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.

The end of NaBloPoMo

So, here we are at the end of National Blog Posting Month.  I managed to post 26 times this month, which isn't perfect but is still over twice the number of posts I write in a month.  On the days that I missed writing,  I was tempted to post a one-liner, but then I felt like I wasn't following the spirit of the project.  It felt more true to just skip it and then fess up at the end.

So, last night after the kids left to return to their schools (Thank-you-very-much), Dave and I went out for pizza and then settled in at home to watch the Steelers play on Sunday Night Football.  I also finished my PS Santa, which is one of the few positive things that happened during that game.  

I'm thinking of swearing off football all together.  Two weeks of Steeler losses and Pitt losing to WVU has made me overly depressed.  I needed to relive some past glory, so I visited with Mean Joe Green.  He likes my Santa, too.

So as of today, I have three UFO's hanging around.  There's my BAP, Tree of Life. I also have a small red sampler, and Brightneedle's Lo How a Rose.  Or I could start a few new Christmas ornaments.  And there are 9 camp project kits by my desk. Or another big Santa?  Or I could piece a Christmas tree skirt for the pencil tree.

What to do....What to do?

Dear Anonymous

You are a genius!  Thanks for your comment and your tip.

To the rest of you, if you're like me and you muddle about with skeins of perle cotton that knot and tangle, go to this website:
http://www.needlenthread.com/2009/02/thread-organization-tips-for-embroidery.html

I'm a happy stitcher again. 

First off, here's my latest update on the biggy-sized PS Santa.  There are just a few more finishing touches left, then he'll be a pillow.  I have in my head a basket full of big Santa pillows.  Wouldn't that be neat?  Wouldn't it be even more neat if I actually did it?  Plans, plans.  I always have plans.

But anyway, I've mentioned before that I'm using DMC No. 5 Perle cotton, and I changed the colors to make him more red and less pink.  And the perle cotton selections are more limited than regular DMC floss, so I had to make some changes anyway.  I like how easy it is to use the perle cotton.  No seperating and reassembling strands of floss....And it has a nice sheen to it.  But here's what I don't like about using this stuff:

I cannot get away from these knots and tangles!  Part of it is my impatience.  I think if I took time at the beginning of the project and carefully undid the wrapper and unwound the floss (although it still knots up no matter what) then wound it onto thread cards, I'd  be less frustrated.  Why-oh-why can't it just come out of the skein nice and neat like regular DMC floss?  My perle cotton is one huge tangled mess all the time.  Anybody have a tip for me? 

Our Thanksgiving day was extra nice.  Both kids and I went to the Turkey Trot in our small town and they had a tremendous turnout, which meant a great fundraising event for the Salvation Army.  I walked the 5K in just over 43 minutes, which was really good for me.  You know what....I used to beat myself up for being such a slow runner, but now that I'm walking I feel pretty good.  I've discovered that I'm actually a pretty fast walker!  After it was over I took off quickly for home to get our turkey stuffed and in the oven so I don't know where I placed or how I fared in my age group. 

I have to say that I've enjoyed reading about all of YOUR Thanksgivings.  The food photos and the family pictures have been great!

Speaking of family, it's amazing to me how busy I seem to be with two young adults at home.  It's not like the kind of busy activity where I actually accomplish anything, though.  How can I explain?  It's like I'm prattling around all the time.  I wait a lot.  I plan a lot.  I sit with them at the TV a lot.  The day goes by and I can't name one thing that I've accomplished.  I just don't get it....

See you tomorrow gang!

"All is safely gathered in"

Everyone is home, safe and sound and my house feels lived-in again.  The dishwasher is sloshing, the washer is chugging and the dryer is spinning. 

A real harvest home!

I missed blogging again yesterday.  It's all your-all's fault.  I've been reading the ways that you all have been expressing gratitude and friendship and optimism.  You've written such beautiful things and I swear it just takes my words away.

Happy Thanksgiving Friends.  No matter how you celebrate or what you eat or what you spend your time doing tomorrow, I'll be thinking of you and thanking heaven for all of the ways that you've touched my life.  I am one lucky girl.

Still knotted up AND GO GATORS!

That knot between my shoulder blades is still there, although it's getting better each day.  Friday and Saturday were more or less lost days, but yesterday I started feeling better and I spent some time stitching.  I should have been cleaning...freshening up the china and crystal, doing some minor dusting etc.  But why endanger the recovery process??

So, here's where I left off on my PS Santa last night:

I'm coming into the home stretch on this one!  Crossing that stitchy finish line!

And speaking of finish lines, my son's cross country team, the Allegheny College Gators, finished third at the NCAA Men's Division III National Championships.  That's third out of 437 teams.  We're all so proud of them - it's a huge achievement.  You can read about it here.

Some of you may know this already, but Division III athletes receive no financial aid related to their athletic skills and athletic departments are staffed and funded like any other department in the university.  In other words, coaches are not paid millions of dollars like in Division I schools, and there are no athletic scholarships.  These men and women run because they like and want to run.  Pretty amazing.

Not feeling so great

I woke up with this knot in between my shoulder blades this morning.  I thought it would go away as the day went on, but it's getting worse and it's starting to make me feel a little sick.  So I'm avoiding my computer today. 

Now I'm off to find some more ibuprofen and the heating pad.

Oh!  If you're up for it, tomorrow is the first day of the November IComLeavWe.  Let the comments begin!

Oh My Gosh!

I competely, totally forgot to post yesterday!  There goes my perfect NaBloPoMo record.  Sniff.  In my defense, I had a couple of work issues yesterday that kept running around and around in my head.  Even yoga couldn't clear my ruminating mind.  So I just plain forgot.

Well!  On Saturday I'll summarize your responses to my last post about themed Christmas stitching.  But I'll tell you right now that the Fellow in the Red Suit is pretty darn popular.

As for me, I love Santa, too and I have several Santa charts, but I've only stitched him once.  I have several collections like that....I decide that I love this, that, or the other theme and I must have charts in that theme and then I don't actually stitch them.

Let's see....I've collected butterfly charts.  (Stitched none) Bird charts.  (Stitched none) Cat charts. (Stitched 1) Hearts. (Stitched 1)  Florals.  (Stitched none) L&L angels (stitched none)  I'll stop here.  I'm getting sad.

On the other hand, I've collected and successfully stitched houses and samplers for over 25 years and that's saying something, isn't it?  Maybe it just says that I'm a one (or two) trick pony....but I choose to say that I'm really, really good at stitching houses and samplers, and I like the feeling of being good at something and I'm not going to mess with that.

But back to favorite Christmas themes and I want to tell you my favorites and show you how they've changed over the years.  Picture time!



Christmas samplers.  Gotta love them.  I mean....alphabets.  Neat motifs lined up in a row.  Right up my alley.

I used to love stitching the Told in a Garden free yearly angels, too.  I stitched five years worth, and I think that I just didn't like the angels that came out after that and I stopped and never got back to them.

 And now I'm not sure that I could say that I have a favorite theme.  Snowmen are sweet.  Santa may be in the running.  And who doesn't love a holiday house?  It's so hard to choose....

Thinking about Christmas stitching

Is there something Christmas-y or Wintery that you like to stitch each year?  Like it wouldn't feel like the holidays unless you stitched a particular thing?

Some of us get silly for Santa.  Crazy for candy canes.  Excited for elves.  Rowdy for reindeer.  Apoplectic for angels.  (Whoa.  Sorry. That was a stretch.)

Tell me about it.  Leave a comment and I'll post a recap of your responses later this week.

Santa has a head and face

I've really enjoyed stitching this Santa so far.  I'm so glad that I saw another stitcher working on one of these on large count fabric at the 2008 camp.  Camp = Inspiration!

And here are some more Cross Country photos.  The season is over now for my kids, so I promise to stop torturing you with these pictures.  But not many people go to Cross Country meets, so relatively few people know what a meet is like, and maybe you're curious?  (I know that some of you have kids that run or used to run.  Barb, Pam and Von....and are there any others?)  There are a few reasons why not many people get to see meets.

First of all, when kids run XC in high school, most meets happen on weekdays and usually between 3 and 4PM, so it's hard for working parents to get to meets.  (It's a daylight issue.  You can't run through field and forest in the dark!)  There is the occasional Saturday meet, but not too often.  Parents work really hard and juggle their schedules to attend just a few meets each year.   And if they run late and arrive 20 minutes after the start....well, they've missed the whole thing.

College meets are usually run on Saturdays, and if your runner goes on to run at the college level, you still may not make it to all the meets because they can be hours and hours away. We usually get to see our kids run at about half of their meets.

Meets are not very family-friendly, either.  It's not like a football game or soccer game or track meet, where spectators sit in stands and watch events, and you can bring younger siblings and grandparents and they can sit comfortably and watch the kids.  At our high school's home course, which was on the grounds of a PSU campus, we learned where we could set up folding chairs for grandparents so that they could see the kids run by a couple of times and see the finish line.  But our home course was very viewer-friendly and that's quite unusual.

So anyway, most people don't know what a meet is like.  They think it's like a track meet and that's understandable, but not even close.

OK, so your kids line up on the starting line.  We've seen meets with as few as 20 kids on the line, and meets with over 400.  The runners in the middle of the line are lucky...they just need to run in a straight line.  But the runners on the ends are working hard at the beginning of the race to kind of funnel into the middle.  And that first big pack can be a mess of arms, legs, elbows and spikes.  (There's Colleen - #305 on second from the left)

Once the gun goes off and the runners pass you, it's like this photo below:  These aren't kids racing.  Those are spectators trying to get to the next place in the course where they can see the runners.  We all have course maps that we try to follow so that we can get to the next place out in the field or near a path to see our runners.  And you usually need to be pretty quick about it.  The kids in these pictures are probably the runners'  teammates and brothers and sisters hoofing it to the next place on the course.

And then come the parents. We're not quite as quick...and we're usually clutching our maps and trying to follow people who look like they know where to go.

And you do that several times until you decide that it's time to skeedaddle to the finish so you can see your runner come in.  This is what you look for at the end. You hope that your runner has enough left to kick strong into the finish, and you look at his or her face and you know that they're pushing themselves to the limit. Look at these girls' faces. Concentration and push.

Then we wait awhile and try to give the kids some space as they recover.  Sometimes it's not too bad, and sometimes it's not very pretty.  (But these girls look ok.)  And once they've recovered a bit, there are usually hugs all around.  And food.  Always food!

****Thanks very much to Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology who hosted the meet and shared these photographs with the many parents who couldn't attend.

I'm still working on Santa's head, so no progress photo today.

It's been a sporty weekend.

Go Pitt!  Moved up to #8 in the AP rankings!

Go Allegheny Gators!  The Gator men's XC team won its Mideast Regional meet, with Gator runners placing first and second, and bringing in positions 15, 16, 25, 31 and 43, too.  Now they're headed to the Division III National meet near Cleveland next week.  My son isn't part of the varsity squad, but all of the guys - varsity or not - worked hard to achieve this. 

Steelers?  Well....Do they want to make me cry?  'Cause I'll do it.

Little Miss Fast

Today my darlin' daughter ran in the NCAA Division III Great Lakes Regional meet.  It was really far away and Dave had to work, so I didn't go.  That was probably a good thing, because it's rained and been miserable weather for almost every meet we've attended this year.

It's the O'Neil Weather Curse.  Whenever Dave and I go on a trip, weather records are bound to be broken.  Hottest....Coldest....Wettest....Driest.  You name it and we've been there for the record breaker.  And I don't mean to make light of the storm damage situation along the Atlantic coast, but I will tell you that you should count your lucky stars that Dave and I were not vacationing near you this week.  It could have been worse.

But back to the meet.  Since my husband and I couldn't attend, the runners were blessed with good weather, and Colleen ran well and her team placed well.  So they're very happy.  Here's Little Miss Fast at an unscored meet that was a couple of weeks ago.

Dave and I went to see Sinbad (the comedian, not the fable) last night in Greensburg.  We laughed till we were hoarse.

Football tonight and football tomorrow.  And that's a good thing, because I'll get to stitch and my PS Santa needs a head.  I'll take pictures when he has a head.  It's too depressing to take pictures of a headless Santa.

Who doesn't love a Comment?

Here's an interesting compliment to NaBloPoMo.  It's IComLeavWe, which is shorthand for International Comment Leaving Week.

Maybe posting daily to your blog isn't the thing for you, but a quick comment is more your style.  For one week each month, you promise to comment on 5 blogs each day and to return one comment on your blog.  That's six little things a day for just one week. 

For us stitchers, that's usually 6 "atta-girls" (or atta-boys), or 6 Ohhhhhs or Ahhhhhs.  Really.  What's not to love?  And in the process, you reach your goal, and you've encouraged 6 other stitchers to keep stitching and keep posting about their projects or their lives.

IComLeavWe starts on the 21st of each month.  And since my keyboard is already warmed up, I'm going to give it a go.  Want to join me?