Some running about

I feel as if this fall has passed by me like a speeding train and that would be ok except I'm not moving as fast as the rest of my world seems to be.

My kitchen is still torn apart and that means the dishes are in the living room, miscellaneous everyday food (like cereal and coffee) and the microwave are in the dining room and all of the pots, pans and pantry foods are in a bedroom.  Dishes are washed in the basement laundry sink.  

I can't stand it.  The clutter is driving me bananas!  It's also probably why I'm not stitching much.  I can't settle down.  I need outer order so that I can have inner calm.  I'll bet many of us are like that.

I do have some stitching photos to share with you, though.  A couple weeks ago I went to the Ohio County Country Fair in Wheeling, WV.  Some of my Friday stitching friends had entered pieces in the fair, both for judging and for display, and I was excited to see them all. Here are a few photos that I took with my iPhone.  The pictures I took are rather blurry and dark, but you get the idea.  And you can see many more photos (and they are much more clear) on this Facebook page

Mirabella's bride, stitched on aida by our friend, Beth

An AMAZING blanket or throw, stitched by a woman from the Wheeling EGA.  That's all surface embroidery.  The detail is fabulous.

You might recognize a bunch of my samplers.  Or maybe not, because they are from long, long ago.  One of the oldest samplers I entered, from 1987, won a blue ribbon.  And do you see the little gingerbread house and the smalls by it?  Those were stitched by our friend, Tammy.  The framed Lego piece was stitched by a young boy, and he won a blue ribbon and best of show in the children's category.

I wish I had a better picture of this.  Our friend Colleen entered this in the stamped embroidery category and it was beautifully done.  We had to step in extra close and we still couldn't tell it was stamped, except that the fabric was obviously not an evenweave.  Her stitches were gorgeous.  Some might even say "exquisite".

Best in Show

This pillow won a blue ribbon (although I don't know its category?) And it won Best in Show in the entire needlework category.  The fabric is hand-dyed somehow - it had a pile like velvet, but I don't know for sure without having touched it.  All of the stitches are running stitches - exactly like you would see in a quilt.  I'm not quite sure why this wasn't entered with the quilts.

I mean, it was cool and all, but not what I'd call needlework?  So I'd be very interested to know the thought process of the judge.  Was it because it was an original design?  All of the other entries were from kits or stitched from charts - with our own spins, of course.  Honestly, I'm not dissing the entry.  I'm only curious.

Anyway, we had a fun afternoon at the fair.  Stitched a bit, talked a lot and enjoyed seeing some wonderful stitching and quilting.

My other travels have been to watch my daughter's cross country meets.  She's having a wonderful season, including a great finish at the All Ohio Meet a couple weeks ago.  Despite strong, knock-you-over wind and driving rain, she still finished her 5K in 19:06.  Now the women are running 6K's, in preparation for the conference and regional meets. 

And thanks to the generosity and mad camera skills of other Wooster Cross Country parents, I'm able to share a couple pictures of my daughter with you. If I had to rely on my own abilities, you'd see pictures that look like this:

Miscellaneous girls running.  Who are these people?  Not my daughter.  Not even any Wooster girls.  I am one terrible photographer.

Instead, because someone else arrived (who could actually operate a camera), I can share these pictures from their recent home meet in Wooster:

Almost smiling?  Really?

Phew.  She makes me tired just to look at her.

I'm getting ready for a fun stitching girls' trip to Erie next weekend. Last year we all prepared an exchange gift bag with things in in that reflected our hometowns. This year we decided to do an exchange from the JCS ornament issue. Since we all were going to buy the issue anyway, we each chose one ornament from the magazine and we're creating 5 kits to exchange with each other. Doesn't that sound exciting? We had the option of kitting it as charted or giving it our own spin.  I'm super interested to see our kits!  I've stitched up my ornament, but I can't show it to you until after we've done our exchange.  It's killing me to have a finish that I can't show you!  Especially since it's my only one in almost forever...

Mystery solved

 Or as Inspector Clouseau used to say, "Mystery Solve Ed."

Well my dears, your wait is over.  There were many guesses, and some of you were quite close, but eight of you hit the answer right on the nose.  Or some other body part...

Eight of you correctly guessed that this:

Is actually an old suppository mold.  Way back when, pharmacists did a lot more compounding.  Pills, ointments, salves and syrups.  And obviously, suppositories.  I remember that Dave's uncle made his own diaper rash cream and that stuff was miraculous.  He called it Binns Ointment.  A few pharmacies are still compounding, but very few.  Ahhh. The good old days. When the pharmacist didn't have to spend 7 of his or her 8 hours a day on the phone with insurance companies.

Anyway, this morning I popped eight names into this pretty little bowl.  It was also one of the few bowls I could find this morning.  Have I mentioned the words "kitchen remodel" lately?  Anyway -

And the winner was:

When did my hands get so wrinkly? 

So Astrid, I'll drop you a line soon and you'll be getting a small gifty from me in the near future! 

I'm also going to send a little something to Barb, because she was the very first correct guess. 

Thanks everybody, and I hope you had some fun!

Big happenings

YAY!  My kitchen remodeling will begin this Tuesday!

UGH.  I have to empty my kitchen and prepare for this.  I've already started by moving my decorative things and some of the kitchen furniture.  Today I'll be emptying the cabinets, starting with the one under the sink.  Ho Boy....it's scary under there.

So if you don't hear from me tomorrow, please send an ambulance.

And a HazMat crew.

A most unusual scissor frog

Here's a bit of fun!

My husband brought this thingy home from work about a month ago, so it's been sitting around my office for a while.  The  other day I was looking at the many flower frogs that are holding my blogging friends' scissor collections and I thought of this and then a light bulb went on.  Hey - scissors!  I think it's interesting in a funky, antique-y sort of way.

So here's the bit of fun...Dave said, "Do you know what that is?"  Nope.  I didn't.  Then he told me and I was quite surprised.  Well, I thought it might be fun to have you all guess about this, too.  Send me your guess by Monday, Oct 10 and someone will win a little prize from me!  If more than one person guesses correctly, I'll draw a name from the correct guesses.  If no one guesses correctly, I'll draw a name from the whole shebang.

Don't guess in the comments. Instead, send your guess to me by email at lakestitcher@gmail.com.  And remember to do it by Monday.

Here are two hints:  1) It came from one of our old pharmacies, and 2) It's solid brass.

Good luck!

The boyfriend and his bike

Thank you, everybody for the prayers and kindnesses you've offered up for my friends.  I hesitated before I wrote about that...I guess I'm glad that I did. 

You know, all through my high school and college years, I don't remember losing any friends to accidents.  And I went to a big high school (1000 in my graduating class) and then a big university.  But my children have lost three young friends to car or motorcycle accidents, and one young woman has extensive brain damage as a result of a quad accident.  It really puzzles me.  These were normal, average, everyday nice kids.  I know bad things happen...but its frequency among these young people has been frightening.

Switching direction here...

Do you all remember the contest that I asked you all to vote in back in the spring, so that my daughter's boyfriend, Montana, could win a contest to pay his entry fee for a mountain bike race in Asheville, NC?  And then the news that he eventually won the contest?  Yes, the swing votes in that contest between crazy mountain bikers seemed to have come from the most unusual source - Stitching bloggers!  Isn't that kind of neat?

So a week or so ago he went  to the Pisgah Stage Race in Asheville and you may be happy to know that he won his part in the bike race. (I know I'm not saying that correctly, but I'm a stitcher, not a mountain biker after all.)  So we're happy for him and proud of him.

If you take a look at his blog - he's been writing about the race - you'll see a couple videos in which he's being interviewed.  The blog and interview language can get a little salty - just to give you fair warning. 

But here's what I was hearing in my head when I watched the video:

Talk, talk, talk, Sweet this, Sweet that.  Talk, talk more.  Single speed, rocks, gravel.  Talk, talk, talk, turning head slightly.  Then...............

WAIT!  Hold on a minute.  Haircut?  Really??  Talk, talk, talk - I'm not hearing any of this anymore.  Just staring at the screen and willing him to turn his head again.  Talk, talk, blah, blah, talk.  Then:  Yes.  Yes.  Absolutely a hair cut.  Well I'll be darned. 

Talk, talk, talk.  Good job.  Congratulations.  Hair cut.  The end.

And they say I'm not a good listener.

Good habits and bad habits

Like most people, I have some of both. But what I'd love to know is:  Why are the good habits so hard to keep and the bad habits so hard to give up?

One of my good habits over the past several years has been keeping my blog somewhat current and up to date.  But lately?  Not so much.  And the longer I stay away, that harder it is to write.  So I keep waiting for that epiphany-like moment.  You know, like a spark of brilliance during your real life that practically yells, "Blog about this!"  Well, calling it brilliance may be taking it a bit too far, but you get my point.

So it looks like you're going to be forced to read about my nonbrilliant moments. 

I've had some highs and some lows this month.  One of the highs has been shopping for campers with my husband.  Yes.  Campers.  Perhaps you've been reading here for a while, and so you're thinking, "Hmmm, she's never mentioned camping before...".  Well, except maybe for Stitch Camp, which isn't camping at all except that sometimes there are lots of S'mores involved.  And I know it sounds crazy, that two people who have never, ever gone camping have been shopping for a camper, but that's been part of the fun. It's like we're on a special assignment together and we're having a ball.

I don't know what it is that we're finding appealing about living in 200 square feet of space for a few weeks at a time, but the appeal is certainly there, so we're just going with it.  There's probably some deeper psychological meaning to it all...But I'm certainly not going to over think it.  That'd be one of my bad habits.

One of the lows has been that our friends lost their young son in a car accident two weeks ago.  It hit us and our neighborhood pretty hard - so, so sad.  It really shook us up.

Stitching has been kind of hit or miss, but I did manage a small finish.  This was a nice little fall project.

From Crows and Pumpkins, by Annie Beez.  DMC floss and some kind of blue linen

And I'm still working on my Antiqued Sampler.  My goal for my last French Knot Friends stitch night was to finish one area of over-one lettering, and yes, yes I did!

This part was easy to finish.  In fact, it was delightful!

If you're reading this from West Virginia, Western PA or Ohio, you may be interested in seeing the Ohio County Country Fair this coming weekend.  One of my stitching friends is a member of the Wheeling WV EGA, and they've been instrumental in gathering needlework for judging and/or display for this fair.  So Deb convinced some of us to enter our stitching in the fair and I've entered a piece or two.  If you go, my pieces should be easy to spot, what with my tendency to plaster my name all over everything the way samplers usually have space to add your name or initials.  Even better, there will be an ice cream tent!  And I'm going to bet there will be Kettle Corn (sigh...yet another bad habit of mine)