Corrections

So, yesterday I drove up to northern KY to spend an evening stitching with the stitch group. We all come from about a 1.5 hr (it was more like 2.5 hrs yesterday, due to traffic) radius around the meeting point and stitch, catch up and have a grand time.
On the way, I decided to stop by the only Crabtree & Evelyn store in Kentucky. I love their hand-lotions, but the reason for the detour was their lip-butters. It is out of this world - stays on for forever, smells and tasted wonderful, looks great (slight red tint), and works wonders for the lips. What is not to love!? Believe you me - I was so disappointed when I got to the store and was told that they have stopped carrying the lip-gloss. Isn't that always how it is? Every time I find a product that I absolutely adore, it is taken out of production. Wonder why - guess that my preference is opposite of everybody else... LOL I will have to shop on-line, I guess.

(The one in the front is the type I love; the "lip swirl" - they have, or used to have, Mulberry, Chocolate Cream and Peppermint.)

Our hostess, who is a sweetie by the way, just found out a couple of months ago that four of us in the group have stitching blogs. We started chatting about the post where I wrote 7 things about myself and we talked about living in Panama and so on. I have no idea how it came up, but we started talking about peopleofwalmart.com and all the sudden, our newly hooked blog-reader blurts out that "Oh, I thought that the "Bad Ass" photo was showing you". Everyone at the table pretty much fell over laughing.
We were trying to rack our brains, trying to figure out what I had written that could have lead her to jump to that conclusion, but with no success.
So with further ado, I am declaring here that rumors about my bad ass are greatly exaggerated. Dear readers, I assure you, I can not take credit for this bottom:

You would probably be a bit taken aback by all the stuff I haul with me to the stitch-meets. This is the pile of assorted projects riding along:

This weeks stitching has been been pretty neglected and really not much to show....
The Hare Pyns class piece progress (once again, I realized that I spent double the time stitching over-one crosses, instead of the much quicker tent-stitches that we were instructed to use.. sigh!)

Scarlet Letter's EH sampler - I am finally starting on the big green "branch" border, which is what made me fall in love with this reproduction sampler in the first place. I am having fun stitching it, but it is a lot slower that I anticipated.

And finally, this is the progress on a brand new design that I bought to stitch for my Littlest Sis. Can't show you what it will be, because she is a follower... I am hoping to get it ready for her birthday in October, but I am not sure. It is stitched on Aida which helps, but it will be pretty large, solid stitching albeit a fair amount of half crosses.

All right, moving on. Bunny is doing well. I got a lot of really great suggestions from all of you and from browsing on the net. Favorites were Emo (except that I am apparently the only one finding that a hilarious name), Jinx, Corporal Carrot (I was reading Pratchett's Men At Arms when we got him), and Jet.
I have finally decided that, being a southern rabbit, his name will be Bubba Bunny. Say that quickly three times! LOL

I got some nice stash this week too. I am a book-lover, but I do tend to separate books into two categories. One is the "reading" category and the other is the "eye candy" section. I picked up a little bit from both groups on Amazon last week.
Eye Candy:
- French-Inspired Jewelry: Creating with Vintage Beads, Buttons & Baubles
Kaari Meng
- Baltimore Elegance: A New Approach to Classic Album Quilts by Elly Sienkiewicz
- Sew Serendipity: Fresh and Pretty Designs to Make and Wear by Kay Whitt

Here are a couple of pages showing a bit of the style of each book:

I got these books for reading:

I just read The Hidden Language of Business by Margaret Morford last week and I thought that it was great. A lot of us technical people are not necessarily great at networking and the politics in the office and this book is a great tool to help you improve. This is an example - I bet that the vast majority of us have done this at one time or another:

For me it is a good reminder to see this black on white, so that I can tell myself not to do this again! An easy read, structured, AND containing a simple plan to help you learn and practice all 60 rules. I definitely recommend this book and I decided to read her first book too, to see if that is as interesting ad helpful.

This week's score, brought to you by Bubba:

Hard to find Fremme booklet, linen, floss for $22 on e-bay - say no more!

This week's message:
The birds expressed some concern earlier this week that all of you will find Bubba cuter than them, so here are some pics showing off the babies and their make-do amusement part ride (no worries, the fan was not turned on).

Checking out the new weird animal:

This week's surprise:

I forgot our wedding anniversary! Again!!! I think that I have ever only remembered one of them in the 8 years that we have been married... DH and I are the perfect match - we both forgot the first 3 anniversaries. Now I believe that he remembers more on spite - LOL. He is a sweetie! He did tell me that he would have gotten a bouquet with orange roses, but there weren't any. I think that what he gave me is absolutely perfect!

Well, I will probably have to end it here. There are so many things that I would like to share with you, but the laundry is calling for me and I have yet to jump into the shower.

Take care and Happy Stitching,

Ahhh, Saturday!

Hi everyone! As always, thanks so much for all your comments. A lot of you signed up for the give-away and I got a bunch of new followers from all over the world, which is always a thrill. The give-away drawing is scheduled for today, but I will get to that that later tonight. I have popped down to the basement to give a quick summary of the week, both in stitching and in general.

I would also like to thank you so much for all the sweet and interesting comments in regards to the "mixed mess" post. Thanks, I really appreciate it! Please keep in mind that I am still not real savvy when it comes to responding to comments. I am trying, but generally I just pop by your blogs and leave comments there. I hope that works!

We do now have two more contributors (and one in process) and 8 followers at the Brightneedle Blog, so that is really cool. One contributor, Maggee, even posted a picture of her stash a couple of days ago, so we are officially up and running now!
This will be my latest post on that blog; Brightneedle's Button Satchel:

Let me assure you, my hands are not of an abnormally large size, this pouch is just very, very small. The kit came without a photo or dimensions on the front cover, so as usual, I had no clue what I was buying... LOL
As you can imagine, I was a bit surprised (= long nose) when I opened up the package to find a piece of linen that was smaller than my hand to work with! Oh well, at least it meant that it was a quick stitch... A very small project for quite a bit of money, so I would probably not recommend this kit, if that is all right to say out loud - even though I do admit that it is very cute!!! Anyway, how much stuff can I really store in this pouch? Not even a lip-gloss... :-o
If you do decide to invest in the kit, be aware of the fact that the size is pretty much exactly as large as it needs to be, so take care when placing your stitch area. It has to be placed pretty much in the exact position that was intended for it, or you won't have any extra linen to work with in the assembly step.

BTW, the French manicure in the photo above is that "gel stuff" that I wrote about months ago. Still love it; the photo shows how it looks more than 2 weeks after having it done - impressive huh!?

Since we are on the subject of collaboration boards; I have finally gotten around to posting my first Christmas project over at the All Year Christmas SAL blog. I'll post the pics here too, but don't be shy - feel free to hop over the the Xmas SAL blog and check it out! :-)
Here it is; the Noel Quadrielle:

I decided to do the assembly a little bit different than how the instructions are written. Instead of using just one piece of interfacing, I opted to go for 4 separate pieces. I figured that it would be easier to get four crisp corners that way and I do believe that it did make the assembly a bit easier.
I am sure that most of you are well aware of this trick, but I do recall the mixed duh-and aha-moment when I first learned it; using a scanner to get perfect templates.
Scan back of stitched piece:

Pin cut-out scans to interface, card-board or any iece needed for assembly:

Iron corresponding piece of interfacing to back of stitched piece (remove scanned cut-out before ironing):

Finish as usual:

I have been on a finishing kick lately and I finally framed a Brightneedle piece that I stitched back in 2008. Oddly enough, I get more stressed out by all the stitched-but-not-finished projects that I have lying around than all the kits, charts and materials that are waiting for some TLC. The story about the frame is pretty neat, but I already wrote about that on the Brightneedle blog...

Four years after stitching the Sweetheart Tree Happy Birthday Knob Knocker, I finally finished it into an actual knob knocker using my newly arrived Far Far Away 3 fabric stash (yay!). I was lazy and used an elastic type lace-trim to finish the edges. I am not so sure that I like the hanger made with the lace, so I may have to rip out and modify a bit once I get a better idea.

Just a quick note about the fabrics. If you like me love the larger Snow-white prints, do not buy the fat quarters but do invest in the 1/2 or, even better, full yards. The reason why is that all my three Snow-white FQs were cut so that the main motifs ended up on the edges and the majority were snipped in half. I still love this fabbie, but I can't really do as much with it as I had envisioned. At least now I do have a better idea about color and size, so that will help for future orders. Let me know if you would like to see an example and I'll post or shoot an e-mail with a pic of my FQs.

Another finish; a small harvest bouquet kit from Fremme mounted on a Clara Weaver phone book that I found on e-bay for cheap a while back. I don't really need two phone books, so I have to figure out who to give one of them to (interested anyone?). I am pretty pleased with the way that it turned out, even though I went with a fairly bold printed paper for the back.

Not a whole lot going on here on the stitching front. I have pulled back out a sampler form the Scarlet Letter, the EH 1669 Reproduction Sampler, that I will try to spend some quality time with for a while. I am estimating that I am about 1/6 of the way there... (I love (not so much) how I always manage to get bird-seeds in all my pics, btw...)

My grand new beginning looks incredibly pathetic with maybe a total of max 30 stitches, so no use posting that sad story here...
However, I did bite the bullet and got the over-one stitching done for my Lucet class in October. Now I have a bunch of pre-finishing steps that I really should hop on board with, but it looks so complicated that I am a little turned off... ever felt that way?

Last, but not least - introducing our latest family member (as always, excuse the state of the floor. Believe it or not, DH vacuumed it less than 24 hrs ago...):

I am so excited - I have never had a bunny before, so if anyone has any special tricks and tips to share, I would be all ears! I am not sure what to name him yet. I have been thinking either Bobby, Chocolate or Kanin (the latter means rabbit in Swedish). All my name ideas are pretty lame, so if you have a suggestion for a name, don't hesitate to leave me a comment. That poor bunny needs a name!
He is a real snuggle-bun and the people at the pet-store says that he is really social with people but he does not like other bunnies. I have been cuddling with him like crazy and he doesn't seem to mind in the least. He is also pretty curious and hops around and sniffs at everything, so we will have to bunny-safe the living-room now (I hear that they like to gnaw on electrical cords and such, so we have our work cut out for us in that department). The birds are not real interested, which is pretty much ideal.
I love him more than I love my new shoes and that says something, 'cuz my new kicks are pretty cool!

Can you believe that I got even more spoiled than shoes and bunnies this week!? Hip*Hip gave me a couple of charts as a thanks for having fun last weekend. So sweet of her and absolutely not necessary! I love both of the charts, but the favorite is the May I chart from All Through the Night (which I have been admiring on-line with my hand hovering over the Buy Now icon...)

Thanks for spoiling me, Hip*Hip!!!! :-)

Well, time to run off. There are drawings to prepare and bunnies to cuddle with. I am planning on making some Patera jewelry tonight too - if i can get my printer to work, that is...

Thanks so much for swinging by! Have a great weekend and Happy Stitching,