Ready, Set, Stitch!

When I got home from work yesterday the first thing I did was choose a fabric to tea stain. I knew the threads I was waiting on were coming soon and I wanted to be ready. This 32 count Lugana fit the bill. I guess I didn't have to choose such a large piece of fabric...but I wanted extra!

I snapped this quick photo with my phone in the big middle of flinging tea. Yes, the fabric covers my dining table. It took me all afternoon to get this thing dyed, it was so big. Then, I only gave it a quick ironing and laid it out over the sewing machine desk to finish drying. I usually iron my fabric completely dry but I'd had enough of wrestling fabric for the day! It got a good ironing after work today.

The fabric was ready just in time because look what was in my mailbox:

These are the threads Nina chose for me to stitch La D Da's A Bird in Hand with. Aren't Nina's threads pretty? That is my finished fabric underneath.

I'm very excited to start! Everything is kitted up and I am ready to stitch.

Nina sells her lovely hand-dyed threads and trims ~ go look here! 

To see how I dye fabric ~ go look here!

Thank you for visiting my blog today!

xox

Blackbirds and Cherries

When I was half-way through stitching this blackbird I kept seeing red cherries on black fabric in my mind. I knew I'd seen that fabric before but I didn't own any of it. I couldn't tell if this wanted to be a little pillow or a pocket or what but I was sure it needed black fabric with red cherries so I stopped by Hobby Lobby on my way home from work and bought a yard. Yes, Lynda and Kathy (you smarties) it is a Mary Engelbreit print. The very minute I was done stitching I was ready to finish and had decided this wanted to be a stitcher's pocket. Now, even though I had never made one before...it turned out very well!

Design ~ Red Winged Blackbird

Designer ~ Bent Creek

Fabric ~ 28 count Khaki Monaco

 Fiber ~ DMC

This finish was sent to Barbi of Blissfully Stitching as an RAK. You can read about it here.

The next time I make one of these, I think I might try to make the backing piece a tiny bit larger and see if I can't reduce the part where the pocket goes on. Kinda even things up? I forgot to put something IN the pocket part when I took the pictures ~ whoops! The ric rac was so easy and big thanks go to Karen for her  recent tips about it!

Since Thursday was the full moon ~ that means it's WIPocalypse time and that means ~ I'm late! I was too busy finishing to bother posting and I'm sticking to that story. At least I had an actual finish to post and that is the whole point of WIPocalypse anyway! Thank you, Measi...for hosting this...I can chalk up another finish out of that over-full bin!

Thank you for visiting my blog today!

xox

WIP Wednesday

A rare view of my desktop. This includes a sneak peek of my current project in mid-assembly. Who here likes cherries on black fabric? Isn't that cute? No, I deliberately didn't show the stitched part. That's why it is called a sneak peek!

Part of my March Madness goal is to finish-finish some things. I'm getting there. Now, if glue would dry faster! Of course...this could turn out as complete rubbish and get tossed in the bin.

Thank you for visiting my blog today!

xox

Hugs to All

A big thank you for all the happy birthday wishes on my last post. You sure know how to make a girl feel special! Dash does too ~ look at the gifts he got me:

Both seasons of Downton Abbey and a companion book...plus the first season of The Walking Dead and a book about it as well. I'm half way through The Walking Dead Chronicles already ~ very interesting!

I had a lovely day out on Friday. We had a lovely lunch at a brick oven pizza place in downtown Tulsa called Joe Momma's. I won't bore you with the craptastic pictures I took there. We had a basket of fried button mushrooms, a fat calzone and each had a couple of beers. It was lovely! Then we went shopping:

I bought some finishing fabrics. I especially like the red striped mattress ticking. I found loads of new charts. Absolutely had to get La D Da's A Bird in Hand because I was chosen by Nina to stitch this using her over-dyed threads. I could have borrowed Nina's but I wanted my own copy anyway. The Prairie Schooler ones both had partridge-in-a-pear-tree designs and I could not resist. Yes, I was able to control myself during stash shopping...I only had two beers!

A little close-up of the Just Nan pin I bought:

I can't resist ladybugs either! Counting pins are too handy. One can never have enough. Here are the ones on my desk:

Forgive the stray thread clippings...this IS a work area, after all! 

What are counting pins and how do you use them? Easy...say you have a long border to stitch and you want to be SURE you have it counted correctly. Or you are counting for center placement on a new start. Use your counting pins to mark every 10 or 20 stitches so save the place. No more mis-counting! You don't need fancy pins of course but they make it fun. 

I am still having a great time for my birthday weekend. I've been catching up on my blog list, doing some stitching on  projects for Theme-a-licious and WIPocalypse and even a bit of housework. *gasp* I can't believe I just said the h-word!

Thank you for visiting my blog today!

xox

Spring Fever

Spring is in the air. It is coming ~ you can just feel it! Of course it doesn't hurt that it is so warm outside today it feel like late spring already! The trees are budding out and the pollen counts have skyrocketed and the Border Collie is shedding her winter coat all over the house. I can sit and brush and after 45 minutes the house is full of loose hair, I have a dog that won't let me touch her any more and she is still shedding. Yup, it's almost spring.

Do you have that friend? You know...the one that hides or makes horrible faces when you go to take her picture? That's my Sheba. If you are pointing a camera in her direction she will look away. Every. Single. Time. Goofy dog. Look how silvered she is getting around the eyes? Such a pretty old lady! She is recovered from her thyroid surgery but she moves slower and rests more.

In honor of the coming spring I have treated my blog to a bit of a spring cleaning. I have deleted some outdated elements, trying to give everything a bit of shine. (Now if I could just get that freakin' header photo to center I will be satisfied! Edit: Thank you Joyce! You are pretty awesome.) Another thing I did was go through my blog list link by link. Yes, it took me two entire days but I visited every single link and removed those blogs that appear to have been abandoned. To accomplish this great feat I had to create a new link list and manually transfer the addresses. This means there might be *gasp* mistakes! If you find a broken link or a blog title that links to the wrong blog or an incorrect spelling please email me and let me know: daffy-cat AT hotmail DOT com

By the way, emailing me saying only, "Hi Sharon, my link doesn't work. Love, Winkie"...won't work! Do you see how many blogs I read??? Please tell me the name of the link that is wrong (as it appears on my list) AND tell me the address it is supposed to link to. Feel free to correct any of my links, not just the one you own.

The best thing about spring is my birthday comes right before...tomorrow in fact! To celebrate my day of arrival I have taken the next three days off work, telling those that work for me not to call or text me with problems unless they have just burnt down my store. Tomorrow, Dash is taking me to Tulsa for a bit of stash enhancement and such. We are going to cheat on our diet. I'm having a dessert. I might even have a little too much to drink! Can you see it? "I'm sorry, honey. I didn't mean to spend $1500 at The Silver Needle. I was drunk!"

Thank you for visiting my blog today!

xox

Fangirl February ~ Now That's a Wrap

It's the last day of the month...this is Leap Day to boot...so it's time for a Theme-a-licious check in. February's theme was: Send a Valentine to your favorite designer...or at least work on his or her designs for the month!

There is no way to hide the fact I LOVE Bent Creek with all my heart so I dug through my stash and came up with a few designs I've been wanting to start, closed my eyes and picked one. Bad Hare Day was the winner. This was so much fun to stitch that it went much faster than I expected. I  am incredibly pleased to show you a finish!

Design ~ Bad Hare Day

Designer ~ Bent Creek

Fabric ~ 28 count tea dyed Lugana

Fiber ~ DMC

How cool is that? I know you will forgive the fact that it is still very wrinkled and crumpled. This bun hasn't had his bath yet! Can you see I stitched my initials in red? I am so very attracted to alphabets...

Since Bad Hare Day was completed I decided to spend the rest of February stitching another favorite: Prairie Schooler... 

And my 8th ornament is finished! 8 Maid-a-milking was quick. Really, all of these blocks stitch up super fast. If I just closed my laptop planted my rear I could get them done in no time flat!

So...March Madness starts tomorrow. In March, our theme is: Stitch or knit on something different every day...it's madness...of the funnest possible kind. I dunno about something different every single day but we will see! If you'd like to join us on this theme-filled adventure visit Heather's blog It's Geek to Me for details.

Thank you for visiting my blog today!

xox

A Blogging Post

...or rather, a mishmash post that has too many topics to properly title!

The Traveling Pattern

Yes, I STOLE Julie's picture!

First up ~ my Traveling Pattern is on the move again! Julie just finished stitching and is offering it to the next stitcher. Hurry now to get in the draw as you only have until the February 29th! Click here for Julie's Blog.

ORT jar labels

Pat Winter has some awesome ORT jar labels you can print off. I thought they were great fun. You might like to use them to dress up your jars.

Please prove you are not a robot

You've seen those around ~ unless you never leave comments. You probably have them on YOUR blog and lots of you don't even know it! Do us ALL a favor and turn them off! Don't give excuses about not wanting spam...I haven't used Word Verification in YEARS and I am not swamped with spam. In fact, since Blogger went with the new spam folder system I haven't received a single piece of spam...I am usually fishing proper comments out of the folder! I do moderate my comments ~ just in case there is spam AND because I receive so many comments I might miss reading them.



Here is a very good post about this topic with great instructions on how to change your settings. You can see I have stolen Tex's picture (with permission lol) and used it in my sidebar with a link to her awesome post!

The Anonymous Troll:

Another thing you need to change is the settings for WHO you allow to comment on your blog. I have seen several posts recently from blogging friends about an anonymous troll. This troll finds something to complain about you or your blog. The way you are hosting a giveaway or an RAK or simply just something to gripe. From what I understand, these comments are unusually hurtful.

Change your comment settings to only allow "Registered Users". If you have it set for "Anyone" that means anyone can comment on your blog...even anonymous trolls.

I'm very sorry if you try to comment on MY blog and you cannot because you aren't registered. I don't allow just anyone to comment on my blog. You can see I don't suffer a lack of comments because of this.

I do get troll comments (from fake registered users I assume) on the rare occasion. They get no reaction but to tap that delete button. Same thing goes for hateful email. I don't need other people's garbage so I simply don't accept delivery.

My blog. My rules. You don't like the way I do things? Don't visit! Trolls will be always be ignored if they insist on visiting.

Thank you for visiting my blog today!

xox

A Fat Tuesday ORT Report

It's a New Moon! Here is my ORT report for February. I really liked the way the photograph turned out last month so I did the same again today. I could have added some Mardi gras beads but I didn't think of it until now! Lots of ORTs in the jar again:

It was International Hermit and Stitch Weekend this past weekend. A crazy busy one for me so I ended up with only a few hours left to hermit. I am calling it good ~ I was able to stitch a little bit at the very least! A peek at what I worked on:

Yup, that is my Prairie Schooler 12 Days of Christmas, 8 Maids. Nope, not even close to being done. I'm in no hurry with these as usually happens when I stitch for myself. If I'm stitching for someone else I can knock things out but if it's for me *sigh* I take my sweet time.

If you'd like to join the TUSAL to show Totally Useless pictures of your Old Ratty Threads, click here.

EDIT: Whoops, I forgot! Be sure to comment on this post and leave a link to your TUSAL post to get extra credit entries in my end of the year Totally Useless giveaways. Thanks for reminding me, Mary Ann!

If you'd like to shut yourself up with your stitching one weekend a month you can join the IHSW, click here.

Oh yeah...my laptop is fine now. Apparently, it did not like the fact the battery failed and so kept trying to contact the battery in hopeless devotion. Lesson learned? Know when it is over and move on! I took off the battery and we are back to normal...except I am now chained the desk until I get a new battery.

Thank you for visiting my blog today!

xox

Theme-a-licious Time

 

I can't believe it is already mid-February. The past couple of weeks have been filled with our Fangirl February stitching! My project is Bad Hare Day by Bent Creek. Wow ~ almost done! (Hey, Heather I figured out that banner. You noticed that...riiiight?)

I have no idea how this picture "really" looks...I'm using Dash's computer because mine is acting up. I had to snap a quickie photo and use it since my computer was in serious jeopardy of being smashed into bits & pieces.

If you'd like to join in on the Theme-a-licious stitch a long visit Heather's blog for details.

Entropy. Forget all that BS about thermodynamics...this is when you are busy getting one part of your life straightened out and the rest of it falls apart. Between work, home and my own body it will be a wonder if I survive. I no sooner get one area cleaned up and a mess appears in another. Thanks to those that have noticed and questioned my whereabouts these past few weeks. I'm just trying to keep this chaos in order, that's all. I stitch like mad every second I can. Stitching is such an awesome stress reliever.

Thank you for visiting my blog today!

xox



Full Moon Madness

Those of you visiting here because it's the Full Moon and you have just updated your blog with a TUSAL post...I hate to tell you but you're doin' it wrong. You are 'bout two weeks late, girl! The TUSAL goes on the NEW MOON. It's WIPocalypse time on the FULL MOON! Whoops!

I have been chugging right along, working on that overflowing basket of want-to-stitch projects. My Finery of Nature was my focus in January, it was posted about here. I won't bore you with a repeat photo since that was my very last post. In February my focus is also my Theme-a-licious project, Bent Creek's Bad Hare Day:

This is the progress after only six days. Can you tell how much I LOVE stitching Bent Creek designs? Holey Moses, this is a fast stitch! I'm sure once I get to the hare and those big blocks of one color I might not be quite as enthused. The border is full of fiddly gaps and skips, which I thought would be really bitchy but it fooled me ~ easy and frog-free as the come. Those funny gaps get filled in with another color of green so this isn't quite as far along as it appears.

This fun project is from that big basket I showed you once before. There are so many designs left in that basket that I really-really want to stitch...how fun to have blog games to join in on and get some of them stitched! Thank you, Measi!

Thank you for visiting my blog today!

xox