Dish & Disclosure

So, yes, I'm working on Fremme's Blue Lady. The Pistols. I got the urge, suddenly, and every stitcher knows that you can't fight the urge. Sometimes it's a fake urge, though. In case of a fake urge, I think I need to work on the Blue Lady, but as soon as I thread my needle I realise the time isn't right after all. This time, the time was definitely right. Heidi was wondering how far along I am, so I took a pic of me showing the Blue Lady. I'm an average sized female, by the way (apart from the calves, obviously), so you may get some idea of her size.

As you can see, I've slowly started making my way down. This serves two purposes: (a) it allows me to check if I won't run out of fabric once I get to the bottom - no matter how many times I checked, re-checked, counted and re-counted before I started, I'm never completely comfortable until I know exactly where a piece ends; and (b) if you feast your eyes on the total picture of the blue babe in my sidebar, you will see that she is standing on a carpet of flowers, featuring about seven million of these exact same squares:

Working all of this right at the very end, all in one go, will most probably finally wipe that inane smile off my face that I always carry when I work on the Blue Lady.

Shall I tell you a little secret? It's a very embarrassing secret, so I'm not sure that I should tell you, but I'm going to anyway. I'm never going to finish the Blue Lady. Never ever. Because yesterday evening I had this premonition that once I put the final stitch into her, I'll be finished too. This is not a joke, I swear. And just to be on the safe side (my premonitions are eerily accurate most of the time), I just won't finish her. Maybe I'll purposely NOT stitch one of the flowery squares, just so that she will never be really finished.
As I suspected, there weren't that many takers for Spring, Birds and Branches by Fremme, but enough to warrant an official drawing by my adorable little man. And since you were all so enthused about my Polish pottery, I took the opportunity to sneak a piece into the picture :o)

The Drawing...


The opening...
Congratulations, Giovanna! Be a dear and send your snail mail address to amcdevries AT gmail DOT com, and I'll send the birdies on their way to Italy.

Well, that's it from me for today. I hope you're enjoying a wonderful week. It's rather springlike here, and since it's a halfday for Pelle today, I think a long ramble through the woods is in order :o)

Yours bluely, but in a good way,
Annemarie.

Mummy time

Thank you all for your encouraging and sweet comments on my last. My post turned out a lot grumpier than I had planned, so here's a little something about nothing, to cheer you up a bit. Some of you have asked how I handle the mother of all BAPs, the Blue Lady? Well, here's how:

*Colourful, much?*

And my current favourite beverage to go with it. Fresh mint tea.

*Yum*

I sincerely hope your weekend will be as relaxing as mine.

Yours cocooningly,
Annemarie.

Old Birds

Okay, that was a longer absence than I had hoped, but here I am with another finish. I know, I shock myself too. This is one of my all time favourites, which is odd, because when I got the kit I didn’t think I would do ten stitches on it, seeing as it’s all grays and greens and I don’t like stitching with grays and greens. Also, I think the project just screams eighties at high volume, but I don’t care. I love it, and here it is:

A project I like to call The Birds by Edith Hansen for Fremme, stitched with Danish Flower Thread on white linen. Excusez the crappiness of the picture, but the birds are already at the framer’s, so I can’t do better than this at the moment. Believe me when I say it’s beautiful.
If anyone should be interested in the chart, leave a comment, and I’ll send it to you. The chart looks used, but that’s because it actually was used. It’s still in good shape and above all, legible. If there’s more than one taker, I’ll do a draw.

Apart from finishing up The Birds, I’ve been knitting away on my knee sock - and with my size legs, it takes a good while to finish one - and crocheting away on my lovely, delicious, gorgeous, warm and snugly blanket. I’m adding squares as I go along, because if I would have to do all of that at the end, there would not be a blanket. Just a whooole lot of squares. My heartfelt thanks to Glenna the Great, by the way, for solving the conundrum of the squares. 1680 possible colour combinations... Who would have thought? Not me. I got as far as 480, and I thought that was a LOT. You’re a marvel, woman, as well as a heroine AND an inspirational stitcher :o)

I’m also making a weighted vest (or at least, trying to) for Pelle. He’s not been doing so well lately. He misses his Opa dreadfully, and he’s in a new group at his medical daycare centre - a group with ten or eleven children who are even wilder than he is. As some of you may know, Pelle is what everybody so politically correctly calls a 'special child' (as opposed to all the other children in the world, who are not special at all, I suppose. Honest to God, I don't know why I can't just say he's retarded, because that's what he is, and I don't love him any less for it. Nor would it make me feel worse if someone were to say to my face he's retarded, whereas I get really uncomfortable when people call him 'special'). Sorry, I'll get off my soap box now. Anyway, they are testing him for autism, and while I know he’s not a raging autist, so to speak, he certainly has his Rain Man-like qualities (doing sizeable jigsaw puzzles wrong side up and what have you). Anyway, I’ve heard that a weighted vest might help him to focus more on himself and less on his surroundings and to help him calm down a bit. Let’s hope it has some positive effects on him. Meanwhile, I, for my part, have a bit of a hard time coping with it all, too, so I guess that’s why I’m branching out with my crafting activities - just to keep my mind off of things. It’s either that or hit the sauce, and although the second option really appeals to me, I understand it’s generally frowned upon to go that road. Anyway, if you wonder why I’m quiet, or if you don’t like my foray into foreign crafting territory, at least you know what the cause for all this is :o)

Don't forget to tell me if you would like a chance to win the Fremme chart!

Yours wanderingly,
Annemarie.