Petite Christmas Angel SAL

Last week, we finished our angels.  I'm ok with my color choices and like the way she turned out, but I still have to decide how to finish her.  Any suggestions?

Mosquito Bites, Open Windows, Leaves and Spring Flowers

Early Spring Flowers -- Blooming in Winter

Our weather turned summer-like last week with temps in the middle 80's.  Our normal temps this time of year is mostly 30's with some days in the 40's.  With the warm temps come bugs, spring flowers and leaves budding out on the trees (and allergies in full force).  We've been really enjoying these warm days and evenings, cooking on the grill, eating outside on the deck, getting yard work done, but never would I have thought I'd get eaten up by mosquitoes in March!
 
With such warm, summer weather, I felt drawn to spring flowers not snowmen and Christmas ornies...

 
So, I stitched up Spring Basket (a members only design by Bee's Needlework for the TSS yahoo group) instead!  I'm thinking this might make a nice pillow for my bedroom, but I'm still tossing around finishing ideas.

Collecting, Craft Room and Computer Housekeeping

I have a problem, my dear friends.  I like to collect recipes, magazines, designs and STASH!  Do you know what happens when you've been collecting digital files of embroidery and cross stitch designs for years and have upgraded computers several times over those years?  Yep, I've got alot of digital files on my hard drive, CD's, a couple of external hard drives and even some floppies and USB sticks.  Now that my current computer is acting up, I decided I had better get things backed up just in case!  While I was backing up my files, I decided to organize the designs -- something I had always needed to do, but you know how you just put those things off.  It took hours to organize my thousands of digital files, but it's finally done.  Hopefully, I can stick with keeping them organized.

I need to tackle the magazines and recipes.  Ever since I was a teenager, I've torn recipes out of magazines and with some magazines, I just keep the whole thing.  Now, stitching magazines are ones I'll never part with, so those are neatly organized in my craft room.  But how to handle the recipes?  I always thought one day I'd copy those recipes down on cards and file them in my recipe box, but then the thought of all that writing kept me from actually starting it.  After collecting recipes all these years, I have a few boxes full of pages torn out of magazines.  I must admit, I don't even go digging through all those pages to find a recipe.  Maybe they'll be heading to the recycle bin -- after all, I can look up any recipe on the internet, right?

I've been very slowly trying to organize my threads and fabbies.  The threads are the easier part -- snack size baggies, gallon size baggies and several plastic shoe boxes.  It's the fabbies I'm stuck on.  Quite a few years ago, I subscribed to a monthly fabric club and kept the subscription for alot of years.  I've just been adding the fabbies to a large plastic box, but whenever I want to start a project, I have to search through the entire box.

What is the best way to store fabbies?  They were all sent folded nicely in individual plastic bags and that's how I've kept them.  Should I sort them by fabbie type, color, thread count or something else?

I'm a Winner!

I actually won something!  Thanks to Meari for letting me know she had seen me listed as a winner on the Victorian Motto Sampler Shoppe blog.  You can read about the give-away here.  I won 4 skeins of plum floss.  My pics do not do justice to the deep, rich plum color of these skeins!

Quote for the week:  

        "I'm too blessed to be stressed!" 

Until next time...
Happy Stitchin'

 

Petite Christmas Angel SAL

Week 3 on this SAL already!  We were to stitch the top skirt and the second skirt.  I got a little sidetracked after I finished the top skirt and I decided to add the backstitching and beads on the top part.

I’m still not sure I’m liking my floss choices.  The wings are blue and the skirt is purple, but as you can see in the pics, they look very similar.  Oh, what to do... I’ve completed the whole top skirt and did some of the backstitching just to see how it looks.  I really don’t want to FROG the whole top skirt or the wings.


Little Snickers

My little Snickers wasn’t moving around very well and actually fell a few times one morning last week.  She tried to jump on the sofa and missed, then after I put her on the sofa, she tried to go from the arm of the sofa to the arm of the chair -- which she does all the time -- and she missed that too.   She was tipping her head to one side and leaning to that same side and would stumble when she walked.  We decided to take her to the vet to have it checked out.

Snickers has a bulging disc in her neck and shoulder area.  The little Queen has been put on complete rest for 4 weeks.  Complete rest means, no jumping on or off the furniture, no steps, no running in the back yard and no collar around her neck.  She sure likes being carried around and the “queen” attitude is in full force, but she’s not following doctor’s orders!  We removed the stool she used to get up on the sofa thinking she wouldn’t even try to get on the sofa and let us put her there, but Snickers decided she could just jump all the way up from the floor.   

You should see us trying to keep her from running in the back yard.  I honestly believe she thinks it’s a game!  For 15 years old, she still runs faster than us.  She doesn’t really seem to be in pain until at the very end of the day.   

 

  

Since she can’t wear her collar, she needed a harness for her leash to be attached to.  I decided to make one from some scrap fabric I had.  I used a piece of newspaper to make a pattern and put the paper pattern around Snickers to size it correctly.
 

I'm not too happy about this!

Are you really making me wear this?

(Snickers doesn't like getting her picture taken -- I think she's afraid to move with "that thing" on!)


Crazy Weather

I’ve been enjoying our unusually mild winter, but last Friday our rain turned to snow.  It was like a snow globe and I had to take some pics while Dottie and I were out playing.

 By Monday, the snow was gone and temps had turned much warmer.  I can’t remember early March ever being in the 60’s and 70’s for so many days in a row.  

With our warmer temps, the signs of spring are all around!

Spending hours right here enjoying the breeze coming in the open window!

Found the hole on Monday and then saw this little guy yesterday morning.  This is right outside our front door.  Dottie hasn't seen him yet.

I’ve had everyone who was in the path of the storms last week in my thoughts and prayers.

Until next time,
Happy Stitchin’