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Happy Monday (I have 2 hrs left here...) too all blog-peeps out there!  I hope that you had a great weekend and that you had to clean a lesser amount of bird-cages that I did.  DH is out on business travels again, so I spent a long Sunday cleaning the house.  It was actually quite enjoyable and all the critters have had fun scrapping everything down while I was away at work today.  The state of our house strives towards entropy much faster than it does in the rest of the universe, I have noticed.  Well, enough with the cleaning monologue and the nerdy science jokes...

I almost fell off the couch today when I saw that I have 99 followers.  I am so glad and so humbled that 99 people have signed up to follow this adventure.  I truly appreciate it more than I can express.  

So.... I really should sit down and think about a fun give-away.  I will see what I can come up with.

I did also get my first ever blog award - I am thrilled!  Heather, from It's Geek To Me, e-mailed to let me know that she has given me the Liebster Blog Award!  Thanks so much Heather, this will be fun!

So now I have to do the following (shamelessly copying the fine-print directly from Heather's blog here):

"Liebster is a German word meaning favourite, dearest or beloved. The Liebster is awarded by bloggers to other new bloggers who have fewer than 200 followers, to help spread the word about their blogs and to help them gain wider recognition.

The Liebster award comes with four conditions that each recipient must satisfy when accepting.

1. Choose 5 up-and-coming blogs with less than 200 followers to award the Liebster to

2. Show your thanks to the blogger who gave you the award by linking back to them.

3. Post the award on your blog. List the bloggers you are giving the award to with links to their sites. Leave comments on their blog so they know about the award.

4. Share 5 random facts about yourself that people don't know about you.

So, here are 5 of my Fave-Under-200 blogs (Hmm, should I have checked that they will accept the award first maybe?  Dunno, I am new to this.  Well, I'll take the chance!)

Here they are, in no specific order:
-  Stitching with Kittens!  The blog title says it all!  LOL  She has stitched plenty of fabulous pieces - I can only dream to get pieces on this level of advancement accomplished one day.
-  Diane at Nan's Needlework Notions.  Diane is so talented - her finishes are absolutely perfect, not to mention that she has a knack for picking out the cutest designs.  Right now, she is showing off some Easter decorations that are to die for!  Nan is also the host of The All Year Long Christmas Stitch-A-Long.
-  Ruth of The Musing Badger.  Stitching and reading - can't get much better!  She is participating in the Pratchett Reading Challenge 2012 and check out her gorgeous Beatrix Potter - love those colors!
-  Marsha of Everybody Loved Clark.  She just came back from a trip to Arizona that looks fantastic AND she got to visit the Attic - lucky girl!  Absolutely beautiful stitching is not the only craft Marsha does, but she makes soaps too.  And she loves bees, which is why I usually refer to her as Bzz*Bzz*Bee...
-  Blue Star Stitcher shares photos of the neighbor wildlife (including love-birds!) and she has a huge heart that she opens for needlework that need an adoptive home.  Do you ever think about what will happen with your stash and finishes in the future?  We can only hope that there are more people like Blue Star out there.

Well, the next one is trickier.  5 random facts coming up:
1)  I love hot-dogs with mustard!  I don't really eat them especially often, but I love'em!
2)  I "almost" became a LNS owner a few years back.  My friend Pink tried to talk me into buying a store that was closing down with her.  Luckily, we decided not to and then the economy tanked, but it was a fun dream.
3)  I love opera - I wish I could sing like that.  When I was in high-school, I used to sing the aria of the Queen of the Night in the stair-wells while running between classes.  I was not half-bad... htne I became an engineer (read between the lines here).
4)  My dream house is a southern Victorian wood house with painted details, wood-work like an ice-cream cake, and a wrap-around porch.
5)   I miss the ocean pretty much daily!

So, I finally decided to start on a new "official" project and pulled the Shepherd and Shepherdess miniatures out of the stash.  I started with the tricky shepherd and his chubby dog - pony... ? .. you tell me!  The stitching is a bit slow, since it is over-one on a fairly larger count linen, but is does look sweet.  Not looking forward to the large, green hill though.  The chart is a bit tricky to read.  It is hand-drawn and the green and red in the honeysuckle border are a "V" and an up-side-down "V" respectively.  I am not a fan of ripping over-one... LOL I got a bit stitched, but then it got put away in a corner, so that I could spend some time on the EMS sampler before the April part would be published.

I did manage to get part 3 done; the left-hand side of the basket and the blue flower sprig were the assignments for last month.  Since this pic, I have down-loaded part 4 and the fun continues!

 

The is ending up much smaller than I had envisioned.  (I would recommend actually stitching this on a larger count, if you decide to work on this piece.)  It is petite, not a whole lot longer than 12 inches, but I love it!  Check out the crazy amount of colors that go into this beauty.  Piles and piles of DMC.  Luckily, I am stitching with one strand, so it is not too bad.  Yesterday I managed to finish the pretty little brown bird in the upper right corner and the upper flower border is finally done.  That little bird is too pretty!

Next part will be the one with the mushroom.  I am trying to come up with something else to stitch instead.  I mean, I like mushrooms and all, but maybe not in this sampler.  I think that I did find a nice butterfly that can come and live here instead.  any other suggestions would be of great interest too!

Since I am hopelessly behind in my photography, I can only show you this pic of the "half-baked" CRC carrot ornies.  I can report that all 12 motifs from the three booklets have been successfully stitched up and they are eagerly awaiting the finishing party.  There really are no excuses..  I have all the mat-board parts needed, I picked out my backing fabric..  I am still contemplating whether I should finish the edges with cording or with beads.  And am I efficient enough (read "lazy") to use the glue-gun instead of sewing each ornie together?  Plus, I do need to pick out a suitable ribbon somewhere.... decisions, decisions.  I am excited about adding all the beads and bling, though!  I guess that will be my carrot!  (Bad pun alert - heheheh.)

 

(Note how cheap I am with my linen - each precut from Silverneedle was meant for one ornament.  In other words, I have enough pieces to stitch each ornament at least one more time.  Maybe next year.. :-))

Here is an example of adventures waiting to happen when you live with a bunch of shredders.  This poor blue bird doesn't even know what hit it, while peacefully sitting on its nest.  The card-board, linen, floss, and the glass-beads (!) have all been eaten up by one or two of my little angles.  My reactions are surprising even to myself sometimes - I could tell that DH was so sorry when he fished it up from behind the couch and showed it to me, but I just shrugged and started thinking about possible way to salvage the piece.  Luckily, I generally enjoy the process of stitching and making more than decorating and displaying, if that makes sense.  Anyway, I am thinking about making one of those pretty little pin-pillows that are so in right now - you know the ones that have a piece of cotton sewn onto the linen on the front (yep, I know that my description totally blows, so check out these examples on Karen's Handiwork blog instead.)

 

I am very pleased to report that no angel has showed any sign of tummy aches after the disappearance of the glass-beads.

The spring bulbs are almost bloomed out in my garden now.  This pretty pink double-petaled tulip enjoys the mild spring, together with some neighboring fuchsia single-petals.

I managed to get all the pansies and the violets in the ground too.  the ones in the pots look fine, but the plants that I sat in the ground don't look pleased at all.  Life if tough, little violets!

Spring is in full swing indoors too.  The birds are getting anxious about building nests and they have started to court each other.  They strut about, fluff their neck feathers and bob back and forth - all to impress each other; scaring away the competition while impressing the potential partner across the room.  I know that they aim to look super cool and majestic, but mummy just laughs and thinks that they are the cutest little down-balls ever.  Mothers!  So they are absolutely adorable, but a great deal less easy to handle.  They get very territorial and aggressive during this time, so I have grown a good collection of bite-marks on my right index finger during the past couple of weeks.

Here they are - guarding their club house with talons and beaks... and dirty looks.

Well, it is bed-time yet again.  I will try to round up Bubba so that we all can go to bed.  (That sounds easier than it is - it generally takes flipping over both couches in the living room upside down while trying to herd her towards her room.  Well, I'd better stop talking about it and actually start doing it.)
Have a great week and Happy Stitching,

Blue Ribbon Sewing Box Class - Travel Report!

Hi and Happy Spring to all!  Thanks for all your sweet comments about the Blue Ribbon Box, they mean so much to me.  I have been dreaming about taking the class ever since I saw Sherri's model about four or five years ago.  I can still not believe that I have my very own sitting at home!  :-)

So - finally, here is the travel report that I promised to share with you!  I took a vacation day the Friday before class in order to make the 6+ hr drive up to Northern Ohio more pleasant and less stressful.  The weather was fabulous (very lucky, since it poured buckets the day before) and I managed to get myself and all the junk I was dragging along out of the house right on time. 

We had made plans that I would pick up L-bug on the way up.  The meeting spot was just a few exits from the Fairfield IKEA exit!  Since I was doing quite a bit better on time than I had hoped, I had to stop in to look for some Cloudberry Jam! 

Unfortunately, I got there about fifteen minutes before the food section was to be open and since I was on a schedule, there was no time to hang around and wait to browse for food.  I did at least find out that there is no Cloudberry Jam to be bought this year, since the harvest had been so bad ...  If you haven't had the chance to taste cloudberries you are in for a treat!  The reason why cloudberries are so expensive and tricky to find is because you can't easily grow them, but they have to be picked out in the wild.  Add to that the fact that they prefer to grow far up north and that they only grow in the wet-lands, so they are hard to get to.  The flowers only carry one berry each and the flowers are not self-germinating since the flower is either male or female.  These factors together with the heavenly taste (generally acquired with age) are probably the reasons why the clodberry has been crowned the "gold of the north" in Sweden. 

 

So I left IKEA with a nice photo of a clear blue sky with the Swedish flag flanked by the US and the Ohio ditto.  Very pretty!

L-bug joined me prepared with a list of stitch-stores that we could swing by on the way up.  We only made it to one store (we shouldn't find the street for the one in Columbus on the GPS), but it was wonderful - Crafty Ewe &  Framing Too.  It is always so much fun to check out the LNS wall models and Crafty Ewe was no exception.

 The new and hot stuff from the Nashville market was on display.  Hard to ignore...

I have never seen linen displayed like this before.  Very cool and easy to find.  This was not all, though.  When I asked the friendly lady who was manning the store about 28 count Newport Red/Natural linen by Zweigart, she pulled out a large bin full of different Newports.  Soooo cool!  I got my piece, that will be used for SamSarah's R is for Robin (I hope that I will be able to start stitching on that in a month or so - it is just adorable!  And yes, I did get the button pack, complete with worm-buttons!  LOL)..

The store has a fun mix of all you can imagine, including all these softies with stitchable bibs.  The pig is just too cute!

There was a huge floss wall, piles and piles of frames and a bunch of adorable accessories.  As you can see, L-bug was as pleased with the selection as I was!

As mentioned in the post before this, we were greeted by kittens when we arrived at my In-Laws.  My MIL welcomed us with open arms and four 1-week old kittens.  Two of them did not even have their eyes open yet!  The were all just dropped off at the animal shelter where she volunteers.  The staff told her that they'll survive if they survive, but MIL didn't like that and brought them home so that she could bottle-feed them every few hours.  She named them Eeney, Meeney, Miney and Moe.  LOL  I was pretty sure that Eeney would not make it over night, but last we spoke, he was better than fine, so that is great!  It's not for nothing that MIL was crowned Volunteer of the Month at the shelter last month!

All four are boys, by the way.  FIL was clearly not thrilled about all the extra pets that landed in the living-room, but as long as they don't stay for too long he'll stand it.

This is Meeney making it out of the basket onto the slick sofa.

After a visit to the lake - it was incredibly cold and windy! - and dinner at the Golf Club, it was straight to be to gather energy for an early morning and a long day of stitching. 

This is our hostess for our Patricks Woods weekend, Rose.  She is the sweetest lady and had planned and taken care of everything you can possible think of, from food, to payment and shipment of pre-stitch kits.  

I loved that we started off both days with a really nice breakfast (I am still in awe) and let me just say that her egg-casserole is fabulous!  She shared the recipe, so it'll be real interesting to see if I can duplicate the yumminess.  I must also say that I was so impressed with the help she got from her husband.  Not only did he sleep in a recliner down in the basements (together with the cats, since Sherri is allergic to cats) to make room for some extra over-night guests, but he also helped in the kitchen, heating up food and loading the dish-washer.  I have a feeling that my DH would be MIA in a similar situation at our house... just sayin'!

Rose is a very accomplished stitcher and has displayed many of her samplers around the house.  The sampler she is standing next to was the first she ever stitched!  Quite a challenging first sampler, don't you think?

 

Oh, and did I mention that Rose is a published designer!?  Shows up that I have stitched a number of designs from her company Tomorrow's Antiques.  We got to see all of them in person during the weekend (Rose's friends insisted that she'd show them to us - I am so glad that they did), so now I will have to get the kits I don't have - especially the snow-flake!

I also want to tell you that some of the other ladies spoiled us with sweet gifts that went with the theme of each class.  We got buttons and button-headed pins during the Sunday class and we were spoiled with a beautiful and very useful home-designed and printed note-book for the Blue Ribbon Sewing Box class.  I don't have a photo of the treats now, but I'll try to show you in an upcoming post. 

 

We did also get to spend time with the sweet dogs of the house.  The house rule is that Ozzie is not allowed on the couch.  He gets away with a technicality; Rose is under him, not the couch!  

 

Below is a photo of the beautiful and canine lady of the house.  She got abandoned after she was too old to race on the tracks, so Rose and her husband rescued her.  She was a great champion in her days and won several racing competitions.  Now she is 14 years old and lives the comfortable life.  Rose told me that she has run off from home twice and both times she was found running around the horse tracks!  Racing is obviously in her blood and her backbone. 

 

I am sooo jealous of Rose's fantastic sun-room.  I want a sun-room!  I love the way it has been decorated - Isn't this the coolest shelf!?  I am a sucker for stained glass and this is such a neat idea.

 

Enjoying breakfast in the sun-room!

Rose gave me the green lights to show her samplers and stitched pieces to you, so sit back and enjoy!  

This is an old Birds of a Feather sampler (Happy Hearts Sampler).

Another classic BOAF; Sally Spencer.

This is another very cool display idea - this reversible sampler has been hung in a doorway, so that you can admire both sides.  (Rose has strategically placed her large ott-light below, so heads are spared that way.)

The sampler wall in the sun-room:

The beautiful boxes, idea courtesy of The Twisted Stitcher.

Display case with all kinds of goodies.  Merry Cox, Lauren Sauer, Leslie Rudnicki, and many more designers' pieces have been gathered here.  Note the pretty Liberty Hill box on the floor.

Our second day carried with is an extra treat in the form of Jane and her pickle tree.  What is so incredible about this tree is not all the beautiful ornaments, but the fact that Jane made all of them (except one) all by herself.  She does have a much more extensive collection at home; this tree is only for the small pickles.  It looks very festive, don't you think?  (I found this article about the myth of the pickle, by the way.  I have no clue whether the contents of the article is accurate or not, but an interesting read nevertheless.)

One of many beautifully beaded pickles:

A large button pickle, another beaded version, one made from green bottle glass and one made with felt:

Semi-precious stone and a felt pickle with some gorgeous beaded leaves in the foreground.  The latter ornament was made by Jane after a beading class were she learned how to make these leaves.

Another button pickle, complete with curly tendrils:

The tree was admired by all.

As you can see, the weekend was wonderful.  We were welcome into the gang with open arms.  The ladies were all so sweet and they are good friends.  They meet and stitch once a week and they really have a great thing going!  Oh, how I wish that I lived closer! Especially when I was informed that Lauren Sauer comes to the stitch-group every now and then too!  Wow!  I hope that I will get to see these delightful ladies sometime in a not too distance future.

Once again it is well past my bed-time so I'd better get off this computer.  I just wanted to share some of the beautiful things we were treated to over our class weekend.

Take care and hang in there - it is almost weekend!
Happy Stitching,

An Early Spring in 2012!

I don't know about you, but I am cautiously optimistic - it seems that spring is here!  We enjoyed a fabulous weekend in the upper 70s with a wonderful summer thunderstorm late Saturday night.  I fell asleep with the window open enjoying the fresh, cool air, the scent of moist earth, and the soothing sounds of rain falling softly on grass and leaves.  The birds are singing, the neighborhood kids are out biking and I feel like I have the energy of ten right now - I love this time!

Earlier in the week, I got the Blue Ribbon Box pulled together after my fun and well-needed break with some smaller stitches.  This box is such a beautiful and delicate project and I must admit that I am astonished at the short time it took both to stitch and to assemble!  If you ever get the chance to take this class, please do!  You do not have to be intimidated in the least, I promise!  

Here it is, in the bright spring sun, perched among the grape hyacinths.

 

A beautiful scrim piece by Marcy Pumphret adorns the front of the box.

 

In the last photo you can see the pretty little mattress pin-cushion better.  This little cushion is probably my favorite part of the entire box!  I splurged and bought the ruler and the accompanying thread winder scrims too.  Right now, this piece is my treasure!  I am already pondering how to make sure that it is kept away from beaks, claws and elbows...  LOL

We spent a good deal of time weeding the garden during Saturday;  Note the beer below.  Wherever the beer goes, DH will follow...  LOL  After 2-3 hrs straight weeding, I have to admit that there is still not much of a difference.  The weeds really got a good jump-start this year.

Our tiny magnolia bush planted last year seems to be doing well, which is nice since we lost two magnolia trees during last years terrible yoyo-spring.

It may feel a tad intimidated right next to the neighbors fantastic magnolia tree.  It almost looks like pink snow on the ground where all the petals have fallen.  I am so glad that the old neighbors moved out - they were nice enough and all that jazz, but they insisted on treating their poor magnolia like a topiary and cut the crown into a ball each year.  You can tell that it is happy to be set free and to finally be allowed to look like a tree and not a gigantic pink lolly pop.  (I am pretty sure that all the other trees around here were smirking at it...)

  

Do you find it hard to pass up on all the colorful pansies and violas in the store this time of the year?  I do, which means that I ended up getting a good deal more than I know where to dig down.  The orange pansies are my favorite, but they seem to be tricky to get hold of.  I have only found space for about two thirds so far - I am hoping that inspiration will hit tomorrow after work!

After digging in the garden (and impressing DH with the largest worm ever!) I had to do some spring decorating at home.  DH did one of his gigantic bi-yearly furniture move-around.  The bird cages are now situated next to the living-room windows and on a safe(r) distance from the spool cabinet, so I am taking a chance here.  I realized after setting this up this little display and working in the yard that spring in Kentucky is incredibly colorful, so this display looks a bit bland...  Oh well.  Guess that means that I have to stitch up something more colorful for next spring.

Speaking of spring and bulbs and so on - I am a big fan of Thistle Threads, so I am not real sure how I missed Tricia's very pretty tulip freebie on the Thistle Threads site (see the two "pages" on the top right?).  It is one of those cool historical needlework applique pieces and the instructions look very good, as always for TT projects.   I may even dare to try this one out one day!

I do promise to give all of you a full account of last weekends trip later this week.  Until then, here are some pictures of kittens that my MIL is taking care of for the animal-shelter she volunteers at.  Aren't they adorable!?  More about them in my next post!

As always, thank you so much for stopping by and have a wonderful week.  I hope that you get a chance to enjoy spring as much as I do and if not yet, I hope that spring will come to you soon!

Happy Spring Stitching,