And The Winner is.......

Happy Sunday Morning!  Just a quick post to announce the winner of the flower frog.

Mr. Random Generator picked:

NUMBER 19

And Number 19 is NANCY M.  

Congratulations Nancy!!  Woo Hoo!!!  Send me your snail mail address and I'll send this right out to you.

Thank you to everyone that entered.  I wish that I had a flower frog to send to each one of you!  I hope that everyone has a wonderful week!!

Kind of a Quickie Post and a Giveaway!

Hi everyone.  I hope that you had a great Easter!  Ours was good although a little different with MIL still in the hospital.  Since my husband's family is Polish they have certain traditions that they follow as far as food.  With MIL not able to cook, it was left up to the rest of us to try to carry the tradition.  I'm not sure how well we did (I don't have a drop of Polish blood in my body so I'm not the best person to cook those things), but we were all fed (it definitely didn't taste as good as my MIL's food though).   BTW, thank you for your wishes for my MIL.  Her wrist surgery went well, although they also found that she broke her thumb on the other hand.  She's in physical therapy, and if her x-rays look good this Friday, they'll change the cast and send her home.

Since it's been so busy the past couple weeks with trips out to the in-laws and my DD being home for spring break, I haven't had a lot of time for my crafty pursuits, but I've gotten a little bit more of Ann done.  Are you tired of seeing her yet?

I'm on the home stretch - I finally made it to the final portion!  Although with all the grass at the bottom it's going to take me a while.  And you'll notice that my people don't seem to have heads (pictures are clickable)!  Since the parts to be filled in are over one thread, I decided to tackle that at the end.  I have a hard time getting any rhythm switching from over two to over one.  I hope to be finished with this by the end of next week, but I think that I'm being a little overly optimistic on that score!!  I know that I'm getting restless for her to be finished though as I've been rooting around in the overflowing stash for my next stitching victim.

I've also managed to get a little bit of quilting in.  Remember these strips:

Well, I managed to get them cut into even smaller strips:

And from there managed to get a few nine patches done.  I started with the colors I didn't like  - brown and green.  Not my favorite combination, but I wanted to get them out of the way:

This is going to be a very scrappy looking quilt.

Then I put together this month's blocks for the Cotton Club.  These are such fun little blocks to make and take no time at all.  I wish that I could get all the blocks at once because they're like potato chips - you don't want to stop sewing them!

So that's about all I've accomplished in the past couple of weeks.  Not as much as I'd like, but life gets in the way sometimes.  I'm anxiously awaiting my Phebe BOM to show up and it seems that I have managed to get a couple other people on board to do the quilt also.  This should be a lot of fun!!

I did have a surprise last week and won a giveaway on Kelly's blog.   I won the cutest pincushion from her:

Her blog is called Undeniably Domestic if you want to take a look.  She has a really cute blog and has the cutest curtains hanging in her kitchen window made out of aprons!  Thank you Kelly!!

I've noticed that I've picked up quite a few new followers and I wanted to say Welcome to all of you and have a giveaway.  I also feel a little bad because I haven't had much time to comment on everyone's blogs with all the things going on with my MIL the past couple of weeks.  I've been lurking but haven't had time to leave comments.  About a month or so ago, I passed by the Salvation Army.  Well, I really didn't pass by, I dropped off donations and ran inside to see what I could find.  While in there I found this:

A flower frog.  Sitting there all by its lonesome.  I already have one like this, but I couldn't just leave it on the shelf, could I?  So I brought it home and would love to send it to one of my followers.  I do have to warn that the base does need some cleaning up which I'm not sure how to do, but it's in really great shape otherwise.  And it needs a new home.  All you have to do is leave a comment that you'd like a chance to win it.  I'll probably include something to be put into it also!  What's a flower (scissor) frog without scissors?  I'll pick a winner next Sunday, April 15th.

Oh, and before I forget, Joanne at Serendipitous Stitching is have an Easter Treasure Hunt.  Follow the link to her blog for all the details.  I took part in the treasure hunt and you can see my clue in the post before this one.

I hope that everyone has a great week!!

Another Fun and Productive Week

Happy Monday!  Wow, after trying all day to get into Blogger, it finally worked.  I don't know if anyone else had problems, but I couldn't post or comment since yesterday afternoon.  Thank goodness they got the problem taken care of.  I probably would go through withdrawals if I couldn't read everyone's blogs!  LOL


Last week on my birthday, I read Faye's blog and found out that I had won her giveaway.  What a great birthday present, don't you think?  And what Faye sent is wonderful (all pictures are clickable):

Look at these great things that she sent.  The pincushion is a work of art and I say that because I'm finishing-challenged and admire people that can make such wonderful things.  This pincushion is beautiful and it feels so good.  I asked Faye what she used and she said crushed walnut shells.  I love both the charts so much and that red floss is such a luscious shade of red I can't wait to stitch with it.  I think that Quaker pattern would be perfect, don't you?  Thank you, thank you Faye, I love everything.


Then another piece of birthday fun was a present that I ordered for myself.  Can't have a birthday without buying yourself something, can you?

This is from Eldreth Pottery and someone that I know talked about this plate and before I could run over and scarf the thing up, another "Sister" friend (you know who you are) snatched the plate and it was gone.  But thank goodness the great people at Eldreth Pottery said that they would gladly make another one.  I think this will look good with the A&E Samplers don't you???


Then a mystery package came in the mail.  Just a note telling me thank you for my generosity.  Now I don't have a clue who sent it or what I was so generous with, but look at these goodies:

Oh my goodness am I going to have fun with these or what?  The sender said that she noted that I liked hornbooks and so two of these are hornbooks.  And the other charts I didn't have.  Woo Hoo.  But now I need to know who the sender is.  It's going to bug me unless I find out - I will get to the bottom of the mystery!!!  But thank you, thank you whoever you are!!!


I've been busy in the stitching/quilting area this week too.  I had to put Ann down before she drove me up the wall.  I'm still working on her - putting a thread a night into her.  The background is just a killer - or maybe not - maybe I'm just not in the mood.  So I started two projects - one is almost done so I'll wait until it's finished to show you, but I also started Sarah Seifer by the Goode Huswife:

This is a fun stitch and I got all this done in about two nights - pretty good for me.  Although lately at night I've been burning the midnight oil doing these:

Yep, a whole lot of quilt blocks!  Love, love them.  For some reason I'm going through one of those stages where I don't want to go to sleep at night, so why waste the time!  I'm now caught up through May.  June's arrived right before the holiday weekend so I've got some cutting out to do, but it felt good to get these done!!!
Here's a better picture:

One block among these has to be torn apart because I sewed one square upside down - I think it was about 2:00 a.m. when I was trying to finish it up - the red, green and yellow one in the second row, and one block came out so bad that I'm going to do it over again.  But woo hoo was I glad to get caught up!  I think I've done about 33 blocks so far.  Only 78 more to go!!


Last weekend while I was out with the girls antique/quilt shopping, I picked up a few things and thought that I'd post them now before I forget:

Not much but a few fun things (couldn't afford much - I spent so much at the quilt stores I had to restrain myself somewhere!!!) - a jar of buttons, a cute plate and some thimbles, the two mannequins (although the wire one came from the Salvation Army), some great old spools of thread that I think someone wound newer thread around, but the ends are stamped with some old companies.  And the little toile piece - it has a candle inside, but thought that it would make a good holder for a pin cushion when I burn the candle out.

Then this little beaten set of drawers.  I think someone just slapped a coat of white paint over it, but it works for me!


So it was another great week.  And you know what else was great about it?  Well, look at these pictures - it does a mother's heart proud:

DD wasn't feeling too well yesterday (can you tell by that messy hair?), and she was just moping around the house so I got her stitching.  Pulled out the Ott light, grabbed a chart out of stash, she picked the floss and away she went.  She decided on BBD's Souvenier de France and this is the progress she made:

You go girl!  Does this make a stitchy mother proud, or what?  She's doing a great job!  I told her that we'd sew it together into a pin pillow with a beaded edge.   By the end of the evening she was completely done with the Eiffel Tower and starting on some of the motifs.  She says she loves it.  Oh my happy heart!!!  Now I know that my stash will be in good hands in the future!!


Well that's it for me except for this picture.  Everyone is posting pictures of their gardens and so thought I'd show a couple pictures of my clematis as of last week:

The flowers were just huge this year.  But they're no more.  We had some bad storms come through here this weekend (and tornados south of us) and the winds and rain just blew all those petals off.  But there are still a lot of buds so hopefully it will look like this again.


Oh, and before I forget.  I mentioned Barbie dolls in my last post and was amazed at how many people commented or emailed about those dolls and that they had theirs from when they were young or collected them too.  I'll try to pull some out this week and post them on my next post.


That's about it for me!  I'm hoping to get a lot more quilting and stitching in during the next week.  I'm kind of taking it off for myself before the kids get out of school and the summer games begin!


Thanks so much for stopping by and leaving all your wonderful comments once again.  Now I'm off to try to catch up on two days' worth of posts by all of you.  I can't wait to see what everyone has been up to!!!


Have a wonderful week.

Giveaway Reminder and This and That

Happy Wednesday morning everyone! I thought I'd do a quick post before the kids got up and we continued our adventures with the school shopping! Whew, can that wear you out quick. This is school supply day (read: credit card on fire day - although it was smoldering after some clothes shopping yesterday). The supplies they need makes your hair stand on end.

First off, if you haven't entered the giveaway for the flower flog (see previous post), sign up now! The drawing will be next Tuesday, September 8th! If you want to enter the drawing, please leave a comment under that post ONLY!!

On the stitching front: shock of shocks, I've stuck to my rotation!!! It's been hard - very hard!!! I can't tell you how many times this week I wanted to pull out something else, but I stuck to it. I put in a week on Marquoir de Justine:






This is really a difficult one to photograph because of the colors used and the fabric (Vintage Nutmeg). I toyed with changing out the brown that the church is stitched with and some of the lettering, but in real life, you can see it and between the mottled fabric and how the brown looks on it, it does give it an old feeling so I'm going to stick with it.

Last Tuesday, I switched out projects and started back on Ann Medd - if you're not familiar with her, here's her pic:


Described as the "Mother of all Samplers"! Well, I think I have to go along with that. It's not a bad stitch at all - straightforward, very few specialty stitches - but it's just so big and those verses on the side can get you.



This is the progress I've made in a week - the C and D verses (or what's done of them), the flowers and leaves where my thread is and those two dogs facing each other (which were causing me all the headaches because the pattern only had them facing one way - oh and ignore that fifth leg on the dog on the left - I have to frog that out.) Not a lot of progress, but some.

This is what I've accomplished so far on the whole sampler - if I get through this section, I'll be almost half way:


And my favorite part - Adam and Eve, of course:

I'm going to stitch another week on it and maybe just try to finish up the whole section so that I can say I'm half way done with it. It may be a stretch though - the week before school is always a busy one. I have been itching to start on something else, but even though the stitching time has been at a premium this week, I see progress every time I put it down and that's encouraging!!!

A couple exciting things happened this week. I won Jan's giveaway of the premier chart for her new design endeavor!! I'm so excited to win and I'm also so excited for her. I know that we're all going to love her designs! I also know that I'm going to have to work this into the rotation. Yes, I know, I know - it's not in stash!! Well, some rules are meant to be bent, right?

The second exciting thing is that my room finally is finished - well, the painting part is. I have moved a loveseat and my sewing table into the room, but have to wait for the table from my father-in-law for the final arrangement and hanging of pictures, etc.

DS is in the closet learning how to install shelves and putting the vent covers back on. The color is Scottish Road by Behr and I love how it came out. I always have a hard time picking out colors because even when you bring the swatches home to look at them in your own light, it still comes out different. But I'm a happy camper. The white box on the wall, unfortunately, has to stay. It houses our power box and I guess we can't do without that! Estimated time of arrival for the table is this weekend so I can finally arrange the furniture in the room. I can't wait - and just in time for the kids to go back to school. Yahoo!!! Although, I think I have a good week of scrubbing down this house before I can play in the room. DRAT!!!

I'm bruised from head to toe from moving around two rooms of furniture! And all the unpacking of things afterwards. UGH! But I really had a chance to go through all my charts, quilt books, etc., and found that there are a lot of things that I no longer need or want, so I may set up a separate Sale/Trade blog to get rid of some of this stuff!! Stay tuned!

Well, I'm off to look through blogs. I haven't been able do to that for three days or so and I know there is a of catching up to do (and probably some enabling).

Thanks for all your comments, especially for the Giveway, that have come in so far. I was glad to see that there were many from blogs that I've never seen before and I know that I'm going to have a lot of fun looking at all of them.

Have a great week and holiday and make a lot of X's.

Blog Anniversary Giveaway

Woo Hoo! It's giveaway time!!! I never pay any attention to that widget I have that counts down the days until my blog anniversary. But a couple weeks ago I looked at it and WOW!!, I couldn't believe that I've been blogging for almost a year. The actual date is September 5th. So in honor of my one year of blogging (and being amazed that people actually follow my drivel - LOL), I'm having a giveaway.

I know that probably some people were wondering why I was buying numerous flower frogs that all looked the same. Well, I had an ulterior motive - TO GIVE ONE AWAY!!!! I'm also including a pair of flowered scissors to get you started (although I know that every stitcher has at least one pair of scissors - but it's like a wallet - you can't give one away without a penny, quarter or dollar tucked inside - so what's a frog without a pair of scissors???). This frog will hold a lot of scissors - not only on the top, but the fluted sides!

So, if you would like to be entered into the giveaway, just leave me a comment on this post. Make sure that if you don't have a blog of your own to leave me your email so I can contact you. If you'd like an additional chance to win, make mention of this giveaway on your blog with a link to the post and let me know that you've done so. I know my actual anniversary is next Saturday, which is Labor Day weekend here in the States, so I'll announce the winner on Tuesday, September 8th!!

Good luck!!!!

And have a stitchy weekend filled with lots of X's!