Early Birdy

You wil be pleased to know The Plan is wOrKiNg!!! I’ve finished ONE gift (okay, so I still need to finish-finish it. Shut up), and I’m very pleased with it. And I’ve made progress on this lovely thing
AND I’ve started another one.
I just had to.
It’s a mystery.
And it is rumoured to feature some birds.

Birds Of A Feather by With Thy Needle & Thread. Is it strange or even wrong to be in love with a piece of fabric? The picture does not do the fabric any justice, but I promise you it's gorgeous. It’s been in my stash for years and years, a lovely soft 32 count Silkweaver Solo, perfect in every way.

And here’s my TuSaL jar for this month:

I don’t know about you, but I think it should look much fuller, don’t you, considering that my needle has seen more action in recent weeks than in the months before put together? What happened to all the orts? These two look like they’ve got something to hide. I bet they’ve had their paws in my orts jar: (click to embiggen, to catch the sinister and untrustworthy look in Pipien's eyes)


In between translating and... translating really, I’ve been having the most wonderful time searching the WWW for pictures of people standing on benches.

Again I ask you, is it strange or wrong or possibly even fetishistic that these pics make me deliriously happy? If you get that happy bubbly feeling when you see this (as I do), check out the Happy Bench Monday pool on Flickr, it’ll brighten your day. By the way, the blanket you see here is for Pelle, and I hope to finish it before his birthday on 2 August [insert maniacal laughter here].

Yours battily,
Annemarie.

Guess what I've been doing?

Stitching!

Wife, into Thy Garden by The Goode Huswife

After a good deal of philosophising, I now realise what was keeping me from my stitching (apart from poor eyesight, a problem which, I am happy to report, has now been solved): gifts!

I owe some people gifts. You know who you are. Every single stitch I do NOT put into these gifts leaves me with such a feeling of guilt that it has put me off stitching altogether. You see, every time I work on said gifts, something goes wrong: the finishing sucks, my sewing machine spontaneously combusts (and, quite frankly, if I were my sewing machine, I'd lose the will to live too, so I don't blame it for giving up the ghost), Pelle falls ill or my translations get lost in the great big trashcan that is cyberspace. You know, the general conspiracy of things. You would not BELIEVE how often I think about the people that are waiting for my gifts. Really, the number of hours you have been in my thoughts are a gift in themselves - and should have been spent on stitching and finishing, rather than thinking about stitching and finishing.

Anyway. I've decided to give myself a firm kick in the behind and stitch and/or finish all of them (that includes a little something for you, Giovanna, just so you know you haven't been forgotten either). And as a reward for a job (not yet) well done, I allowed myself to work on that gorgeous sampler by The Goode Huswife you see above. I'm stitching again. Yay and hooray!

Yours stitching busily,
Annemarie.

Well, I had to share with SOMEONE...

...and since everyone in my part of the world is sound asleep, it had to be you.

***

Oh, my dear Goddess help me:


I am now crocheting shawls with sock yarn.

Somebody please just shoot me now.

In which I make copious use of the exclamation mark

My orts jar this month.

More dust than orts, my dears. You may have possibly guessed that my stitching mojo isn’t all that it’s supposed to be, and hasn’t been for a long time. Now, last weekend, I sat down and had a really good think about that. Why couldn’t I bring myself to stitch? It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy it per se, but there was something... something I couldn’t put my finger on.

That is until my dear brother showed me his cell phone (or his CranBerry or his StrawBerry, or whatever it is you call these contraptions) to prove something to me (I don’t know. Something about him being a Twit, or something. Like he needs to prove that to me. I’ve known that for some 36 years. [Just kidding: I adore my little brother]). Anyway, he asked me to read the words on the tiny, tiny screen and I found myself doing something I’d never done before (or at least, not that I was aware of): I kept the device at arm’s length to read what it said on the screen. It was at that exact moment that it hit me:

I need freaking reading glasses!

I rushed home and sat down with my stitching, and there was all the proof I needed: the stitches of Summer Basket just seemed to dance in front of my eyes, and Summer Basket is worked on 30 count fabric! Imagine me trying to stitch on 40 count! No wonder I seek refuge in crafts that require threads and needles actually visible to the naked eye! Now if only I can find the time to take myself to the optician’s, I should be right as rain and stitching like mad very soon quite soon relatively soon.

Yours blind as a batly,
Annemarie.