Woe is me

I'm writing this while Pelle and I would imagine a good many other people in my part of the world are thusly engaged:

You see, I'm ill. Without going into too much gory detail, my entire upper half is cramped up due to stress. And here I was, thinking I was coping pretty well with everything that's going on. Whilst lying in bed earlier this evening, wishing for it to just go away, I made a mental list of all the things I'm going to do to better my life and never have to suffer this again. SO:
-I'm never going to eat again
-I'm never going to drink coffee again

and (perhaps more realistically) (I think)
-In the mornings, when I've dropped Pelle off at the bus, I will go for a 30 minute walk, just to get this '30-minute excercise' thing out of the way first thing
-I'm only going to eat healthy foods from now on. Not that I eat unhealthily, but perhaps I could do without the crisps and the Ben & Jerry's and the gluten and the cookies and the liquorice... okay. Excuse me for a bit...

Blegh. Ugh. Okay. I'm back.

Anyway, what I really came to tell you is that (and this really is a bad side-effect of stress-related yuckiness) I cannot stitch. Isabella Johnson, or as I like to call it, The Red Cow Sampler, is verrrrry nearly finished. Not even a days' work, but it's taking me forever. Behold (and excuse the bad quality of the picture. It is, after all, three in the morning):

See? Just a bit of the border, the cow needs filling in, and a little rose in the right hand corner, and that's it! I hope signing it before finishing it (over-one, so there is no way I will ever frog it) wasn't too premature :o) (Oh, I've just noticed: that's Pantoef's pantoufle at the top of the picture. He was completely flummoxed at being woken up in the middle of the night and demanded a mention in this post).

On a more serious note: you can probaby guess what's causing all this stress. My father is now very ill and in and out of the hospital all the time, and we're all deeply, deeply concerned. Frankly, I'm so pre-occupied that blogging and blog-reading and e-mailing is something I do only sporadically now, but I do appreciate you all stopping by my little neck of the blogosphere!

Yours sleeplessly,
Annemarie.

Holy cow!

Did I fool you? Did you think I came here today to show you my finished cow? Nope, a finished cow isn't what I'm holy cowing about. Actually, today's post should have been called holy pony, because since my last, I've started and finished and finish-finished the fantabulous Emma and Her Pony Sewing Roll by Stacy Nash (and yes, a sewing machine was involved in the putting together of this sewing roll!)

This was stitched on 28 count raw unbleached linen with the recommended DMC threads. There's a wee pocket there to hold the scissors, or any other orts and ends that need tucking away.

Is it wrong to be so sinfully happy with something you've made yourself? Well, I shall meditate upon this matter in my yoga class today.

I hope you craft something today that makes you bubble inside!

Yours meditatingly,
Annemarie.

Why I hate my sewing machine

... or ANY sewing machine, for that matter. I mean, I have a strong suspicion that my particular sewing machine was made by tiny children's hands in a sweatshop in BuliBuliwusiwasa, but even so. This...

...never happens when I sew by hand. But sewing by hand takes so long, and as it happens, the Gift Police are hard upon my heels so I have to make haste, but with results as these I'm taking twice as long, because, obviously, I can't send this to anyone (what would you all think of me if I went about sending you this tripe?) and I have to start all over again, with the stitching, and the fussing and the finishing and the swearing. My house is filled with failed finishing attempts, and I don't even want them!

What I do want is spend some more time with Isabella, who is lovely and addictive.

I hope your week is filled with successful finishing and satisfying stitching. And cool weather.

Yours fretfully,
Annemarie.

Words!

Remember a couple of months ago, when I introduced you to my plan to build stitch a Word of the Day Wall? You thought I'd totally given up on that idea, didn't you? Admit it! Actually, I didn't think I would do it either, but I'm surprising even me these days! The thing is, Pelle is getting more and more interested in reading and 'writing'. He can recite the alphabet. Backwards. And he can tell you which is the thirteenth letter of the alphabet without even thinking. Also, he keeps track of every single cross I stitch, especially when they end up forming letters. He's a true inspiration, in more ways than I can tell, so in honour of my son - and his favourite theme park - I stitched up this:

Efteling! And I finish-finished the letters too, so we can now actually hang them on a line (thank you, Heidi, for that idea!).

Mind you, I'm not a seamstress by any stretch of the imagination (at least not when there are machines involved. I don't trust these sewing machines, do you? I'd rather do it by hand, but these are a lot of letters and I'm sllllllloooooooowwwwww and I wanted this word finished!), so the appearance of these letters is, shall we say, prim, but I'm so happy with them! Can't wait for the little man to come home from school and show him what mama has done :o)) Now to find a place where my terrorist cats won't be able to get to them...

I hope you're enjoying a lovely week!

Yours pridefully,
Annemarie.

How now red cow?

A surprise update. Well, a surprise to me. But today I have worked in the garden, I worked on my translation and now it's too darn hot to even stick the tip of your nose outside the door, so surely the only sensible thing to do is to curl up in front of the AC and write a blog post. Also, I have things to show you!

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to take some very old finished projects to the framer's (as I didn't have any very new finished projects), with these results:

My favourite of the lot by far. It's one of the 14 birds from a fantastic booklet published by Bahmann, full of these quirky birds, by Jutta Ortmanns. Finished in *gulp* 2003. The next one is another design from this book:

And yet another Bahmann design, called Worpsweder Oktett. I have no idea where to hang this thing in a house full of samplers. It's a lovely thing, it was a joy to stitch, I wanted to have it framed, and now... I don't know where to put it.

The last one is Summer Row by Bent Creek. Finished in *gulp* 2002. Love it!

And now for the projects that are heading towards being framed with gathering speed (well... one can dream). There's Needleprint Sarah Harris, which I'm loving!

This is my favourite of all Needleprint charts, because the colours and the medallions are so completely quirky. Do you see that motif on the right? It has a colour in it that I have never, ever, not once, used in my entire stitching career (which is in its 17th year). To be fair, it hurts my eyes and every stitchy fibre in my body to use this colour, and yet... and yet. It works! What a lovely surprise!

A sampler which I'm loving even more is Isabella Johnstone. I'm halfway, and I started this one only a little over a month ago. This may not impress some of you stitching machines, but to me, that is quite a feat, I tell you.

With this heat, all I really want to do is assume a foetal position, because I am a winter person and a winter person without winter is as a coffee person without caffeine... Damn! I'm a coffee-drinking winter person drinking water in the summer. Oh, the horror!

Thanks, as always, for your continued visits, and for your lovely and supportive comments. They really do make my day! Now if you'll excuse me, I have a cow to attend to.

Yours perspiringly,
Annemarie.