called to me. Even though I spent most of my life trying to get out of Tennessee, it's home, it's where you will find all my family and occaisionally I miss it so much it hurts. I love Florida but over the last couple of years I realize more and more that I will never be a true Florida girl, I will always be a Tennessean.

My Beloved Tennessee

Hands to Work

32ct antique white linen aged by me

DMC

Future Projects

With the beginning of the 2011 holiday season my mind is drawn to 2012 and all the projects I hope to start and WIP I want to finish. 2011 so far as been a bit of a fail. I haven't had near as much stitching time as I would like and my project finishes have been few and far between. I know it's not a race but there are so many things I want to stitch, I want to "Stitch all the things!" Totally taken from this Hyperbole and a Half post, scroll down to see "Clean all the things!"

Hyperbole and a Half: This is Why I'll Never be an Adult

These days I spend a good bit of time sorting through charts, making lists of future projects, supplies needed, and then squealing when I've kitted something up and it's sitting there waiting on me to put in that sacred first stitch.

There are so many people that don't understand the call of needle, thread, fabric, and a crisp new chart, I feel very sorry for them but then again they may not understand why sticking to the kitchen floor doesn't bother me in the least and they just love the smell of Pinesol and Soft Scrub. Hmmm, no I still feel sorry for them. Give me a comfy spot and some good solid hoop time and I'm a happy girl. I do get concerned at times that one day I'm going to wander into the kitchen for a little snack and the floor will refuse to give me up. Now that I think about it maybe I should keep that bottle of Pinesol within reach.

Hope everyone has a wonderful and safe Halloween. May your pumpkin patch be sincere and may the Great Pumpkin shower you with gifts.

She Blogs!

2011-09-08T11:12:00.009-05:00

I think I remember how to do this thing called "blogging". Over the last few months I kind of ran out of things to say here on the blog. Do you ever think "that blogging thing is kind of pointless" I think I just felt I didn't have much to contribute so opted out for a bit. You know a summer hiatus, I love that word, so very tv.

I have been doing some stitching. Not as much stitching as I would like but my current project is The Scarlett House's Sarah Elizabeth Brooke. I've been dying to stitch this since Tanya acquired the sampler. My great grandmother is Sarah Elizabeth and Brook without the "e" is a family name. I was destined to stitch this sweet sampler.

I got a new camera and am still learning. Michelle is right, the best camera in the world is no help if you don't have an eye for the shot. I kept these simple and used the light box the spousal unit put together for me a few weeks ago.
I decided to go with DMC instead of Belle Soie so my sampler is a little different than the one you see pictured on the chart. I wanted to start Sarah sooner rather than later so I pulled the DMC, unkitted a piece of 36ct vintage light examplar, and jumped right in.

I did tweak the DMC conversion a touch. The flowers in the border are stitched with DMC 304 instead of 3721. I wanted a deeper red and I'm very happy with the 304.

I also swapped out the color for the house. Instead of DMC 355, I decided to go with DMC 347. Again I wanted my bricks just a little redder.

It's been so long since I blogged, I do believe all pictures can be clicked on to make bigger.

I tent or half cross stitched the verse. It was such a relief to discover that the over 1 in a half cross is not a nightmare. I've had Jane Atkinson in progress since 2009 I believe and part of the reason I quit working on her was the over 1 verse. I just couldn't face it, the thought of it made me sick to my stomach. But thanks to Sarah and just doing it, I can now face over 1 but only as a half cross. I think if I were forced by the stitching police to do a full cross at this time, I'd just have to stick my needle in my eye.

Last weekend Tropical Storm Lee dropped in for a visit. He came bearing(baring?) the gift of much needed rain. He was also kind enough to stagger the showers that there wasn't even a lot of flooding around here. I could go for a few more weekends just like that. I like being in the house. No guilt about not going anywhere, I'm actually being a good citizen by staying home. Really!

Here are some boats in the mists. OK the ghost boats are really in the pouring down rain but I love the eerie feel. Ghost Pirates! Check out South Park's Halloween Ghost Pirates episode with KORN. One of my favs. I think you can view it at South Park. If not there, then I'm pretty sure it's on Netflix.

Here are some surfers. I don't normally criticize surfers for surfing during a storm because that's their thing. But I noticed the guy in the middle was kind of teaching the chick here on the left. And sorry dude, a tropical storm, even one as whimpy as Lee is not the time or the place to teach someone to surf.

That's about all the news from the Redneck Riviera. I have a few more projects going and maybe I'll have a finish in a few days. Or maybe not!

Thanks for reading!

The Happs

2011-06-12T17:51:00.010-05:00

The title is kind of misleading as not much is going on around here. But I did make this cover for my Nook: The Original Padded Nook/ Nook COLOR/ New by BirdifulStitches I highly recommend this pattern. The directions were easy to follow, any wonkiness or poor quality is all on me.

Nell, my Nook, stored in her handmade padded cover. Much nicer than the tacky crochet thing I whipped out when I first got her.
These are the pockets. I made a few mistakes but it had nothing to do with the pattern or the instructions. It had every thing to do with my sewing machine being possessed and I think I told it to "Suck My D___". Use your imagination. It's one of my favorite lines from The Hangover and as the Spousal Unit says, "It's funny because I'm a girl". Of course, the sewing machine, every the nasty ho, told me it was thinking about getting it's bartender's license. I know makes no sense but I was terribly frustrated that day because of an uncooperative piece of machinery.

Here's the full frontal view of the inside of my Nook case. I'm so glad I finally got around to making this. I've had the pattern forever. I'll make another one as I figured out my machine issues and am more comfortable with the process.

I've been working here and there on my WR2107 Pokey Dots Throw. I'm attaching blocks as I make them. Sure it slows down the fun part, the block making, but when I'm done, I'm done, well I'll have to add edging but the blocks will all be together. No hours and hours of putting them together when I'm already sick of it.

This is my progress such that it is on Lisi Sloboda 1828 - Cross Stitch Pattern. Sorry my pic isn't better Margaret. I'll take another one when I add a few more colors. I'm converted the DMC to HDF and decided I'd use those instead of the WDWs as charted.

All crafting has been slowed considerably due to the stack of books you see in the pic above. Our library system has it's kinks. Sometimes you can request 20 books and they come in one at a time weeks apart, other times you get all of them at the same time. That's what happened to me. I'm trying to read through this stack as fast as possible. I don't enjoy pressure reading and it's my one complaint about the library but what does one expect for $0.

We have been in the middle of a major drought. Storms reach the Florida/Alabama border and run north instead of east. These clouds were a happy sight last Saturday. I hope I was able to catch the weird bright green of the water. I honestly can't tell on this old computer.

Hope everyone is enjoying these early days of summer. Thanks for stopping by!

Cool Waves and Dark Waters

2011-05-27T17:48:00.005-05:00

I've had a productive day or two. I managed to finish crocheting an afghan started many months ago. Just in time to welcome in Summer. DOH! I also pulled out a HAED project, Dark Waters. I'm actually stitching a triptyche of art, but started with the bottom piece, Dark Waters, an ocean of mermaids, there's a center which is just water and sky and the top piece is a sky full of angels. Not a lot of progress on Dark Waters, I'm trying to fill in areas of confetti which is wonderful for the detail of the piece but doesn't really show much for several hours of stitching. But I love this art and it's going to be freakin' awesome when completed. If it's ever completed that is.

Here's my Cool Waves throw stitched with the same exact colors as in the magazine because I'm unimaginative that way, actually I love these colors and I had them all right here in the stash so I went with what worked. Please ignore where Pineapple the cat has clawed up my wicker. She's evil. This pattern is from a Crochet Today special issue, Quick and Easy Gifts. The yarn is good old Red Heart.

I have more afghans planned, some using the exact colors from the magazines because I'm trying to deplete the Red Heart stash and mostly because I happen to like the colors the original design was created with. I suck at the color thing, when I attempt my own interpretation it's usually catastrophic, at least to whom ever is unfortunate enough to gaze upon it.

This is my current progress on Dark Waters. I love the detail in the fish to her left. That makes the confetti stitching so worth it. Yes, my fabric is dirty and believe me, over the next ten years of stitching on this I suspect it will get even more dirty. Such is the life of a slow work in progress.

Have you seen Tanya's new designs? Head over to The Scarlett House and show her the love! They are wonderful!

Hope everyone is able to spend many hours with the little X this weekend! Especially the Americans who have a long weekend, that's 24 extra stitching hours!

What are your stitching plans?

M. R. M.

2011-05-24T11:39:00.002-05:00

Or Mouline Rouge Monday:

Mouline Rouge

Long Dog

40ct Lambswool Linen

DMC 498

This sampler was started years and years ago. I love it and can't really say why I haven't been showing it love all this time, ok, I've got the attention span of a gnat and other more exciting projects screamed louder. It kept getting bumped lower and lower in the WIP pile and was forgotten. I have to say I'm lovin' my Mondays spent with this sampler. It's a nice change from what I normally stitch and it's entirely possible I'll finish page one next week.

My rotation as it stands now is:

Monday- Mouline Rouge

Tuesday-Miss Lila

Wednesday-Heaven and Earth Designs, I have several going and I miss them.

Thursday-Wild Card-Anything Goes Jane Atkinson Reproduction Sampler(another one started several years ago),Abécédaire Berthe Dupont - 18 Trésors de boites à couture Trésors de boites , Lisi Sloboda 1828 - Cross Stitch Pattern and any other number of projects that I have started and strikes my fancy.

Friday-Freebie Friday I'm working on a free sampler from a French site, Berthe Dupont:

Le site des Trésors de boîtes à couture click on blog, and check out Berthe Dupont, there should be the most recent part on the first page(or see link above) I am also participating in HAED Freebie SAL, working on QS Curl Up With a Good Book and the half year SAL is about to begin and I will be stitching SK Rapunzel.
Saturday/Sunday-Sonne Spotte

So far this is holding my interest. There's enough variety to keep me entertained and it's loose enough that I can pull out other projects and mix it up a bit.

Also On My Mind:

Crochet. I've fallen in love with several designs from this book:

Lily: Pattern Book Preview - Bright Ideas

My friend Pam scored it for me at Hobby Lobby, yay, to not having to order online!

I want to make some cushions for the wicker on the front porch and I'm loving the Sunburst pillow, the Hexagon Pillow, the Graphic Pillow, and the Pinwheel. I also want to make the rug for the area inside my front door. I'd call it an entry way but it's basically a 3x3 hunk of linolium. I'm thinking I'll do the background in brown and make the dots yellow, orange, lime and aqua. Would love to do the white but I'd have to wash it every five minutes. It would be brown before the first day is over, so I'll start out with where it would end up anyway. I have a huge bucket of Sugar & Cream and Peaches and Cream and all kinds of kitchen cotton so I can do a stash dive for supplies. I'm kind of wanting to order some of Knit Picks Dishie(Dishie Yarn Knitting Yarn from KnitPicks.com). But I have way too much kitchen cotton in the garage to order any at the moment.

Anyone watching Game of Thrones on HBO? OMG we look forward to Sunday nights so much now. I didn't expect the Spousal Unit to like it, it's not his normal show but he's addicted more than me. We discussed downloading the HBOGO app on the computer so that we could watch next week's show early and decided that if we did that we wouldn't have anything to look forward to next Sunday. I'm also listening to the book from Audible.com. For every four hours of TV show, I'm listening to about 9 hours of book.

Hope everyone is doing well and getting lots of stitching done!

Tuesdays With Miss Lila

2011-05-17T14:06:00.004-05:00

Or Revisiting the Whole Rotation Thing

I'm not much of a rule girl. I follow them because that's what one is supposed to do and it only took one ticket for not wearing a seatbelt to make me buckle up(but it still annoys me that in Florida people on motorcycles can choose not to wear a helmet but me, in a car surrounded by metal, am forced to wear a seatbelt and I don't want to hear all the benefits, I get it but I think helmets should be required on motorcycles if I have to be attached to my car, just sayin'). Anyway, I have started a new rotation that I don't expect to last very long because I'm a rebel at heart but if I can get some time in on each of these projects for a just a little while before breaking my own rules I might see some genuine progress.

Tuesdays are for CHS Miss Lila's House. I have an Aunt Lila and you'll be hearing more about her later on. Yeah, I know you are all on the edge of your seats!

Miss Lila's House

Carriage House Samplings

32ct black linen dyed by moi

DMC

I'm so very ashamed of the stitching you see below:

I have frogged this area four times. I have changed hoops, tried stitching in hand, used a Qsnap. Nothing will make this area look nice. The little X is going funky on me here. I am now referring to this house as the Amityville house. I'm pretty sure I'm going to wake up any morning and find it surrounded by flies. Check out the Amityville Horror movie if you don't know what I'm talking about.

I will admit that this linen is a cheap 32ct that I dyed myself, it's obvious that I got exactly what I paid for. I plan to frog one more time and also switch to DMC that hasn't been bobbined, just in case that is the cause of all my woe. I do love this piece, because as I mentioned I have an Aunt Lila, my Mamaw's oldest sister, so she is technically my great aunt and I loved her a lot.

Has anyone else ever had this problem when stitching 2x2? I can't remember a time when I have struggled this much trying to get the little X to cooperate.

Dirty Laundry

2011-05-10T12:36:00.007-05:00

With apologies to my Mamaw who I loved more than anyone on earth, I will, with this post reveal some family dirty laundry. It's only peripherally stitching related but since this may be the only public memorial to my dad's wife, I'm going to tell the tale here and I plan to tell it true. I will start with a progress picture of my Mouline Rouge. I haven't worked on this project in a month of Sundays. When I pulled it out of it's hidey hole, I remembered that I was stitching it using a wooden hoop my dad and his wife brought me back from Germany when they went to visit her crackhead idiot son who was being "kept" by a rich German woman. I think at the time she owned nail salons. They have since gotten married and it's entirely possible they were married at the time my dad and his wife went for their visit.
Jean asked me what I would like from Germany and I said "Oh some stitching stuff". When they came back they brought me this hoop and some Anchor threads and I think a big hunk of fabric to make into a tablecloth.

Here is MR out of the hoop. I'm stitching it on 40ct lambswool with DMC 498.

At the same time I am wandering down memory lane, looking at the hoop and wondering how Jean is, I get a call from my brother that our uncle had called him and said that Jean, my daddy's widow, passed away last Tuesday. This was the following Monday. So I call my uncle and try to figure out what's going on, there's no obituary, nothing online, except I ran across where her house had been foreclosed on and auctioned off on April 15. When my dad died her idiot son and his wife moved back here from Germany to live with her, to take care of her. She got my dad's pension, her pension from the Sheriff's Dept and I believe she got some SS disability because of a degenerative back disease but I'm not 100% sure about that but she was not hurting for money. She had been sick for many years with lymphoma, when my dad passed away and my brother and I got nothing and had to beg for the few things of my dad's we did get, well, we felt bad for her because she was ill. My brother mowed her lawn, did her grocery shopping and took care of the "Honey Do" list for her. I called regularly. My brother discovered while trying to help her manage her bills that she had been wiring her idiot son money by the thousands, double digit thousands, so that he and his wife could get out of Germany, I guess the rich nail salon proprietress had fallen on hard times. Anyway, it was her money, not ours so let her send it all to the idiot crackhead doofus.

Eventually they arrive, at this point my brother and I can no longer get through to her on the phone as crackhead goober doofus wants to chat us up. We know his mother's schedule better than him, we know when to call, but both of us finally gave up. My brother quit going over doing chores because he and the doofus goober crackhead would get into fights. So we both went on disconnect with her which is how we ended up out of the loop at the time of her death.

I have known Jean for most of my life. Her first husband and my parents were best couple friends. They rode motorcycles together, we went camping together as families. We spent a lot of time with them for several years. Then one day, they are gone. Their house is empty, they vanished. A few years later my dad gets a call from her husband and they are living in some middle of nowhere place in Mississippi. They want to see us. We head down there and they are living on a farm and telling stories of their time in South America. I never got the true story of how and why they ended up there, if they were running from something or to something but they did come back quietly and in the shadows. Well Jean eventually divorced her first husband, got on the Sheriff's Department, I think she was a sargeant at the time she retired but I'm not sure about that. She had remarried to another Sheriff's Deputy. She divorced him. And now I'm not sure if she had a third husband or if my dad was number three. So we will go with my dad being husband number three but how does my mother's former best friend in the whole wide world end up being married to my dad? Well, as best as I can tell, Jean's oldest son committed suicide and somehow she got a hold of my dad and they started talking, renewing the friendship. My dad, God love him, was always chasing the dream and unfortunately the dream was never my mother. Any woman that wasn't my mother seemed to be who he wanted to be with. Other kids other than me and my brother were kids he wanted to be around. I don't think he could help it. But he and Jean reconnected, apparently on many levels and when he and my mother finally divorced, curiously right about the time my brother turned 18 and child support would no longer be an issue, they married.

As far as I can tell they had a happy marriage and were probably soulmates. They indulged each other's whims, neither one could do any wrong in the other's eyes and in a weird crazy kind of way they embraced each other's conspiracy theories and had guns all over the house and bought groceries like they were buying for an army because what if Armageddon arrives and we can't get to the store and they were extremely private and guarded and in this whole wide world is there anything else anyone can ask of a marriage and a partnership?

My daddy and Jean

Jean was always good to me. She had known me most of my life and while I wanted to hold her accountable for my parents horrible marriage, it was horrible way before she came along. My dad, he just never met a woman he didn't like. It's a sad thing but it's true. Over the years I've come to accept this part of him and forgive him because while his choices hurt us, he was a dreamer. I loved my dad, I loved his kooky, wonderful artist side. I loved how quiet he could be and then out of the blue be so unexpectedly funny. He grew his hair long, got his ear pierced, was covered in tattoos, grew a fu manchu, and rode motorcycles until his health wouldn't let him do that any more. He was my dad, and I loved him, so I loved Jean.

I spent a week with them when my Mamaw passed away. The room I stayed in looked like Marie Antoinette threw up all over it. Their doberman slept with me(probably to make sure I didn't try to steal anything) and I was surrounded by Jean's collection of dolls. Some Marie Osmond dolls, some very fine porcelain dolls, I'm not up on my collectibles, but there were dolls every where. She had a little log cabin in the front yard, the size of a child's playhouse, set up like a life size doll house. She loved her collection, they made her happy, maybe filled that void for the little girl she never had. Everything was very feminine and ruffledy all over the house except for the few spaces that housed my dad's odd collection of things.

Daddy and Jean and Harrison

November 1995

I don't know how Jean's life has been since her son and his wife moved in with her. We lost contact. When he(doofus, crackhead son) called my uncle he didn't know what to do about burying her. She had been gone a week and was still laying on a slab in the morgue. She had wanted to donate her body to science but it was so full of disease they turned her down. There was some nonsense about a cemetary and it being underconstruction, and then "I want to cremate her but don't have the money, but it's okay the county will bury her". That is so very wrong. She had her life together before all this. She had money, her house was almost paid for if not paid for, good insurance, and to end up like this. My brother talked to some people at the Sheriff's Department and they told him if her son would contact them they would take care of her. My brother was going to tell my uncle who could then maybe contact her son and hopefully she will get a proper burial.

Jean, may you R.I.P., tell my daddy hi and give him a hug for me and I hope that you are now at peace and pain free for the first time in many, many years.

From the Workbasket

2011-04-15T08:13:00.004-05:00

Things have been busy around here lately. I hate it when life gets that way! I have been feeling more creative than I have in a very long time so I'm going with the feeling. I'm not really sure what will be created but it will either be awesome or a total fail but as my South Park would say, "I learned something". That's not a bad thing. Below you see my slow start on CHS Miss Lila's House. The fabric was originally an antique white linen. I dyed it myself with some good old RIT dye. I was hoping for a true black. As you can see I got nothing close to a true black, but I think the design is working up well on this color. My first attempt was a very light charcoal, so I soaked the fabric overnight, rinsed the heck out of it the next morning and still ended up with a deep charcoal instead of black. The dark fabric was a bit frustrating to stitch on at first, the tree in the center there has been frogged not once but twice because I was apparently just sticking the needle in where ever it felt good. I mentioned that I am feeling creative. I pulled out my Jenny Hart Sublime Stitching book, found the practice sampler, and worked on it yesterday. I think I like embroidery. A few years ago I don't think I would have written those words. I've been taking my time, trying to get comfortable with the stitches, stitching on muslin instead of evenweave linen and basically enjoying the process of learning. I think we forget how fun learning can be. I'm one of those people that wants to be able to do something correctly from the beginning, to start out an expert and that's such a joke and only leads one down the path to craft disaster. So I'm taking my crafting slow these days, embracing the process. If I spend a few days learning something and it's a big old fail, then it's a big old fail and maybe when I try again later, I'll get it. I have to remember to love the process.

I am seriously digging this Clover hoop. Sorry I'm not adding links, my computer is being a butt and I'm just hoping to get this posted before the post goes "poof" into cyberspace, anywhere but my blog!

My stitches are not perfect, a few of my French knots are questionable, some of my flowers are wonky, but isn't that what makes it handmade instead of machine made?

Hope this post finds everyone doing well and enjoying spring!

Blush & Bashful

2011-03-30T15:08:00.004-05:00

Emma Lerch and Shelby from Steel Magnolias would have been friends.

Emma Lerch

Scarlet Letter

32ct Cream Linen

DMC

Emma stitched her house in Shelby's two colors of blush and bashful. The house does appear to be hosed down in Pepto-Bismol.

Go here if you don't know what I'm talking about:

YouTube - Pink is my signature color

I promise I tried to add the video right here but I'm not as smart as I like to think I am.

Emma has been joy to stitch from start to finish. She got me through some very sad days the last few weeks. I still can't write about the loss of my friend Lisa but Emma was definitely a bright spot in days filled with the shadow of grief.

Do Guys Dig Chicks

2011-02-17T08:03:00.005-06:00

With porch sitting skilz? Because of all the skilz I have, I'm my very best at porch sittin'. Emma Lerch

Scarlet Letter

32ct cream linen

DMC

(click pic to make bigger)

It's that time of year, day time temps are hovering around 66°F, the sun is calling me out to soak up some of those full of Vitamin D rays, and the wicker on the porch, left so empty for the last couple of months, is yelling for me to plop my behind right here and stitch. So who I am to argue with the wicker?

I sat outside for a little while and used the time to put in a couple of lengths of DMC 352 on Emma's house. My friend Tanya mentioned that I had outlined the house and how different we all stitch, and days like this are why I save my filling in for later. You never know when opportunity knocks and you can steal some front porch time and why bother with a chart when there's all this filling in to do?

I've managed to work the border down the right side and am now keeping my fingers crossed that it meets up properly along the bottom.

Emma is a simple sampler but her bright colors make me so happy I'm finding it hard to set her aside to stitch on anything else. Once I get the border finished I'll complete all the stuff in the middle with the exception of the house and the grass and I will devote my porch sittin' stitchin' time to those areas. I can get back to outlining on Jane Atkinson and working on Isabella Johnstone when I'm forced to stitch indoors.

In other news, I've been planning my front flower bed, it's a narrow little space and I think I'm going to plant sunflowers along the back row closest to the railing and then fill the front with all kinds of cut flowers. I have two packets of cut flower mix here along with snapdragons, cosmos and zinnias. I'd also like to plant some daisies and dahlias.

I've been making lists of all the things that need sprucing up around here and I've filled up one composition book already. I started painting the patio table and chairs last week. I still have two chairs to go and then I need to get some new cushions. The table was a roadside find a couple of years ago and then the chairs the Spousal Unit found, yet again, on the side of the road. We are definitely upcyclers/recyclers so I don't feel too bad wanting to splurge on purchased chair cushions and a new umbrella.

If you like Frappuccinos but hate the price, I found a very good recipe here:

Homemade Mocha Frappuccino

Since the mornings are warmer I've decided to give the coffee pot a break and start treating myself to a morning frappuccino. This morning I even topped it with some Reddi-wip and chocolate syrup. Of course this treat caused me to add one more thing to the to do list, replace icemaker in the fridge. My ice is full of black rubber shreds from the icemaker. I hate it when that happens but my frappe was just as tasty without the ice.

Hope each of you are seeing a bit of spring in your corner of the world, unless of course you are enjoying being snowed in, which come July and August I'm going to be dreaming of six foot high snow drifts instead of 95° and 100% humidity.

A Quickie

2011-02-12T13:16:00.003-06:00

POST--a quickie post. Unfortunately not a quickie project but one full of joy. I hope that 13 year old Emma Lerch was as happy in her day to day life as her sampler makes me. The bright colors have been nice to stitch with since the last couple of weeks have been dark and dreary here in the Sunshine State.

(click to make bigger)

Emma Lerch

Scarlett Letter

32ct cream linen

DMC

Yes my pictures would be better if took a minute to iron the stitching but that would mean taking all the stuff off the ironing board and actually putting it away, so wrinkled is ok, it gives it character.

I have developed an unhealthy addiction to Netflix streaming. Who knew there was so much tv out there that I didn't know existed? I turned off the tv last week and went back to my audiobooks. I definitely needed to get the Netflix monkey off my back. I think I've found my balance and can watch Netflix responsibly, meaning I will leave the house occaisionally and interact with actual human beings instead of the ones on my tv screen.

Hope this weekend brings a touch of spring to everyone's corner of the world since this winter has been a humdinger. My mother says she's never seen so much snow in Tennessee as they have had this year.

Of Stitching and Crocheting

2011-01-28T16:32:00.007-06:00

The stitching around here has been slow but steady. I can stitch for hours and not have a lot to show for that time other than the memory of a pleasant few hours.

There are those that think sitting around the house stitching on a perfectly beautiful day is a waste of a perfectly beautiful day. I disagree with that philosophy. I think any day is the perfect day to sit on the couch and stitch and since recently introducing Netflix streaming through the Wii to our home, well I don't care if I ever leave the house. It's this wonderful, magical thing, this Netflix streaming through my Wii.

I've just started Isabella Johnstone from SANQ, I think last summer's issue. I'm using DMC and 32ct linen that I aged myself. I've also been working a bit on SL Emma Lerch:

(yes, that's the Wii controller, my new BFF)

The picture below is the bit that was able to catch a streak of sunlight, the only sun that I could capture this afternoon:

Emma and Isabella are great companions while I watch episode after episode of Wire in the Blood and 30 Rock. Another project getting a bit of attention is my Ocean Waves afghan. It's from Crochet Today's Quick & Easy Gifts special issue. I'm crocheting it using the recommended yarn because I had it all in the stash. Good old Red Heart. I would say that I wish I was crocheting this using the finest wool but the fact is my family is the type of family that if a drink gets knocked over they reach for the closest thing to sop it up which would be this afghan, not to mention the dogs and our pride of cats, the frequent handwashing of a wool blanket would be a pain in the butt.

All I know is that I need to stitch and crochet much faster. I have a long, long list of projects and even with not leaving the house any more than I have to, I can't get near as much done every day as I'd like. I thought for sure I'd have Emma completed by the end of this month. No way that will happen. I keep trying to tell myself it's all about the process, the finish is just a wonderful perk but I want to move on to the next project. The serial starter in me is itching to start several new projects. It's a constant battle not to put that first little X into a piece of virgin linen. I must control myself or I will spiral out of control and be sucked into the vortex to Fantasy Island or rather the land of "You'll Never Finish All These Projects".

That Emma, She's a Screamer

2011-01-06T13:54:00.005-06:00

Since finishing Rachael Holmes my stitching time has been devoted to sweet EMMA LERCH. She seems to be yelling the loudest and considering her loud color palette, she's hard to ignore.

Emma Lerch

Scarlet Letter

32ct cream linen

DMC

started in 2010

The last couple of days have been spent on stitching the house outline and I will admit that while this is a reproduction sampler I am not stitching it the same as Emma. Her house was apparently outlined with over 1 Xs and I can't see where all that over 1 enhances the beauty of the piece so Emma is a better woman than I. I'm stitching the house outline over 2 just like the rest of the sampler. Call me a baby, I can take it. I tried a couple of over 1 stitches and truthfully, they were not making me happy so I made the executive decision to make my sampler a wee bit different from Emma's and no one would know unless I told them and whoops, I just did!

Since finishing the outline of the house I've gone back to working on the border. It's actually going pretty fast and this is from the single slowest stitcher in the history of the world.

Has anyone else stitched this sampler? Did you outline the house with over 1 Xs?

Happy New Year!

2011-01-02T09:49:00.002-06:00

Here ye! Here ye! On this the second day of January in the year two thousand and eleven, a sampler has been completed by she who nevers finishes anything. Rachael Holmes

Heartstring Samplery

32ct linen, aged by moi

assorted threads from the stash

(click to make bigger)

New Year's Eve was spent trying to right some wrongs such as the septic tank, the broken front blinds thanks to a neurotic dog and cats who believe they are their personal monkey bars, some cleaning and a bit of stitching. Unfortunately most of the above took away from the time I could spend stitching and Rachael Holmes ended up being carried over to the new year. Since I'm more of a lemonade girl than lemons I decided a finish on the first day of the year could be just as a positive as a finish on the last day of the year and maybe set my stitching pace for the year ahead. January 1st was spent with an NCIS marathon and stitching and stitching and stitching, OMFG, no matter how much I stitched, there was more. No matter how close to finished I thought I was there was more! I gave up around tenish and decided Rachael won and she'd get one more day out of me. At six a.m. this morning I picked Rachael back up, I made X after X after little X and finally after two episodes of Law & Order she was completed.

I love this Sampler so much. I used Beth's colors as a guideline and pulled threads from my stash.

These are the threads I used-the chart colors on the left, my substitution on the right:

WDW Honeysuckle- GAST Ohio Lemon Pie

WDW Dove- GAST Banker's Gray

WDW Guacamole CC Eves Leaves

WDW Pecan DMC 420

WDW Havana DMC 830

WDW Mocha CC Olive Branch and DMC 640

WDW Bark DMC 3021

WDW Red Pear DMC 223

WDW Raspberry CC Manor Red(this was touch too red but it works well I think)

WDW Deep Sea CC Wavy Navy

WDW Bullfrog GAST Forest Glade

WDW Curry CC Finley Gold

My conversion isn't perfect but I'm very happy with the finished result and am working hard not to be so anal about using the exact threads a chart calls for and I'm trying to build my confidence swapping out colors. I've found the investment in a DMC color card is worth every penny. Once a thread can be matched a color of DMC matching a thread from the stash is so much easier.

May 2011 be a year of stitching heaven for all of us.

May there be no knots in your floss

No frogs in your needle

And may the little X continue to bring you comfort and joy!

Thank you to everyone who takes time to read this blog and share the love of the little X with me.

Happy New Year!!!!

2011 WIP Challenge

2010-12-30T16:32:00.005-06:00

I decided to try to the up for a challenge WIP challenge this year. Only I'm tweaking it a bit and only starting out with six projects. If I complete these six by June 21st I will then add six more to the stack, once those six are completed, I'll see what three projects look promising for end of year finishes. I always start challenges and SALs with so much hope. This year I'm being realistic. I have pictures of my first three WIP, the weather has been much too dreary here to take pictures of the other three. So I wanted to post this now before I changed my mind and when I post again I will have the most current pictures of all six projects, and maybe have my full fifteen projects decided upon. This is Jane Atkinson by the Scarlet Letter. According to my records this piece was last photographed on February 23, 2009. I love Jane, truly, madly, deeply and would love to finish her early this year. Not sure that will happen, that over 1 verse is a killer. I'm stitching Jane on 36ct Flax linen and using good old DMC. The colors are much brighter than what you see in the picture which is part of Jane's charm.

Above you see Primitive Needle's Black'd Skie. I had hoped to finish this project before the end of this year but as you can see that ain't happening. I know I have stitched more on this block but can't seem to find a picture. This photo was snapped on July 28, 2010. I'm stitching Black'd Skie on 40ct Vintage Pear and using the Pure Palette Silks. They are awesome to stitch with.

And Long Dog's Sonne Spotte Rounds out my top three. I'm using a mix of GAST and DMC and stitching on 36ct creme brulee I believe. This picture was taken on April 15, 2009.

The other three projects that will be seeing lots of action the first part of 2011 are Handwork's Frances Eden, Scarlet Letter's Emma Lerch and Long Dog's Moulin Rouge.

I'm looking forward to this WIP challenge and hope I can keep up my mojo and get these projects completed by June. Unless something unforseen happens I can see this as a very reasonable goal.

Not Fa La La La La La La

2010-12-22T13:04:00.003-06:00

But La D Da Da Da or Tah Da De Da De Da:

In the Garden

La D Da

40ct lambswool(I think)

DMC floss

Why yes Virginia there is a finish before Christmas. BELIEVE! This morning while watching LOTR: The Two Towers I put the last stitch into the border. It was nice to actually wrap something up before Christmas. Yeah, pun intended, because I'm a dork like that.

No other news to speak of other than I scored this nifty bowl thrifting last week. Right now it's buried under books and DVDs while we attempt one more time to move the TV armoire but even as emptied out as it is it still won't budge. We are afraid to remove the tv from the top because we will never get it back up there because it's almost as heavy as the aforementioned armoire.

The tree is leaning against the living room as I have stated that I will not put up the tree until the living room is rearranged because I've determined that every single thing wrong in my life is directly related to the poor positioning of the tv armoire. My world would be all rainbows and unicorns if only we could move that armoire.

I did mention previously that I am in the throes of perimenopausal insanity? Oh yes, the crazy is coming round full force these days. It's amazing what small thing determines the quality of my life.

Now back to working on Rachael Holmes and the hope to have her completed before the ball drops in Times Square.

Coming soon:

My 2011 WIP Challenge List

My 2011 Crazy January Challenge List

Dispatch From the Land of Unfinished Projects

2010-12-16T07:39:00.007-06:00

How's everybody doing? Getting ready for your holiday, Christmas, Festivus, etc. celebrations? Things here have been busy. I was recently inspired by this post:

Pleasant View Schoolhouse: Getting Started on a Scrap Quilt

And determined that maybe I let myself get too sucked into the perfection of quilting. If my seams don't match up I'm not worthy enough to quilt. If my layout sucks, I shouldn't have wasted my time. I had it in my head that any sewing or quilting I did must be perfect or I was doing nothing but wasting my time and money. So I read Anna's post and decided that some random scrap piecing was in order. I had been agonising for a while over the layout and colors for my oldest son's quilt. He likes green, he's loud and a true wild child. Over the last year or two I had been gathering the random green fat quarter, a bit of green yardage and then pulled some yellows and blues and an orange or two from the stash because all green seemed a little sad to me. I thought my wild child needed a kick of color outside of green. I took my time, tried to be as exact in my cutting as possible, at least as accurate as someone linearly like myself can hope to be.

I then sat around for a week or two trying to figure out how to match up squares and rows and what fabrics worked and what didn't and then banged my head on the table and screamed to the empty house, "It's a flippin' scrap quilt, don't think, sew, don't think, sew". And that's exactly what I did.

(if only my yard were ever as green as this quilt)

I took this picture this morning in the yard, a cloudy overcast 6:48a.m. shot, and I do believe some neighbors were peaking out their blinds wondering what the heck I was doing. I'm the weird, quirky, odd neighbor and I'm okay with that.

Here's another picture. I randomly sewed two squares together, then stacked them up in a pile, then I determined how many pairs of squares I'd need per row for a twin sized quilt, the number was 14 and then I started just sewing my pairs together. Once or twice I stopped and changed up a square or two but I didn't really think too hard about it. The top was going to be what it was going to be and I didn't want to plan it. I wanted a joyful, happy, scrappy mess--this means that no matter how I laid out the colors it would be a success, as long as it had the happy gene, the smile factor.

Last night when the spousal unit arrived home from a long day at work he saw the quilt top on the back of the couch and a huge smile spread across his face, "If the oldest son doesn't want it, I do". That right there is success.

This is the top stretched out on DS#1's bed, OMG, that room is a dark and scary place. But the top fits the bed and will be perfect when I add a border. I had been worried and so had the oldest son that this quilt had a girlie feel to it. I kept saying groovy, not girlie, GROOVY I tell ya.

The two fabrics above are the ones he finds most offensive, particularly the one on the bottom. I had yardage of that, whoops! The top fabric, yeah I knew it was girlie. I get it, but it sure made me happy to cut it up into those four inch squares. It's the one fabric that is me in the quilt, so I left it. We have named this quilt, The Girlie Man.

Next up is a quilt for the middle son which will be a mix of old jeans, plaid shorts, some cut up button down striped shirts, maybe some osnaburg fabric and a few blue prints thrown in. I plan to make it similar to this quilt:

Pleasant View Schoolhouse: Another Scrap Quilt: Someone Stop Me!

I like the 3x6 retangles a lot. It may end up being a hot mess trying to use denim but I'm going to try. Worse case scenario, I'll need to swap out the denim for some dark blue solid fabric.

Then a scrappy quilt with blue as the dominate color for DS #3.

If you have been wanting to try piecing but decided it's above your skill level or too fussy, or too hard, I beg you to just jump in and let go. The quilt doesn't have to be fancy, use stashed fabrics, try to do it right but don't fret if seams don't match up exactly or if there's a bit of puckering. I loved this project so much. I took my time cutting, I pinned it to death just before sewing, and I still got puckering, I still didn't sew perfectly straight but I tried, I tried so hard and that's all that matters. My biggest obsession was trying to keep matching fabrics from popping up next to each other. It was impossible, to let go of that control, to just jump in and sew strips of squares together and see what turned up where, it was fun and liberating.

This quilt couldn't be more basic:

4 inch squares

14 to a row

21 or 23 rows of squares

That's it.

From the Cross Stitch Pile:

Progress on La D Da's In the Garden. This is taking forever! I'm finally down to a bit of filling in and the border. Maybe I'll have this finished by the weekend.

November Manifesto

2010-11-01T09:11:00.004-05:00

Before I get to my November Manifesto, I had two final finishes for October. Stacy Nash's Jack Treat Bag and Hallows Eve pinkeep:

Jack Treat Bag

Hallows Eve Pinkeep

32ct antique white linen

DMC

Fabric aged by moi

Back of Jack Treat Bag

Fabric used for lining treat bag
Backing fabric for pinkeep-yeah, my homespun has a touch of bling, that's how I roll

November Manifesto

My plans for November are many:

1)Finish Primitive Needle's Black'd Skie

2)Make solid progress on Scarlet Letter's Emma Lerch

3)Finish the oldest son's Christmas stocking-Drawn Thread's Stefan's Christmas Stocking

4)Start the middle and youngest son's stockings-still debating a pattern for the middle son but the youngest has chosen BOAF's Wish Upon a Star Christmas Stocking.

5)Stitch some ornaments(designs and who they are for to be determined later)

There are probably more but right now these are at the top of the stitching priority list.

The other goal is to finish Nanowrimo this year. I have a writing schedule, I know the story I want to tell and with the oldest son finally employed I can do it. I am allowing myself a shitty first draft, thank you Annie Lamott and I'm just going to do it. I have a series planned, I know the stories of the first three books, I have a YA spinoff series and a prequel series and another spin off series. I just need to not have to share a computer and now for five hours Mon-Thurs I don't have to. I am going to do this. If everything goes as planned, of course it won't, I'll finish the first draft early, won't look at it again until January. Then I'll rewrite, then let a few friends read it, then rewrite it again, then see if my agent is interested and since she doesn't represent this kind of book, she won't be, then I begin the search for an agent. I have seen this book published, It will happen.

I love creative visualization. Creative visualization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Anyone remember that scene from An Officer and a Gentleman where Debra Winger tells Richard Gere that if he sees himself flying jets it'll happen? Yeah, my life's philosophy based on a movie. If you see it, it will happen. My mantra. Kind of like George Costanza's "If you believe it, it's true" philosophy.

YouTube - Jerry, just remember. It's not a lie... if you believe it...

Happy November 1st!

A Taste of October

2010-10-28T17:00:00.007-05:00

It's been dark and dreary here most of the day so taking a decent picture, for someone already camera challenged, well, I did the best the I could. Below is my table centerpiece, such that it is. The two pinkeeps are from Notforgotten Farm's Three Pinkeeps chart. I hope I have the name correct. The crow was stitched on a silvery gray fabric, 32ct I think, and then coffee stained. "I Told You I Was Sick" is on good old 32ct antique white. I stuffed them both with walnut litter available at your local pet store. I can never decide how good to stuff them. I think the tombstone could have used a tablespoon more litter.

click to make bigger

The piece above is Shadows of a Thousand Years by Jennifer Taylor Gass. The white fabric to the right is the original color before I dunked it in coffee and baked it in the oven for a little bit.

Near Halloween

The Primitive Needle

32ct Picture This Plus Dill

WDW Floss

(click to make bigger)

Above you see Primitive Needle's Near Halloween(Designs - The Primitive Needle). I really thought I got a better picture of this, even with the dark and dreary afternoon light but apparently my camera is getting ready to kiss me goodbye.

And posing with my Notforgotten Farm pinkeeps is my Lolita Queen of the Dead needle attracter(yeah probably not a word but I'm not sure if the term needleminder is trademarked, so work with me ok?) I saw the cabochon and had to have it. A touch of glue, a super magnet and viola, a needle sucker of my own making.

I hope to have a few more things to show by Halloween day but we'll see how that goes. It's been hard to be in an autumnal frame of mind with the temperature being in the mid-80s and the humidity at 100%, it's like the middle of July down here. I'm ready for some cooler weather. I'm sick and tired of being hot.

If I don't see ya'll before, may the Great Pumpkin see how truly sincere your pumpkin patches are and shower you all with candy and stitching stuff.

The Process is Very Organic

2010-10-08T11:29:00.005-05:00

Isn't that what designers tell Tim Gunn when they don't have a clue what they are doing? I've been toying with an idea for a sampler for a while but have been very lazy about actually doing something about it because my artistic skilz are nonexistent but I wanted this piece to be mine from the verse to the design elements. So like I usually do, instead of jumping in with a feeling of joy and adventure and a "que sera sera" mindset, I just avoid it all together. I mean it's not like I don't have a million other things to stitch. So the other day I started digging through the stash trying to find my cross stitch font book, of course it was no where to be found. I had figured out my first verse and wanted to jump in it if you know what I mean. So I pulled out my Woman's Day Guide to American Needlework by Rose Wilder Lane and found a sampler I liked and modified my letters from those in the sampler.

I charted out the words on some graph paper I printed out from the Cyberstitchers site.

The moon face is actually a sun face I took from Here Be Wyverns by Nancy Spies. The current debate around my house is whether to make the moon actually round or leave his face floating out there. Right now I'm thinking about leaving him as is because I'm having issues charting a circle, it's wonky as all get out and I'm pretty sure when the stitchin's done I'll be dyeing my fabric so stitching the moon or outlining the moon is a decision I can make later.

My No Name Sampler

32ct antique white(until I dye it)

DMC 310

2x2
I freehanded the waves and basically just started stitching and frogging until I got a shape I liked. I did mention this whole process is organic right?

My witch silhouette was a doodle, then I tried to chart the outline and then stitch her from that. She's not perfect but just attempting this got me out of my comfort zone which is a good thing, I think.

Good or bad the verse is 100% mine. I'm struggling with my second verse and the scene so I've set it aside to work on Primitive Needle's Tis Halloween and Scarlet Letter's Emma Lerch.

All I'll say about Market is OMG, I have to have all of the new Primitive Needle designs, I love Plum Street Sampler's Sea Hag and the Prairie Moon Halloween sampler.

Don't forget to check out Missy Ann's blog for the 31 Days of Halloween giveaway extravaganza!

My Wednesday was Wicked

2010-10-01T15:18:00.008-05:00

Wednesday from here on out, at least until I get bored with the idea, will be known as Wicked Wednesday. That means I can stitch on Halloween/Autumn/tombstone designs or Adam & Eve designs because I was raised Southern Baptist and well that serpent is the epitomy of wicked according to some powers that be. Work with me here because this gives me an option of switching from Autumn themed stitching to A&E and gives me an out when I'm tired of orange and falling leaves, not that I can ever see that happening but one never knows which way the cross stitch wind might be blowing.

Wednesday night after working on La D Da's In the Garden and Notforgotten Farm's Halloween Queen I had the strangest dream. You see the snake? You see my Pumpkinheaded Queen? Well in my dream they were chasing me. The dogs woke me up at 2 a.m. which is why I don't know if they ever caught me but let me tell you I woke up sweating and exhausted. See the snake below? He was chasing me in his coiled around Eve shape. Eve was no where to be found so he was kind of bouncing like a Slinky or sproingy springy kind of thing. Yes, it was as weird as it sounds. And no I did not drop any acid before bedtime. If I had I suspect his coloring might have been a bit more vivid.

The Halloween Queen a.k.a. Pumpkinheaded Queen was chasing me and trying to hit me with the branch she is holding that I haven't stitched yet. I was kind of freakin' when I woke up because it was so real. I'm not sure why these two decided to work together to torment my subconscious but they made a great team!

Here's a close up of my Halloween Queen. I love this design so much. The designer is Lori Brechlin of Notforgotten Farm.

It was a little breezy today so I pulled out some books to help hold down the Queen during her photo shoot because I wasn't in the mood to whacked with a stick or for her to blow off the table and get dirty. I have enough dog and cat hair issues to add outside dirt to the equation.

Here's my progress on La D Da's In the Garden. I'm loving this piece too. I have trouble every day deciding which of these projects to work on. So far I've been splitting my stitching time between them and it seems to be working well for the time being.

This being October 1st and all, don't forget to stop by Missy Ann's blog for the 31 Days of Halloween extravaganza.

Some Stitching, Some Finishing

2010-09-28T07:08:00.005-05:00

Gift Box

My recent stitching time has been devoted to finishing a gift for my friend.

There's no better way to show a friend how much I love them than gifting them with some of my hideous attempts at finishing. I only took three pictures because I gave it to her while the glue was still drying because 1) We have kittens and the box would not have survived the night and 2) I wanted it out of my house! Here is the box top complete with pins. It's straighter than it looks in the picture, I promise. Really! Seriously!

Friendship is a Sheltering Tree

Prairie Schooler

25 or 28ct Lugana(I thought it was 28 but I'm pretty sure it's 25ct.)

DMC
I think the pins are making it look not so straight. Attaching trim is not one of my strong points and I kept asking the spousal unit if it would be wrong to give Pam the box and trim and a bottle of glue and tell that I'm sure she could do a better job than me. He said that would be major, big time tacky, especially since she had to line the patchwork bag I gifted her with since I had a sewing meltdown. I perservered and got this finished despite not being quite satisfied with the finished result but it is what it is and she knows I made it with love and I should add that I was only ten days late. Go me!

Lady Bug Scissor Fob

Fairy Needleminder that I made

Close up of needleminder

Despite the stress of being the single worst finisher in the world, I enjoyed this project. The box is painted a dark blue, think one of the DMC 920 something series. I can't recall the exact number at the moment.

But it was a relief to take it over to her house wet glue and all. Am I the only one that feels like rainbows and unicorns when a handmade gift is done and out of the house, like "whew, now I can get on with my life"?

I got this idea when I saw a box Missy Ann made for a swap a while back, Lookie what I made!

My box is not near as nice as the one she made and I ended up kind of doing my own thing. I read different tutorials online and basically stretched the stitching over some batting and mat board and glued it down. I think next time I'll go with lacing but I am linearly challenged and thought the glue might be my best bet. I also left too much fabric on the back but I have been screwed one too many times cutting my fabric too close only to realize an extra 1/4 of an inch or even an 1/8th of an inch could have made all the difference. The fob is stitched on 32ct Belfast and I found the freebie chart online. And now I can't find the website. I hate when I do that. I want to say it was at about.com but I could be wrong.

I made the needleminder from a cabochon I found online.

Thanks again to Missy Ann for her help and inspiration.

Not Necessarily Blooming

2010-09-20T16:47:00.008-05:00

Today I was pondering the messiness of my house, how to weed through the crap, when it dawned on me for a very long time I have not been blooming where I'm planted. I've kind of been spreading crap across my universe much like weeds in a flowerbed.

That thought, that I was the weed instead of the flower in my world, well, it woke me up. I have been thinking a lot recently about changes that need to be made to make the home life better, the bank account more balanced, my body for that matter more balanced and thanks to the on set of perimenupause, something has to be done to be sure that I do not allow the crazy to wrap it's arms around me too tightly. Lately I have felt that a dive into complete and total crazy was no farther away than to step through a doorway.

I guess knowing that the crazy is right there ringing the doorbell is a good thing but with this whole perimenupause thing it comes over me like a rogue wave. One moment I'm calm, doing something completely normal and the next thing I know, I'm in the fetal position in the middle of the living room floor sobbing like there's no tomorrow. I've been having a lot of days where I just want to stick my head in the oven and call it good.

So that's where I've been, how's things in all y'all's worlds?

A R.O.A.K.

The other day I came home from schlepping people here and there and what did I see but a package on my doorstep. I hadn't ordered anything that I could recall, and then I recognised the return address on the package and wondered what in the world this stitching friend had sent me. I opened the package to find what you see pictured below:

I so heart the pink skull and crossbones. The chart is By the Bay's Santa at the Seashore, there's a bright skull and crossbones notebook for making lists of all those projects I never seem to finish and some Sugar & Cream cotton for knitting some handy dandy warshrags. Thank you so much Jeanne! With all you have going on in your life, to think of me, well it just left me verklempt.

Speaking of projects, I did finally manage to finish something:

A Haunting Mermaid

Carriage House Samplings

36ct Flax(I think)

DMC

I have no idea why it took me so long to get around to stitching this piece. I love her and the colors are perfect to hang with my Mairmaid's Song and Sirens of the Sea(also CHS). I will admit to one very sad moment, I had twittered that the piece was finished, only to realize a few hours later that I had forgotten all the background stitching on the three bands. I was devastated. I was so ready to have this DONE. But I finally sucked it up, did a stitching marathon, got to love Peter Jackson for making the Lord of the Rings trilogy the single longest movie marathon in the history of the world.

Remember that pile of letters from a previous post? Well this is what I did with them:

I was inspired by this post:

things I've made: Redecorating my old room

I have always loved the saying, "Always Kiss Me Goodnight" and had planned to buy a sign to hang over the closet door but then I saw Floresita's Feliz and thought what a neat idea. So I spent a day or so tracing and cutting out letters, no fancy Cricut here, then I sewed the letters to the felt and then decided the words "kiss me" needed something so then I did some lips. The ribbon is red with white polka dots. Yeah, it's kind of artsy craftsy even kindergartenish but seeing it makes me smile.

And when I say kindergartenish I'm pretty sure any kindergartener on the planet could have done a better job than me. I hated school projects! Still do!

This reminded me very much of a school project or teacher bulletin board project while I was doing all that cutting.

Know all those jokes about "How to Bath a Cat"?

No kittens were harmed in the taking of these pictures!

How about the dishwasher? I had just emptied the dishwahser when I noticed Mittens and Katie jumping around inside.

Arts & Crafts

2010-08-31T12:49:00.010-05:00

Long time no write! How ya'll doing?

Yes, I've been stitching but more about that in a bit. Along with stitching I've been haunting thrift stores for supplies for future projects. On one of those outings I saw this sweet frame. Admittedly I'm not really about the "sweet" or the "precious". I was more about the shape and how it resembled a tombstone. Don't you see the goth potential here?

So I bought it, for like a $1, brought it home and stitched up CHS Phoebe Brown. The frame was way too large for little Phoebe so I ran across a frame at T. J. Maxx and it's just the right size, that would be the needlework piece to your left in the picture below:

The needlework on the right is CHS Hannah Skinner. I can't decide if it can be fit to the frame or if I need to go in search of another frame. There's a close up below:

Yes, I chipped it while trying to make Hannah fit, so it's already in need of a touch up.

Although after seeing what Kim did with her copper paint and antique patina, I'm wondering if this frame might be worthy of a do-over. I think the black paint stain made it more tombstoney, but that verdigris would look all mossy and more graveyard like don't ya think?

Here's a close up of Phoebe. I'm debating aging this frame. $4 at T. J. Maxx can't beat that price.

Felt Scrabble tiles? No, I've been playing around with an idea for a banner. Maybe I'll have a finished picture of that later this week. Right now I'm debating to pink or not to pink? With the pinking shears that is.

I have a crazy long list of projects I want to work on and complete and every day my list gets a little longer. I really need some time management skilz because right now I'm making lists more than doing anything productive.

Here's the high schooler:

He was so thrilled to be starting school, can you tell? The spousal unit and I are excited that he didn't burst into flames when the sun touched his skin. He spent his vacation in the Land of XBOX but now that he's gone back to school I worry that the world will be overrun with zombies. I'm 100% sure that his dedication to the Land of XBOX kept us all safe these last eight weeks or so.

Hot Hot Hot!

2010-08-04T07:51:00.002-05:00

Even though I was born and raised in the south this summer has just about done me in. A house built of ice in the Artic Circle is looking mighty good these days. I didn't know the air could get so thick!

I thought I would have a finish to show you all, I even tweeted that I had a finish, only to have to be a takerbacker when I realized I missed the whole bottom band of the sampler and forgot to do the background fill in work on two bands. YIKES! I reckon I was ready to be done with that project!

There really isn't much going around these parts at the moment. I'm doing lots of stitching because it's too hot to do anything else. I should be cleaning but we need to paint and I want to rearrange furniture and pictures on the walls and I've been looking at various albums where people show their stitching and home decor and I really want to know why one person can hang a picture on a wall and stick some knick knacks around it and it looks awesome and I swear I could hang the exact same picture, have similiar knick knacks and it look like a pile of junk? I have been searching for my inner style and I have concluded that it just doesn't exist.

I mean people can have old peeling paint furniture in their homes and it looks awesome, I have the same furniture in my house and it just makes me look, oh, how do I put this, poor. It has no style, makes no statement other than "this person can't afford new furniture or a bucket of paint". The same piece in someone else's home is charming. How do they do that?

Speaking of decorating I saw these:

desire to inspire - desiretoinspire.net - Flickr finds - embroidery hoops

Then became obsessed with this particular picture:

fabric hoop bulletin board Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Went in search of a tutorial and found one here:

DIY: Embroidery Hoop Corkboard or here:

sweet jessie: Put a Cork in it

I thought these were just the coolest thing. Perfect bulletin board for someone who loves needle, thread, hoop. So I put these on my list for making in the not too distant future. I want a couple for the kitchen and a couple to go over my workspace in my bedroom. Yes, I'm aware that people have been using fabric prints in hoops as wall decor for a while now but it didn't really make sense to me(back to the old they can do it and it look cool, I do it and it looks dumb) but the bulletin board twist sucked me in. It all made sense. Something useful and pretty.

I've also been thinking a lot about my mermaid stitching. I've stitched quite a few with more to go, I have several Heaven and Earth Designs mermaids from various artists along with more primitive mermaids and the Mirabila mermaids to all mix in together. I started wondering, if I lived in a log cabin in Idaho would I still hang my mermaids, would they be relevant to that life style? I decided that yes they would.

I stitch what I love, what inspires me, what makes me dream while stitching, kind of like a good book. Part of the reason I enjoy reproduction samplers is thinking about what the original stitcher was thinking when she mapped out her sampler or chose the colors. I'm getting ready to start Emma Lerch from the Scarlet Letter and I've been thinking a lot about her funky pink house and what made her stitch her house that color. I mean a pink house in today's Florida isn't unheard of but Emma was in Pennsylvania in 1830 and it's possible that the peachy rose color was as close to stone or brick that she could find but I like thinking that she reached for that color for no other reason than it made her happy. Maybe she was from a somber household where her world was mostly gray and dark and choosing the pink for the house was her way of rebelling.

Yes, once I again I show you, the reader, that I have no life.

In other news we watched Kick Ass last night. I love that movie. We saw it at the movie house and I couldn't wait to get it when it came out on DVD. Fun, fun, fun.

I'm listening to the Tale of Halcyon Crane(Wendy Webb) at the moment and reading The Girl Who Chased the Moon(Sarah Addison Allen). On my nook I'm reading Patriot Witch by CC Finlay.

If you're looking for a very different way to prepare summer squash last night for supper I made:

Summer squash enchiladas Homesick Texan

I used Ancho Chiles because that's what I could find at Publix without having to make a trip to the Tienda. Very spicy and very good. I think adding some sweet corn to the filling would be a nice addition. If you can't find the dried peppers I had considered making it with canned enchilada sauce as the base and working from there. I wasn't sure it would work but that was my option if I couldn't find the ancho chiles. This was a very filling vegetarian meal.

Yesterday I was channel surfing and came across the Duggars at Pinnacle Mountian State Park in Little Rock. I almost cried. We spent a lot of time at that park when we lived in Arkansas. Sure the mountian is only 1,100 feet but we climbed it often, spent a lot of time there with the boys and I climbed it when I was eight months pregnant with my now 14 year old.

I started thinking about the girl I used to be. I am an outdoorsy girl not be confused with athletic. I love being outside. I'd rather sit under a tree and read a book or stitch than just about anything. I love hiking and walking through the woods(in Florida that can be dangerous as we have scary poisionous snakes-not a lot of woodsy hiking for me at the moment). I think that's why gyms just don't do it for me. If I'm going to walk I want to experience the outside, the woods, the sights, the activity outdoors. It's been too hot to be outside much this summer. I miss it and I miss the girl I used to be. The girl who went hiking on weekends. The girl who kept a backpack ready to go with water and energy bars(usually bite size Snickers--we're talking 16 years ago). I miss my crunchy granola inner hippie. Somewhere along the line I became one of those people that just, I don't know, exists. I've been reflecting a lot on where I was 20 years ago and where I am now, physically more than anything but I plan to get back to walking because I want to feel good. I'll never be skinny and that's not really my goal. I just want to be healthy. I want to reclaim my inner outdoorsy chick and I hate that I'm such a wimp that sitting outside reading a book is just the worst thing I could think of doing these days much walking in the heat. It's been bad this summer.

I also have been reading more and more about growing my own food and learning more about canning and living off the grid. You know, so I can stick it to "the man".

A few things I'm going to focus on over the next few months:

Walking more, period, getting over myself and the heat and just doing it.

Getting back to more whole foods eating.

Learning how to make biscuits, why didn't I let my Mamaw teach me? Because back then I was going to grow up and have a chef. (This would be in my Harlequin Romance phase, I so bought into that dream!)

Simplify things around the house. We toss out stuff every so often but we still have a lot crap that serves no purpose. Then again there are boxes in the garage that might just hold some treasures I've forgotten about. Never know until I start digging through them.

Work more on my sewing skilz. I really want to work on sewing clothes. Why didn't I let my aunt teach me to sew back in the day? (Because I was going to live in France and wear couture) I didn't see the creativity in sewing clothes, it seemed so practical, so functional. Now as I read sewing blogs and see what people do with patterns or how they make their own patterns and how they use fabric with the pattern. I so get it.

Work on my quilting/piecing skilz. I'm dying to make a quilt like this:

Wild Geese Quilt-Along « Bloomin’ Workshop

My Paintbox squares Oh, Fransson!: How to Make Paintbox Blocks got put on hold when I went to my mom's and I decided I'm going to make a few more blocks and then turn them into a table runner.

This has turned in to quite the long rambling post so I'll end here. Keep your fingers crossed I get those final stitches in A Haunting Mermaid soon. I want to move her out of the WIP pile into the finished pile.

Stay cool!

A Finish and Some Works in Progress

2010-07-28T11:16:00.012-05:00

A new blog post, shocking, huh? Always the unexpected around here. The Monkey Sampler

Midsummer Night Designs

28ct Sandcastle Lugana

DMC

According to my records I finished Midsummer Night's Monkey Sampler on July 21st.

This has been my take along project for a LOOOONNNNGGGG time. It was pretty much the only project I worked on while I was at my momma's since it's stitched on 28ct and I could see the holes in the fabric even in the poor lighting. That green yard just about did me in but I perservered and now it's finished! It always feels so good to put those last stitches in a project. Then again, it takes me forever to finish a project so a lot of life happens while all that stitching is being done. This project has been to Tennessee twice, once when I went home for my dad's memorial service and the second time most recently when I went to stay a week with my mother when she was released from the rehab center. She has COPD and had to learn how to breathe again, and also to learn how to live with her new best friend, her oxygen tank. This particular project has also seen a lot of time at Panera while I wait on kids to do whatever it is kids find to do at the mall for hours on end.

Liberty Sampler

Hester's Needle

32ct Natural (or maybe Raw) linen

DMC

My new take along project can be seen above, Hester's Needle's Liberty Sampler. I really thought I was farther along on this than I am. Let's keep our fingers crossed that there's a lot more quality Panera time in my future.

When I started this piece a few years ago I wasn't quite ready for the satin stitched band so I just did good old cross stitches. I debated frogging this band and stitching it as charted and then my sanity surfaced and I decided I liked the little Xs just fine thank you very much.

Rachael Holmes
Heartstring Samplery
32ct dyed by me linen(more aged actually)
A Potpourri of fiber from the stash

Heartstring Samplery's Rachael Holmes is seeing a lot of stitching time at the moment. This is a fun sampler and I got over myself and just pulled threads from the stash to see what would work with Beth's color palette. It's kind of liberating to pull out the handy dandy DMC color card, a fiber conversion lists and dig through the stash and find what works.

Black'd Skie
The Primitive Needle
40ct Vintage Pear
Pure Palette Silks

This is my progress on Black'd Skie. It's been a bit slow for me but it's due more to having the wrong magnification of readers, I was using 2.00 and that's just way too strong. I had misplaced my 1.50 and those 2.00's gave me a headache every single time I tried to stitch. So I found my 1.50 and now I'm back to happy headache free stitching.

I love the Pure Palette Silks. I am not an expert on silks, I rarely use them, but I really love stitching with these.

Halloween Queen
Notforgotten Farm
28 or 32ct fabric from the stash(it was unlabeled)

DMC

A few weeks ago I started a project that's been on my to do list for a year or two. Notforgotten Farm's Halloween Queen. I found a piece of linen in the stash and gave in to the urge and made a good start on the Halloween Queen.

In the Garden
La D Da
36 or 40ct Lambswool(that's a guess)
DMC

And another project seeing a lot of needle time, La D Da's In the Garden. This is another project I've had the chart for for ages and decided to see if I had a piece of fabric that would work and dug around in the old fabric drawer until I came upon this piece that I'm pretty sure is 40ct lambswool but it's possible it's 36ct. I did a floss toss and decided this could work. I had thought about using GAST but didn't have all five colors so decided to go with DMC.

Last week I made my first trip to Needle Delights, my LNS, in ages. It felt like coming home. I dropped off three pieces for framing, my Cape Cod Girls(changed to Gulf Coast Girls), Salem Remembered and my 13th Colony Bay. I ended up bringing my 13th Colony Bay home with me for a bath. I had no idea it was so dirty until Tonia put it under the light on the framing table. OMG! I wanted to throw up it was so dirty. I was extra, extra glad I stitched 13th Colony Bay with DMC because washing it was no problem and I was mortified at how dirty it was. I thought I had been careful, kept it tucked away in a baggie in a drawer but I did stitch on it forever and I stitch outside when it's nice. I enjoy stitching outside but this piece was definitely a wake up call that only DMC projects will be worked on while sitting on the porch or in the backyard from now on.

That's all the news from here at the moment. Hope everyone is managing to stay cool this summer because the air down here along the Gulf is a force to be reckoned with.

Independence Day

2010-07-04T12:49:00.007-05:00

Happy Independence Day to all USA readers of the blog! The spousal unit and I took an early morning drive east and found ourselves in the picturesque little hamlet of Seaside, Florida. It's a pretty little seaside town, aptly named. This is their post office and it made my heart sing when I saw it all decked out in it's Fourth of July finery. I don't have a lot of red, white and blue in my home but I do love 1776 and all that jazz. BUT this morning seeing this sweet little post office and all the people representing in their red, white and blue, I almost cried because what I saw in Seaside was what the American experience used to be. They must have had a parade at 8 a.m. We didn't know anything about it and just drove in that direction. It was small town America at it's absolute best. People were smiling, laughing, the bookstore and all the local businesses were open, this was like 8:30 on a Sunday, in the South, and it was pretty cool.

Below you can see a shot of the beach at Seaside. Their shoreline is a bit different than ours. They have the white sands but have left their dunes untouched even with the building of homes and businesses. They have worked hard to leave as much of the natural world untouched as possible and still build a thriving little tourist town around it. While I am not a huge supporter of planned communites because I do believe to each his own Seaside does it quite well, mixing in the planned neighborhood along with funky eateries and art shops. If we ever win the lottery we are moving here. That's about the only way we will ever get there but we love the 30A lifestyle.
A couple of weeks of ago my friend Pam and I went to an estate sale. She scored a stack of art books and on the cover of one titled Artist's Journal there was a painting I loved. The original artwork was by JoSonja in 1997. Since the art magazine was all about learning to copy the art inside the magazine I hope JoSonja doesn't mind that I begged the Spousal Unit to please paint me that painting. Since it's Uncle Sam and Mermaids it seemed quite appropriate. Also he painted it for me, not to sell or anything and the only copyright notice I found was not to mechanically copy or reprint the artwork so I hope his painting doesn't violate any copyrights.

This was the best picture I could get this morning. I think he did a pretty great job!

Last week I went to my momma's to check on her. She had been in a rehab facility learning how to cope with her COPD and when she came home she was a bit overwhelmed so I went home for a week. I had intended to rent a car for the trip because we have kind of old vehicles and it's a long drive. Unfortunately the line at Enterprise Rent-a-car was really long, so we went to lunch. Somehow over club sandwiches and fries we went from renting a car to buying a new one. We pulled into the Kia lot thinking to buy a Sorrento, we love that sock monkey, and then we saw Enik! Six hours later he was coming home with us and then two days later I drove him to Tennessee. I hate how much I love this car.

For your viewing pleasure:

YouTube - Ghetto Hamster Deluxe - very funny ad

I tried to add the video to my blog but couldn't make it work so a link it is.

Have a happy and safe 4th!

Heat Index 104 And

2010-06-17T10:33:00.008-05:00

...it's not even July yet. I wonder if all the oil in the Gulf has anything to do with the heat, you know increasing the speed of global climate change?

I made a beach run this morning to check out the condition of the Gulf in my town since Okaloosa Island in Ft. Walton Beach was covered in tar balls yesterday. The pictures on the local news were just awful.

Photo Galleries : Northwest Florida Daily News

For more local news on the oil and just in case that link doesn't take you to the photos here's my local newspaper links and the local news channel:

Northwest Florida Daily News

pnj.com Pensacola News Journal Pensacola news, community, entertainment, y

WEAR ABC 3

But as you can see below in my fuzzy picture, not sure what happened, the ancient Coolpix just didn't want to focus this morning, but it could be haze from the heat too, anyway, the water is clear for the time being. There was a huge skimmer ship on the horizon and I tried several times to get a shot of it and they were all big time BLURRY. I gave up. And I'm posting the two pictures below this one all for the benefit of the Florida Department of Tourism:

The water is so clear at Gulf Islands National Seashore between Pensacola Beach and Navarre Beach that you can see the shells. See them shells? Do you see them? The water is clean for the moment.

Look there's some toes in desperate need of a pedicure. But there is nary a tar ball floating around my feet.

I have learned a few things over the last couple of weeks. For most of my life I have been a huge supporter of Jackson Browne and his causes. What I never knew was how exhausting being an activist can be. It can take a toll on your life, your mental state and friendships. A week or so ago the spousal unit and I saw tar balls, many, many tar balls in the water and on the beach at Gulf Islands National Seashore. At the time I didn't have the oil on the shore or oil in the water numbers in my phone, at the time I didn't know we would be the only two people in the area to witness this. We took our crappy camera to CNN at Pensacola Beach and showed them but no one checked it out. We got busy with our real lives and I forgot to notify the local news, I thought I had taken care of it on a national level, I mean seriously.

I finally got around to posting a picture on my local news channel's Facebook page and one of the comments was "why didn't I show landmarks for exactly where I was". Excuse me, these beaches aren't named, they don't have bathrooms, much less a trash can. There are no landmarks, 20 miles of white sand and the occaisional parking lot here and there. I learned to be more specific about where I'm taking the picture.

Anyway, that particular weekend every time I mentioned oil or tar balls, friends would say, "Our beach is clear, quit whining, enjoy it while you can". While I appreciate clean beaches, I can't let go of what is happening and what can happen. Last week as tar balls and oil flooded Orange Beach, AL (or was it Gulf Shores?) Anyway, I heard a national news correspondent comment that people on Pensacola Beach were breathing a sigh of relief. A SIGH OF RELIEF? People this is not over, it hasn't even really gotten started good as far as coming ashore. We can't breathe sighs of relief, we need to yell, scream, holler and yes, pull our hair out because nothing is being done. After reading about the Mexican oil rig in the 70s I'm beginning to wonder if anything can be done beyond letting the well empty itself out.

I'm beyond frustrated with the governor of Mississippi. He's like the mayor of Amity in the first Jaws movie. He will not believe the oil is a problem until a big black tidal wave washes ashore in Gulf Port. I understand he wants people to come to their beaches, I understand that their beaches are clear, run some tourism commercials then but quit acting like the rest of us are making up the possibility of something catastrophic being out there just on our horizon. It is very real.

I heard this morning that there might be a 40 mile dead zone in the Gulf. Do you know how much sea life resides in 40 miles of water? I don't have exact numbers but let's go with A LOT.

We have lived here 13 years this July 4th. We do not see dolphins every time we go to the beach. It is so infrequent that when we see a dolphin we squeal like tourists, it's that rare for us. Every single time we have been to the beach in the last few weeks we have seen dolphins. And not just a random loner dolphin, we've seen pods of them. I hope Mother Nature is keeping them safe from the oil, keeping them ahead of the deluge. I've seen so many dolphins lately that I no longer think it's exciting, I'm starting to think it's creepy. That's how rarely we saw them before now. I see them so much that it's creepy.

Last night we were at the pier and a guy caught a shark. It didn't hold the normal excitement for me. It was bittersweet. There was one part of me that thought, "wow he caught a shark, cool" another part that said, "well at least he saved it from death by oil" and then my final thought was, "what if this little guy is one of the last of his kind". Shouldn't the healthy fish be left alone for now? Shouldn't they be given a chance to get to safe waters and mate and breed and survive?

I've never been a person that thought animals, especially fish, shouldn't be eaten but now as more and more sea life is endangered due to oil and tar balls and dispersants, maybe we should let them be. I know right now while everyone says Gulf seafood is safe, I think for the time being when I get my fish and shrimp cravings I'll take my chances with good old Captain D's or Red Lobster. I hate to not support my local fish markets but I'm erring on the side of caution.

60 Blocks of Summer Challenge

I joined The 60 Blocks of Summer challenge on Flickr. My first two blocks can be seen below:

I made these blocks using the tutorial found here:

Oh, Fransson!: How to Make Paintbox Blocks

I thought this challenge would be a good way for me to become besties with my rotary cutter, ruler and sewing machine. I don't have a specific project in mind and honestly my fabric stash is pretty random so I'm just going to work on different squares and see what happens. I may get a sample quilt out of the challenge or lots of smaller projects. Either way my sewing skilz should improve immensely.

I forgot to take an updated picture of my A Haunting Mermaid from Carriage House Samplings so I'll do that another day. I have made a tiny bit of progress, I mentioned how time consuming being an activist is didn't I?

Gulf Islands National Seashore

2010-06-06T07:09:00.005-05:00

Yesterday we took a drive along Gulf Islands National Seashore. We found this bit of debris in the water and fished it out: It's coated in dispersed oil. It's thick and gunky and a nasty piece of business.

Here is a picture of the this piece of whatever coated in this mess.

Here are tar balls

Do you see how much of this crap there is? No matter what anyone says this will not be easy to clean up. This is one section of beach and no news people were here. We told CNN about it and I have yet to see it reported. Even our local news isn't reporting it. They are all hanging out at Casino Beach in Pensacola instead of driving a few miles up the coast to see the real story.

This gunk you see on the beach was floating in the water. You couldn't step anywhere without coming into contact with it.

Of course we saw hazmat guys up the road behind the million dollar homes where uh, no tar balls were reported. We saw no one on this stretch of beach and we came back a few hours later and it was worse.

Plastic buckets and shovels will not clean up this mess. It's huge, it's ridiculous, and I'm beyond furious. We can't begin to imagine how this will be cleaned up. It's just too much.

I have emailed our local news and CNN and am telling everyone I can about what we've seen. The story is not getting out. There was a sea turtle nest marked just a few feet from this and this stuff was scattered so far along this beach. I can't begin to capture it with my crappy camera.

I am not doomsdaying, I am not saying the sky is falling but I am saying that we are being misled about how easy this is going to be to clean up.

BP Left More Than Their Footprints

2010-06-04T16:26:00.010-05:00

Well this morning tar balls started washing ashore at Gulf Islands National Seashore. This is the most gorgeous stretch of beach you will ever see. So what are tar balls? Tar balls look like dog doodoo or dukey or poo or whatever you call it. They are brown and shiney and warm. How do I know they are warm? I stuck my toe in one when I thought it was a piece of driftwood. Whoops. I just gave Tony Hayward, BP head another excuse for what these could be.

The green in the picture is June grass, it's a yearly occurence and used to be the bane of my existence. I will never ever complain about the layer of swamp grass in my bathing suit again because next time I swim in the Gulf my bathing suit will be full of tar balls. I'll take June grass any day.

More seaweed and June grass and tar turds, uh, balls.

And more. I wish I could have gotten a picture the length of the beach to show you all just how many of these there are. I wish I could make everyone see what we have to lose if we don't change our dependency on oil. And yeah, I'm embracing my radical ways once again. We as a society have failed the earth, our children, and future generations all in the name of "get me there faster" and convenience. An inconvenient truth, yep sure as hell is.

I left my footprints.

This picture is supposed to be of some surfers getting in their last ride before the Black Tide hits. Maybe if you biggify it(that's Annette's word) you can see them.

Yep that's a tar ball next to my footprint. Maybe we could give the BP execs a tar ball enema? Because that's just about where I want to stick their well.

While walking along the beach I saw the very edge, the curved edge of this perfect sand dollar peaking through the sand. I expected to only pull out a piece of it but amazingly enough it was in one piece. I posed it on a piece of drift wood and was reminded that even when one is having apocolyptic thoughts, end of days kind of crap, some beauty can be found if you only take moment to see it.

In my younger years I was an idealist. I had this vision of the person I wanted to be, I defined myself a certain way and somewhere that girl got lost. She became the person she used to ridicule, the person who quit looking beyond her back yard. The person who accepted the unacceptable just because that was how it was supposed to be.

When I was pregnant with my oldest son we lived in Ohio, there was an oil refinery in town. I didn't know what that meant being a transplanted Tennessean. One day at lunch, I worked at one of the local hospitals, I was talking with a coworker and mentioned all the strange cancers young kids had and the fact that every one my age was on fertility drugs in the lab where we worked. She begin to tell me about the oil refinery and how she blamed it for the infertility and strange cancers. I quit drinking the local water and started buying fresh produce and eggs from the local Amish farmers. I read Diet for a Small Planet and I Shopped for a Better World. I became a vegetarian. I tried so hard to make a difference and then somewhere along the way, I just started accepting, I ate a bacon cheeseburger. Life was what it was, I couldn't change anything, I couldn't make a difference and I was so tired. I surrendered to life and became just like everyone else.

Now 23 years later, I have found that inner activist. I have found my flower child. Over the next few weeks and months, I plan to change. Somehow, someway I'm going to make a difference.

Don Henley wrote in the book Heaven is Under Our Feet, and I'm paraphrasing because I can't find the book, it's in the garage somewhere, that sometimes you have to give people what they need not what they want. Basically, we're back to the inconvenient truth. Living greener is not convenient, it's not even pleasant and honestly I don't know if it's even doable. But I do know this, we can all make changes and I learned years ago when I wanted to boycott another company over their infant formula practices that some companies have their brand everywhere. You think you are boycotting only to discover that you have a house full of their brand only it's cloaked and you've been unknowingly supporting them after all. So I don't think a boycott of BP is realistic. I never buy gas there, the only times that has ever happened was when I was on the road and it was my only option.

The Gulf is my Walden Pond and I've let her down. I've lived a life of convenience and made choices that weren't in her best interest. I hope over the next few months to make some serious changes. Can I do it? I don't know, hell I don't even know exactly what to do. I just know that things have got to change, people have got to change, we as a society have to make those hard choices because they are right and not choose the easier road.

I hope with all my heart that the Gulf will be able to revive herself and flourish again. I have seen some interviews that offer a lot of hope in that direction but I fear that this is going to be just too devastating for her.

Reading, 21st Century Style

2010-05-28T11:02:00.006-05:00

So I recently acquired a B&N Nook. But I didn't get a cover, so to keep it from getting all scratched up and because I'm broke, I needed to come up with a cover for it. So last night I grabbed the two skeins of Red Heart closest to me and fortunately they matched, one Spring Green and one, a variegated, that no longer has a label but it's got a nice mix of blue and green and yellow. I found my N hook and did a chain of approximately 40 chains, holding both strands together and then half double crocheted each row. I somehow decreased or increased as it's a bit wonky at the bottom, I'm going to try to block out the wonky, but I'm very happy with the results until I can either purchase the cover I want or make a better cover, I have fabric to make one but this was much faster:

Missy's Nook Nook

Red Heart 100% Acrylic Yarn

My own pattern such that it is

Meet Nell, my Nook

I even remembered to leave a little hole in the bottom so I can charge Nell in her Nook Nook.

Charging Action Shot

Who is that in the background? Could it be the single funniest human being on the planet, Stephen Colbert? Why yes it is. My new favorite tote bag from B&N. Yes I am a dork.

I refuse to rant about oil today. The situation is what it is. I'm going to disappear into some escapist fiction courtesy of Nell and forget about BP, oil and just lose myself in the page, uh screen.

"Very, Very Modest"

2010-05-19T09:20:00.012-05:00

I am going to preface this post by saying that it will not all be a Gulf Coast in Oil Crisis rant. There is stitching and some thrifting so if you have been avoiding my blog due to my enviromental rants, well there's something for everyone here today.

First business:

A BP official, that British dude, stated to Sky news, that's a UK news channel, that the damage to the Gulf of Mexico due to the oil spill will be "very, very modest." Now does someone want to tell me what that means? I mean I understand that he's saying that the damage will be minimal but this is a from a man who will not allow accurate measurements to be taken of exactly how much oil is being gushed into the Gulf on a daily basis because "they(BP) are focusing on clean-up". So how in the hell does he have a clue what the damage will be and that it will be modest?

So we hear that that pipe thingie is working, well if going from 210,000 gallons of oil a day to 170,000 gallons of oil a day is working, well we are in a world of trouble. Do I need to point out this all started on April 20th? It's now May 19th, that means we are closing in on a month of astronomical amounts of oil being pumped into a body of water 618,000 miles in diameter not the 17 million miles of the Indian ocean.

Let me paint a bigger picture for all of you reading this sick and tired of the story as it's not glamourous and doesn't affect anyone but a bunch of beach bums who probably should live in the real world and vacations? Why I'll just go to the Caribbean. Well let me enlighten you folks. A lot of the sea life that lives in the Gulf migrates back and forth between the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. Do you understand that everything is connected? That grouper caught in the Caribbean in a few months could possibly had been a grouper eating smaller fish who had consumed oil a few months before. Do you know how toxic that makes the fried grouper sandwich you are getting ready to consume sitting in front of the beach grill on St. Thomas? I hadn't even considered the whole migration thing until my friend Chelsea pointed out. Her mother has a dive business and they travel all over the Gulf and the Caribbean. All the focus is on the oil and the obviously affected sea life, we need to pay attention to this on a much larger,deeper scale.

It is being reported that oil has reached the loop, the Gulf Stream, that means oil could be in Key West by Sunday. Is anyone paying attention? Is anyone connecting the dots and most importantly are the people making the decisions doing the right thing or just sweeping all this under the rug because what's done is done?
This is a close up of my CHS A Haunting Mermaid. She's quite pissed off about the whole situation and I have been trying hard to focus on her being what any BP official sees when they close their eyes and if they don't fix this mess she will haunt them to their dying days.

Here's a pic of my progress. It's a horrible picture but hey, isn't that what you've come to expect here from the Ranch? Crappy camera, unskilled photographer and no freakin' lighting! Click to make bigger.

So I started my Jane Atkinson some time last year, above you see meager progress. Want to see the true awesomeness of Jane? Of course you do. Go check out Margaret's progress on her Jane, I think she just started stitching her last Friday, I kid, I kid. She's been working on a little longer than that but not by much: Days of a Sampler Lover: See Jane's leaves

On Monday I had planned to stop by the local thrift store but the neighbor I dislike was just walking in so I came on home. She makes me want to puke and the thrift store is small, so yesterday I popped in a for a quickie look around and found a few things.

What you see above is The Golden Rule by Lutterloh out of Germany. It's the 1969 edition. It's a book all about making your own sewing patterns from just the measurements of your bust and I think your hips. I had to have it and since it was just 25 cents well it was in my budget.

Need sometihng to wear to the beach? Lutterloh has you covered.

Going shopping? Well whip up one of these ensembles and be the Belle of the Mall.

Then I saw these placemats. They are not my style, there are eight of them and the set was $5 but I couldn't leave them there. It's so wrong that someone made these and someone passed them on to the thrift store. The embroidery is so delicate and the backs are so neat.

And then for $1 I ran across this table set:

Yep, kind of uh, well, funky? There are three napkins and three coasters all stitched with this boat.

Then there's the tablecloth, with a Dutch girl stitched on there and the other end of the tablecloth has a windmill and the person made a niftly little bread basket liner with the Dutch girl stitched on it too and for a $1 I had to give them a home.

I may not be able to single handedly save my beloved Gulf but I will declare myself the Protector of All Misfit Stitching! Think there's a pattern for a stitching superhero suit in the Lutterloh binder?

Yeah, I'm Really Pissed Off Now

2010-05-16T11:38:00.002-05:00

For those of you that buy into BP's BS that the Gulf of Mexico is a "vast ocean" here are some facts: The Atlantic Ocean is approx. 41,105,000 square miles. The Pacific Ocean is 64 million square miles, the Indian Ocean is 17 million square miles, the Gulf of Mexico is 615,000 square miles.

The Gulf of Mexico is basically a lake compared to the oceans that cover the earth. So please people, pay attention to the news, what BP is saying and what they aren't saying. They are now telling us that the oil is magically evaporating thanks to the dispersants, chances are the oil and dispersants are just sinking to the floor of the Gulf. How many mutant fish, turtles, dolphins and sharks will we see in the not so distant future? How many of us will have children born with disabilities because we consumed fish that was reported to be safe but in fact was contaminated by the dispersants that the Gulf is being filled with? No one knows the long term effects of these chemicals, it's all about the Benjamins.

I beg everyone to please thoughtfully consider every petroleum related purchase you make in the future and I'm not saying that I can walk away from gas and oil, especially since my husband drives for a living, but we can all make minor changes to reduce our need for oil. I'm not suggesting anything radical, I can't make major big time changes but I can make small ones and any thoughtful change can make a difference.

Please when you watch the news, take a minute to fact check what the oil industry is reporting.

Place

2010-05-03T13:31:00.005-05:00

Today I wish I was writing of frivilous wonderful stitching things but I can't. Today I am writing to tell you all about my place. If you've read this blog for anything length of time I'm sure you know how much I love where I live. I can't imagine anyone not wanting to live here in North West Florida. It's a special place. It's a beautiful place. And where I live isn't as developed as most and I don't ever want it to be. If you vacation in my town you are here for one reason and one reason only, you love the beach. Why is that? Because Dude, it's all we have. We don't have any water parks, we have only a few restaurants and only a handfull of chain restaurants. There's one or two touristy type shops. We have two groceries and a Walmart. We have two hotels and they aren't even on the beach. One is on the sound and one is across the highway from that, snuggled in between the Taco Bell and the KFC. When we moved here I had almost as many books as the local library and even had way more books on tape than they did.

Over the last few days I've thought a lot about how tired I was of this place over the winter. I was deeply jealous of those that had snow and short dark days, and the perfect excuse to cook something slow in the oven, build a fire, and hunker down with a pile of stitching. You see, where I live, when the sun is out as it tends to be the better part of the year, there is this need to be outside, soaking up that vitamin D that so much of the country is lacking come the dark days of February. There is this deep guilt, at least for me, at sacrificing any beautiful day to the indoors. Mother Nature calls me out constantly, begging me to drink in her beauty, not hide inside. Sometimes I found her calls so very annoying when I wanted to be indoors getting a good solid case of stitch ass. But it's not who I am. I am that girl sitting on the porch with a book or some stitching, do I need to admit how dirty my stitching gets from stitching outside? It's one of the reasons I don't find it too hard to stay with good old DMC, I can wash my needlework without a second thought. I am also that girl that wants to be on the beach every single minute of a gorgeous day. Not so much tanning but just sitting on the beach hoping for that random dolphin appearance. They don't swim by as often as you'd think. There's that excitement when walking on the beach in the early morning and you find turtle eggs. There's the thrill of finding an in perfect condition sand dollar. There are pelicans and herons and sea gulls that can spot a potato chip a mile away and then before you know it you are swarmed like a scene out of Hitchcock's The Birds. There is white sand. There's the scent of Coppertone and Hawaiian Tropic. There are the screams of kids getting knocked down by waves and the full throttled scream of that kid whose feet have never touched sand, never seen a wave, and it won't happen this day. These are the sites and sounds of my place. But now that view has changed. Not from a hurricane but a situation created by man.
This is Boom, it's stretched across many, many miles of the Gulf coast right now.

This boom is protecting a bird sanctuary in Pensacola Bay or maybe it's the sound, I get them confused. Should I share with you that after taking these pictures I slipped in some gunk on the sidewalk and fell right on my big old butt, right in front of Sunday traffic on Bayfront Parkway? I am so freakin' graceful it's not even funny.

This morning it was reported that 20 sea turtles were found dead on the beach in Pass Christian, Mississippi. This is only the beginning.

The oil is still gushing from under the Gulf at 210,000 gallons a day, and some experts are saying that it could be more, there's just no way of knowing.

I am not a property owner, I don't live on the beach. We don't own a boat. I don't own a business, but this place, this place is mine. I spent most of my childhood planning my move to Pensacola Beach. I'm not there but I'm close. My dad talked for years about moving down here, after every family vacation, I didn't talk, I did it. I was lucky enough to marry someone willing to go where ever I wanted and it was here. The beaches are so much more than sand to me. They are my church, my cathedral, my holy place. They are where I go to connect with that Higher Power. These beaches, the Gulf, it's where I find strength, it's where I find my peace. The connection is deep and solid and real.

What is happening right now is beyond my comprehension. I am heartbroken and I'm pissed off.

I do not support off shore drilling and I don't vote for politicians who do. There are people much smarter than me who said this kind of tragedy could never happen but I always thought it was a possibility. It only makes sense.

There is so much I want to say and I can't find the words. For many people across the country what is happening down here is nothing more than a phone call or two to change vacation plans, for those of us living and working and raising families down here the oil slick will change our lives for many years to come. Some small fishing businesses and restaurants may never bounce back.

I ask all of you reading this to please pay attention to the news stories, check out my local papers online:

pnj.com Pensacola News Journal Pensacola news, community, entertainment, y

Northwest Florida Daily News

And our local tv station:

WEAR ABC 3

Let's hope BP's Dome Plan works because Plan B will take a minimum of 60 days to put into action. As it is Plan A will take at least a week to get in place and it's truly a crapshoot as to whether or not it will work.

Knit Happens

2010-04-06T17:51:00.005-05:00

When I am feeling particularly stressed out, I can't stitch because for me, frettin' and stitchin' do not go together like peas and carrots. Stitching does not work for me on any level when I'm worried, throw in some PMS and well I am just a mess, and then there's that whole menopause or pre-menopause thing going on, well no way the little X was going to offer me any comfort. That would be choosing a path covered in frogs, trust me on this.

But I can knit as long as it's something simple. My favorite thing to knit ever is the Mason Dixon Ball Band warsh rag. There should be five in the picture below but I had to rip one all the way back because I lost complete control of the pattern and was just knitting any way I felt like and I'm not sure what happened because I use a row counter but I have another one on the needles and will continue to work my way through my ginormous stash of kitchen cotton.

I love this pattern so much because it makes me look like a "real" knitter when I give them away or show them to nonknitting friends. But it's so very simple.

Here's a link to the pattern:

Knit a ballband dishcloth - Knitting - Crafts - Canadian Living

It's also can be found on the back of Peaches & Creme kitchen cotton label, hence the words "ball band" in the pattern title.

Knitting these makes me feel really good about knitting because they are not treasures, they are meant to be used and believe me, the first four I knit lasted me over two years. Two years, used and abused and handknit by me!

Oh and the yellow and orange warsh rag is full of mistakes but I wasn't in the mood to rip it back because it's a dishrag ya know so I left the messed up band in and moved on along. That was so cool to do that. There was a time when that messed up band in the middle of the dish cloth would have bugged me to no end but now I embrace the mistake and it helped me decide which dish rag would be the first to hit the sink. Orange and yellow dish rag you are going down! In to a sink of soapy, sudsy water that is.

Hope to get back to my A Haunting Mermaid tonight or tomorrow. I'd sure love to finish her in a timely manner and I'm planning on starting REBECCA ROBINSON and Rebecca Cullin on April 29th, my Aunt Rebecca's birthday. I've been wanting to start both of these for the last six months and my aunt's birthday seems like as good an excuse as any to just start them already. I'm going to stitch the regular cross stitch version of Rebecca Cullin. Don't think I want to deal with all those speciality stitches.

Whims

2010-03-30T08:58:00.006-05:00

My needlework isn't limited to cross stitch. I found a great pattern on Ravelry and have become just a bit obsessed with the idea of crocheting with perle cotton. Since my collection of DMC perle cotton is limited to the few skeins I've purchased here and there for random Shepherds Bush projects and maybe a Sekas design or two back in the 90s, my palette was not very varied and since I wasn't sure I'd even be able to crochet with the teeny, tiny 1.80mm hook I decided to cheap out and purchase a bulk package of inexpensive(cheap) perle cotton at JoAnn's. It was going to cost quite a bit more to purchase all colors I wanted in the DMC at $1.49 a skein so the bulk perle was good for experimental purposes.

It took a little practice to get used to the small hook and the slippery thread but I love it! I got a little jammed up yesterday afternoon when I tried to work my way through the process of connecting the hexes, so I set my little hexes aside for the night. Maybe today the instructions will make sense. The pattern is quite thorough so I'm sure it's me not the pattern.

This is what I'm hoping to turn my hexes into:

Through the Loops!: Pincushions

I didn't link directly to the pattern info on Ravelry since not everyone is a member of Ravelry. The above link shows what I'm hoping to make and then I linked to Ravelry in the first paragraph.

I've made some progress on A Haunting Mermaid. Every week I think I'm going to finish and another week passes and it remains a WIP. But that's ok because I am making progress and is there really a rush? I'm not on a deadline, I'm stitching for myself. I have to remind myself constantly to enjoy the process.

The beautiful spring weather down here on the Redneck Riviera makes me feel guilty about wanting to stay inside and stitch. I've moved my stitching spot to the front porch and also the backyard for a little while everyday. The sun feels so good and lifts my spirits but not nearly as much as needle and thread slipping through fabric. As much as I enjoy the sun I do believe I could survive 10 months of winter as long as I had my stitching. Now remove stitching from the equation and I'd go flippin' nuts.

Have you all seen this:

Carriage House Samplings & Mo Jewelry: A Very Big Announcement

I am so very sad.

The Mom Saga

Last week my mother was admited to the hospital and is being treated for two chronic and debilitating conditions. While she's trying to get better it looks like her COPD is just getting worse. Going on home right now isn't an option and once she is released from the hospital she'll be going to rehab for 20 days to learn how to breathe again. Once she's released from rehab I'll be going back home to Tennessee to stay with her for a while. I'm hoping they can really get a handle on her problem but I'm pretty sure smoking for 50 years has left her lungs in pretty bad shape, although my Mamaw was diagnosed with emphyzema and the woman never smoked a day in her life. The doctors said it could have been caused the type of kerosene her father used in their house when she was a kid or the fact that she was around smokers most of her adult life. She wasn't diagnosed until she was 78 years old.

And to show what a stupid obsessive stitcher I am, I've been sorting WIP that I can easily take to my mother's and work on since there isn't much to do where she lives and I'd go insane without a project or two or twenty. Having time to plot a stitching strategy is a good and a bad thing. I have several projects that I know are going unless I finish them before having to go back home, fat chance of that happening, and one or two projects I hope to get all kitted up between now and when I might have to leave.

Trust me when I say there is absolutely nothing to do where she lives except "visit" and my mother isn't going to be up to visiting that much which, unfortunately, is another aspect of her health issues. Being pretty much a shut in for the last couple of months accept for the occaisional trip to the Piggly Wiggly and a daily run to the post office has left her depressed. She has no hobbies except for her "stories" (General Hospital, One Life to Live and All My Children). While there are those that believe I have no life because stitching seems boring or they just don't understand it, at least I'm using my mind, keeping busy, and I always have the hope of that new start just right there within my reach. I can't imagine living like my mother with no hobby, nothing to stimulate my brain or creativity, just endless hours of waiting to take my next pill or hoping someone will knock on the door for a visit.

I'm planning on taking a few stamped embroidery pieces with me that my mother might like to attempt if I'm there to show her how to do it. I think she might like that more than cross stitch.

I've been doing some spring cleaning and trying to get my house in order in case I have to go home sooner than expected. I had really hoped to get through the 14 yr old's school year but I think with a bit of planning everyone will get along just fine and not even realize I'm gone.

This Is Only A Test

2010-03-25T18:54:00.000-05:00

Just seeing if I can blog from my Blackberry, just in case it's my only connection to the internet one day. Since I have serious issues commenting from the old Blackberry I've been testing it's www limits.

No real stitching updates, life has kind of gone off the tracks but I'm hoping to get my balance back very soon.

What's Up?

2010-03-23T13:10:00.009-05:00

Spring is popping up all around me, a little late for North West Florida, usually we're getting this nice weather mid-February but I'm not going to complain. My basil and cilantro are a sprouting a sure sign of spring.

I've been managing a bit of stitching:

Black'd Skie

Primitive Needle

40ct Vintage Pear

Pure Palette Silks

Above you can see my little bit of progress on PN's Black'd Skie. I'm using the Pure Palette Silks and I love them. I'm being completely, totally honest and I am not one that automatically uses silk. I've used some that have left me, oh let's say, underwhelmed, but these Pure Palette Silks are nice to work with, don't shred or fuzz up like some, and have a great shimmer to them. I've only used Cauldron and Envy so far but the experience has been very satisfying and I am not a paid endorser for Pure Palette. This is just my opinion. (I think I read somewhere that bloggers are supposed to let people know if they are a company mouth piece so I'm letting you know, I'm not, I am just a user of the aforementioned product.) My Silk N Colours and Pure Palette Swamp Thing were backordered so I'm just taking my time and enjoying the stitching.

Notice the readers? Purchased at the Dollar Tree and they are 1.5 magnification and have rocked my world. I should have bought a pair when I was stitching with the PTP Swamp linen but who knew something this simple could change my whole stitching perception?

A Haunting Mermaid

Carriage House Samplings

32ct linen(not sure what color)

DMC

Above you see my progress on Carriage House Samplings A Haunting Mermaid. I can't believe I waited so long to start this piece. I've had her kitted since the chart was released in 2005 but I got all hung up on whether or not I should do the beaded swag border or just stitch the keys along the top. As you can see, I finally decided the beaded swag was not in my future so I went in search of pictures on the world wide web to see what I could find and strangely enough I only found one completed Haunting Mermaid and one in progress. Since this is such a cool design I couldn't believe more people haven't stitched it and maybe they have and just aren't on the internet. But I did like the look of the stitched top band so I was very happy to finally put in some first stitches.

Single Crochet Background

Orange cross stitches

Sugar & Cream Cotton

Kenny chart created here(// knitPro web app)

I became a bit obsessed with Tunisian crochet a few weeks ago after seeing this:

Gege Crochet: Mario Party! Part 1- The Whole Enchilada on Craftster

and since I have no afghan hook and no Tunisian crochet skill and I'm trying not to buy anything at the moment I thought I might just try crocheting a foundation fabric using single crochet and then cross stitching over it. I'm not impressed. So I'm going to order a Tunisian Crochet book and couple of hooks and see what magic I can create.

The Frogging of Rachael Holmes:

Rachael Holmes

Heartstring Samplery

32ct linen(dyed by moi)

A potpourri of threads

I decided that my error on Rachael needed to be frogged so I took an hour or two the other day and frogged the vine in this band and started over. I'm hoping that I don't have to frog the flowers but I do believe that's being a little too optimistic.

Busting the Stash Afghan:

Pokey Dots Throw

Red Heart Website

Stash Yarn

http://www.coatsandclark.com/NR/rdonlyres/0A730741-DD4F-4AC3-81D5-19C1A9DE266A

I saw this pattern on the back of the new issue of Crochet Today and decided since I have a ton, a lot, a major big time stash of Red Heart acrylic that I should use it up and this afghan seemed like a good project. I'm using a soft white for the outside round of my squares and I'm happy with the look for now.

Am I the only that thinks if the cross stitch magazines could modern up their covers a bit like Crochet Today they might expand their readership to a younger group of stitchers? Comparing the covers of various knitting/crochet magazines to current issues of cross stitch magazines, the cross stitch magazines seem hopelessly stuck in the 1980s? Is there no way to rock the cover the of a cross stitch magazine?

Opinions? Ideas? Leave it alone and let me stitch already?

Yep, There's a Whole Lotta Stitching Going On!

2010-02-25T15:15:00.018-06:00

So after many, many days of cold and rain, remember this is North West Florida, not the North East, the temperature started getting back into a somewhat bearable range and the sun came out. I took that as an opportunity to take my current WIP out to the porch for some sun, some natural vitamin D absorption, and just to basically prove to the neighbors that I was not in fact a vampire who couldn't leave her house for fear of turning to ash, although I'm pretty sure the three sons have been wishing for a house to fall on me, it's been one of those months, if you know what I mean.

I scored the wooden bowl as part of a set at a local thrift shop that is standing room only almost every single day. It's really crazy. I figured they must be selling crack to old folks but turns out they have an interesting inventory and occaisionally I find something kind of off the beaten path. These bowls have a colorful rooster painted in them and there's a bigger bowl too. I'll take a picture in the next day or two because I got the large bowl and four small ones for $2. Can't beat that! They work really well for holding bobbins of floss for projects that don't use more than say ten colors.

Does every sampler stitcher let out a deep sigh when they reach the section of border where you hope and pray the stitches meet up properly? I was so happy when I got to the final stitch of vine border and everything all came together just like it was supposed to.

Do you see that? A border that's properly stitched. We will not speak of Rachael Holmes as I have a problem in one of the bands and am trying to decide if I can live with the miscount or do I frog. I'm figuring Miss Rachael was probably too busy too do too much frogging so I'm thinking she would give me her blessing to leave the mistake in and know that absolutely no one would notice it, just me and my obsession that everyone in the world notices every single thing I do wrong. But this border, perfection if I do say so myself, and I do! It's so rare I can say that.

Laura Parker

Rose Tree Samplers

32ct Clay linen(from the stash)

DMC-2x2
Here is Laura all finished and sweet. While I like Adam & Eve samplers and have a pile of them to stitch eventually for a wall of sin of the likes no one has ever seen I must admit that my motivation to track down this chart and stitch this sampler, is the fact that it's the Laura Parker Sampler. I'm on a mission to stitch samplers with our family, my family, my ancestors names on them and imagine my excitement(not too hard to imagine since I'm an uber dork) when I saw the Laura Parker Sampler by Rose Tree Samplers. It was a very quick stitch and was my alternate Olympic Challenge SAL project. It's really more an NCIS sampler since I worked on it when I wasn't watching the Olympics and when I would watch NCIS.

Here's a close up of Adam & Eve.

I like that Eve appears to be feeding the serpent. Wasn't she supposed to feed Adam?

My friend Pam gifted me with my most favorite cooking pot. That's potato soup you see simmering there:

I call this Seven Year Itch Potato Soup. Why that odd name? Well when I was a kid, my dad would you know get an itch and leave for a few months, until my mom or my Papaw found him and brought him back home. I have quite a few tales about that time in my family's life but I won't bore you all with that. Can you say therapy? But whenever my dad would leave making sure my little brother had supper became my responsibility and one of the very first recipes I learned to cook, out of desperation more than anything was potato soup. We loved the potato soup on Shoney's soup and salad bar so every day I would come home from school and try to figure out the recipe. My mom didn't care what was for supper, just that she didn't have to deal with it so we ate whatever came out of the pot. Over the years my attempts got better and while my soup would never win any awards it's still pretty tasty.

The other day I realized I never ever make potato soup and it's really sad because I love it and could honestly eat it all the time. I never made it for my kids, not once, and back to the therapy thing, I do believe that I never make it because it's so connected to very low times in my life back when I was just a kid forced to be an adult because of two parents who had their own problems.

Lunch and you know what else I discovered? There's no way to photograph potato soup and make it look like anything other than a bowl of ick....but it really did taste good!

We Have a Winner!

2010-02-22T09:06:00.002-06:00

Hi y'all! Apologies for disappearing like that it wasn't my intention.

I did the random number generator at Random.org and couldn't figure out how to post it here so please trust me when I say the winner was commenter #21 M. T. Pockets.

M.T. please email me at gulfskye at aol dot com and so I can get your address and send you your 40ct Swamp fabric and my gently used chart.

Thanks everyone for playing along.

I've been stitching a bit here and there and have posted on the Olympics SAL blog here:

2010 Winter Olympic Stitching Challenge

It's not too late to stitch along with us. Come join in the fun!

Amish Mistake Giveaway

2010-02-02T15:35:00.005-06:00

Finally got a chance to get what I think is a better picture of my darling Ichabod but I did think about Anna's comment about how we don't want to be "that" person, the one searching for mistakes in needlework. At the time I posted I thought it would be fun because my mistake is pretty in your face but after taking a gazillion pictures and even close-ups of the mistake itself, it's not as obvious as I thought. So if you want a chance to win my gently used Primitive Needle Ichabod Seabury chart-I wrote on the last page, whoops, and a piece of Picture This Plus 40ct Swamp linen to stitch your Ichabod on, all you have to do is leave a comment to this post. If you leave one somewhere else on the blog I might not see it. I don't want anyone screaming shenanigans. I will use the random number generator to pick a winner, of course I must figure out how to do that. Ichabod Seabury

The Primitive Needle

40ct Swamp Linen-PTP

Belle Soie Silks

My current WIP can be seen below:

Rachael Holmes 1842

Heartstring Samplery

32ct linen aged by me

A potpourri of threads from the stash that matched Beth's thread's as closely as possible.

I'm stitching Rachael 1x2 on the 32ct and I'm loving the effect. The band to the bottom left is supposed to be eyelets, I messed up and made Smyrna crosses and decided I was not going to frog them since they looked just fine to me. As odd as it may sound I didn't have any of the WDWs in the stash or they were kitted with other projects so I pulled out my DMC color card and started matching over-dyed threads to the DMC equivalent. This is a fun, funky wonderful sampler to stitch. I don't want to put it down. For more of Beth Twist's designs check out her blog and there's a link to her etsy shop on her sidebar.

And finally, if you have not listened to the Glee Season 1 Volume 1 soundtrack, check it out. It's great. I have listened to it over and over and over. We've watched Glee from the very beginning, the 14 year old couldn't be bothered and he loves the CD. Now he wishes the show was still on. I mean seriously, it's way more entertaining than the current programing. Just sayin'.

A Good Friend Once Told Me

2010-01-26T10:13:00.008-06:00

That cross stitching, it's a simple thing, you thread a needle:

You bring your needle up through this hole:

And down through that hole:

A very simple thing.

It has become apparent to me over the last week that cross stitching is not simple, at least when you move into the 40ct linen and silk thread league. Until recently I was never that stitcher. I was a DMC and overdyed cotton kind of girl on nothing higher than 36ct. But my love for Primitive Needle's Ichabod Seabury pulled me to the dark side. And dark it is.

I couldn't see the holes in the linen and my eyes aren't that bad. Reading glasses even at the lowest magnification made the fabric even blurrier to my eyes, so I felt my way along on this project. It's full of stitching mistakes. Chock full of them I tell you.

But because misery loves company I'm going to have a contest right here on this old blog. I left one glaring, huge, major, big time mistake in this piece, the kind of mistake that will make stitchers say to themselves, "can you believe she left that mistake in there, can you believe it, seriously?" and "can you believe she admitted to it?". I ripped it out and restitched four times before saying, "I give up, in you stay". So in the next couple of days I'm going to take a really good, freshly ironed picture of my darling Ichabod and let you find my Amish mistake. Once you find it, you can email me and all the correct responses will be put in a bowl or hat and drawn from and the winner will recieve my gently used Ichabod Seabury chart and cut of PTP 40ct Swamp linen on which to stitch your very own Ichabod. And I just looked at my chart and gently used is correct, I wrote the dimensions for 36ct linen on the back, whoops. Well at least if you decide to go up to 36ct I've done the math for you.

This is a very simple stitch, I just decided to make it harder on myself by attempting 40ct for the first time with a darkish linen.

The Picture This Plus Swamp is a wonderful funky green and I love it. All my stitching mishaps with this project were my fault, bad lighting, not the linen, I love, love, love Picture This Plus fabrics and definitely not the fault of the chart. It was all me, myself and I.

So stay tuned for The Amish Mistake contest to pop here in the next couple of days. I'd have posted a better picture today but this is one of those days when I have to be 20 places at the same time, I hate those days.

So see my quick snap of a completely finished Ichabod Seabury below:

Ichabod Seabury

The Primitive Needle

40ct Swamp linen

Belle Soie Floss

And stay tuned for The Amish Mistake contest!

Also, any guesses from what movie I ripped off my title and the first few lines with some creative license by me?

New Year, Two Finishes

2010-01-17T13:00:00.008-06:00

Yesterday I finished Plum Street Sampler's Garden of Eerie:

Garden of Eerie

Plum Street Samplers

DMC

32ct linen

Hand-dyed by Moi

Started January 2, 2010

Completed January 16, 2010

Someone and I can't remember who asked about the dyeing process and basically what I did was take my stockpot, I got one at Walmart for $13, it's black granite looking, you know like a stockpot you buy to take camping, I added water to about a 1/3 of the pot, I then mistakenly dumped a whole packet of RIT Golden Yellow powder dye into the pot, I should have used less for my intended look, I placed my fabric in the pot and stirred and let it soak for maybe 5 minutes. Probably another mistake since I wanted just a hint of yellow, I checked my fabric and it was GOLDEN. At this point I grabbed my big bottle of RIT Tan Liquid Dye and splashed some in the pot and started swirling the fabric around. I stopped, checked the fabric, added a splash more, swirled some more, checked it and decided to add one more good, solid splash of Tan, swirled, then removed my fabric and rinsed it like there was no tomorrow. At the time I was not thrilled with my results and annoyed that I didn't just order up the Lakeside Linen I needed, but I'm trying to lighten up, be more adventurous, figure things out for myself, use what I have-I'm not going to go all crunchy granola on y'all but I am trying to really let go of my tendency to be a slave to the chart. All that to say, I am really, really happy with my fabric. It gives the design an eerie enough feel and it's a bit different and up close and personal the DMC just glows on the fabric. That's the only way to describe it. It glows.

The big question now is will I ever be able to do this again and get a result that I'm happy with. I've attempted dyeing several times before and honestly my attempts were halfassed and I'm ashamed of that, so, I will learn patience, I will practice my mad dyeing skilz, and trying to explore my creativity that way.

Garden of Eerie is my second finish of the year. My first is the stitched portion of an ornament for my little buddy, John:

Santa Rides(Horse)

Prairie Schooler

Finished January 7, 2010

DMC

28ct Natural Linen

The ornament still needs to be ornamented. But I'll do that this week I hope!

The other night there was a knock at my door and the sound of people singing Christmas carols. I will admit to being a wee bit scared to open the door but then again my kids constantly remind me that we live on the most boring street in the world so against my better judgement I opened the door. My friend Pam and her kids were singing Christmas songs and Pam handed me my Christmas present(we don't hold to timelines around here, both of us being crafters we understand the belated gift, mine to her is still in progress, whoops!) I opened my package and what did I find:

Why this really cool bag she made for me. The words(the design on the front of the bag was stitched by Pam) say:

I collect floss and fabric

buttons and ribbon-

A stitcher's passion is

Pattern collection

How true are those words? Here's a peak inside the bag:

Pockets! How sweet is this bag? I love it. Thanks Pam!

And below you will see the statement that strikes fear in the heart of the men in my house:

Don't we all?
For one of your very own check out:
crossstitch naked tote by doecdoe on Etsy

Don't forget the Olympic Stitching challenge! If you want to join the team blog leave a comment and we can all stitch for the gold!

2010 Winter Olympic Stitching Challenge: What's Your Plan?

It Could Happen

2010-01-05T18:10:00.005-06:00

I'm thinking that 2010 is the year of the stitching pandemic. Actually a pandemic of an affliction referred to as Stitch Ass(Siobhan I will forever be indebted to you for this term). At least for me. I did not stitch New Year's Eve that I can recall and unfortunately I wasn't drunk, it was just such an uneventful evening that well, I just can't remember if I did, in fact, stitch on New Year's Eve.

I didn't stitch on New Year's Day and was mortified when Laurie brought it to my attention that New Year's Day should be spent doing all the things you love so that you are assured of doing them the rest of the year. YIKES! I seriously messed that up. I cooked, I cleaned, I dog sat, no stitching, no knitting, no quilting, no embroidery, no crochet.

Well I declared January 2nd the official start of my New Year since January 1st on the calendar is more a day of work(cooking and such) and visiting and doesn't always leave any free moments in the day for one's other passions and believe me there was a time about fifteen years ago when I would have listed food as my number one passion. But I fed my hungry heart, worked through the whole emotional attachment to food and well cross stitch has for the most part except those few dark years when I chose pizzas over my stitching, always, always been my passion.

It's just the last few weeks there's not been enough hours in the day for stitching. So I declared my January 1st do over, determined that my year was on a different cycle than the rest of the world's and made January 2nd my New Year's Day.

On January 2nd I started Plum Street Samplers Garden of Eerie. After getting more stitched, after adding more colors, I think I'm in love with my own hand dyed fabric. I believe if I were going to give it a name I would call it light cinnamon. I determined this after starting my pot of coffee this morning and noticing a bit of cinnamon stain on my thumb(I always add a sprinkling of cinnamon to the grounds, 1) for good fortune and 2) because it just tastes good. My fabric is very close to the color of cinnamon.

Plum Street Samplers

Garden of Eerie

2x2 32ct linen

DMC

Here is my progress as of this afternoon. The greens really pop on the fabric.

Here is a close up of FrankenAdam and Bride of FrankenAdam(a.k.a. Eve). Yes the back stitch over her right eye is not cooperating. I've restitched it umpteen hundred times and now am giving up. She just went a little crazy with her eyebrow pencil, OK?

Not sure why these pictures are a bit washed out. I hope it's just my computer screen. Maybe I can get my lightbox assembled this weekend and finally get some pictures in lighting that might actually enhance the stitching.

So join me in a worldwide pandemic of Stitch Ass. I think it's a wonderful affliction and I've got my mojo back and there are seriously worse things one can come down with like, oh I don't know, H1N1. That's no fun. But Stitch Ass, well that's nothing but fun, except for those that want supper, clean underwear, but I can't do that I'm sick, I have Stitch Ass.

2010 so far I love you!

2010: The Year of Stitching Dangerously

2010-01-02T16:27:00.006-06:00

Or the year designers email me and beg me to "please stop posting pictures of my WIP on this blog because between my poor photography and the liberties I take with their designs, I'm causing people to in fact not purchase their patterns!"

2010's first victim of 1)bad photography and 2)my first attempt for the year at dyeing my own fabric, Plum Street Samplers Garden of Eerie:

The fabric is supposed to be Lakeside Linens Vintage Sand Dune. I decided to attempt to dye my own fabric and please let us remember that I have very little experience in dyeing my own fabric, do not have a clue what I'm doing and am a fly by the seat of my pants kind of girl. I did not photograph the dye process because seriously is it really that interesting to see fabric in a pot of colored liquid?

I am happy with the color and the picture above is as close as I could come to an accurate representation.

Mistake #1:

I only had yellow RITS dye in powder form. I wasn't thinking and dumped the whole pack of powder in the trusty dye pot. So yeah, my white linen became a solid golden yellow. Whoops.

Mistake #2

See mistake #1

Mistake #3

I kept adding splashes of liquid Ritz dye in Tan which made it less yellow but kind of deepened the whole sand idea to more of a orangey brown sand. You know like a clay sand instead of a beachy sand. But the color is nice and warm and somewhere between light sand linen and tobacco linen.

Why is this the year of stitching dangerously? Because I plan to do more fabric dyeing. I'm going to throw caution to the wind and dye my little heart out. I hope to think it through a little better next time instead of just jumping off the dye pot cliff, but dyeing my own linen is going to be part of my 2010 stitching experience.

I'm also going to lighten up about switching fibers. As long as I have my trusty DMC color card I should be able to convert almost any thread in any design and I need to embrace that side of stitching. Use my creativity and make sure each design has a little bit of me in it.

Public Service Announcement

Attention All Cross Stitch Designers:

Be afraid, be very afraid.....but I love you all and thank you from the bottom of my heart for sharing your talent with me and all the other cross stitchers around the globe. I am so very sorry in advance if my artistic license(and I use that term very loosely) causes sales of your designs to plummet.

PS: I was not drinking and blogging but I was talking on the phone while blogging. And yes I was indeed horrified at all my typos and errors in the first posting of this blog entry. YIKES!

New Year's Eve

2009-12-31T15:57:00.002-06:00

Warning, pictureless post ahead!

I've been pondering all day what to write about here today. 2009 was a pretty sucky year all the way around. It started out with so much hope and went down hill kind fast. I hate to rush through the years of my life but I am going to say a very happy "goodbye don't let the door hit you on the way out" to 2009. Nothing I planned worked out and I take responsibility for that. Bad management all the way around.

I want 2010 to be a year full of hope. A year when I work harder to be a better person, to be more thoughtful of my friends and family, and to get away from all the negativity that I have let take over my moods and emotions and surround me in it's darkness. Life should be a joyful thing. Something to celebrate. I haven't done much celebrating this year, mostly whining and I've tried to keep that away from the blog but the fact is I have been focusing a lot of energy on what I don't have instead of being very grateful for what I do have.

So 2010 is going to be, for me, the year of gratitude. I am going to try to focus every day on the things I'm grateful for and not focus on what I don't have and not let envy and jealously get a hold of my heart.

365 days of being grateful instead of the never ending whining I feel I have been doing for the last three months. I didn't realize how much the whining had taken hold until I just stopped. I stepped back and looked around my life and told myself to get the hell over it! Very liberating.

Today has been busy running errands and arguing with the spousal unit, yeah, we had a bit of a disagreement at the store who shall not be named and I'm focusing on the fact at least I've got him, someone I love, to argue with. So there's that. Gratitude.

I'm in the middle of dyeing some fabric for Plum Street Samplers' Garden of Eerie. I went a little crazy with the RIT Yellow dye and now my overdyeing with Tan is not grabbing on. But at least I have fabric and RIT Dye to attempt this with. Gratitude. I'm serious. Whatever happens I am a lucky girl to have the fabric to try this on. I'm honestly trying to give myself a serious attitude adjustment because I'm pretty sure I have not been too pleasant to be around the last few months.

Tonight we are staying close to home. On the menu:

Unless I can convince the spousal unit to pick up Chinese food for supper that is.

Tacos
Cheese dip(1 lb velveeta, 1 can Rotel)
Bacon wrapped cream cheese stuffed jalapenos(check out Pioneer Woman, click on cooking, then click on appetizers, you will love me forever for this hookup, these are the ultimate in fabulous wonderful comfort finger foods)
Fried mushrooms
Chocolate Chip Pie
Reeses Peanut Butter Cookies

This will all be munched on while watching the Thin Man Marathon on TCM tonight-I really wanted to grow up to be Nora Charles or at the very least have her money! But she and Nick were and still are pretty awesome. Not a bad way to spend a New Year's Eve and I'll probably click over to Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin to catch the ball dropping in Times Square too.

Tomorrow's Menu:

Brats and Italian Sausages on the grill
Spinach Artichoke Dip(the green for good fortune)
Texas Caviar(the only way me or my family will eat Black Eyed Peas, even for luck)

Not sure what else, I haven't really thought the New Year's menu through at all.

Still trying to finish up an ornament so I'm not stitching on it in 2010 and my New Year's start is going to be Plum Street Samplers Garden of Eerie, the piece I'm dyeing the fabric for which is now in the dryer. Please let it work and not be too dark.

I will also put a few stitches in Enchanted Garden Storykeep, it's part of the SK SAL on the HAED BB. The link there takes you to the HAED website and the link to the BB is on the left hand sidebar.

Tomorrow, may be some goals, some WIP pictures. I haven't really given much thought to my 2010 stitching because I'm still stuck in Christmas 2009 at the moment but hopefully not for much longer!

Happy New Year Everyone. May 2010 be full of joy, happiness, good fortune, lots of luck, gratitude and most importantly to quote my good friend Siobhan, lots of Stitch Ass.

The Year Without a Santa Claus

2009-12-26T09:27:00.004-06:00

On December 23rd I recieved an urgent dispatch from the North Pole. Santa was running short of time and gifts and he wanted to alert me to the fact that my kids had been bumped from the list this year. The youngest is fourteen so it was just a matter of time. He said they had all been good but there is that whole recession thing and he really thought he was going to get by here but it'd be better if I could just hook up the fourteen year old myself just in case.

Fortunately for Santa, the fourteen year old's gift had been purchased the Sunday before so I grabbed one or two things to add to that and called it good. When presents were put under the tree on Christmas Eve, the nineteen year old said, "Presents under the tree before Christmas morning? What happened?"

It never dawned on me that my family even paid attention to our routine. Santa has delivered everyone's presents and come to think of it I have never ever put presents under the tree before Santa arrived because for years and years when kids were smaller I didn't want them messing with the presents and it was just easier to rely on Santa to do the work. I didn't have to yell at anyone over the holidays for busting into presents and it was then that I realized that maybe that rule of mine that saved me a lot of grief took a lot of fun out of Christmas for my kids. There was no package shaking and rattling and guessing because mom and dad didn't buy gifts, Santa supplied them and my kids believed in the miracle of Santa much longer than most because my middle son or maybe it was the oldest pointed out that "of course Santa exists because we didn't have the money to buy so many gifts". Even now I'm reasonably sure they all still believe.

As my family has grown older I have noticed a shift in our traditions and things that were once looked forward to with excitement have been greeted with a rolling of the eyes and a comment along the lines of "seriously?" Solstice for one.

I have always embraced the idea of Solstice. It was something that no one else I knew did(we also believe as deeply in the Great Pumpkin as we do Santa Claus and not too many people choose that path and each of my boys have a cross stitched Halloween stocking but not a stitched Christmas stocking, I guess you can see where my priorities lay). Solstice was something for just my family and while it wasn't celebrated like Christmas it was just one more day that was special, sometimes with a fire and roasting marshmellows, sometimes just with a yellow cake to represent the sun and the longing for warm temperatures once again. It was never a big deal but it was just something a little extra. It was also an attempt to keep my kids in tune with nature, the cycles of the earth, but now it's just one more thing they can't be bothered with and it could be that I didn't make it a bigger deal over the years, and this year it just kind of slipped by me before I knew it Solstice had passed. This has been a strange holiday season for me. While I'm not a big time Christmas girl I usually fall in to the spirit of the season before Christmas Day, this year I don't know that I ever felt the joy, not once.

As the kids have grown up our family celebration has become smaller and quieter, and this year it even felt a bit empty and I don't know if that was me or the family or just that 2009 sucked from the very beginning.

It was sad to tell the fourteen year old that Santa sent a message that he wasn't hitting our house this Christmas Eve, so he left it up to me. The fourteen year old looked at me and said with resignation, "Let's hope you don't screw it up". He's a funny one that kid. He got what he wanted so all is well.

I'm planning to do New Year's Eve right, not with a drunken bash, but with a feeling of joy. Joy that 2009 is gone and that 2010 will be a better year for my family and everyone else too. I am going to toast 2009 and kiss it goodbye, I am then going to toast 2010 and welcome it with joy and a prayer that we start the year out right. I'm going to spend this coming week trying to figure out how to start the year out right, because right now it appears that 2010 is going to begin the way 2009 is going to end so I have a week to fix the mess and get some kind of balance back because life has been kind of out of whack the last three months. Somewhere things got off track and I need to get things sorted and organized and all flowing in the right direction because chaos is just not working for me.

Speaking of chaos, I need to sit and organize my stitching and various other projects. 2009 was the year of guilt free starts for me and now I need to figure out where I'm out on several projects and get my focus back. I have had no kind of plan for the last six months and I'd love to see some finishes this next year.

We also have Winter Olympic stitching to look forward to and I'll open up the Olympic stitching blog sometime in January *ok just set one up, here:

2010 Winter Olympic Stitching Challenge: What's Your Plan?

and we can all plan what we want to stitch while watching curling.

Hey my mood has perked up a bit just thinking about some Olympic stitching. I am thinking that Sonne Spotte might be a good Olympic project. Good thing I have some time to figure it out.

I hope everyone had a Blessed Yule, a Merry Christmas, a Happy Holiday, and that 2010 will arrive with a sack overflowing with blessings and joy for all your families.

The Eve of Christmas Eve

2009-12-23T08:42:00.004-06:00

Well I've hit the serious Christmas countdown wall. I managed to stitch and finish three of the ornaments you see below: Candy Cane Seeds

SanMan Originals

14ct White Aida

DMC

(yes, I went old school with the stitching of these ornaments)

These are for my three great nieces. Have I mentioned I suck as an aunt? These are the first ornaments I've ever made for them. I was sewing on the ribbon hangers while the spousal unit was hovering, he had to get to work you know? I only had time to take a picture of one, but I did indeed stitch three of the EXACT SAME ORNAMENT. I didn't think through the finishing so the tops are kind of unfinished. I folded them over and hoped that when I sewed in the ribbon hanger it tacked the front and back flaps of fabric down a little. On the positive side the bit of excess fabric should hold the peppermints in the pouch. I can't believe I let it come down to the last five seconds of overnight shipping. Every year I say I'm going to follow Tasha Tudor's lead and start planning for next Christmas on Dec. 26th.

We put the tree up on Sunday and added lights, ornaments were added yesterday when my little buddy John was here. I let him decorate the tree to his heart's content.

I'm still working on his ornament and because I didn't really think through the fabric thing, 28ct linen, it's going to be kind of the size of a sofa cushion. Let's hope their tree doesn't fall over when he tries to hang it, it's quite possible that could happen. But the kid loves everything I make him so he's going to get this ornament before Santa hits the skies tomorrow night. With any luck he'll get it this afternoon. His last year's ornament is laying around here in an unfinished state because I've lost the pattern, the PS freebie of Santa and the canoe. I don't know what I've down with the pattern so 08's ornament will remain unfinished until the pattern comes marching home. I did mention how I suck right?

Last night I made a batch of Chess Squares:

Chess Squares - 16978 - Recipezaar

I had these for the first time in 1982. I was working at the University of TN College of Dentistry and Mrs. Chapman, the cashier, brought in a pan of these and OMFG! I had never tasted anything so wonderful in my life. These quickly became a family favorite.

I wanted them so bad last night too, and I followed the recipe and then forgot, completely and utterly forgot to set the oven 25 degrees less for a dark metal pan. I burned up the crust like you would not believe. I'm going to make another batch today and PAY ATTENTION while they are baking.

So far I have purchased one Christmas gift, for the 14 yr old. It was purchased after being insulted by a salesperson at a big name appliance/electronics store. We got there at the butt crack of dawn, were the third and fourth customers through the door, ad in hand, freshly printed on Saturday night, and was told the item we wanted was not in stock as it sold out the week before for the $400 and really what did I expect four days before Christmas? Can you believe that punk salesman said that to me? "What do you expect four days before Christmas?" Well I didn't make up the ad, it was brand new, so I expect you to have in stock what your ad says you are going to have on sale four freakin' days before Christmas. JERK FACE! So I walked out of the big name appliance/electronics store that happened to be an hour from my house, I called the store in Pensacola to see if they had the item was told no that no one in our part of the country received their shipment so the closest store was Tampa. So headed over to the store who shall not be named and tried to work the price comparison deal. Unfortunately while it was the same exact item, it was one digit off in the old stocking number so we paid the regular price at the store who shall not be named but at least they didn't insult me and ask me what I expected four days before Christmas. The first guy is lucky I didn't try to cram the Gateway he was trying to sell me in place of the item I wanted up his cocky, rude nose. If I could have afforded the Gateway at $450 I reckon I would have purchased the item I really wanted the week before for $400 duh!

The oldest wants gift cards for clothes and that's what he'll get. He also needs a new DVD player so if I can find one on sale I may add that to the gift cards. The middle son, a.k.a. money bags, has been buying everything he could possibly want and I was in a serious depression about what to get him and then remembered a recent conversation with some friends about a Sonicare so he's getting one of those with the whitening setting. I'll probably pick up each of them a pair of PJ bottoms and some plain tshirts to wear around the house and we'll call Christmas done.

I've pretty much had a reindeer up my butt the last few weeks and have had wanted to skip Christmas altogether(just call me Mrs. Krank or Mrs Grinch either one fits the person I've been most of the holiday season) and someone recently mentioned a gratitude journal and whenever the waves of depression have hit I've tried to think of all the things I'm grateful for. Instead of fretting over the son I can't buy anything for and who has no need for extra cash, I should be glad that he's employed, he's a hard worker and saves the majority of his paychecks.

Instead of complaining over not getting the aforementioned item on sale, I should be thankful that yes, four days before Christmas I was able to get the 14 yr old what he wanted even if I did end up paying more for it than I wanted to. I was still able to do that and not at the big chain electronics/appliance store--I won't be going back there, cold day in you know where before that happens and that makes me sad because I do enjoy this particular store. Anyway, it's the only thing he asked for so it's bought and hidden and he should be happy on Christmas morning.

So in 2010 I'm going to focus as much as I can on the positives in my life and not the negatives. I just have to get through the next oh, 72 hours, and I can put this Christmas season behind me.

I want to wish everyone a blessed Yule and thank you all for coming here and reading and emailing. In case anyone hasn't told you all lately, You Rock!

The Dark Side

2009-12-08T08:30:00.004-06:00

Well a week or so ago I purchased a punch needle, just the Clover one, using a coupon at AC Moore, but I'm crossing a line. I never wanted to do the punch needle thing but I haven't been able to convert Carriage House Samplings punch needle Mermaid stocking to cross stitch and my attempt at embroidering it sucked, major, big time sucked, so I got a punch needle. That's as far as I have gotten in the process but it's that first step that leads us down the wrong path.

I've also become obsessed with the idea of hooking rugs. It's all Lori's fault. I wander her blog, check out her rug patterns, click on links to other blogs and well, got lured in. I managed to score three 100% wool skirts at the thrift store yesterday for $1.50 each. Since wool off the bolt at JoAnn's is around $25 a yard I consider those skirts a serious deal. Now I'm researching wool cutters(expensive) although I found a much less expensive one but no where ever seems to have them in stock, it's kind of a rotary cutter deal, but designed for cutting wool strips, that will probably be what I end up purchasing as wool cutters are running $100+ on ebay. Not in the budget by any stretch of the imagination. I'm pretty sure our ancestors didn't have a wool cutter just for making rugs so I can adapt.

I also need to research the whole wool dyeing thing, as I will buy wool clothing and then overdye it the colors I need. Of course I didn't expect to find the wool I did yesterday, I mean this is Florida after all. I stopped in on a whim and I got lucky. I didn't even check out the men's clothing, there might have been some wool pants that I could take apart but $4.50 was about all I could spare yesterday so that was good, I stayed within my budget such that it is.

The ladies at the thrift store were ooooohhhhing and ahhhhing over what pretty skirts I was buying. I started to tell them I was going to dye them and cut them in to strips and turn them into rugs but somehow I determined that they wouldn't "get it" and it might be best to just nod and play like I was one of "them". Yes, they are pretty. These skirts sure will be warm during the next cold snap.

Another current addiction, Detritus bags from Vikki Clayton. I've ordered a few over the last couple of months and am using some of the silks to stitch an ornament right now. I love her silks. I recently tried another brand of silk thread and well it shreds like nobody's business. I am unimpressed and don't see what all the hoopla is about. Yes, I use shorter lengths but honestly for the price per skein it really shouldn't shred like that, in my humble opinion but what do I know?

I am also enjoying Vikki Clayton's linens. I've got a couple of pieces and have been real happy with the 40ct light coffee. At $11 a fat 1/4 it's budget friendly.

So that's where my brain has been the last week or so. Obsessing over rug hooking, buying a punch needle(I still can't believe I did that), trying 40ct linen for the first time and surprised that I can actually see the holes without the aid of magnifying glasses. Yay!

The Five of Us Wouldn't Survive

2009-12-02T06:48:00.009-06:00

If we had to depend on our gardening skilz for food. Last summer I had two tomatoes total. Not last summer but the summer before we planted a Key lime tree and a Satsuma tree(think Clementines). Last Autumn my Key lime tree was covered in Key limes, then we had a hard freeze and I didn't believe in that whole "oh Lordy it's going to freeze let's put quilts on our plants" and well the Key lime tree died, it's made a comeback, the leaves smell all limeyish but not one single lime or bloom. The Satsuma, all our hopes were in the Satsuma until the then 12 year old crashed into it while making a seriously awesome catch of the football. The Satsuma split, we tied it together with either bread ties or zippy ties, I can't remember and it's a pseudo-hurricane at the moment outside so take my word for it we tied this Satsuma branch together and while she didn't flourish she did produce a single Satsuma. Here's the citrus grove, a.k.a. our front yard.

Here's our harvest.

Here's the farmer and I use the word "farmer" very loosely.

And here's the crop. What should we do? Juice it, make an orange cake? Uh no.

We decided to cut her in half and eat her in wedges and she was mighty tasty. Yes she was. While our crop wasn't big on quantity it was one good quality Satsuma. We didn't even have to bring in the stunt orange and yeah, I had one ready to go because I could just see cutting into this baby and her being dry. Completely, utterly dried out on the inside but she wasn't. And we feasted. So our orange crop lasted from harvest to plate for about oh, five minutes and that's because we couldn't find a knife to cut her open with as I was in the middle of Thanksgiving cooking and every utensil in the kitchen was in need of a washing.

Thankfully we had chocolate chip pie and pumpkin pie to fill the lack of homegrown Satsuma void. And it was good.

And because doesn't everyone love seeing a nekkid Tom turkey here's mine, weighing in at just under 22 lbs ready to be tucked into a nice warm oven. Yep, that's a stick of pure butter poking out of his belly and globs of butter stuck under his skin. Butter is good, very, very good when it comes to turkey baking, almost as important as Tom turkey himself.

I hope everyone had a blessed and bountiful Thanksgiving and if you don't celebrate the U.S. holiday I hope that your fourth Thursday in November was good one.

Tonight's Post

2009-11-23T21:17:00.006-06:00

Is brought to you by the colors red and white and the numbers 8 and 27. Red and white seem to be the theme for the past weekend. Months ago I cut out lots of red and white squares with the intention of making a quilt for my bed. I cut them out and left them to sit and sit and sit. I thought I could turn them into a quilt top by astral projection but apparently it doesn't work that way.

White iPod = 35 hours of Stephen King's Under the Dome. King rarely lets me down and I enjoyed Under the Dome, I have the sore ears to prove it.

Spaghetti with meat sauce, courtesy of Real Simple's Easy Delicious Meals special issue. White plate part of my original every day dishes set when I got married, Sears Federalist, if I'm not mistaken.

Why #8? Well this is the 8th day my kitchen table has been laundry free. My family is shocked and falling into the routine of looking for their clean clothes in their rooms. No more half asleep staggering into the kitchen searching for jeans or t-shirts or work clothes, no more drips of water creating a trail from the bathroom to the kitchen in search of underwear. We are almost a normal family.

The spousal unit wants to know when the Mothership will be beaming the real Missy home. (Yes if you're my friend on Facebook you've heard that one before but it's no less true.)

Why #27? Well that's how many quilt blocks I pieced over the weekend. Yes, it's true, and I would say that I was channeling Kwilty Kim but my piecing is quite naieve compared to the quilt tops she makes so I'll just say I pieced in the spirit of Kim.

These blocks were pieced courtesy of Stephen King. I wanted to listen to my book and when the sewing machine was humming no one talked to me, I could plug up my ears and disappear to the Dome in Maine and before I knew it I had pieced all the little squares I cut out so many months ago. Not all my corners matched, but in my defense more seams lined up than didn't, and I'm quite proud of that accomplishment. I ripped back a few blocks and resewed and others that weren't too far off the mark, I left as they were.

This quilt top is handmade, it's homemade, and well it's going to look it. It's taken me a very long time let go of my desire to piece perfect quilt tops. That's what was taking the joy out of the process for me. If it wasn't perfect it wasn't worth doing. Don't get me wrong, I don't want tacky ass quilt tops but at the same time I want to enjoy what I'm doing and how many people are going to look at my quilt top on my bed and say "OMFG did you see that five of those blocks had seams that didn't quite meet up?" Yeah, I don't think anyone will notice but me. Although if I'm honest there are two blocks that are probably not so good but still it's not that noticeable unless you are looking for flaws and if you are looking at my quilt on my bed and wanting to see flaws, well you will be rewarded.

So this is where I've been the last few days, virtually under the dome in Maine, physically in front of my sewing machine or stove depending on the time of day, and mentally in a very good place in regards to the never ending laundry.

I think I'm seriously going to shoot for 365 days of no laundry on my kitchen table in 2010. I think that is one goal that is seriously doable and this is from someone who hasn't seen the top of her kitchen table since last Thanksgiving.

The Proof

2009-11-19T11:43:00.009-06:00

That I am on Day 4 of a kitchen table that is no longer covered in people's underwear, socks and t-shirts. This is a remarkable thing around here because it really doesn't take much to lure me back to my lazy, slacker ways. It's so easy to pile up laundry on the table and go about my business, but now, after four solid days of a cleaned off table, having laundry on it seems wrong. I do fold clothes here but they are put away immediately because leaving them there would be wrong. I never wanted to become that person, but where laundry is concerned, it feels pretty good. I'm not obsessed, I do my one load a day, I put the stuff away, and it's done. Not piled there waiting on me to do something with it. I hate that it feels so good and that maybe my mother was right. I really hate admitting that. You see my mother has a laundry obsession. Laundry must be placed in the washer just so, whites must go it alone. You have to use Tide and Downey. You must remove the clothes from the dryer and fold them or hang them up immediately(I am still not there, we are so very much that wrinkled family from the Lowe's or Home Depot commercial. I may have changed a few bad habits but I have not lost my mind, yet!) So I don't know if I have spent the last 25 years of doing my laundry my way to show my mother that it doesn't have to be that way. So what if all our white underwear and t-shirts are gray. Gray is a good neutral color. Take that mom! And Tide, that is not always in the budget, Arm & Hammer and Publix laundry detergent are just fine thank you very much--or even homemade with Washing soda, Borax and Fels Naptha. (Ok I've been buying Tide with Bleach Alternative lately but I do not do whites in a separate load, it's just wasteful--unless it's something red or something I absolutely know will bleed on the whites) oh and I do not wash whites in hot water, all my laundry is done in cold water. My mother would cringe at that.

My Pistoulet Chicken makes me happier than it should. Granny Smith apples, buy a bag, get a bag free at Winn Dixie, also have two bags of Red Delicious, same deal. I see apple pie in our future.

I'm currently coveting Amanda's new breadmachine. It looks awesome on Amazon.

Amazon.com: Cuisinart CBK-200 2-Pound Convection Automatic Bread Maker: Kitche

I did two batches of pizza dough in mine yesterday and I think the motor was about to give up, it was hot, hot, hot and that was just on the dough cycle. I like that the Cuisinart makes long regular loaves. Very cool.

I made these cookies this morning:

The Pioneer Woman Cooks - Spicy Molasses Cookies

Not bad but do not in any way overcook them. I did my first batch, decided to let them go another two minutes and that was a mistake. I also think I went a little too heavy on the cardamom and I tried to be careful to use the exact amount but it's a pretty strong spice and mine was from a freshly opened jar.

I've read a few reviews of this book and had hoped my library would have it but they don't:

http://www.amazon.com/Mad-Hungry-Feeding-Men-Boys/dp/1579653561/ref=wl_it_dp_o

The reviews I've read have all been positive. Although one person does point out that girls get hungry too, yes we do! And the text is a bit annoying about cooking for men and boys but that is the point of the book, but we girls we like us some food too! But reviews of the recipes I've read on various blogs have all been good.

I've also been wanting this cookbook for a while:

http://www.amazon.com/Rustic-Fruit-Desserts-Crumbles-Pandowdies/dp/1580089763/

And my library hasn't gotten it in either. Another book where the reviews have all been good.

Something about the holidays and a bit of a chill in the air that really gets me in a cooking mood.

Seeing Knitting Iris photos of recent meals really makes me long for wide open spaces, a large garden and cabin in the wilds of Montana. Although I don't think I could eat a heart sandwich. It looks good in the picture, but I'm not a vital organs consuming kind of girl. My friend Cassie used to force me to eat liver and onions once a month because it was good for me. Hard to believe we're still friends after that gastronomical torture.

Recently I rearranged the living room. I set up a new stitching area and once I get the Rubbermaid bucket out from under the table and replace it with a basket of some sort with a lid to keep the cats out of the yarn I'll take a picture of the whole corner but for now you get Sabrina:

She took my spot. She likes curling up on the unfinished Vintage Vertical Strip blanket that I folded up and use for a cushion.

She is annoyed that I interrupted her bath and she's not impressed. The Breeze as we call her runs the house. She terrorizes Pineapple and Naomi the two other cats and pretty much scares my Polly Prissypants too.

Here's the queen telling me to go away, leave her alone, let her cuddle up and lay in the afternoon sun.

I am currently listening to Stephen King's Under the Dome. I love it. I am up to hour twenty something of thirty five and I don't want to stop listening. I think that's what has aided my cleaning mojo.

The Spousal Unit says I will not be able to stay up until midnight to see New Moon tonight. It's going to be hard, I'm usually asleep by ten, I hope I can get a nap in today.

You Are Going to Want to Kiss Me Right on my Mouth

2009-11-18T10:10:00.005-06:00

When you make these cookies:

They are Surprise Cookies from Martha Stewart's Cookies cookbook. The recipe is also online. It can be found here:

Surprise Cookies and more delicious recipes, smart cooking tips, and video dem

Don't the cookies look like they are bathed in celestial light?(works for me, much better than saying my photography sucks, doncha think?) But they do taste heavenly. Trust me on this.

Even Rachel Holmes wanted a piece of this action. My fabric is not touching the chocolate I promise, but come to think of it that might add to it's aged appearance.

Speaking of Rachel, here's a current pic. Yes it's washed out, I tried several different spots outside and this was the best. Click the pic to enlarge.

In other late-breaking news, I am on day three of absolutely no laundry on the kitchen table. People wander through the house towards the kitchen searching for shirts, underwear, socks, then they remember, "my clothes are in my room". Twilight Zone music then begins to play because they have obviously been transported to some bizarro land where clean clothes are exactly where they are supposed to be. It's difficult not to take the stuff from the dryer and toss it on the table and move on to the next load, but I'm slowing down, folding, hanging and putting things away. This is huge for me. All the laundry put away, freakin' awesome!

In Thanksgiving news, the turkey is purchased and in the freezer temporarily, got a 20 pounder. Started to go for something a bit larger but good grief we don't need that much turkey. I already see a couple of turkey pot pies in our future and I'm pretty sure this year I'm going to toss the carcass in a pot with some water and make turkey broth to freeze for the Yule bird. We do a ham on Christmas Eve and have a turkey on the big day.

I'm pretty stoked about the new more organized me. Never fear, Casa de Dog Hair is still alive and well but there is not one single piece of laundry on the kitchen table. I'm super serial.

I Got Excited

2009-11-16T15:30:00.005-06:00

And made this:

Ever since I saw this poster project this has become my life's philosophy.

Don't keep calm and carry on. on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Sure I could probably pursue something more profound but this is way more "me".

Stitched 2x2 on 28ct antique white lugana with DMC 4210.

Charted by Pam and me using my Patternmaker software.

By the Dawn's Early Light

2009-11-14T08:26:00.003-06:00

I have rediscovered my love of 28ct lugana. I know, it's not fine linen, but it was my first foray into over 2 stitching, my first step out of the aida comfort zone. It was soft and silky and it was so luxurious compared to my good old Charles Craft 14ct and 18ct aida. I spent hours in my LNS, it was either Creative Critters or the name had changed to Crown Thistle Needlework, it was within walking distance of my house in North Little Rock and I'd put the kid in the stroller, we just had one kid at the time, and walk to the LNS. The shopowner promised me if I'd just give evenweave or linen a try I'd never go back to aida. I bought a piece of 28ct ivory lugana and Sheepish Designs(I am 99% sure that's the designer) Virtuous Heart Sampler(and I'm less than 20% sure that is the correct name of the sampler) and I don't have it handy because it needs to be reframed after one brother slamming another brother against the wall in a WWF moment(back when it was the WWF not the WWE) but they could have been impersonating a lion attacking a gazelle so that would fit with the WWF(World Wildlife Federation).

Yes, the DMC is wrapped around a wooden spool. How precious is that?

The spool was in a baggie with some others that my Mamaw gave me years ago for some project out of a Leisure Arts Spirit of Christmas book which apparently I never got around to actually making. I have maybe five or six and these were my great grandmother's wooden spools so I'm careful with them. But I've been stalking eBay and thrift stores hoping to score a mess of these old wooden spools for not so much money. I've developed a love for embroidery over the last couple of years, thank you Jenny Hart! And want to keep my embroidery floss separate from my cross stitch floss and I think these wooden spools are kind of funky cool for that purpose.(Dork alert! I get it)

But you ask, "If you want to keep your embroidery floss separate from your cross stitch floss why do you have floss you are obviously cross stitching with on a spool?" Well I thought it'd be different and I had the spool right there and the cardboard bobbins were in the shoebox in another room and the cross stitch only uses one color. So I thought I'd just be wild and crazy and spool it. "Spoolin' on a Wednesday afternoon". That should be a song.

The design is one that was run through Patternmaker(Thank you Pam for your technological help, ok for doing it for me because I am so incompetent) and makes me very happy. I have a companion piece already charted and it makes me even more happy! Happier than this even:

Sue Hillis Designs: Pirate's Creed - cross stitch pattern and even this:

Sue Hillis Cross-Stitch Designs Blog » Final version: “Women who behave…” (although I believe the real quote is "Well behaved women seldom make history" Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

With any luck I'll have a finished project to show tomorrow.

No, that's not coffee in my cup but Adagio's Earl Grey Bravo. I feel really contintental when I drink hot tea.

Is everyone in full speed ahead holiday mode? Yesterday I cleaned out my kitchen pantry. I had a lot, A LOT of expired canned goods. I discovered maybe two years ago that canned goods actually had expiration dates. I'm pretty sure growing up my mom would occaisonally open a ten year old can of Campbells soup and not think twice about it, or maybe Dinty Moore Beef Stew. I thought canned goods were supposed to last forever, you know you fill up your 1950s bomb shelter with Mother Campbells and you can survive any catastrophe.

I'm now working out what I need to buy for Thanksgiving dinner. I've learned over the years that keeping it simple is the best thing for my family. The husband will eat anything these days, even onions as long as he doesn't know they are in the food he's consuming. For years he told me he was allergic to onions, only to find out years later he's a big fat onion hating liar! The 14 year old won't eat anything but turkey and mashed potatoes and the two older sons will eat pretty much anything, the middle son prefers pumpkin pie only but now that he's 18 if he wants pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving dinner more power to him.

Tentative Thanksgiving menu:

Turkey

Dressing(really bad dressing because I do not have my Mamaw's dressing making gene, my dressing sucks, major big time suckage)

Green Bean casserole(I'm southern, it's got cream of mushroom soup and french fried onions on top, it's what we eat ok?)

Swiss Vegetable Medley (great casserole, probably my all time favorite)

I may or may not make a squash casserole, maybe to spruce up the leftovers on Friday night. I use this recipe only I add a can or two of diced green chiles. It's mighty tasty:

Yelllow Squash Casserole - 14522 - Recipezaar

Mashed potatoes

I want to make a sweet potato casserole but I'm the only one that eats it so like the squash casserole I might make this over the weekend to freshen up the leftovers.

Dessert:

Pumpkin Pie(recipe straight off the Libby's label)

Chocolate Chip Pie - 83750 - Recipezaar (very 1970s dessert)

I've been reading a few books and articles about survivial preparedness. I've sufficiently scared the ever lovin' pee out of myself and I think I don't want to read about that stuff so much any more. I think my goal is to keep a well stocked pantry, enough food for five for a couple of weeks and hope by then any national crisis will have worked itself out. Oh and a well stocked project pantry because the best thing to take the edge of the world as we know it ending are a few projects. I remember a time on RCTN when something bad happened and someone suggested why don't we stitch blocks for this or that and someone said, "Do you think cross stitch makes everything better, don't you think there's something better you could do for these people?" Well I didn't step into that, but trust me when I tell you when my world is crashing down around me, some needlework in hand at least makes me feel better so yeah, for me a project of some kind does make me feel better. A bit of control in the chaos around me. It's such a small, small thing but offers so much comfort.

Ida, Ida, Ida

2009-11-09T17:23:00.010-06:00

Here are some pictures taken at various points along the Gulf this morning, around say 11 a.m.

Yes this picture and the one below it look alike but they aren't the same picture I promise. The surf was really starting to kick up.

This is from a park along the beach highway, my favorite road in the world. It will be breached if it hasn't already and then be closed for the next two years because my county officials suck.

Here's one of the lifeguard stands on my local beach. You can click on any of these pictures to enlarge, or biggify as Annette would say.

These storms bring out the surfers. This guy was just sitting on the beach and then walking on the beach, I never saw him actually get in the water but trust me there are several surfers out there.

The county just recently started rebuliding our pier after picking their noses over it for quite a few years and of course that decision alone puts us in the path of a tropical storm. You see that big blob of white foamy surf? There are three or four surfers just behind it. The waves are that big.

Dinner is done, I made these:

Fresh from the Farm: A new BEEF recipe for you! :)

Going to make a batch of banana bread in a few, using this recipe:

Easy Banana Bread - 63756 - Recipezaar

And will probably make one of these too:

Chocolate Chip Pie - 83750 - Recipezaar

Because that's just how I roll.....

Tonight's plan: stitch the night away. No school tomorrow, no where to be, the dogs have special chewy bones for later when the storm comes ashore and makes everyone a little jumpy. The rain is coming down pretty hard right now and I'm guessing the winds will pick up in a few hours. I'm one of those dorks that likes tropical storms, as long as I don't have to leave the house, and I don't so *all is good.

*that feeling is subject to change if we have a lot of tornadoes around 2a.m. and we're sleeping in the hallway.

From the Gulf Coast Lab

2009-11-05T07:59:00.008-06:00

Over the last few days I've become obsessed with the whole natural dyeing process. I love the idea of dyeing my own fabric and sticking it to "the man". What I mean to say, I don't always have the recommended fabric here and sometimes I want to start something right now instead of waiting to order the fabric I need. Learning how to dye my own fabric, it gives me some hand-dyed options, gets me out of the "I must absolutely use the recommended fabric" frame of mind.

Of course I have no sense of color, I have no patience, I want to dunk my fabric and call it good. I'm learning but it's a chore. That being said these berries were hanging over the fence and I thought they would make a nifty purple dye. They don't, they make an amber colored liquid. But that didn't stop me.

After simmering the Beautyberries in the pot for a while I poured off some amber colored liquid and went foraging in the freezer for a package of three year old freezer burned blackberry/blueberry mix. I dumped those in the pot and brought it back to a simmer and then let it steep over night. This morning I cut two small rectangles of white muslin and stuffed them in these jars. I decided the dye might work better if it was heated so I put each jar in the microwave for five minutes, then took them out, set them on the kitchen window sill and left them alone.
Here's the fabric soaking in it's warm dye bath. The jar to the left holds the Beautyberries and the blueberry/blackberry mix. The jar to the right is just the Beautyberries. They smell wonderful when simmering like an herbal tea. I kept having to tell people the stuff in the black pot is not edible. I was relieved after doing some research to discover the beautyberries weren't toxic and someone even made jelly from them, and they pointed out they were still alive but I'm still not so sure about that because most sites I found weren't sure if these berries were toxic or not which I thought was strange since someone did indeed make some jelly out of them.

And here are my test squares. The pink/purple hued piece is from the berry mix and the pale yellow is from the beautyberries alone. The muslin was bright white like that paper towel. I do not have a clue what I'm doing so I'm going to do more research and find out about setting the dye or using vinegar or alum as a moredant. I did add a bit of vinegar to the amber liquid just to see what it would do. It just made it smell vinegary as far as I can tell.

Today I plan on trying my hand at turning Goldenrod into a pot of yellow dye. We'll see how that goes.

Here is my start on Heartstring Primitive's Rachel Holmes. Yes the picture sucks. Click it on to enlarge and it's a bit better. The fabric is 32ct MCG white linen that I coffee dyed and baked. The threads are not the ones Beth used but my own conversion using threads I had in the stash, I was shocked to discover that I didn't have any of the called for WDWs.

I'm stitching Rachel, 1x2 and liking the look more than I expected. This is the second chart I've used stash threads for and I think I'm getting better at matching my colors. It helps that Beth had a DMC conversion on her chart. I appreciate that a lot! This is a mix of GAST, CC and DMC.

I had been charting something out by hand and my friend Pam helped me with my Patternmaker software so that I would quit banging my head on the table from the chore of charting by hand. Maybe I'll have that to show tomorrow. Ok Pam didn't "help" me, she pretty much did it all. I have so many technical issues and once again no patience.

WIshing You A

2009-10-31T14:48:00.003-05:00

Halloween!

Wicked a free chart from Primitive Betty. Quick stitch--it's not finished into anything yet because I couldn't find any trim I liked at JoAnn's. Was searching for a beaded trim and just found tiny pom-poms. Not what I had in mind.

May all your pumpkin patches be sincere and may the Great Pumpkin bless you all with lots of toys(a.k.a. floss, fabric, and charts-STASH!) and candy!

Head over to Missy Ann's for the grand finale to her 13 Days of Halloween Extravaganza!

A Package

2009-10-30T16:19:00.008-05:00

In today's mail I received a package from Beth Twist of Heartstring Primitives(you can find a link to her Etsy shop at her blog). I won her pin pillow giveaway on Facebook. If you are on Facebook, become a fan of Heartstring Primitives. Beth's designs are very nice, I have With One Accord, Rachel Holmes 1842 and Ann Taylor and I don't know which I'm going to start first but back to the package:

See that strawberry? How sweet is that? I have a jar of these that my Mamaw made. Yep, the ones she made by hand in a Mason jar like a jar of strawberry preserves.
Here's the front of the pin pillow. I think it's a Williamsburg print, is that what those fabrics are, my mind is blanking at the moment. It'll come to me as soon as I hit publish.

Here's the back.

And here's a close up of the strawberry. Sweet! Thank you so much Beth!

And because it's the day before Halloween I thought I'd share my progress on HAED A Night in the Pumpkin Patch based on the art of C.C. Kuik. My goal had been to have her finished by tomorrow but as you can see that ain't happening. I'm glad I pulled her out because I had forgotten how pretty she is and now I want to stitch on her all night. Sorry the picture isn't any better it was cloudy when I did her photo shoot.

Don't forget to check out Missy Ann's 13 Days of Halloween......

Migas for Brunch

2009-10-29T11:14:00.007-05:00

Or the episode where I pretend I'm sitting in a cafe in Austin having brunch with Missy Ann and Michelle. Music, food and friends, Austin is one of my dream of moving to cities and it's in Texas which I think is extra cool because it just is.

I discovered migas via Homesick Texan and whenever I want something extra tasty for breakfast other than oatmeal or skillet potatoes and onions which is then turned into a breakfast burrito, I make a pan of wannabe Migas. Cause I'm not from Texas, never been to Austin and never had the real thing. My Migas are a lot like Homesick Texan's(type in Migas in her search field). Her recipes are my guide for all things TexMex.

First you cut a few corn tortillas in strips and pan fry them in a bit of oil:

I drain my pan, growing up with heart disease in the family you learn the importance of draining off as much grease as you can. I then put the corn tortilla strips back in the pan with a smidge of butter and a bit of chopped onion and fresh jalapeno:

I let the onions and peppers soften up a bit and then pour in my eggs, this is three eggs with a splash of half & half. I let the bottom cook a minute or two then give it a stir, then when the eggs are almost done I top with some cheese, I used four cheese Mexican this morning because it was what was already opened.

Is there any way to make eggs look pretty in a skillet? They really are just a slimy, yellow blob.

I was out of salsa because we had tacos and enchiladas for supper last night so I topped my migas with some Rotel. When we moved from Memphis to Lima, OH back in 1986 I had a meltdown because the grocery store didn't carry Rotel and not only did they not stock Rotel they didn't know what it was. Did these people not know the joy of Rotel cheese dip made with a can of Rotel and a pound of Velveeta? How did they get through Friday nights? The horror!

My mom sent me a case and when anyone would come to visit they would bring a few cans of Rotel and some Pancho's Cheese Dip.

This is an easy filling breakfast and would be really good with refried beans on the side. I wish I had some this morning, actually I just made them so it's practically lunch. I learned to love beans for breakfast when I read Tassajara Cooking years ago. They are an all day food, ok, maybe that's a stretch.

Clutter report:

We can see the top of the coffee table, the three top shelves in one of my bookcases is pretty well organized, the dining table in the family room, great room, space that no one has a clue what it's for since my kitchen is an eat in kitchen, is decluttered enough to see the wood. My sewing machine is still out and will be until I get a fold out table for the bedroom and we paint. No, we haven't painted yet but the room still feels good even with disgusting walls.

I've started putting the granny square afghan together but putting together isn't near as much fun as making the squares, baby steps, baby steps.

I'm really in no hurry to make the two ugliest ripple afghans in the world and I'm not starting them until the granny afghan is complete. Yes, it's a plot to put them off but it's like 80 degrees here so the boy will not freeze in the next few weeks.

I haven't crossed a stitch since Sunday so I plan to stitch this afternoon and watch horror movies on AMC.

Don't forget to head over to Missy Ann's and enter her 13 Days of Halloween giveaway!

It's Wednesday Already?

2009-10-28T08:31:00.004-05:00

The other day on her blog Anna suggested we show what's in our stitching bag. Here's mine:

From left to right: ever present old school iPod(iPhoto, I thought I was so cool at the time, LOL), gum from my trip in July (I only chew gum when I fly, it aggravates my TMJ, TMI?), lipstick, my Moleskine-my constant companion, highlighters, pens, A House by the Sea/Midsummer Night Designs, Monkey Sampler/Midsummer Night Designs, Strawberry Blonde a.k.a. Tomato Blonde. What I didn't show, the overnight Kotex, again TMI?

My question of the day, how do you organize your spices? This is my spice cabinet next to the stove. Spices are just kind of flung in there hit or miss. I tried putting my baking spices on the second shelf with the baking soda and powder but it all gets mixed in together. A spice rack seems a waste of space and I have no where to hang one near where I cook, this is a perfect spot I can stand at the stove and just reach up for what I might need, if I could only find it.

I've thought about getting some of those small plastic baskets, you know like baby doll laundry baskets, I think they are really drawer organizers or something like that, and organize them that way at least they'd be a bit contained, or maybe if they make small wire baskets like that, I don't think a clutz like me needs wicker/bamboo near the stove-I am trying to get away from plastic in the kitchen but I don't think BPAs can leach from the basket through the bottom of the spice bottle and unfortunately many of my spices are in plastic I'm starting to buy the spicesin the glass bottles but seriously the price on spices at Dollar Tree and Dollar General are too good to pass up and I've had no problem with the freshness or quality of them.

I've been looking at spice racks that come with the glass bottles that you fill but seriously wouldn't any BPAs already be in the spice from the previous packaging? Maybe I'm over stressing over this BPA stuff because the damage was probably done with the first microwaveable plastics that my parents brought into the house back in the day.

But any organizational ideas would be appreciated. The basket idea is the best I can come up with at the moment and I'm not even sure how I'd organize them in the baskets.

Don't forget to enter Missy Ann's 13 Days of Halloween extravaganza.

Pretty Sure I'm Not Me

2009-10-25T10:32:00.004-05:00

The Pod People have taken over my body because first a finished project, then a cleaning frenzy, and now yet another finished project. But the comforting news is that all cleaning ceased as I finished this piece:

There are errors galore in this little piece of needlework, all the fault of the stitcher not Blackbird Designs. I would tell you exactly where they are but since I'm the only one that knows where they are, maybe you won't notice them.

This cross stitch chart appeared in one of the BBD quilt books, Summer Weekend. The quote really moved me when I saw it originally in KwiltyKim's webshot's album.

I can't wait to find the perfect frame and hang it in my soon to be painted bedroom right over my work area because the words are true. If you don't begin you can't succeed or fail. Powerful words they are, at least to me.

Don't forget to check out Missy Ann's 13 Days of Halloween giveaway. She's giving away some pretty awesome prizes.

Quickie!

2009-10-22T17:05:00.004-05:00

Cleaning is kind of awesome. I can't believe I just wrote those words but under a pile of papers and catalogs and magazines on a shelf I found this:

It's my missing Carolina Handley by CHS. I can't remember when I framed her but it was months and months ago and then I got distracted, must have laid her on the shelf and poof, she disappeared until a pile of crap. I'm working hard to change my evil ways of paper piling, stacking, hoarding. I'm getting better about tossing junkmail the minute it enters the house, but the catalogs and magazines, they are my Achille's heel. I've cut way back on the magazines I buy, and stopped all my subscriptions, except Everyday Food but that was a fundraiser for a friend's son, I mean I had to subscribe to something, and I love me some Everyday Food. Best cooking magazine ever. JMHO of course.

Also while cleaning I found a much beloved yet forgotten WIP. Picture tomorrow, it's yucky here at the moment so no good light.

Don't forget to head over to Missy Ann's and check out the 13 Days of Halloween.

Oh No She Didn't

2009-10-21T10:50:00.002-05:00

I was so excited, I thought I finished Simply Live on my birthday but yesterday morning while patting myself on the back I noticed that I missed two of these little four diamond thingies that are scattered around the words. So in fact I was 8 stitches shy of a finish but that's ok.

And so that Lisa does not have to take responsibility for my color choices--I'm not thrilled with the blue I chose for the words- here are the colors I used in my conversion:

P8-CC Plum Paisley

P11-CC River Rocks

P10-DMC 316

P2-GAST Dried Thyme

P7-DMC 4240

P5-WDW Schneckley

P6-DMC 433

P12-WDW Chestnutt

P1-CC Just Rust

I really struggled with the DMC 4240. I think if I did it again I would cut away the purple parts of the thread and go with just the blues I just didn't think about it at the time and I really wasn't in the mood to frog and honestly I love this particular DMC Colour Variations thread.

I'm so excited to have a finish, it's been forever!

Thanks for all the birthday wishes.

Don't forget to head over to Missy Ann's for her 13 Days of Halloween giveaway!

On This Day

2009-10-19T11:30:00.002-05:00

46 years ago I made my debut. 46. Ouch! I feel sixteen inside, ok 21 since I really don't want to have to sneak around to drink.

Questions I'm pondering today:

If I finish a cross stitch project on this, the first day of my new year, does it mean I'll have many finished projects over the next 365 days? And yes I plan on finishing Simply Live before midnight today. I am going to do it.

If I start a new project on this, the first day of my new year, does it mean I'll be starting many new projects over the course of the next 365 days? I plan on starting Near Halloween by Primitive Needle as soon as the last stitch is in Simply Live.

And lastly, that whole Simply Live philosophy, it in no way relates to stash right? I mean stash is well security for those rainy days, hard times, comfort food for the soul right?

I've been fall cleaning for the last week. We have some painting to do and then other than the disaster that is our carpet I'll be ready for the Wheel of the Year to turn on Halloween. I love that back in days of yore--olden times if I didn't use "yore" correctly--Samhain represented the new year. The hard work of harvesting, food preservation, repairing roofs for the coming snows, all done. Time to settle in for long winter nights. Life slowing down just a little bit.

Autumn arrived on the Gulf Coast this past weekend and it's been glorious, days just warm enough and the night air with a bit of a bite in it(and not of the mosquito kind)--makes a cup of Tazo's Calm very welcome late in the evening. The days are getting just a bit shorter and it's nice to see darkness fall a little earlier.

So here's a toast to my new year(feel free to use this as an excuse to pop a cork in your world and celebrate on Monday night--we all need a reason to just randomly celebrate don't we?) and please can I just finish this one project today? Is that too much to ask?

Autumn In All Her Glory

2009-10-17T11:23:00.002-05:00

Autumn has finally arrived on the Gulf Coast. Warm days, chilly nights. Perfect time of the year. Another sign of Autumn? My first cup of Earl Grey since March. I tend to only drink hot tea when there's a chill in the air. Yep, that's an IngenuiTea tea pot(click on teaware). The only bad thing about it is that it's plastic and unfortunately there is no where on Adagio's site where they state it does not contain BPAs. I'm phasing out plastics but this is an exception. If you aren't familiar with this little teapot, do a youtube search for "ingenuitea" and watch the videos, pretty nifty little device, possible BPAs and all.

And yes, that's knitting you see, maybe I'll finish my Alien Illusion scarf this year, it's only been four years since I cast it on.

I have completed all 80 squares for the 18 yr old's afghan and am in the process of crocheting them together, it's not near as much fun as making the squares but I'm getting there.

The chick cave is coming along nicely. Rearranging the furniture changed the whole feel of the room and I really can't get over how moving some things around can make the air feel so much better. I was so excited about the change of the aura of the bedroom that I started rearranging the living room and even though there's still piles of clutter, some stuff I can't move to the bedroom until we paint, no sense moving it twice, and some stuff needs to be tossed and some stuff just needs a place. I'm working on it and actually feeling good about it.

My vacuum cleaner is gasping for air, it will suck a little but really not so much. It's a year and a half old and has sucked up about 34 dogs worth of dog hair and we can't forget the cats. There is so much hair, I don't think any vacuum could last more than a year or two around here. I'm thinking I might as well just buy the $40 vacuum if I'm going to have to toss it in a year. If this had been the Dyson Animal and it only survived a year, I'd be heartbroken. I don't think even Dyson Animal could handle the animal hair in this house. But hey, Mr. Dyson, if you'd like to send me one to test for a year or a two I'd be glad to. If your appliance can survive this house, it would be a serious testimony to the quality of your product, so I'd be glad to test one. Just sayin' or as Butters would say, "Do you know what I am saying?"

Another sign of Autumn? Pot roast in the crockpot and the first homemade loaf of bread in ages. It's been too hot to bake, so I'm excited to have homemade bread again. Little pleasures, little pleasures.

No Simply Live is not completed yet, but as with the crocheted afghan I'm getting there. I had hoped to have moved on to Halloween stitching at this point but maybe by Monday.

Check out Missy Ann's blog, for her 13 Days of Halloween.

Annette(Annette's Acre)is having three separate giveways, so check them out too.

Inventory

2009-10-13T08:38:00.002-05:00

Blocks left to crochet for afghan-1 1/2

Simply Live-need to stitch letters R-Z numbers 1-0, a bit of border and a few minor motifs.

Quilt-squares cut(months ago), still not sewn together. Just do it already. Plan to lame out and tie it instead of quilting it but I need a cover for my bed, period. Tying(tieing?) is just fine with me thank you very much.

Rearrange bedroom, give it a studio apartment feel. Sleep on one side, create on the other. Paint, make it look nice yet functional. Turn it into a chick cave because I need my own space. Spousal unit just sleeps there anyway. He doesn't care what it looks like as long as his side of the bed is sleepable.

Paint chili pepper red dresser white, acquire cubes with baskets to place on top and store various stash related stuff. Find new drawer pulls or knobs-something funky and cool if budget allows.

Move work table from living room to bedroom, look for prettier work table in the future or at least one that might fold out for sewing, fold up desk like for soldering, laptop, other desk related functions--maybe one of those sewing tables at JoAnn's. Hmmmm.....

Clean out closet, find mini dresser to fit inside closet to store underwear, pjs, tshirts.

Get some under the bed boxes for stash. Space that is completely unused and wasted, make it functional.

Find some wood, paint "Always Kiss Me Goodnight" on it(or maybe just order one premade from etsy or ebay), hang above the other closet door, viewable from the new bed position. Maybe crackle it. Try to ignore the fact that penmanship sucks(see "maybe order one").

Going to be busy around here for the next week.

Cross Stitch

2009-10-11T10:13:00.007-05:00

Very inspired name for this post huh?

Well I have some cross stitch to show, not finished but oh so close. Below you see a blur of Simply Live, but there, holding it down, keeping the wind from blowing the fabric off the table is my Eldreth Pottery Mermaid. When she was packed in my bag on the trip home the guy working the Xray machine at the airport asked me if I had a vampire in my bag. I didn't have a clue what he was talking about until I remembered she's holding a star. I tried to explain that I had a piece of pottery in there and please do not ask me to unpack my bag because I would never get it back in there safe and sound or be able to zip my bag. But he shook his head and waved me on through. She's a lovely momento of my time with Sharon and Siobhan and boy did I ever fall in love with Pennsylvania.

Here is a close-up of the stitching and of course using my camera skilz super power I chopped off part of the letters I have stitched but you aren't missing much.

I've been thinking a lot recently about the whole "simply live" philosophy and what that means. I've also been thinking about the Slow Year that Riana writes about on her blog.

Honestly I'm not a big consumer. I buy clothes only when I need to because it's a traumatic experience. I don't think about being 60 lbs overweight until I need clothes and then it slams me right smack up side the head that you aren't Kat Von D. You are a 45 yr old, 5'2", 60 lb overweight woman.

Damn, that realization hurts every single time.

Which then causes tears and me to leave the store, trying not to snot all over everything. You think I'd eventually get a clue but I don't. So clothes shopping is not in my retail therapy arsenal. I tend to buy groceries(see 60 lbs overweight) and stash. Not even a lot of stash. I've done very well the last few years sticking to stitching from the stash, using what's on hand and over all not helping the economy out too much but it's not with any kind of plan, believe me, if I had the money, I'd spend it all on stash. Seriously.

But as grocery prices continue to rise I find myself pulling out my whole foods cookbooks, Moosewood, I had forgotten how much I love you, and Laurels Kitchen too. Time to once again reclaim my good habits and go back to a more vegetable based diet, not giving up meat entirely like I did when I was pregnant with the 21 yr old but definitely focus on better meal planning. I have done none of that in the last six months. I went on strike because I honestly got tired of all the complaining about how "I don't want to eat this or that" so screw them all, order a $6 Howies pizza every night as far as I'm concerned. The other night I made eggplant/zucchini parmesan using a mix of recipes from the original Moosewood cookbook and Laurel's Kitchen. It was killer. Probably just as high calorie as a burger since the eggplant is fried before being parmesaned but OMG, it was incredible and worth the effort, even in 300% humidity with the stove and oven on, worth the effort, the sweat, the extra heat in the house.

And because we all take our celebrity where we can find it and I'm shameless. Have you all got your Primitive Needle Witches Hollow chart? Have you? Here's the faraway shot with two pots I found in the garage, purchased years ago at the flea market for like a $1 a piece, they were misfires. I think that's the term.

Anyway if you remove your chart from the package and read through it, you might just see this:

Yep that's me! Thanks for the shout out Lisa! I know, obnoxious much? That's me.