Keeping Busy

We have been a little out-of-sorts lately so Dash and I went on a little outing. We just spent a night (Friday) away from home and did a little shopping, sight-seeing and such. It was nice to get away, if only for the night. We went to the movies and saw The Raven with John Cusack, on opening night no less. We NEVER go to movies on opening night. The movie was fun and Cusack is such a solid performer. He's easy on the eyes too, lol. This movie also features Brendan Coyle of Downton Abbey fame. 

A neat surprise was the family of Bluebirds outside our hotel room window! There were four chicks (just fledged) and the parents. They hung out on this Woodpecker-hole-riddled pine tree. The babies were learning to fly and mom & dad were busy bringing them bugs. Sorry for the lousy quality, these photos were taken with my iPhone, through the window, into the sun. 

The babies kept peeking at us. 

"Can they SEE us?" They wonder.

Daddy bird wasn't happy with our stares.

"Who are you LOOKING at?," He asks.

Daddy flew off to catch bugs and baby s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-s his wings. 

"This flying business is such HARD WORK!"

We went to a town near Tulsa called Jenks, as we'd heard they have lots of antique shops to visit. We hadn't realized it was also the weekend of their annual herb festival so they were crowded like you wouldn't believe ~ but we had loads of fun. I found lots of goodies:

Jars and jars and jars of buttons. A very pretty (and tiny) clear glass flower frog. Some neat old commercial thread spools. Two jars full of old, old wooden thread spools.

A cool Needlecrafts book. This thing is HUGE. Some old leaflets, including an early Prairie Schooler. Then I also found several lots of 1980-90's cross stitch magazines. When I've gone through them I will offer my duplicates up as a giveaway, k?

Eeek!

So sorry about that! I had to include an "I live in freakin' Oklahoma" story for you. The other evening I went out to get the mail and there were hundreds of tiny spiders all over my mailbox and the planter it sits in. Oooo! Spiders kinda freak me out if there is the slightest chance they could get ON me. So I go get the bug spray and give the mailbox and the planter a good dousing. To my absolute HORROR seven (OMG 7!) huge Black Widow spiders come rushing out from between the bricks of the planter. I gave the planter another good dousing of insecticide and phoned Dash at work to tell him I'm packing up and moving to Antarctica where surely it's too cold for spiders. He convinced me to stay by promising to spray around the house inside and out. Incidentally, after he sprayed, I found another Black Widow dying on the front porch! Don't poke your hands into places you can see around my house. Just sayin'. I have found Black Widows here before but never so many at once.

Maybe I will stay here in Oklahoma. Our weather has been just lovely lately and I have spent many, many hours stitching on the back porch. Since it's usually too windy, too rainy, too cold or too hot for me to stitch outside this is quite the pleasant development. I have several things to show you but I'm going to just tease you for now! See you soon!

Thank you for visiting my blog today!

xox

A Weekend to Hermit

Ah, the one weekend each month to do nothing but stitch! It was International Hermit and Stitch Weekend and I made use of every second I could spare. Of course, one must do the laundry, dishes and take care of the gardens but for the most part, I stitched and stitched some more ~ Dash even cooked for me every meal! Yes, I know how lucky I am, girls...believe me.

So first up, I started my next Prairie Schooler "12 Days of Christmas" ornament 10 Lords a-Leaping and I made excellent progress:

Lynn, you aren't the only one with Zombie people! 

It was so hard to put this one down but I knew I had to start the next Traveling Pattern or I'd get behind. Wouldn't want anyone to think I was a flaker! Here is where I got to on that:

This is Tending the Blooms by Shepherd's Bush. I chose a very bright spring green linen I dyed a long time back. Wish you could see how pretty it is in person! However, since this is linen, it is terribly wrinkled and you can't see it in the picture but I'm weighting the edges down with my scissors and needle minder ~ lol!

I am so impressed with how much stitching I was able to do! There were some comments on my TUSAL post about how people wished they had as much time to stitch as I do. Really? Me? No way ~ I am still The Queen of Slow Stitching and don't anybody forget that! I work full time (and when I am not AT work I'm worrying about work) and I am the worlds worst about managing my time when I am home. I spend way too much time ogling blogs instead of stitching or even crashed in front of the TV because, poor me "I had a hard day." If we all actually put ourselves to it we could accomplish so much more than we do!

If you would like to join us for the next International Hermit and Stitch Weekend visit Joyce's blog for details. IHSW is the third full weekend of every month so the next one starts May 18th. Joyce usually has a sign up in advance so you can let everyone know you are "coming" that weekend.

Thank you for visiting my blog today!

xox

TUSAL Quickie

Just a quick Totally Useless Stitch-A-Long post to show off my ORTs this New Moon. I did a lot more stitching than I thought. 

If you'd like to join us in this Totally Useless Endeavor click here and start saving your ORTs!

TUSALers leaving a comment on this post receive an extra entry in the giveaway!

***

"Do you want me to make you a pitcher of sangria?" asked Dash.  

I heard, "Are you going to make a pitcher of sangria?" 

"Yes," I said, "but I want to take a shower first."

So when I got out of the shower I made a pitcher of sangria and opened the fridge to see one already made.

Whoops!

I'm just a little tipsy. 

Thank you for visiting my blog today!

xox 

The Busy Needle

This was the second of the three Traveling Patterns I'm stitching. Whew ~ this means I've only got one more to go! This Traveling Pattern was started by Lynda of A Cozy Little Place for Stitching. A change up from the others ~ this one travels a set schedule ~ so now that my turn is over it has been sent on to the next in line.

Design ~ The Busy Needle

Designer ~ Little House Needleworks

Fabric ~ 32 count tea-stained Lugana

Fiber ~ DMC

Many thanks to Lynda for including me in the travels of this design. Thanks go to Shar as well, for loaning me her copy when I asked. Blog friends are the best!

Okay, one more traveling pattern to go. Stitch, girl, stitch!

Before I forget...I drew a winner for the Bird in Hand pillow ~ Deborah of Cranberry Samplings. Thank you all for playing along and I will try to have another giveaway soon!

Thank you for visiting my blog today!

xox

Pears

I adore pears. Aren't they just beautiful? I think so anyway! Green ones, yellow or red ones. I find myself very attracted to designs with pears in them. A lot of these are Christmas designs ~ which I cannot resist buying! But I like them all.  Do you like pears?  I hope so... 

...because I have a freebie for you:

In case you like it better on a lighter colored fabric:

To receive a copy of the design email me at daffy-cat AT hotmail DOT com. Tell me the name of the design you are requesting. This one is "Pears." I appreciate comments left here for encouragement too!

Please respect my copyright and do not upload my designs to any website or share with other people. Yes, they are free but I still retain copyright.

My designs are published as PDF. You must have the free Adobe Reader installed on your computer to view/print my patterns ~ or a similar PDF viewer.

As always, you can click the cat in my sidebar to see my other free cross stitch designs. They are all still available for the asking.

Thank you for visiting my blog today!

xox

A Bird in Hand

Last weekend I finished my Nina's Threads Project into a pillow. I waited until now to share with you so to give Nina a chance to post on her blog first, since it was all her idea! She has had it up for several days and now it's my turn:

Design ~ A Bird in Hand

Designer ~ La-D-Da

Fabric ~ 32 count tea-stained Lugana

Fiber ~ Nina's Threads 

This was such a fun project. I really enjoyed working with Nina and getting a chance to try her lovely hand dyed threads. I am very pleased to learn you can buy Nina's Threads in the US at The Thread Basket. It was nice to see there are two sizes of skeins so if you only need a little you can buy a half size at a reduced price.

I found the finishing fabric at Hobby Lobby, taking my stitched piece with me to color match. I couldn't believe I was able to find fabric that went so well. It's like Nina had that fabric in mind when choosing the thread colors for the design. My pillow is lightly stuffed with fiberfill. Big thanks to Nina for letting me try her threads!

This pillow could be yours! If you would like to own it, leave me a comment on this post and I will choose a winner in a few days.

And the winner of the drawing for the Traveling Pattern, Thankful, is geeky Heather of It's Geek to Me. Thanks to everyone that entered and don't be too disappointed if you weren't drawn since you can follow it to Heather's blog and try again after she has stitched it!

Thank you for visiting my blog today!

xox

Thankful

Or maybe that title should be one down, two to go? I completed the first of the three Traveling Patterns. I will probably get thrown out of the stitcherhood on my ear but I cheated on this one! I edited it severely:

Was that too much creative license? I loved the sheep. Loved the flowers. Thought the tree was great and the lacy border superb. Hated the verse. Don't know why! So I edited. Forgive me! I stitched this on a scrap of linen I dyed yellow...worrying the entire time that sheep was going to fade away!

Details: 

Design ~ Thankful, a complimentary pattern

Designers ~ Little House Needleworks and Crescent Colors

Fabric ~ 32 count "Daffycat Dyed" Belfast Linen "Sunshine"

Fiber ~ DMC 3799, 3865, 3346, 434, 3832

I've not seen the full history published anywhere but you can see some Thankful stitcherhood finishes here:

Anne of Doll's Musings (sorry Anne! lol)

Mouse of Tales of a Stitching Mouse

Gracie of Needles Pins and Dragonflies

Tricia of The Stamper's Stitches

If you know of other finishes let me know and I will add them in!

Now for the good part! If you'd like to be the next member of the stitcherhood leave a comment saying so. I will not put your name into the hat unless you ask to be added. If you ask to be added and your name is drawn you will be expected to stitch the design as quickly as possible so the pattern can go on to the next stitcher. Don't ask to join if you aren't going to be reliable!

Hurry now, I will draw a winner very soon...probably this weekend!

Thank you for visiting my blog today!

xox

Sheba

Sheba 2001-2012

My heart is broken.

xox

March Madness Failure

I am perfectly aware how atrociously late I am at updating for Theme-a-licious. I have been dawdling because I totally failed my plans for March Madness. I only completed two projects and of those, only one got finish-finished. I meant to stitch and finish one a week. Yes, me...the Queen of Slow Stitching. Stop laughing! I really meant to do it!

My first finish was the Bent Creek Red Winged Blackbird stitcher's pocket:

This was sent as a secret RAK to Barbi! She received it earlier this week and you can read about it here.

My next project was La D Da's A Bird in Hand:

Horrible wrinkles and lighting here. This was stitched using Nina's Threads as part of Nina's Threads project. Nina chose the colors...I just stitched! This still needs finishing but I should get to that soon!

For April our theme reads:

Amazon April

Dip your needle into the vast swath of fabric dedicated to your BIGGEST projects!

I kinda have a problem with that...and it's called "obligation stitching." I  was chosen to be the next stitcher on three different traveling patterns. Oh holy crows! How did that happen? No one enters giveaways expecting to be drawn! 

My first project is underway and two more are being mailed to me. Instead of working on Finery of Nature as I planned, my Amazon April will be filled with these three projects. My Amazon task, lol. Be ready for drawings! Two of these Traveling Patterns will be drawn by lottery. As I complete each one, I will put it up for grabs to the next lucky stitcher!

Thank you for visiting my blog today!

xox