Meager Progress

I didn't make as much progress on Dark Queen as I would have liked, but it is progress in any case. I worked on filling in the upper window area. I am still not doing to good about refraining from jumping around. Here she is...

Here is the link to the last progress pic. I can't believe that it has been two months already. ARGH!!!

Sunday Again

Where in the world has this past week gone? I have been very busy at work, and have had a lot of other projects going on at home. I managed to fit in a bit of stitching time yesterday. It is the HAED SAL weekend, so I am working on Dark Queen again. It is raining and miserable here today, so I am hoping to spend a large chunk of time stitching. I should have some decent progress to show at the end of the SAL.

I worked on another fun little craft project off and on this week. We are going on a cruise later this year with two other couples. We decided that we don't want to wait that long to get into the cruise spirit, so we will be hosting a party this summer. I was struggling with what to do for the invitations, and ran across these. A message in a bottle invitation for a cruise party? PERFECT! I ordered up a kit, and FedEx delivered it a few days later. I have been working on assembling them, and yesterday they were finally ready to mail. The toughest part was getting the message rolled tightly enough to fit in the bottle. The best part is that you can mail them just like this (within the US). How cool is that?

Bryon has been busy doing some serious work out in the yard. Last weekend, he cut out two huge dead evergreen trees. He wound up with a big bruise / gash combo when one of the trees attacked him. It was very ugly for a few days, but is finally starting to look better. The trees that we are losing are a long needle variety that are a favorite feasting ground for a certain type of beetle. The beetle bores into the tree and eats away, killing the tree. The beetles don't bother the short needle evergreens, so any replacements that we have put in have been short needle types.

We had a new tree delivered yesterday, and we had to plant it. My job was to hold the tree straight in the hole while Bryon cut off the burlap around the root ball and then filled in the hole with a peat moss and dirt mixture. I had to get close enough to be able to grab the tree trunk, but stay far enough away so I didn't slide into the hole. That sounds a lot easier than it was :) The new tree is 6 feet tall, but it looks so little compared to the trees around it!

We also have some potential new residents on the back patio. I haven't seen any robins tending to these, but there are three little robin eggs in the planter on the patio.

Finally, here is a picture of some of the iris plants that are doing incredibly well. A couple of years ago, we dug up some plants that had strayed out of bounds. We planted them underneath some newly planted trees to see what would happen. Last year, we had a pleasant surprise in the spring, and just a few blooms. This year, they are awesome!

That's all for now! Thank you for stopping by :)

Very Pink Post

I finished stitching a biscornu that is a gift for a non-stitching friend. This is "Sweet Biscornu" by Periphaeria Designs, from the July 2007 Gift of Stitching magazine. I stitched this on Silkweaver "Pink Pizazz" 32 count Belfast linen, using Needle Necessities "Watermelon Ice" (#1571).

If this looks somewhat familiar, it is because I have stitched it a couple of times before in different colors (green and purple).

Our profusion crabapple tree is in full bloom. The blossoms survived the rain and high winds that we had the other day, so we get to enjoy this for a bit longer.

Here is a closeup of the flowers on the tree.

Finally, if you haven't seen the "Pink Fiber Heaven" contest on Stitch Pink, be sure to check it out!

New Look - Can You See Me Now ?

I think that I finally fixed the browser compatibility issues that I had with my layout. I switched to the "new" Blogger, and modified my layout to maintain the 3 column look. I have tested it in Firefox, and at least everything shows up now!! I am not totally happy with how all of the spacing looks, so I will be tweaking that as I have time. I lost a lot of the sidebar content, but do have a backup of the old template. It is a good excuse to go through and evaluate all of what I had on there. Please bear with me while this is under construction :)

Here I Am

I have been a terrible blogger lately. I can't believe that I only had one lousy post for the entire month of April! My stitching progress has also been less than stellar.

I *have* been really busy, though. In mid-April, we took a whirlwind weekend trip to Minnesota to see my family. It was a quick trip that was long overdue, but it was great hanging out with everyone! We adjusted our work schedules so that we could leave a bit earlier than normal on a Friday, and had a rainy and snowy trip up to Minnesota. The first morning, I woke up before everyone else. I wandered outside to check out the weather while the coffee was brewing. There were three baby deer across the street in a neighbor's yard, feasting away on the foliage. I stood and watched them for a while until they got spooked and trotted away down the street.

The coolest part about that weekend was teaching my 9 year old niece how to sew. She is really crazy about Webkinz. I was totally clueless about these until recently. Bryon's great-niece gave us a Webkinz overview at Easter, and then my niece showed me everything about them during our trip. She wanted to learn how to sew so that she could make blankets and pillows for her Webkinz, and also sell them to her classmates at school. How cute! Her dad, who has an entrepreneurial spirit, also wanted to learn how to sew. He bought her a sewing machine, all of the gadgets, and a supply of remnant fabrics to experiment on. They were eagerly awaiting our visit so that I could give them lessons and get them up and running. We had lessons on Saturday afternoon, and even raided my SIL's much neglected DMC stash to find suitable matching threads to hand sew the pillow openings with. By the time we left, my students were sewing up a storm! I hear that the blossoming business is doing quite well :)

I also have a new job! It's with the same company, but at a new location and will have new challenges. The drive will be a bit longer, but I am very excited about this new opportunity :) I am working on adjusting my schedule so that I can leave the house much earlier in the morning in order to beat traffic. That also means that I am tired much earlier in the evening. I normally don't use an alarm clock, so that is a big change! It will take me a bit to get adjusted to this, and then it should be good :)

Spring has also arrived here. After a long winter, this is so welcome! We have been doing a lot of yard work, and are in the best shape ever as far as that is concerned. We are hoping that all of this hard work up front will allow us to sit back and enjoy the fruits of our labor all summer long. There were a few injuries along the way, but everyone is mending quite nicely :) Other than being old and out of shape, I had a mishap with the pruners which were not quite as sharp as they could be. I twisted my wrist when I tried to prune a branch that was just a bit too thick. Those pruners promptly went in the garbage, and Bryon bought me an awesome new Fiskars pruner. Bryon also mistook his finger for a branch, and we had a multi-bandage incident one night. At first, we thought that a visit to the emergency room would be in order, but luckily everything settled down and was okay. It is still a bit early to plant the vegetable garden and annuals. May 15th is the average last frost date for this area, so we try to wait until then. The weather has been mild, but we did have frost a few mornings last week.

Since I don't have any stitching pics to share, here are a few of our gardens. The first is a rhododendron that we planted last fall. It really is beautiful!

The next picture is of our back garden path. We really worked a lot on this the past few years. There were tiger lilies that had taken over, so we have been trying to reclaim the area.

This last picture is of the hyacinth plants that were such a pretty shade of purple.

I am really hoping to have some stitching progress pictures soon! I am working on a biscornu for a birthday gift for a non-stitching friend. The problem is that it is nearly 3 weeks overdue. I *must* finish this up this weekend!

Earthquake

I thought that I was totally losing my mind this morning. I usually start waking up around 4:30 in the morning. I heard a wierd noise, and thought that it was raining and that there were branches hitting the house or something. I looked outside, and there was nothing going on. Then I realized that a covered glass dish on my dresser was rattling. We are out in the country, so there is nothing around here (like trains or traffic) that would do that. I thought that I was still dreaming, or imagining things!

I got up around 5:30 and turned on the news, and was surprised to see an explanation for what I experienced...there was an earthquake in southern Illinois, and it was felt in the Chicago area. We are about 250 miles north of the epicenter. This is an extremely rare occurrence around here!

Surprises for Yuko

I received a wonderful, sweet e-mail from Yuko this week. I had just mailed a package to her last Saturday, so I was thrilled that it had made the long trip in just a few days. She had been feeling a bit under the weather, and I'm glad to hear that this little package cheered her up!

There is a little story to go along with this, so bear with me :) It's a pretty cool story, and I promise that there are stitching pictures here, too.

Anyway, if you have been reading my blog for a while, you have no doubt heard me blabber on about Colorado from time to time. I absolutely love it out there, we own 70 acres in the southern part of the state, and hope to live there someday soon. I have another blog where I blabber about Colorado even more (although I have neglected it a bit lately).

Quite a while back, Yuko had told me that her husband used to be a snowboard instructor out in Colorado back before they were married, and that he enjoyed my Colorado pictures. About a month ago, I finally asked her which resort it was that he had worked at. I almost fell out of my chair when she told me that it was Arapahoe Basin! I had totally expected her to say that it was Vail or Keystone...so imagine my surprise when she said that it was A-Basin!!! That's one of the two resorts that we ski at most often when we go out to Colorado, and Bryon has had a season pass for there for many years. He has racked up about 20 days on the slopes there this season. He is at the Denver airport right now on his way back from another long weekend trip out there. We even have a huge picture hanging on our living room wall which is of Arapahoe Basin, as seen from space. It was a gift from our friends this past Christmas, so that gives you a bit of a clue how much we love A-Basin!

Well, it just happened that Bryon was out in Colorado on a ski trip when I found out where Yuko's husband used to work. I told Bryon about it, and he was so surprised as well! Needless to say, he arrived home from his trip with a few little Arapahoe Basin goodies for Yuko's husband.

I couldn't just send that, now could I? So I stitched a little pinkeep for Yuko. It is a freebie from Lizzie Kate. It was so perfect for spring, and I thought that the saying was wonderful :)

I also sent some Easter candy goodies, as well as some fun stitching supplies. I also knew that she liked the Willow Tree figurines, so I sent her the Angel of Spring. I didn't take pictures of everything, so you'll have to check out Yuko's blog for that...she takes much better pictures than I do, anyway :)

It is amazing how small the world is sometimes...what a wonderful world it is!! I am so grateful for all of the awesome friends that I have met through stitching :)

CdC Update

It's about time for a Cirque des Cercles update! I spent most of the weekend working on this, and think that I have finally made up for the time lost frogging after the last update :)

Let's Go Warriors!

Back when I was in college, the basketball games weren't all that exciting. And, our team certainly was never on national TV. A lot has changed in 20 years!! They have made the trip to the NCAA Division II National Championship game 3 years in a row now, and have brought back 2 titles. The most recent was this afternoon, in an incredibly exciting game!

I am definitely not a big sports fan. But last night my brother clued me in that they were playing today, so I had to tune in!!! I wound up having to put my stitching down and was yelling at the TV :) Down 12 points at halftime, it wasn't looking so good. I almost flipped the channel, thinking that I put a jinx on them by watching. I had only watched the end of the win in 2006, and had watched the entire game last year. During last year's game, they had a good lead going in to the final minute but had a disappointing loss. I'm glad that I hung in there, because the second half of today's game was incredibly exciting. Not only did they make up the deficit, but they pulled out a win by an 11 point margin. Congratulations, Warriors!!

Drawing Winners!

We have winners!!

I made two lists. One was for those interested in the chart and the other was for those interested in the kit. If you were interested in both, you were on both lists. I used random.org to generate the random numbers.

The winner of the chart is Cheryl, and the winner of the kit is Ranae. Congratulations to the two winners! Thank you to everyone for your wonderful comments, and for joining in on the fun :) We'll have to do this again soon!