Grandma turns 90!

Yup, she's turning 90 next week. She lives in PA, but is on her way with my Grandpa to Alaska for a few weeks, and to celebrate her 90th birthday in AK. For a million different reasons it is impossible for me to go! (wah, sob) But I have this great 90th birthday card I found last year and saved to send her. I knew if I didn't buy it, I'd never find another one! How often do you see 90th birthday cards?!

Anyway, today I have marked to send her the card in AK, sometimes mail takes a while. But I think I could wait until Friday and it would still get there on time. When I was at Sue's, I picked up a hummingbird bookmark, one of those stitched on a brass bookmark! Know what I mean? I've never seen one exactly like this one, but my grandma loves hummingbirds. So, I decided I'm gonna stitch it! DUH! Why didn't I decide that last week? So that leaves me two days to really get it stitched and in the mail! I have a total of about ten stitches in it now! Due to it being brass, my usual sewing method is out the door. I'll have to use poke and stab! Ugh! The thing is 100% stitched, I'lll post a picture when I'm done! :)

My lastest finished project

I managed to finish this one just in time to take it to Sue's weekend! I bought the pattern at a retreat in Pigeon Forge, TN last November. It is all stitched over one on 32 ct. I think it must be a With My Needle pattern, but I'm not 100%! And I've already passed on the pattern and have another stitcher waiting in the wings for it, so I can't even look to see the title! The title of the book was stitched in French and said book 2 on it. Well, since it was only my book 1 and I doubt I'll do another... I changed the title to English and labeled it MINE! :) I had to backstitch each page, cut them all apart, and then stitch a little piece of cardboard inside two pages and connect all the backstitching! Took two days to do all that! Plus I had to hand attach a little ribbon to connect all the pages! Lots of pinning together and poking myself with pins! But I just love it! One of my most favorite smalls!:)


Sorry some of the pictures are blurry! My camera is not good at taking close up pictures of details! Okay, so maybe it's not the camera!!

mail art

So still no pictures, but at least a new idea!

I really want to stitch a mail art thingy! Sue's #1 fan showed us a few different styles at Sue's stitch-in weekend. They are so neat! I'm really thinking I need to do one! Have any of you done it?

The Great Problem

I was going to put dilema, but I couldn't figure out how to spell it! That way didn't look right!

Anyway, I'm working on this project, I"ll post a picture tomorrow! But it's the one from the retreat where the basket about did me in! It's all handwritten, and the instructions are horrible! I'm on my last section (almost) and it has four initials on the sample. In the instructions it says to use your favorite alphabet (I don't like when they do that!) and to customize it! Well my initials are boring.. SSS! Yup, three S's! But the other page already has a long saying, so I"m not sure exactly what to put there!

Hopefully I"ll be able to post a picture in the next few days and we can all figure it out!:)

It looks to me like the designer got tired of designing by the 4th page (it's a needlebook) and just stuck four random initials on there! haha

Home from Sue's

Well, we're back from Sue's weekend in Richmond. Seems like we wait and wait and then it's here and gone before we realize it! I roomed with my buddies Linda and Brenda. We had a blast, as we always do together! We snuck a preview of the LNS.. shh, don't tell! We went on the way to the hotel, okay well it wasn't really on the way.. basically we wanted first dibs! Which we got!:) The whole group went on Sunday and we (the three of us) plus our new friend Nelsa stayed back and cross-stitched for a long time in the quiet! Nelsa is a hoot, and we loved meeting her! She's from the Baltimore area, and we hope we get to visit her sometime in the near future!

Usually on these trips I get a TON done..but a tiny, itty, little basket about did me in! Yup, it took at least three hours to get it right. I will say the directions were horrible on the chart! I'm not even sure the final thing is right, but we all decided it was good enough! After that there was an issue of the door..that took another hour or so! Ugh!

I got to show off all my finished smalls and got lots of pats on the back, which is always really nice! I have some pictures of finished stuff to post, I just need to get caught up at home!

I have an all day appointment tomorrow and then field days for my kids at school Thurs and Fri. Life will slow down in August!:)

Sara

Two Old Finishes

I was at my grandma's over this past weekend and saw two pillows that I had stitched for her a while ago, so I snapped a picture! One is the US Map by Sue Hillis. I changed it up a little bit. Sue had all the capital cities charted, for each state. Well, my grandparents have been to every state (at least once) so I casually asked my grandma what her favorite places were in each state, and added those. Somebody (a long time ago!) helped me with the little poem at the bottom. It's been in their motorhome for years and at the age of 90, they just sold their motorhome. But she used to love to show it off!

This pillow I think is a pattern called Friendship. The middle word is supposed to say Friend, but I put Grandma! All the words seemed to fit her perfectly! That border was the pits though!

She was telling me a story the other day about how she has problems with dairy products now. Then she added, "Well mother was like that towards the end too!" I thought to myself "towards the end?!!" And she said, "Well, now.. did I just say towards the end?!" And laughed! She will be 90 this June and while she is in great health, I do realize she is "towards the end" of a great life! She will be terribly missed whenever that time comes! I'm hope it won't be for a while! I'll miss her like crazy...

Where Did the Time Go?

Yikes! Where does all the time go?! I've been busy stitching, finished up the Darn Darn thingy.. I should post a picture of it! I like how it turned out! I've finished up three of my over one projects, now they just need to be all put together. I'm going to put one together tomorrow, and will post pictures! It's gonna be cute! Pain staking, but cute!

I'm heading to the Memorial Day Stitch-In with Sue Hillis this weekend. I'm driving (well riding) with two of my best stitcher friends..we are going to have a blast! Fri-Mon: all stitching! Can't wait!

Life is getting ready to get really hectic for me, in fact my stitching weekend is about my last weekend for free stuff. I debating keeping up with the blog, cause we're gonna be gone a lot this summer. Guess we'll see!

Hopefully I'll have some pictures tomorrow!