And one more thing

I've shamelessly stolen this idea from Yoyo's blog. Happy New Year Friends!

Oh...and I forgot to tell you this

I want to end this year with a smile, so I'll tell you this story.

Having your MIL staying with you for a week can be ummm... Interesting. So on Sunday I was folding wash on the couch in the living room. Usually I fold in my bedroom, but the Steeler game was on and so I didn't give it a thought. Well, I was folding a load of dark wash and folding and folding and not thinking anything about it, and we were talking and watching the game, when I came to one of my exercise bras:


And I started to fold it.

Evidently, the MIL was closely watching what I was folding, because she says..."So Lee, is David wearing thongs now?" Cool as a freakin' cucumber.

I coulda died. Dave has a nice build, but....c'mon.

It was a MIL moment to remember.

2009 Finishes

Here's a slideshow of my 2009 Finishes. Some of these were stitched a while ago but only just finish-finished this year, so I thought they deserved a spot on the slideshow.

I have to say...I was surprised by the number of things I had completed.

Happy New Year to all of you!

I want to be 70 and have a neat party, too!

I had a wonderful time last night.  George's daughters put on a wonderful birthday party for him and I think that George enjoyed himself to no end.  He didn't open my Canoeing Santa gift, (invitation said "No Gifts", but do I care?  NO.), but I'm sure he'll get a kick out of it.

Here's something very neat.  His daughters' husbands actually home-brewed two special beers for him - a light ale and a scotch ale - and created really professional labels for the bottles that were personalized for George.  They had pictures of George and lots of funny and sweet sentiments on the labels.  I've never heard of anything like that.  Pretty cool, right?  And the beer was really good!

I have some busy-work to get through this morning, then I hope to get my needle back into Lo How a Rose again.  I haven't picked that up in a couple of weeks and I'd love to get the stitching finished soon.  In a perfect world, that would mean before the New Year.  In reality....that means before Easter!

Good News and Many Thanks and a Bit of Stitching

First of all, thanks so very much to all of you for your prayers and your words of support while I worried and worried about my MIL last week.  Every time I read one of your comments, I could literally feel the comfort that you offered.  I completely mean that.  It was a physical relief.

Have you ever had a moment or a feeling that you're receiving grace?  That's what you all gave me.  That moment when you just breathe and let the comfort wash over you and then you know that you can move forward and everything will be ok no matter what.  So you may not think that the words that you type have that big of an impact, but I mean to tell you that they do.  So thanks to each and every one of you. 

And someone - I don't know who - sent me a Secret Santa gift (a gift cert. to eHandcrafts) the day before Christmas.  Girls...I was shocked.  I had been busting my butt for a couple of days with caring for my MIL and feeling like the entire family Christmas thing was falling on my shoulders and dealing with Dave's extra work hours.  Oh, and the impending ice storm was just the frosting on the cake.  I was hardly sleeping and had been in constant motion since Sunday. 

WELL, when I sat down at the computer before supper on Christmas Eve and looked at my email, I couldn't believe it.  I almost wept. I mean, I read your blogs, too and I know that we all have our problems and worries lately.  Kids (young and old), aging parents, PITA jobs or even joblessness...So I know that whoever sent this probably has worries of their own.  But they put aside their troubles and thought of me and did something so kind just at a time when I needed it the most. 

So I don't know who did this, but thank you from the bottom of my heart.

And as for my MIL...

We brought my MIL home from the hospital last Tuesday and I'm happy to tell you that her confusion seemed to disappear after a very, very short time. She slept well and completely each night, got some strength back, and little by little took steps to take care of herself each day. Then yesterday she told us that she was ready to go home and Dave and I felt pretty comfortable with that.

So today we packed her things and went to get some groceries and I took her home. We'll be checking in on her each day for the rest of the week and if she's having trouble, we'll bring her back here.

It's been a stressful week, especially with a holiday in the middle of it and with Dave having to work extra because of another pharmacist's vacation, but we made it through and I'll tell you what....I'm almost glad that this happened. It's been a wake-up call for us. Aging parents are something that we don't like to think about and so we just, well, we just don't think about it and that means that we don't always plan for it very well. Dave and I both see that we absolutely must plan for her care and we also see that we shouldn't expect help from any other family members. (His brother and sister-in-law did not lift a finger. Selfish? Let me tell you.)

I feel like I could sleep for a week now. Except my neighbor has just turned 70 and there's no way I'd want to miss his party tonight.  George is super. In fact, at 70, his "age-ness is finally catching up to his coolness." But I want to go especially because I want to give him this!

George builds custom made wooden canoes and they are works of art. I hope he likes my attempts at coolness....

Here is another quickie PS finish.  This year's Christmas freebie.  I had so little time to stitch this week, and I used the simplest of finishes because I really wanted to get this onto my little cross stitch ornie tree. 

Actually, a quick nap may be just the thing.  After all, I have to keep up with George tonight!

Houseguest

Well, it looks like my MIL will be coming here for the time being, starting tomorrow.  So tonight will be spent getting Colleen's room ready for MIL and moving Colleen into the home office/sewing room, which incidentally looks like a paper and fabric clutter bomb has exploded in it. 

Then we'll re-evaluate this situation at the start of the new year, because Dave and I both agree that  this shouldn't be permanent.  And even though I think it's not permanent, why-oh-why do I feel myself panicking already?

Maybe it's because since the summer, I've enjoyed my "alone time" so much.  That whole empty-nest thing was pretty short lived and over the past few months I've been very happy to have time to myself devoted to my stitching and reading.  Everybody else in my family had their self-indulgences and I finally had mine again, too.  I'm panicking because I want to hold on to that and I don't know if it's possible.

Selfish?  Probably.  But I'm trying to be up front about it. 

OK, I'm tired of talking and writing about this.  I'm moving on and my next posts will be about things that are more fun and interesting!

No stitching today.

No stitching to write about today.

My MIL has been in the hospital since last Saturday and is having health problem after problem.  It's not made any better by the short days and her tendency to "sundown" once it gets dark.  We're worried that this is has fundamentally changed her living situation.  She's lived alone up till now, but Doc says that she shouldn't live alone anymore, and that could mean some big changes around here.  I try not to worry, but after I met with her doctor this morning, it's hard to think of anything else. 


But what does the   Baz Luhrmann Sunscreen Song song say?

"Know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum."

So we'll just wait and see what happens as we travel down this road again.  

It's killin' me

I can't stand it.  It's like when you were little and someone started to tickle you and it was funny at first and then it became torture and you laughed and screamed STOP IT at the same time.

You bloggers.  It's all your fault.  For the past several months, you have been turning out some stunning work and I get obsessed over it and start making lists of all of the things I want to have.  And you shop owners, too?  You have just as much culpability as the bloggers, because now about eleventy thousand of you are having these big sales.    But do you know how much stitchy shopping I've done this year??  Good Lord.  I may only have a few WIP's, but I have enough things kitted up to last me through the next few years.  Maybe decades.

Please stop.  It hurts.

Another Christmas Surprise

And here's another Christmas surprise.  A while back, Anna was writing about some quilts from her mother that were in varying stages of being finished.  We traded a couple of emails back and forth and I couldn't believe it when she offered me this red, white and green Irish chain quilt.

It's about 90% quilted already, and her mother has worked the tiniest, most even quilting stitches.  I'm so excited to get this into my lap this winter and finish it up!  Well...actually, I think I'm going to have to practice my quilting stitch for a bit before I take a needle to this.  I'm a little rusty and I fear that my quilting stitches will be really BIG and clumsy looking at first, especially if you compare them to Mom Stitch Bitch's stitches.  We can't have that.

Yes, there is a Santa Claus

Except that her name is Sandy! (no blog, but posts over at the LHN Ornament SAL) Look what arrived in Monday's mail. It's as if I wrote a letter to Santa Claus (except that in real life I'd probably get coal in my stocking this year).

Needless to say, I'm dropping ALL of my other WIP's and starting this. When something this nice happens...when someone reads your blog where you moan about out-of-print things that you're wanting and then is this generous....well, you just get out your needle and floss and you get to it!

I may have another Christmas surprise to tell you about tomorrow, too!

Last day in NYC

Saturday was our last day in New York.  We did the Uptown tour loop and that started in Times Square and took us around Central Park, into Harlem, along Riverside Park and past several Museums. The photo are  the Hudson River, the Apollo Theater and the Guggenheim Museum.

We were leaving just as it got dark, and snapped one last photo of Macy's before we got back on the train to pick up our car in Jersey City and head back home.

There are a few things that I think I'll always remember about this trip.  (I'm not going to talk about the cold.  BTDT and it was December, after all) First of all, I've never seen so many people in my life.  I was a little overwhelmed on Thursday night, but those crowds were nothing compared to the Saturday crowd.  There were places in Macy's where we were literally shoulder-to-shoulder and back-to-front with people.  It was only slightly less crowded out on the sidewalks.  So I'm glad that our weekend started on Thursday and we had a bit of a chance to acclimate.  If we had started our trip on Saturday, I would have been a basket case.  (I found myself wondering how many people have meltdowns in those situations?)

Even among such crowds, there were people that stood out.  We saw shouting arguments on sidewalks spring up from nowhere and neither person was going to give an inch.   We were kind of a captive audience during one, standing and waiting for the light to change while these two men went at it behind us.  It was so uncomfortable for us that it was comical.  On the other hand, every single person who we asked to help us could not have been more kind and helpful.  I hate to pick on Macy's, but it's a good example because it was bedlam.  Yet even in that crush, the sales clerks and security people were all (seriously...all) cheerful and ready to help us.  And we encountered that attitude everywhere we went.

We enjoyed our bus tours, but seriously underestimated the time that we needed for each tour.  The whole hop-on-hop-off idea sounds appealing, but only if you want to do a quick stop and walk around a particular area then get on the next bus.  I thought we could get three tour loops in during two days, but there was no way that we had time for that.  So we only had two tours (besides the Thurs night Holiday Lights tour) - Uptown and Downtown.  We couldn't fit in the Brooklyn tour.  Regardless, I'm glad that we did the tours.  We were completely unfamiliar with NYC and these tours gave us a decent look at the highlights of the city.  So now we have ideas about what we'd like to see and do when we plan our next trip and we'll be comfortable enough to get around on our own. 

Yup...I said next trip.  We'll be back.  More likely it'll be in better weather, like in the spring or fall, but we'll certainly go back.

Other highlights:
1.  Entire stores with nothing but trims and ribbons.  Incredible.
2.  New York Cheesecake....to die for
3.  Seeing groups of Santa Claus's walking down the street to catch a bus. 
4.  Talking about family finances with a street vendor.  I know.  I have to learn to stop talking to everyone.
5.   The young woman who ran onto the train, stopping in front of me, face to face, just three inches from my nose and then whipping out her phone to send text messages completely oblivious to my uncontrollable laughing.
6.  Seeing the sunset just behind the Statue of Liberty.  Stunning.

I did the tiniest amount of stitching in the car on Thursday.  Here's Sew Red (I had only stitched the "b" before the trip).  It was a good car project.  Easy to see and no color changes!

We officially lost our minds for three days

Touring New York City in frigid weather with windchills that made it feel like the temperature was down in the teens and during the height of the Christmas rush is most certainly insane. And what do certifiably crazy people do while they're doing certifiably crazy things? They take pictures.

Here we are on Crazy Bus #1 - the Holiday Lights tour of NYC. The wind was blowing a gale but we wanted good pictures so we sat on the top floor of the bus, NOT under the plastic cover. So we could get good pictures.  Because the choice between great pictures and frostbite is a no brainer when you're a NYC tourist.

Here are a few:

 Times Square

Lincoln Center

Macy's

 The four other hale and hearty souls sitting up top and outside hung in there with us, too.
 

 Day Two was just as cold - maybe even colder.  But this time we knew to sit under the plastic dome on the bus.  Cold, but sheltered from the wind.  And we got off the bus and walked a good bit, too.

Here we are near City Hall and those are real working gas lamps.

We "hopped on and off" the Downtown tour bus all day, finishing the night with a trip to Rockefeller Center, then we walked all the way back to Macy's to pick up a Jim Shore Santa (at a fabulous price, by the way) Then a late supper near 33rd and Broadway and back to the hotel.

I'll have Day 3 pictures tomorrow and I'll tell you about the crush of humanity in NYC on a Saturday, just two weeks before Christmas....

D is for December. And Driving

I made a quick trip to Wooster today to get Ms. Colleen.  Her last final was finished at 4PM and we were on the road by 4:40.  Luckily, I didn't run into any snow or rain on the drive home.  Every time (except once) that we've been in Ohio this year it's been either snowing or raining, so today's drive home felt easy as pie.

Before college girl was ready, I met up with Barb for some lunch, shopping and girl talk.  I got to see her BOAF Bitter Flower completed.  Stunning!  And she had started a Bent Creek design on a linen and silk blend fabric.  The fabric was really - oh - luxurious.  Can't wait to see more.

Tomorrow we're headed to New York for what promises to be the world's fastest visit to NYC.  Dave is off Thursday, Friday and Saturday so we decided to just pack a bag and go because after this he's working straight through...as from Dec. 14 - 29 with only one day off.  I hope to be able to post, what with two family members who can't go anywhere without laptops.  So till then....

OOP Woes

I'm sure that I'm not the only one who cries over new-to-me designs that I eventually find are out of print (OOP, in ebay speak)

I completely fell in love with Brightneedle's Lo How a Rose design when I saw that several stitchers were working on it last year. Not only is it my favorite Christmas hymn, I love it's style and colors.  But last year, if you didn't already have this Better Homes and Gardens book in your stash, it was difficult to find. There were ebay sellers but...Good God....they wanted $35 for it. I mean, if the book had been chock full of designs that I loved, sure...no problem.  But this was really the only design that most of us wanted.  For months I kept my eyes peeled at flea markets, used book stores, and yard sales.  I'd spy a yard sale with lots of crafts or newly opened used book store and start twitching like a crack addict. But I had no luck after several months and eventually I gave up.

Until about three weeks ago, when I saw it on the Amazon site for sale.  Good condition, and a costing a whopping 99 cents.  Altogether with shipping?  About five bucks.  Score one for me!

It's a joy to stitch.  I just wish I had more time.  And here's where I am as of today.

Now my next OOP search is for an older Prairie Schooler Santa freebie card. It's a design of Santa paddling a canoe and was released to promote a leaflet called Santa Rides. For someone who lives on a lake? Well, what's not to love?

Sure, I've seen it on ebay. This "free" card is priced at $7.50. Oh yeah. And free shipping. Very generous at a whopping 44 cents.  Seriously.  I'd pay a few dollars, but I'm not crazy.

Ah well.  I'll keep watching ebay and see if something less highway robbery-like turns up after the holidays are over.  Meanwhile, I'll congratulate myself for being so reasonable and hate myself for the very same reason.

Coffee, chocolate and a day stitching with a friend

Last Friday was fantastic!  Carol and I met at a Starbucks in Canonsburg for some mid-morning stitching and coffee.  And talking.  Lots of talking!  (If you're not familiar with Carol's blog, head on over to Stitching Dreams and prepare to be amazed by her year long Ornament-a-Week project.)  And lucky me....Carol had stitched this wonderful PS Santa for me to hang on my tree.

He's beautifully stitched and finished and matches my house and my tree perfectly.  In fact, he may be a permanent fixture on my fireplace once Christmas is over!  She had also packed a loaf of Pumpkin Cranberry Bread into the bag and I have to tell you that I started eating it before I took its picture.  But picture or not...it was moist and a delicious combination of sweet and spice and tangy.

Then we went to lunch and headed to a shop that has recently relocated to Canonsburg, The French Knot.  It was a sweet little shop.  Nice fabric and thread selection, but kind of missing the mark when it comes to new charts.  I know that stock selection must be tough with such a small shop and maybe we just have different tastes.  Regardless, even though the shop may not be perfect, I'll still try to support it.   There are some Friday night stitch-ins scheduled there, and I think I'm going to try to get to one later this month. (As much as I love my two college kids, I may need to run away for at least a night while they're home)

After our shop visit, Carol and I drove up the hill a little to  Sarris' Candies, and if you're from anywhere near Southwestern PA, you probably know that name.  Chocolate, chocolate, and more chocolate, including a visit to the chocolate castle (not my photo, but from the Sarris site)

This week I'm going to visit with Barbara when I pick Colleen up from school.  I can't wait to see her Bitter Flower project in person!

I'll tell you...I'm so lucky to have met two such neat women.  Now we just need to arrange to get all three of us in one place!

Skip ahead a quarter century

Skipping ahead from yesterday's post that is - - - Today the letters that I write are few and far between.  There are the usual thank you notes, quick greetings in birthday cards and holiday cards, and notes tucked into packages that I mail. 

Now for the most part, my stationary gathers dust.  I used to buy beautiful stationary and kept it guarded from kids and the husband who seemed to be clueless about where to find scrap paper.  Nothing fried me like seeing a phone number scrawled across stationary meant for letter writing.  But over the years, I started doing the same thing.  I'll bet I sent the prettiest school absence excuses in the history of Uniontown High School.

Now almost all of my written correspondence is done by email or blogging.  Or blog commenting. At first it felt like letter writing's poor cousin, but I'll tell you....it has grown on me.  I'm about as happy when my Inbox has "genuine" email in it as when my mailbox had a letter. (By genuine I mean non-subscribed to, as in not newsletters and ads.  Real email generated by real people that I know.)  I've made some very cool friends as a result of blogging and email, too and I think that they are just as important to me as my pen pal friends are.  In some ways I feel as if I know these ladies better than my pen pals of years ago, because we are able to pack so much into a blog post.   

I know I'm probably preaching to the choir here, because most of you who read blogs have probably embraced this kind of communication already and are comfortable with it and satisfied with it.  Still, there are people who will tell us that our correspondence isn't as satisfying as an honest to goodness paper and pen letter.  It certainly isn't as lasting.  (And given some of the blather that I write, that may not be a bad thing). 

For instance, go on over to this post of Barb's and scroll down and read the sweet letter that her mother gave her.  (Admire the stitching as you scroll down too.  It's lovely.)  Imagine if Barb's grandmother had emailed that letter!  It'd be long gone...We don't wrap a ribbon around our emails and keep them safe.  What a treasure to have a letter like that!

So - where does that leave us?  For me, I think it means that although I won't go back to writing long letters, I want to make an effort to send more birthday cards and other occasional greetings in the mail, and to make sure that I add a note that's more heartfelt and meaningful than my usual "Have a great day!"  Because now that letters are so rare, they really do take on a special significance.  And who knows what will end up tied neatly in a ribbon and packed away with other treasures? 

Hey! This sounds a little like a New Years Resolution!  And so although I haven't done one minute of shopping or baking and I'm way behind on the decorating, I can say that I'm actually ahead of the game for this one aspect of the holiday season.  Go Me!

I have a couple nice pictures for tomorrow.  He's only the sweetest Santa evah.  Little preview below.

From back in the days when I used paper and pen

Back in the 1990's, I was big into pen pals.  It was totally amazing to me.  I added my name to a "Pin Pals" list in Quilters Newsletter Magazine, saying that I liked quilting and cross stitch and that I had young children and *poof* my mailbox was full for several weeks.  I think I had something like 40-50 responses from all over the world.  Now remember, none of us had home computers at the time.  All of our letters were hand written for at least the first 5 years of our pen pal relationships.  We were devoting a lot of time and energy to this.

Well, as these things go, some people wrote and we evetually found that we had almost nothing in common.  I think that I can say that we gave it a valiant try, but in the end we knew it wasn't working for either of us.  And some of those pen pals turned out to be...um....wackadoos.   After a while and a bit of natural weeding out, I found some women who were fun and lively and interesting pen pals.  Some of them fizzled out too, as situations in our lives changed and we lost touch or lost interest in the whole writing thing.  Now, some 25 years later, there are still two whom I consider close friends.  There's Hella from Germany and Elizabeth from Australia, and I adore both of them.

 Anyway though....I found out about Round Robins back then and I participated in a few.  Maybe 5?  So here's what I want to show you today.  This was a RR that started in July 1993 and finished in March 1994.  My theme is obvious, but the other themes included animals, holidays, rabbits, quilts, rag dolls, teddy bears and "your state".

I thought it would be interesting to post the stitchers' names, too, so....

Starting at the top row and moving right:
Lisa Rohr, Nebraska
Cheree Morozoff, Canada
Connie Nugent, Pennsylvania

Second row:
Jenny Berman Ross, Virginia
Me
Barb Bartlett, Michigan

Third row:
Kim Provax, Arizona
Laura Cherry, Utah
Zoann Kochersperger, West Virginia

This devil is still unfinished.  measuring 12" x 12".  I really need to do something about that...

She's my new hero

I almost never write about politics or religion in my blog, but I'm compelled to write today. 

Lately I've been reading articles written by Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, blogging as Wasabi Mama.  She posted this video of a speech by NYS Diane Savino and it moved me almost to tears.  So I had to share it with you.



State Senator Savino seems to have taken all of the thoughts rattling around in my head when the topic of gay marriage comes up and she has put them all together into a meaningful and heartfelt speech. 

I'm sorry to say that the vote failed. 

Quilting Santa

Here's 2005 PS Santa, finished as a pillow last night! Oh...and I wanted to tell you about that cording. I found it this fall at a church flea market. It was an entire spool of cording (36 yards) that I bought for....wait for it..... 25 cents. So you'll be seeing a lot of this cording as time goes by.

Here's the back. I've added a small photo because somehow it's really blurry.  Any campers who attended Camp Gottastitch may recognize the button.  I took it off of my camp Christmas stocking.

I'm still putzing around about what to work on next.  I'm really still in a Prairie Schooler state of mind, so I may start another Santa.  I also need to stitch a quick gift card holder for our community Christmas party.  Or I could put together something nice for our book club hostess on Monday. 

I had better decide soon.  Sometimes I over-think this stuff too much and then I don't do anything.  And that's perfectly excusable if it's housework or cooking or work-work ;)  But it's really nuts when it's something that I enjoy doing so much!

The Advent Hilarity

Most of you have seen me post this link before, but what with NaComLeavWe and all, I've met a few new bloggers who might appreciate some good laughs.

I think this Sara blogger is hilarious.  Don't be drinking anything while you pop around on her site.  And if you do.....Don't say I didn't warn you.