And the Award goes to...

Dear readers, I have nothing much to show you on the stitching front and now that the pumpkins have been harvested, no new pumpkinny pictures to share either. So what am I doing here? Well, the reason for appearing thusly, in the middle of the week, less than a week after my last post, is threefold, nay, fourfold. Firstly: I think the number of comments left on my blog when I post in the weekend is just unacceptably low [:o)]. Secondly, I do have one picture to share of the needlebook I've made using another Blue Pistol Lady motif. It's unfinished, but showable. The fabrics on which my needlebook-to-be rests are the ones I will be using for the lining and pocket.

Thirdly, I've joined another Neighbourhood Round Robin. Now before you (yes, you, Harmien) start shaking your head and directing your eyes heaven-wards, let me explain that this is not any old Neighbourhood Round Robin. It's Vonna's idea of a Neighbourhood Round Robin. And it's not really a Round Robin, it's more sort of a Stitch Along. You see, no other person will stitch on this Neighbourhood except myself. We don't start until December 31st, which leaves me an entire four months to finish The Village of Hawk Run Hollow, The Blue Lady, The Fremme Birds, the Cinders Sampler, Rites of Spring, Where My Heart Blooms and The Harvesters, which is, I think you'll agree, totally do-able. Vonna set up a blog for us, and I spent the better part of yesterday evening feverishly planning and plotting and calculating and drawing and sighing and smiling and cackling and browsing and counting and searching and researching. I always find that, in order to start a neighbourhood, I need a name for it. After that, it's a piece of cake. So, the name of my new Neighbourhood, ladies and gentlemen, is Woodsy Wanderings. You will have to wait for the rest of my plans until I find a piece of fabric large enough to carry my neighbourhood.

Fourthly (I was making a list of reasons for posting today, remember?), there has been a lot of Blogger Award awarding going on in the last couple of weeks. I have been nominated several times, by some lovely fellow bloggers whom I have rudely neglected so far (Su, Rachel, Loreta, so sorry). Now I do believe everybody in Stitching Blogland has been nominated at least once for the Brilliante Blogger Award, the I Love Your Blog Award and the Kreativ Blogger Award, so I hope you don't mind if I don't pass these awards on to other people. That is not to say I'm not flattered or pleased, because I am, more than I can say.
Does anyone actually know where these Blog Awards come from? Who makes them up? Is it a Blogger powered thing, or does someone sit down at a desk in front of a computer on a rainy, boring afternoon, to think of a new award? Because if that is the case, I would hereby like to introduce another Blogger Award, thought of by moi, entitled: The Blogger Who Makes You Green With Envy Because They Can Stitch, Design, Work, Keep House And Raise A Family Without Seemingly Losing Any Of Their Amiable Qualities Award (the BWMYGWEBTCSDWKHARAFWSLAOTAQ Award for short). This is the Blinkie to go with it,

and the lucky people who get to copy and paste this blinkie on their blog are:

Barbara, who is not only the warmest person, the bestest Mommy to four beastiest of children, the beautifullest stitcher and a great writer, but also a seriously original designer, a wonderful craftswoman - you have only to browse through her Etsy Shop to know I am right - and an inspirational fellow Blogger.

Tanya, of whom the same can be said, basically. I mean, come on. Look at the pictures of darling Ben and Zack. And she's The Sampler Girl. 'Nuff said. Oh, and she likes Seinfeld, too, which proves she has a great sense of humor :o)

Vonna, who must be the busiest bee among us Stitching Bloggers. Apart from hosting a number of exchanges and now this Neighbourhood SAL blog, this lady has two jobs, one husband, four children, a finishing service for stitchers who are stuck, and a house so immaculate it actually brings tears to my eyes every time I see a picture of said house.

Monique, homeschooler, designer, thread-holder-designer, quilter, coffee-slurper, Scandinavian fabric and design lover...the list goes on.

The rules of this award:
1. Be proud and rejoice.

That's it.

I promise stitchy pics in my next post!

Is it Autumn yet?

Well, I hadn't planned on posting for a good while because I'm not at all close to finishing anything, really, but then this morning, when I woke up, the weather was decidedly autumnal (some people - including my mother who is getting a bit sick with her entire basement flooding every few weeks may call it freak weather) and then I read Heidi's blog and I knew today was the day I was going to harvest some pumpkins. I have to say I have no idea how to tell when pumpkins are 'done', but I see pumpkins of all shapes and sizes popping up everywhere, so I thought 'why not'. Actually, I know sod-all about pumpkins, except that I like the way they look. I don't know what they taste like, I don't know how long they keep, I don't know how to make pumpkin soup or pumpkin pie or pumpkin mash or pumpkin ice cream or pumpkin tea, but I do know they look kind of cozy stacked up, with Pelle's little head popping up behind them:

Pelle is frightfully proud of our pumpkin stash

You understand I won't be happy until I've photographed these babies from all possible angles, using them as props for stitcheries and threads and floss rings and key rings.... Speaking of which: I forgot to share a pic of the wonderfully sweet RAK I received from Carol about two weeks ago. The reason why I forgot is that I put it to use as soon as I saw it. Carol had written on the envelope that it contained a key ring, thinking that the good people at the customs office might not understand the term 'floss ring tag'. But, you know, I've been looking for a key ring that is totally me, and what better form of key ring than e floss ring tag? And what could be more me than a gift from Carol in the form of a Bent Creek bunny? Exactly.

Isn't it the cutest? Thank you so much, Carol. It looks a bit wrinkly, but that's because I put it to good use every day :o)

And now for some more autumnal stuff. After finishing LHN's Herb Garden - which you haven't seen yet, because that's the piece I brought to the framer's as soon as I had disposed of the last ort - I knew I needed to do another Little House Needleworks design. Now I own nearly all of the charts, but before Herb Garden, I had never, ever, ever stitched a LHN design. Not ever. I know, it's incredible, but there it is. Anyway, I now understand the attraction and I knew I had to mend my ways. Here's my new LHN start:


It's The Harvestersand I think it's pretty obvious why I chose this one. The religious text is another first and, unlike the BC Bunny, not really 'me', but you never know what good may come of stitching this ;o)

I'm slowly but surely making decent progress on Blackbird Designs' Rites of Spring

The design is just lovely, but I have Autumn on my mind and find it difficult to concentrate on anything so brightly coloured as a spring design by BBD...

I have some more things to show you, but since this post is already on the picture-heavy side, I will wait and show you my other Projects in Progress the next time.

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!

A new start. And another one.

Wow. I'm still reeling from the last couple of weeks. It has been mad. Not the rushing-hither-and-thither kind of mad, but dealing-with-a-lot-of-difficult-stuff kind of mad. Honey buns. My son going to school full-time for the first time in his life and not liking it one bit, throwing bitter accusations my way in the most heartbreaking (and unintelligible) manner on a daily basis. I've been to our old house for the first time in over four months and I've repeatedly talked to the one I left behind, even meeting once to celebrate Pelle's fourth birthday. All of this while my therapist and meditation guru is away on vacation, so you can imagine there was very little I could do to preserve a semblance of sanity except to wallow in self-pity and to succumb to a serious case of startitis. I mean. Serious. Startitis. I think you may say my startitis has morphed into startospasm. I know I have my Fremme birds, I know I have my Pistols, I have my garden and my pumpkins and when he comes home after a day of hard graft at school I have my son, but still it isn't enough. I want more, more, more, and I want it NOW. And so, without further ado, here's what I've been wanting and doing.

As promised in my previous post, a fob featuring a motif from the Blue Lady chart:

Stitched on low count white linen with Danish Flower Thread. I love the look of this fob so much, I started a needlecase with another motif to go with it. As you see, I'm trying to get my money's worth from this design :o)

I've started a sampler I told you about a couple of posts ago. The one using GAST Cinders:

(Notice the prop for my thread ring) This design is from the June 2008 issue of Cross Country Stitching magazine. Can anyone tell me why the lovely Michelle Ozark Stitcher and I are the only living souls in Blogland who seem to like this magazine and Jeremiah Junction designs in general? I don't get it. I LOVE this mag. Absolutely love it. In every issue there is at least one (but oftentimes more) must-stitch design and I'm very thankful that the local bookshop here has been able to order it for me, so I don't have to travel halfway across the country every two months to get my copy. Can't wait for the next issue!

Next start... came as a shocking surprise to me as well. It's Blackbird Designs' Rites of Spring, the second Loose Feathers design of this year. First time I clapped eyes on it I thought 'neh'. Nothing compared with Where My Heart Blooms. And before I knew it, two nights ago, I was plugging merrily away. It is an amazingly quick and addictive stitch and I'm afraid I might finish this one before I'm halfway through Where My Heart Blooms.

You may think that my starts as shown here are not as impressive as you might have hoped at the beginning of this post, but if I tell you I started and finished two other projects that I took to the (cheap!) framer's before I even got the chance to take a picture of the finished product, I think your awe of my determination to start and finish will increase. Add to that the fact that I agreed to do a Halloween floss ring tag exchange with Harmien (who has shamelessly asked for a scissors' fob to go with it) which I've already started and nearly finished, and your admiration of my diligence must be complete.

And what think you, my dear readers, of these babies?

Aren't they sweet?

Until next time!

Back from Away

Darn. I had been looking forward to blogging so much and now that I finally have the time (and the required internet connection, which is a surprisingly difficult thing to find when you're on holiday in Germany) I can hardly bear to drag myself away from my stitching! So this will probably be a short post (but you all know what happens when I say that) about my sojourn in Deutschland. A couple of family pics and a bit of an update on the stitching front, because BOY, has there been a lot of stitching going on!

My parents took Pelle and me to the town - well, village - of Linstow, which sounds like some place slavonic but isn't. From there, we took a lot of day trips to all sorts of fabulous places in the beautiful neighbourhood. We've been to see a water mill...

...Oh, before I go on, I wanted to ask you: are you guys inspired to stitch by new surroundings, unfamiliar buildings, etc? I felt myself longing for the Village of Hawk Run Hollow when I saw that water mill. I even felt inspired to design my very own German version of the Village when I visited Quedlinburg. The Willage of Quedlinburg, designed by mich...

...Hang on. What was I talking about before you interrupted me? Oh right. The water mill.

The gentleman parading around in front of the building is my father. This is a rare picture indeed, because I managed to capture papa just before he could put his hands or his newspaper in front of his face.

We also went to the city of Rostock, and later on to the beach at Warnemünde, where I encouraged Pelle to allow the water to touch his toes. He loved it so much, I could hardly drag him away from the water (and the jellyfish. Eeeew). The last time I took him to the beach, about two months ago, he screamed his head off, so we're definitely making progress. Here's Pelle with my parents.

Notice the Elvis Presley handbag which my mother carries around with her with great pride :o))

I had such a wonderful time. Without wanting to wax sentimental (again), this time away with my parents gave me the chance to discover that the old me is still very much alive and doing very well under the circumstances, which is something I tend to forget when I'm faced with the inevitable difficulties that wait for me at home.

As for the stitching news I promised you, I don't think I've stitched this much in years. It er... I'm ashamed to admit it, but it took a little getting used to. Every time someone came near me, I think I actually growled at them? The first day of stitching was when the weather people threatened us with rain and storm, so we decided to stay in our cottage for the day. This was also the day that Pelle discovered the joys of role play and decided to open his very own DVD and Bookshop. He didn't need me or my parents to act as customers: he made them all up. Goodness knows what he told all these poor imaginary people, but there were a lot of them. It took Pelle all day to get his shop organised, which gave me plenty of time to work on my Fremme birds.

As I've mentioned before, one of the joys of stitching Fremme designs is that they're worked on low count linen with one strand of Flower Thread, so you can actually stitch in the car (a moving car, that is. I mean, you can always stitch in the car, but it tends to get a little more difficult when the thing is actually cruising down the motorway). I made a lot of progress, as I'm sure you'll agree.

I also finished Judith's neighbourhood. Here it is as it looks now:

I stitched the block at the bottom. The one with the pumpkins, that's right.

And even though I thought I would never get around to working on my Pistols, I took it with me anyway, and what do you know? I stitched so much I ran out of my holiday supply of blues!

At the beginning of this post I told you about my urge to stitch? Well, just now, while I was putting away all the stitchy things I took with me to Germany, I thought: 'Hello? How can I live without a needlework set composed of Blue Lady/Pistol elements?' 'You can't' said the little devil perched on my shoulder, and so I started a fob which I hope to show you, in a semi-finished or finished state, some time later this week. In which post I will also make mention of my pumpkin patch, so be warned!

Retail Therapy

Thank you all very much for your kind comments and votes of support on my last post. I feel better now that you, my friends, know a little more about what makes me tick and how sometimes the ticking isn't all that regular :o). I'm sure I have a difficult road ahead of me, discovering all sorts of things about myself and about those I hold dear, but with the help of friends far and near, it won't be quite as hard...

Well, as you all know there's nothing like a little retail therapy to cheer up a sad stitcher, so last Friday Harmien and I went to the villagette of Abbenbroek to enjoy the Summer Sale at Crown Stitches. I make it sound as if we just hopped in the car and drove there at the speed of light, but let me tell you, without Harmien to read the map we would never - EVER - have gotten there. Only a few miles from said village, we were so tired, so sick of the road, so hungry and so desperately in need of a toilet and sustenance, that we had a little fast food therapy as well...

Thank you, Harmien, for taking this picture and then putting away your camera and forgetting to photograph the really important things, like the inside of Liezbeth's home, which also happens to be a quilter's heaven and a stitcher's - slash - stash-gatherer's dream. Here's two pictures of my haul:

The red fabric is already in use:

This is the last you'll see of this project for now. It's a present (yes, a stitched gift! That's my idea of falling off a wagon), and the presentee is a reader of this humble blog, so this is just a peek before you can actually see what it's going to be.
The charts I got are Stitcher's Prayer by CHS, two pumpkin-themed Stacy Nash designs, and Garden Walk, by our very own Monique, which I'm looking forward to stitching some time soon.
This is my progress on Judith's neighbourhood so far:

And... Okay, you've asked for it, so don't blame me... here's a picture of my patch.

Holy moly. I'm afraid I'm going to have to borrow some of my neighbours' gardens soon...

It's starting to feel like one creepy Halloween already, but that might also have something to do with the freakish weather we've been 'enjoying'.

I'm not in a very writeative mood today. Nothing personal. This always happens after I hand in a translation. Yes, the Blazing Little Christmas stories are now a thing of the past. Thank heavens. All those jingle bells were starting to get on my nerves, and they didn't do anything for my desire to stitch Christmas ornaments, which is still as non-existent as it was before I started working on this book. It's a good thing it's only October July.

Coffee and bed.
No.
Coffee in bed.
With a book.
Nice.

No title, just this...

Last night I dreamt about my husband and today I´m even sadder than I have been for a long time.

You see, my husband disappeared about five or six years ago. He didn't disappear overnight. It was a gradual process, but in my mind there came a point when gradually saying goodbye turned into mourning. It took me two years to mourn his disappearance, and when those two years were up, five or six years ago, he had gone completely. I said goodbye to every aspect of him, bit by bit, and I wasn't even aware that these aspects were going, going, gone. I thought they were still there. The person was still there, he just didn't look like himself anymore. He looked like a she, said he felt like a she. He became much happier as a she than he ever was as a he. That's what she kept saying and that's what I kept believing.

The outside changed, but so did the inside, which was something I hadn't counted on. Heck, it was something I didn't even dare acknowledge until about three months ago. That's when I realised that while she had become herself and while I had helped her become herself, I had completely lost my own self. Lost, insecure, nervous and angry, that's what I am now, deep inside. On top of that, I'm incredibly sad. I thought I was done mourning, but it turns out I still miss my husband more than I can say.

***

I'm sorry if this is TMI, but I wanted to share this. Maybe this post will answer some of the questions you may have had. I didn't have to think long about actually posting this. It's my blog, and while I have no intention of turning it into a place where I share the story of my life, I don't want to keep the personal stuff from you, either. Besides, you've always been such good friends. You can't possibly only be interested in my stitching and my pumpkins, right?

Bye bye Miss Pumpkin Pie

You can't see me, but picture me, if you will, breathing a huuuuuge sigh of relief as I sit here sipping some heavenly java. Whence the relief? Well, first of all, this morning I handed in my second Blazing Little Christmas story after a couple of days of dangerously crazy translating. One more story to go (to be handed in next Monday) and then this little old lady is off on her hols to Germany. My second reason for sighing blissfully is because after months of internet deprivation, I am finally online, officially, legally and hopefully, forever. Which means I can blog my little socks off and visit you lot too. Isn't that marvellous? Within reason, of course. I still have that darned Christmas story to finish.

There's not a whole lot to tell you, actually. I could bore you to tears with tales of my patch, but I decided not to go down that road again, unless I'm really bursting to tell you something exciting. But I've discovered not a whole lot of people find growing pumpkins exciting. Every time I mention my gorgeous patch to people who love me, they go glassy eyed and shrug their shoulders and look at me as if to say that they love me regardless. So, no more pumpkin stories. Stitching stories are what you're all waiting for, I gather, so stitching stories is what you'll get.
I'm sure you've read about our wonderful Stitch & Bitch day over at Harmien's last Thursday? It was indeed as fabulous as the other girls proclaimed, and two of us bitchies came bearing gifts! Rachael brought coffee of the yummiest kind from her local Starbuck's, and Barbara actually found the time to stitch us all some beautiful gifts. Of course, mine was beautifullest of all, and here it is:



Barbara changed the colours the design called for to my favourite blues. She knows me so well :o)))) And the backing fabric, girls, well...I say fabric, but that doesn't do it justice, really. It's a piece of antique lace, featuring a plant I promised I wouldn't mention here anymore. Here's a pic of the back. Notice the prop? (Sorry, I can't help myself, I'm that proud).

In between translating steamy love scenes and visiting friends, I also found time to do a little stitching and finishing of my own. Here's the latest addition to my needlework set:

The owl is just a tiny element from a wonderful chart by Abbey Lane designs, called All Things. I usually use the chart for the cute birds that are perfect for filling up empty spots on Neighbourhood RRs.
Here's my needlework set in full, as it is now:

It's really starting to look like something, isn't it?

It's only ten in the evening, so I think I'm going to do a little more work on Judith's Neighbourhood. I've completely lost track of who's sending whose to whom and when they´re supposed to be sending it, but the date of July 15th is firmly stamped on my brain, somehow. Should be doable.
Ha! Ever the optimist...

Time for some more coffee, methinks :o)