"Buttons and patches and the cold wind blowing,
The days pass quickly when I am sewing"
~Author Unknown

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Autumn and winter gardens.....

You can find me stitching in an autumn garden this week and not blogging. I am off for a short vacation. We are leaving soon to pick up Saskia and will be meeting two other quilting friends when we get there. We are also starting on another BRD SAL. This time Jeanne is joining us for this stroll around a winter garden as we stitch Baby It's Cold Outside. Here is my choice of linen and thread. I am stitching this 1 over 1 on 28 count linen.

I stitched up a little gift for the owner of the B&B where we will be staying in The Alsace in France. The name of her B&B is Ambiance Jardin.

It is a magical place with an incredible garden. Pierrette collects watering cans and I hope she will like those I have for her. We are looking forward to going there again and I hope the weather is nice enough to spend some time stitching or quilting in the garden.

Have a great week out there in blogland and I will talk to you again as soon as we get back...

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Old dog, new trick......

For some time, I have had it in my head to learn to crochet in order to make my own granny square afghan. I have two. One was made by scraps of yarn with black as basis which is the 'original' granny square afghan from days gone by. The other is soft and romantic colors to make the patchwork quilt I made. My mother made me this afghan. I love it and grab it often to keep warm when I have to lay down and rest or sit reading in my bedroom.

I want the challenge of making one myself. My friend Sonja "wanted to be able to teach me something for a change" as she put it. This summer, she brought me a gift of a ball of burgundy red cotton and a crochet hook. We made the men wash the dishes after we had dinner at Cranberry Cottage while she and I practiced doing some crochet stitches. We were quite a picture in my two recliner chairs.


I then emailed a friend of mine, Susan, who had recently made some dishclothes. I use crochet and knitted dishclothes and love them. My aunt used to make them for me and thankfully they last forever so I still have some even though she is no longer with us. Susan sent me some easy patterns but suggested that I simply make rows of double crochet to size just to practice and get the feeling before I move on to a granny square.

I did it! Yeah! It is simple but I made it myself and it feels wonderful to learn something new after years of showing others how to do things.

It will really be fun to use this. Yes bloggers, I not only like ironing but also cooking and working in the kitchen.

I used a crab stitch (reverse crochet) to edge it. I found a great deal (I think) at the Lidl last week for light weight brown yarn and decided to buy that to try some more crochet stitches and make a scarf. I will keep you tuned about what I end up working on as I am off to look through a crochet book that Sonja also gave me this summer.

In the meantime, I will continue to be inspired each time I walk by this basket of soft yarn for my granny square afghan. I already bought the yarn because I found it at Action for such a great price. It is dark gray, light gray, purple and pink. Will I have enough to make the afghan? Or should I buy more? They say around 300 meter/100gram.

And the last question that comes to mind...Did I really need to start myself on yet another hobby???

Monday, September 6, 2010

Eating worms and watering friendships...

In May, I had set myself a challenge within my UFO challenge year. I know my handwork achievements will slow down drastically now that we are getting the keys to our new house in two weeks. I decided to try and accomplish 6 UFOs from mid May to mid September with a surprise giveaway win going along with each finish. It has been fun to watch old projects finally getting finished and also spreading some thankfulness for you, my blog readers, through my fobs and needlebooks.


Now I had a list of some UFOs that I really wanted done and all but one of them is now finished as of today. I am just thrilled about having met my goals with some to spare. No I did not finish that last one on my list but I did finish many other extras that were not on my list. I sat down and went through what I did finish and...well...can you see me smile??? More about the details in a moment.

Way back long ago...yep that is a long time. *wink* Annemarie had finished stitching a fabulous Moira Blackburn chart and decided to set up the Lovelorn Sisters. I had to sign up immediately because this was created from a child's song that I always sing to make my mother laugh. Later,
Annemarie laughed when she found out it was a child's song while she thought it was just a verse on a sampler.

Nope! We Lovelorn children do really go sing about eating worms in the garden. *grins*

Now don't ask me why this became a UFO! I adore this design and have no idea. I just left it sit. I had every intention on finish it right away thus the date is wrong. So mine is the starting date. *wink*

I knew when I got the chart in the mail from Annemarie that I would use this to make a tray doily. I sewed strips of fabric to make the doily fit just right inside the tray. Now I can eat something other than worms in the garden since I have something to carry out cups of tea and cookies.

This project needed a summer fob. This fob has a tiny dragonfly and rose on it which you can see if you enlarge the photo. I went back to the previous post since it was fun to read your comments about ironing. I used the random number generator and the winner is...


Congratulations Deborah! Please email me with your address.

Last December, when I decided to challenge myself in 2010 to finish as many UFOs as I can, Saskia and Joke said they wanted to do it too and have a set challenge. We each set a personal goal. Whoever won got treated to a High Tea by the other two.

I set a goal for six UFOs but ended up finishing 12. I have also started and finished 10 projects so far this year.

Off we went for our High Tea a couple of weeks ago. I just love spending time with Saskia and Joke (who are mother and daughter) which is always filled with much laughter.

And well...the food was pretty good too. *grins*

I also sent a gift to a blogging friend. Marsha is such a warm and giving person and I really wanted to do something back for her. She sends me DMC thread simply because she says she knows how expensive it is here. When I talked once about never having had an advent calender, she went out searching for one even though the holidays were over and sent me one. I am still anxiously awaiting this coming December when I can use the advent calender.

She won one of my surprise giveaway fobs so I decided to take advantage of it to send her gift. I got her a pair of scissor and made a wool felt holder for them. I sent her some of Nina's hand dyed threads and a LHN/CC kit. Then I made her a project bag to hold one of her stitching projects. After all, we stitcher's need to be organized, right?

So am I stopping with my UFOs? No way! I still hope to finish another 2 or 3 before the year is over even with our pending move. Can you keep your fingers crossed for me? It makes for difficult stitching if I cross them myself.