Little finish

This was my in-car project from our LONG car trip to San Francisco in the Spring.

I finished it as a very basic cushion.  For some reason the design has the apples kind of floating above the basket, so I added a ribbon.

I started my fall decorating on Sunday, and I think it fits in well.

I'm working on showing you how I put together my flange pillows.  I think they're really easy, but you could get a very similar effect by just piecing your stitching to a strip of fabric for the front and adding a back and stuffing it.  So there's always that option.  I kind of like the way that a flange pillow creates some depth, though.

Anyway, once I get a bit more organized, I'll post something about that.

Pillowed

Here is Summer Basket finished as an envelope style pillow. I used some fabric that I had on hand, and the more I think about it, I'm pretty sure that it's some BBD Moda fabric. I didn't have quite enough, so I had to add some muslin to the back, but who's looking?

This had become one of my favorite pillow finishes. These envelope pillows are super adaptable and very forgiving.

I took this picture this morning on our back deck. Sheesh.  I didn't realize how much of the back driveway would be in the photo.  Please ignore the dead plants and scrap wood! I've been a terrible gardener this year.  There were times that I had more dead baskets than living ones.  It was so hot and dry this summer, and that was part of it.  But maybe I've been channeling a little Morticia Addams, also.  I've always admired her housekeeping style, so why not mimic her gardening style, too?

My September Answer

Do I do anything weird when I'm stitching?  Hmmmm. 

I don't have an odd habit, like turning around three times before I sit down or tapping a stitching totem or anything like that.  I'm not devoted to a particular chair or table or gadget. 

So what do I do that I think is weird?  Well, I'll tell you that my focus is all over the place when I'm stitching something.  Because I tend to stitch samplers, there are usually lots of motifs and breaks and sections.  I almost never complete a section before moving on to the next one.  I skip, hop and jump all over the place.  Sometimes I can't decide if it's because I'm bored or if it's because I'm so excited to move on to the next part.  I'm going to go with the latter.

And that's my answer!

Things I did over the weekend

Well, besides read, stitch, sleep, eat and have drinks on the beach and by the pool.

We went to see the new Clooney movie, and let me start by telling you...I would have not have read, stitched, slept or eaten all weekend if I had found this hunkaman in the pool.

Yup, George Clooney totally does it for me.

But not his latest movie, The American.  Good lord, what a snore!  How could someone that I've adored so much in other movies produce this movie?  It was less exciting than watching paint dry.  It  was beyond boring.  And I don't say this lightly, because I'll put up with a lot to see two hours of Clooney.

Do you remember the Warner Brothers cartoon with the singing frog who won't sing in front of an audience?  And the fellow would put the frog on stage and open the curtains and there would be nothing there but a scowling frog and the sound of crickets?  Well,  this will be one of those "you had to be there" type of anecdotes, but there was actually a cricket hiding somewhere in the movie theater and listening to its occasional chirps was oddly appropriate.  And a guy down front was yawning loudly from time to time, but nobody shushed him.  We didn't have the heart.

So don't go.  It'll just make you sad.

September SBQ!

You know, I was all het up for this last week!  Then I came to realize that last week wasn't the first Monday of the month, but rather the LAST Monday of the month.  So what's the inevitable result?  That I forgot to post this on the correct Monday.

But hey...On Monday I was at the beach, where I was enjoying the sun and fun and way too many cocktails.  And you wouldn't have wanted me tipsy and near the water with anything electronic, now would you? 

So...September's question actually comes from another blogger who left me a comment asking about this.  I have to apologize to her...I've gone through all of my comments and emails and I can NOT find her correspondence so that I can give her proper credit (If it's you, step forward, please!) Her question was:

Is there anything that you do while you are stitching that is kind of weird or unusual?  A quirky habit maybe?  Or anything that you do that makes you think, Hey...I wonder if anyone else does this?

So that's it, stitchers!  Now we'll wait to read your answers, so we can say to ourselves, "Well, I may be weird, but at least I don't do that."  (Just kidding...we're all friends here...)

Finished Summer Basket!

Summer Basket is finished! It was close, but I finished it before we left for the weekend and I took it to Salty Yarns , where Sally was generous with her compliments.  Salty Yarns was exactly as I had remembered it from last year.  Stuffed to the brim with charts and fabrics and threads and don't even get me started on all of the wonderful tools and doodads.  But anyway, here is my version of Blackbird Designs Summer Basket, purchased last Labor Day and stitched this summer:

 

I had to make some changes to accommodate the variations of dye lots in both the threads and fabric.  So I used the recommended fabric - 30 ct WDW Baby's breath, but I had to substitute Gentle Arts Old Brick for the GA Clover (pink letters and flowers) and I had to substitute GA Gold Leaf for the GA Brandy (gold stars and letters)  So my sampler isn't as soft and muted looking as the model photo on the leaflet, but it's because the dye lot of my piece of fabric wasn't as pale pink as the model fabric.  Stitches done in Clover and Brandy were all but invisible.  

I have to say, I did NOT like this WDW fabric.  I doubt that I'll ever use it again.  It had absolutely no body to it.  There are some nice colors, but it's like working with a wet noodle. 

Here are a couple other little changes that I made, too.  (Changes = Mistakes that I was too lazy to frog and restitch). The top line of my alphabet was about 5 stitches too far to the right and I didn't realize it till I was way into the stitching.  Luckily, I wasn't using it as any kind of jumping off place for placing other stitches (phew), but it meant that I couldn't fit the letter "G" in at the end of the line.  So since XYandZ were all tiny, I decided to use a tiny G.

But then I had to balance the left side of the alphabet line. Handily, in most BBD designs you can always have a couple extra birdies at your disposal!

So now I need to decide if I should frame it or make it into a pillow.  I'm actually leaning towards a pillow.  It would look great made as an envelope-type pillow in my wicker couch, and BBD has put out a new fabric line recently....Something tells me that a trip to the quilt shop is in my future!

Weekend Stitching

Look out Labor Day Weekend!  I'm almost there!

I know that it looks like I skipped and jumped around a lot on those stars, but I was more concerned about getting them counted and placed on the fabric than I was about finishing them. So now those lovely stars are placed and except for finishing them, adding another bird, and wrapping it all up with my initials and the date, I should be golden.  I learned long ago not to put in the date until the bitter end.  There's no better predictor that I'll have a project dying on the vine than putting the date in prematurely.

But back to those unfinished stars - Sometimes I really don't feel like counting. I'll look at my work and think, "Ehh. Ten up, seven down? That's more than I can handle today." Then I'll just put it away.

I'm a girl who knows my limits.

Oh!  Here's a kind of funny website for you writer types.  Unsuck It takes annoying business jargon and gives us no-nonsense alternatives.  You know...to help us craft better content creation from the cradle to the grave.

Yikes!

Holy cow...10 days without writing in my blog?  And here I am at Day 11 yet I feel like I don't have a single interesting thing to tell you.  I think I've had writing burn-out for the past 10 days.  I had to do so much work related writing that I didn't have any energy left for fun writing.  Consequently, if I owe any of you an email or a comment, I'm so sorry!  I'll be keeping up better in the future.

But here's the thing.  Once I stop blogging - even for a short time, it takes, like, a super-human effort for me to start up again.  (Please try to picture me all red-faced and sweating and squinting with effort right now.  It adds to the drama)

So I packed two kids off to college last weekend, and now let the rejoicing begin.  Well, maybe later, after I finish mailing them all of the crap they forgot.  Mom's Delivery Service, yessiree.

And can I tell you about the mess they left behind and about the disgusting state of my daughter's bedroom? 

I don't have any milestone stitching to show you today.  I'm working my way around the star border on BBD Summer Basket, and it's slow, slow, slow.  Or maybe I'm just bored with it.  My goal was to have it finished by Labor Day weekend and that's going to take some serious dedication.  But I'm optimistic.

Why do I want it finished by Labor Day weekend?  Because I'm planning a trip to Salty Yarns in Ocean City MD, which is where I bought it and I'd love to show it to Sally and her girls.  (Yes...I am a compliment whore)

Have a nice Weekend Before Labor Day Weekend gang!

And another...

I had Spring Violets framed, also.   Believe it or not, I remember almost every stitch of this.  I remember first spotting it on a friends blog (or did she email it to me?) in what felt like the deepest part of the winter of 2010 and knowing that I had to stitch it.  I remember that it lifted my spirits tremendously.  I remember excitedly playing with the colors to make it mine, mine, mine.  Even if I hadn't blogged about it, I still think it would be a memorable stitch.

Spring Violets, by Hands to Work.  Stitched on Lavender Bliss Lugana

Thanks for all of your generous comments on Lo.  I'd offer the book up for trade, but I traded it away months ago.  If you're really hot on the trail of the design though, there are several used copies available over at Amazon.com.  Really, most vendors have it priced so reasonably (somewhere around $4.00), it's practically a steal.   So go here if you want to find the book!

Yippee!

I was super excited to pick up my framed Lo!  I haven't had anything professionally framed in years, so this was a really big thing for me and I have to say that I'm so very pleased with the results.

From BHG's A Cross Stitch Christmas: Lo How a Rose, by Brightneedle Designs

There is a bit of glare in the photo, but in my house of spiders I'm NOT going to spend that kind of money on framing and not put glass on it.

In other things around the house here...Late summer life with college students around has become increasingly challenging. I'm getting them back into the school mode of thinking though, by providing lots of early morning Lectures and Seminars by Mom, like the one entitled "Hey! I'm Not Running a Hotel Here." Their reading lists have included books like Notes from Mom: Please Pick Up After Yourself Before I Kill You.  And I may request that they turn in a paper by the end of the summer on the topic Many Ways to Treat Your Parents as if They Were People, Too.

So why the heck will I miss them so much when they are gone?

One more mention of book club

And not another rant, I promise.  I guess I really needed to blow off some steam on Tuesday! 

After talking to some like-minded friends,  we've decided that we're going to become a little more proactive at our meetings.

For instance, my fellow book friends and I noticed that we tend to sit near each other at meetings.  Now we're going to spread out and sit among and between the other ladies.  The idea is this:  Make all of the unrelated side discussions more difficult by physically separating people.  I plan to be up close and personal with a couple of them.  Maybe snap them with a rubber band if they veer off.  (Is that going a teensy bit too far?)

We're also going to be more proactive when we start putting books into the mix for next year and insist on more variety of genre and setting. (I counted to make sure that I wasn't making a mountain out of a mole hill...In the past 8 months, we've read 5 historical fiction novels, all set primarily in the 1930's and 1940's) When we meet at my house in October,  I'm going to give out a list with several types of books - mostly types of fiction, but adding the categories of biographies and memoirs and true accounts to our 2011 plans.  And I'm going to be as diplomatic as I can, yet strongly suggest that nobody chooses books from the same categories on the list for a whole year. 

The book list is probably the biggest leap of all.  Up until this point, the method for choosing books was that we all decided which month we want to host in the coming year, then the book choice was up to the hostess.  Depending on the hostess, sometimes very little thought was put into the book choice, and that's been part of the problem.  So anyway,  we'll see how my genre list goes over.  If it's rejected, then it's more than likely that our group will split up.  And that may not necessarily be a bad thing, but rather just how these things go. 

So now that we have a plan, I'm cool with the situation.  I just hope I can pull it off.

And my next post will have more to do with stitching, I promise!

Book club rant

This will be a post without stitching news or stitching photos, so you may want to skip past it...you've been warned.

I belong to a monthly book club and we have a core group of about 10 women, plus or minus two. And it's making me a little nuts.

The majority of the women are older, and since I'm no babe in arms, I should elaborate and tell you that by that I mean they are in their seventies.  Issues?  Can we talk about issues?  My god, if we ever read anything that's not set in the 1940's, I think I'll pass out.  And girls, if you're going to choose a book for your hosting month, will you puh-leeeze get the title right?  Don't tell us that the title is In Her Place when you actually mean A Woman's Place, (set in 1942 - go figure) because then we'll end up with this book:

Instead of this book:

Two entirely different things, am I right?  (And I'm actually more interested to read the first book because it's NOT about World War II.  Plus I love the expression on her face.)

I should tell you that the book for my month (October) is Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book.  I thought it would be cool to switch things up and read a YA novel that was sweet and creative and fun.  Plus...it's October.  Ghosts and vampires and what's not to love?  And during our meeting last night one of the women unceremoniously dumped it on the table and said, "This is our book for October?  Does anyone realize that it has pictures?"  Which completely pisses me off because since December 2009 -each and every month - they go through the list of books for the year and each and every month I tell them, "NOW LOOK, this is a children's book.  Look in the YA section of the book store.  It's light reading.  It's fun. And it won the 2009 Newbery Medal."  But as usual, nobody listened to me.

I want to scream.  And I know that they are going to hate it.  Of course, they all hated the last book I chose (ironically, set during WWII), The Book Thief.  And I tried to suggest To Kill a Mockingbird, but they didn't want to read it because it was too depressing and "it just goes on and on and on."  (Seriously.  They said that.)

Fortunately, there are three or four other women who read more diverse books and who are open to trying new things.  These three or four other women also seem to be able to keep the discussion about the book and not veer off to discuss why so-and-so got divorced or the latest church gossip.  So I'm happy to be a part of the book discussing subset of the group.  But the other ladies?  Ay-yi-yi.  Making me nuts.

OK.  End of rant.  Back to stitching.

More Summer Basket

I was stitching away over the weekend! I'm happy to tell you that my urge to stitch has come back to me.  Part of it is the encouragement that you all send my way.  You know how it is when you know something is pretty and you like it, but your enthusiasm wanes?  But then a friend gives you a compliment and you can get all excited about it again?  That's what's happened here.  Some very sweet online and face to face friends have spurred me on!

More excitement...I had a wonderful afternoon with Linda (no blog, but working on it) recently where we stitched and ate and then headed over to JoAnn's with our framing coupons in our hot little hands!  I had decided to frame Spring Violets and Lo How a Rose, and I was glad to have Linda with me to help bounce mat and frame ideas around.  Let me tell you....I haven't had anything professionally framed in years, so it was very exciting!  I think they'll be ready in a couple weeks.

Anyways, here is where I left off with Summer Basket on Sunday evening:

Summer Basket - BBD

August Stitching Bloggers Question

Hello everyone!  Well, we've started into the dog days of summer here in my part of the world.  The days are already noticeably shorter and I can hear the late summer bugs humming all day long.  And school will be starting for many of our children very soon.  Even if you don't have kids, there is still something in the air that seems to be urging us to settle down and get ready for fall.

So I thought that this might be the right time of year for a lighthearted and fun SBQ.  Back in 2005, Anna (her creative self) took a song title quiz and turned it into a Cross Stitch Title Quiz.  (Yes, I did just write 2005.  How can I remember what she wrote in 2005, but I can't remember what day it is sometimes? )

So here's the August SBQ deal. 

Read the list of questions below and answer them with the title of a needlework design.  Include the designer's name, too.  Try to add a photo of the design, if you can.  While you don't have to own all of the designs, you should at least want to stitch all of your answers.  And finally, if you played along 5 years ago, try to come up with answers using new design names (ones that have been published in the last 5 years).

1. Are you male or female?

2. Describe yourself:

3. How do some people feel about you? 

4. How do you feel about yourself?

5. Describe your girlfriend/boyfriend/interest:

6.  Describe your best friend:

7.  Describe where you currently live:

8. Where would you rather be? 

9. Describe what you want to be:

10. Describe how you live: 

11. Describe how you love: 

12. Share a few words of wisdom:

13.  Now use a title to say goodbye:

Seriously

So I just now got this email from About.com Needlework that says this is Start a New Hobby Week.

Really?  Because if I'm going to participate in Start a New Hobby Week, then I'm going to need to change its name.  I'm going to call it Go Out and Buy a Bunch of Stuff and Let it Sit Around for a Couple Years Before Donating it to Goodwill.....Week.

After crafting for the past 30 of my 52 years, I think I know myself and I can freely tell you that I'm a one-trick pony.  I do needlework.  I'm a stitcher.  (I can also quilt but do it so infrequently that there's no way I can call myself a quilter.)

I've taken detours into knitting (with comical results), beading and jewelry making (all my stuff looked like summer camp projects), and rubber stamping (wonder what I did with those?).  I made a two year effort at flower arranging with the local garden club (and was told that I'm a plopper.  As in - plopping flowers in a vase then plopping them on the table).  I tried my hand at any number of things and the only work that always makes me happy is needlework.

So instead of starting a new hobby, I think I'll just give the money directly to Goodwill.  Cash never gets dusty.

Tongue in cheek...

Don't get me wrong. I love real Jane Austen based movies.  I love the samplers and needlework projects that are based on Jane Austen works.  But this was just too doggone funny.  I love it when the girl's shoes fly off.

Forgotten Bookmarks

Since so many of you are readers as well as stitchers, you might enjoy this blog, called Forgotten Bookmarks.  It makes me wonder about the things that I may have left in books that I've given away.   And you may remember the story about my mother-in-law and the "bookmark" she found in her book from Goodwill.

There are some interesting things in those books.  In fact, in many cases, the bookmarks are more interesting than the books!

Bear comments and then some STITCHING (really)

Some follow-up info on our bear is in order.

I kid sometimes about being eaten by a bear, but I know that they aren't craving any Lee meat.  I know that while these bears aren't exactly harmless, they aren't really interested in me.  They are prowling for food and are probably only dangerous if you unwittingly startle them or stupidly antagonize them. For instance, when people go blackberry picking, they're warned to be very noisy, giving the bears ample time to leave the area.  And people can be stupid.  Ridiculously, amazingly stupid.  Like the fellow that the game warden said used to put honey on his son's head so that the resident bear would come lick it off.  (He swears this is a true story)

It used to be that an occasional bear would be seen and then trapped and taken to the woods of Western Maryland.  And then as more and more property became developed there, they started sending their bears to us.  Now, the game warden tells me, there are so many bears in the area that they've run out of bear traps and will only place a trap (when it's available) if the bear is troublesome - causing lots of damage or approaching too many people. So for the past few years now, we've been warned to lock up our garbage (preferably inside) and to put away our bird feeders each spring (they love bird seed).  But we've been seeing more and more bears in this part of the state.

So far, with the increase of our bear population, only the bears have suffered.  Mostly they've been hit by cars.  I don't believe that anyone in our area has been seriously hurt or attacked.  (Although my son had some scary moments when he was running on a trail in the woods and there were two cubs above him and the mother below him.  Nothing happened, but he and his buddy really stepped up their pace to get out of there quickly!)

It's really quite a shame, and what's an even greater shame is that I have neighbors who think it's great fun to feed the bears.  And a local restaurant owner who refuses to secure his garbage and you can only imagine what kind of fabulous food is luring bears to his place. 

So anyway, Val sent a great comment about the American Black Bear, and I want to share it with you.  Val, I hope you don't mind, but I didn't have a way to contact you and I thought you might want readers to have this info.


I'm a National Park Ranger (& stitcher!) in the Sierra Mountains....and I just had to comment on the 'bear story".

Where you live, you have American Black Bears; even with the name they can have fur that is brown, blond, or red. American Black Bears behave much differently around humans than Grizzly bears(found in Montana, northern Idaho, Canada, and Alaska). Black bears are not naturally aggressive towards humans...they are after FOOD! Anything that smells - even suntan lotion - will attract them. When they get a food reward, ie garbage from your trash cans...it's an easier way for them to get calories and they'll keep repeating that behavior as long as they get a food reward...no matter how small. When black bears focus only on human food and/or garbage, that's when the problems happen..they get used to being around humans and sometimes they break into sheds (or cars out here in the National Park I work) etc. When a black bear gets to be that kind of a "problem"...they are killed...zoos don't want them - they have enough and relocation doesn't work - they come back to their home range. So, if you want to save a bear's life (and not worry about them on your early morning runs) work with your local or state wildlife agency and find a solution to latching your trash cans so that bears can't get into them. With no food reward...they won't visit your neighborhood again.

Fun fact: did you know that 95% of a black bears diet consists of vegetation and bugs?

Sorry for the soap box, but after seeing too many bears destroyed because of bad human behavior, I get very passionate about educating folks on good human behavior so a bear can be saved. 

Thanks Val!

WELL!  In non-bear related things, I spent a very lazy weekend last week.  I don't know... the house needed to be cleaned and if anyone had come over I would have been mortified, but Thursday was NOT a good work day and by the end of the day Friday I was feeling pretty fried.  So I decided to be completely self-indulgent over the weekend.  Friday night I brought out my stitching and watched TV.  Saturday and Sunday I took turns reading my book and stitching.  And by Monday I was ready to face the world again. 

So here's my progress on Summer Basket:  There's a bit more lettering to complete, then the remaining stitching is fairly repetitive.  Stars around the border and the band at the bottom border. 

And The Namesake?  One of the best books I've read so far this year.  Amazing.

Yikes!  It's after 10! Time to put my nose to the grindstone.  My one boss returns home from vacation this weekend and I need to be prepared.  I think that when he goes away, he spends most of his time thinking about all of the things he wants me to do when he gets back....and then he kind of throws them all at me at once.  Maybe I can convince him that vacations are bad for him?  Bed bugs.  I'll tell him all about bed bugs attacking travelers.

Our bear is back

Thought you all might get a kick out of this photo, taken by one of my neighbors at 7:30 one morning last week.  He's been enjoying a buffet of sorts each Sunday night, toppling the garbage cans up and down my road.  (Trash pickup is early Monday morning)

I walk or run at about 7:30 each morning, so you can bet that I've been keeping my eyes peeled!  I don't need to be eaten by a bear.

Books, books, books

The desire to stitch still eludes me, but I've enjoyed other things in the meantime.  I've spent a lot more time reading this summer.  Some of it has been for book club, but most of the things I've read have been for my own enjoyment.

Maybe you've noticed the Goodreads widget in my sidebar.  I like having that little tool. I've always liked keeping track of the books I've read over the year so I kept paper lists in my datebooks but I've lost them all.  Now I really like being able to do it online.

Hey, wouldn't it be cool to have a stitching widget?  I wonder if one already exists?

But anyway, I've read some wonderful books this year and I've listened to some books that knocked my socks off.  I've also plodded through some books, given up on one or two, and I've even returned an audio book to Audible.com  because I couldn't understand most of it.  (Yes, they actually credited my account for that reason.  Cool.)  So I've had an interesting mix of things to read.

Of course, there are the book club selections.  For some reason, we've been kind of stuck in the 1940's, and as much as I like to read novels set in that time period, I'm completely burned out on WWII stories.  So my favorite book club selections so far this year have NOT been set in the 40's:  Darling Jim, by Christian Moerk and The Help, by Katherine Stockett.  I read each of these as audiobooks and they were outstanding. 

Then there have been books that I've read on my own.  Some when I've needed a laugh (The Spellman Files series, by Lisa Lutz), some when I've needed something to sink my chops into (Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout), and some when I want to read something interesting but not too heavy (The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein).


Right now I'm reading The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri.  Friends, I can hardly make myself come up for air when I'm reading this book. It's just that wonderful. 

Oh, hey...I receive Goodreads updates from a handful of you, but I'm always on the lookout for more book list sharers.  If you keep a Goodreads list, let me know.