Shabby erm... chic?

Okay, I know you came here to read about my scary story. I will definitely tell you about my terrifying scare - probably when I have nothing crafty to talk about but still feel the desire to bore you with a new blog post. Today, I have something else to talk about and I don't even know where to start. That's how incredibly psyched I am. I haven't eaten in two days, I hardly slept, the house is looking decidedly unkempt. Thankfully, Pelle was with the ex this weekend, because I'm sure I wouldn't have noticed his presence had he been here.

A couple of weeks ago, I came across a blogger who had taken an online class to make a Remains of the Day Journal. This lady is the teacher and she's fabulous. Anyway, the journal is made entirely out of scraps of paper and fabric, all sewn together with the help of a sewing machine. Now, please note that I have never in all my life used a sewing machine, but I thought this was the perfect opportunity to get started with mine. This journal calls for a shabby treatment, you see, so failing to sew straight lines is actually a requirement. Heh. Here are some pictures of the progress I've made:

Gathering fabrics and making a plan:

I set up the sewing machine and actually deliberated for a minute or two about whether or not to use it. I'm a little scared of the thing, you know. However, sewing through a couple of layers of fabric AND thick paper seemed even scarier, so I plugged the beast in, and this is what happened this morning:

Ta-daaaaaaa!!! Ta-da-da-da-da-da-duh-daaaaaa! Ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! I'm pleased. Can you tell?

And after all that sewing and changing sewing machine needles and threads and colours, do you know what took up most of my time? The freaking kumihimo-cord that I ended up not using. I thought I'd put it in the picture so as not to make it a complete waste of three or four hours of my life.

This is the journal in various stages of open-ness:

The inside is a complete mess, but I don't care. Perhaps you're thinking to yourself: 'actually, Annemarie, the outside is pretty bad as well.' You'd be right, of course. But I don't care about that either :o) Hooray for Shabby Chic (aka Primitive)!
Oh, by the way: sorry for that shade I threw on the journal whilst taking the pictures, but obviously, I'm too absorped to go back outside to take the pics again. You get the idea anyway, right?

This next picture shows you some (but not all) of the stuff I will be using to make up the pages.

Needless to say, stitching has never been further from my mind. Tomorrow, however, I'm off to visit Harmien, so I will take my stitching with me. Possibly the Vilage of Hawk Run Hollow, the project we decided to do as a SAL about, oooooh, three or four years ago :o)

Until next time, dears.

Yours psychedly,

Annemarie.

In which I share my solution

Ooh, that touched a cord, didn't it? That picture of my WIP/UFO pile? As some of you so rightly pointed out, that wasn't even all. I know, I know. But you did manage to make me feel okay about this awful situation. Some of you even went so far as to say they feel less guilty about their own state of stitchy affairs after seeing the pitiful state of most of my projects. Awww. You're all so sweet.
Look. Here's some more. Most of these came from the deepest, darkest corners of my UFO drawer, where the sun literally never shines.

The Blue Lady, the Pistols, Mrs. Slocombe is nowhere to be seen. That's because she doesn't count. A couple of months ago, the wonderful Anna van Schuurman (aka Stitch Bitch) asked some of us bloggers to tell the stitchy blogging community what their favourite ever cross stitch project is. If you want to know why The Blue Lady, the Pistols, Mrs. Slocombe doesn't count as a WIP (she's never a UFO), then please read this.

Thank you for you suggestions on how to tackle this Mount Snowdon of a WIP/UFO pile. I took some of your advice and mixed it all up and came up with a solution: I put them all back in their bags.

Except for this one:
A project I like to call the Birds, by Edith Hansen for Fremme. It's nearly finished! And it has a spring-like feel to it that I really like. Excusez les wrinkles, but I won't iron my projects before they're done.

And of course I started something new in the form of this:

Pipien was too busy with her ablutions to look up, so you can't really see the resemblance between her and the stitched one. Pantoef, of course, was happy to oblige. The design is from Cross Country Stitching magazine.

I'm still waiting for the mail to deliver the exchange gift I stitched/wrought for Melissa. Her exchange gift for me arrived here in record time, but mine is taking for-bloody-ever! That's why I keep bothering you with my completely uninteresting Wips and UFOs, you see. I wouldn't have anything else to talk about!

Oh, hang on! I was nominated. Tagged, if you will. For the Beautiful Blogger award! By Charlene! Isn't that sweet? Thank you, dear Charlene, I'm flattered! I'm going to be a complete pain and not play by the rules. I won't nominate 7 other bloggers, because there are too many of you. Seriously. If I love your blog, then I have probably already expressed my fan-dom in my comments. No need to do it here. I will, however, answer the question that goes with this award, i.e. name 7 unknown-ish facts about yourself. I'm not sure that after five years of blogging I still have secrets you don't know about, but here we go:

1. I was not a good girl while growing up. I spent some time in a police cell. And I spent precious little time at school, thinking the fair cities of The Hague and Rotterdam were much more enjoyable than that awful, smelly, seventies school building.

2. I can't wink.

3. When I grow up, I want to be a lady enjoying her blue flower garden, in a blue-gray dress, with a blue hat, and with pink hair, at peace with herself and with the world.

4. I hate brushing my teeth. I do it, but I hate it. Pelle's teeth: ditto.

5. If being a recluse would be socially acceptable and not frowned upon by my family and friends, I would be a recluse.

6. I am horribly afraid I may have become a cat lady because there are so many cute cat projects to be stitched.

7. I live in the middle of the woods, all alone (with my small son, of course) but I've never, ever been afraid to go outside alone. Not ever. Until a couple of months ago, when I got such a dreadful, heart-stopping scare that now I'm afraid to even open my door late at night. If you want to know that story (and it's a good one) let me know in the comments, so I can share in a next post.

Okay. This was a long post and I'm sorry. Blame the award. And the stitching. And yourself, because you all keep coming back!

Yours all over the placely,

Annemarie.

A cry for help

Honeybuns. Help me!

There are SO many things wrong with this image. To name but a few:
1. It's not a joke.
2. I have to now go and put all of these projects back in their bags and their hiding places.
3. Not one of these projects is calling my name. Nothing. Not even a whisper.
4. So, obviously, I have to start something new.

But at least I finished my translation. ON TIME!

Yours... let's not even go therely,
Annemarie.

Vooom

Quick post. Deadlines galore and I'm on a roll! Of course, now that I've said that I fully expect disaster to strike at any moment... Before that can happen though, here's a pic of what I've been doing in between sleeping and working:

BBD's Where My Heart Blooms. I searched my entire blog for the last update picture I posted of this one and to my utter horror, I couldn't find one. Would you believe the last update stemmed from my days as a Wacky Wanderer? Do you know that that is at least two years ago? Whew! Still, here it is, and I have every intention of finishing it. You know. Some time.

Oh, and I had to show you a picture of my darling boy, wearing his Olympic Mittens with great pride:

Thank you, again, Melissa, for such a sweet gift for Pelle. As you can see, he really appreciates it!
I hope you all got the mental e-mails I sent you? Remember? Linen, the one in which I tell you I completely agree with everything you wrote; Berit, the one in which I tell you to go and get yourself a Rex NOW; Kathy A, the one in which I welcome you back on terra firma and confirm that, yes, you did indeed win the blog anniversary giveaway; Esther, in which I tell you to get your a**e down here; Su, well, you know what's in that mail; Denise and Ann, in which I thank you for the tips and nice chatty e-mails; Melissa, in which I tell you that, girl I wish the post would just HURRY and that your pillow is right next to my computer as we speak; and Giovanna, the one in which I tell you that even though some people think I will never get to Paris, I still believe that I will one day join you at the major craft fair there...
Great! Glad those e-mails arrived on your mental cyber doorsteps. Now I'm sure you don't mind if I spend the rest of my evening with WMHB!

Yours industriously,
Annemarie.

A finish that will blow your socks off

Apparently, spring is not upon us yet. Could've fooled me (and they did), because I'm in full spring-cleaning mode, but the thick layer of ice on my car every morning tells me winter isn't over yet. As I sat pondering this Spring Fever Phenomenon, my eye wandered in the direction of my scroll-framed WIPs and caught sight of Noah's unfinished coat. Now what sort of a person am I, to leave this guy with his bits freezing off in the middle of winter?

And so, honeybuns, I finished The Coat:

I would like to think that I can now breeze through this piece and be finished by April, but somehow, I don't see that happening. Do you?

I have another finish to celebrate, but that one's on its way to Melissa, so I won't be able to show pics until it arrives on her doorstep. Her exchange gift for me arrived early though, and here it is:

Isn't it sweet? And it smells heavenly, too! Of Spring (well, Summer. Lavender!). Melissa, your stitching is gorgeous and I just love the design you picked for me. Thank you so much for a lovely exchange!

Speaking of Spring Fever: it turns out Ikea is suffering from it, too. They have a huge sale and the combination of a huge Ikea Sale and Me Suffering from Spring Fever is not a very good one. Especially since I have (or I should say: had) a bedroom in serious need of a revamp.

As it so happens, our local Ikea is a two minutes' drive from Pelle's school (literally), so I picked him up myself and had a lovely lunch of fries (for Pelle) and Swedish meat balls (for me). Then we picked up the chest of drawers I wanted and went home to clean out my bedroom; to play with Pelle; to haul off the old bookcases that serviced as wardrobes; to go for a bike ride with Pelle, and by the time I got to put together my chest of drawers, I was so knackered I complained and muttered and mumbled my way through the entire chest building process. I think I swore a bit too.
But then, this morning, when I saw this, I was so happy to be greeted by a room that actually looks like a bedroom and not like a dusty junk shop.

Who cares that I can't move my fingers or hold a pen, much less a needle? I have a bedroom. Which I won't be seeing for a good while, since all this Spring Cleaning Fever has distracted me from my work for one entire day. And you know when you have to make up for lost daytime hours, right? Right. The time you should be spending in your bedroom...

Yours Springily,
Annemarie.

WIPs and Winners!

Oh dear. I finished two things and I can't show you either because one is an exchange gift (on its way to you, Melissa!) and the other is a translation. Another deadline is headed my way with gathering speed, but that didn't stop me from starting a whoooole bunch of new things, pictured, for your enjoyment, below:

Here you see: the start of Flax Fields by CHS (I'm using the glorious Gloriana silks Annique gave me last year. Thank you!!); half a Baktus scarf (which I'm knitting with two seemingly never-ending balls of yarn); three novels (two to be translated, the other is being read); fabric soaking in coffee for Mum's the Word (a birthday gift from Harmien which is sce-reaming at me to be stitched) and I forgot to put the letter N in the picture, which I finished. So technically, it has no business on the pic anyway, because it's not a WIP but a UFO (a Useful Finished Object).

So as you see, I'm quite busy and that's the reason why I'm so very very quiet. A lot of people are anxiously awaiting e-mails from me (I think) and I would like to apologise right here and now for being so tardy. In my mind, I've written each of you about a hundred e-mails already, so if you would be so kind as to read them in your mind? That would be wonderful, thanks!

Hey, but the real reason you're here in droves today is because of my Blogiversary Giveaway, right? It's the first of March, and I'm about to reveal the winners. Are you excited? Are you sitting down? Are you all ready? Okay then. The three winners of my Blogiversary giveaway are..........

Kathy A.

Linen (yes, really!!!)

Nancy

Congratulations, lovies! Linen and Nancy, could you e-mail me your snail mail addresses, please? Mind you, I still have to make the gifts, but I already have a very good idea of what I want to stitch (and sew!) for you. It will take a couple of weeks to finish everything, though. Hope you don't mind!

That's it from me for now. I'm going to soak in a nice hot bath and then I'm off to bed. Enjoy your week!

Yours busily,
Annemarie.