Out of the gate it’s already an exciting year! 15 1/2 years ago, I had this very lovely flower girl in my wedding. She and her boyfriend of several years were staying with us New Year’s Eve (like they have been for the past few years) and this time, he had a ring and a question for her… and she said “Yes!” *sniffs* Is that totally sweet or what? Now they’re engaged and I just have to say, congratulations, Tiffany and Joe!! (Had to use orange, it’s her favorite color!)

I’ll let you in on a secret… a little while ago, I meandered across the street and tied a baby-blue balloon on Mike and Kat’s mailbox. However, you’ll have to check their blogs for the news!

Speaking of Kat, she and I made a pact for the first six months of 2008: no new starts or purchases for ourselves save for Chatelaine’s MX. (More on that in a sec) I know it’s only January 5th, but we’re doing well so far. Stop snickering! We have to start somewhere! I finished part 1 of Martina Weber’s Mystery from last year, “Secret Victorian Garden” (click right) and if you look really closely you can see all the white beads are there, too! This is a SAL with Kat so Part 2 won’t be started until we’re both ready for it. It was the part that sold Kat on the chart, so I’m sure she’ll finish up part 1 soon. It’s not obvious in this picture, but there are three colors of braid used here; gold, silver and dark blue. Isn’t it gorgeous? Yuuuummmmm! Anyway, back to our pact… we will only be working on our WIPs for the first six months of the year and we won’t be acquiring any new stash. I know Mike and Scott are pleased with that idea!

We had our ornament exchange in December – but that was secondary to our first meeting with Jenni and Scott’s handsome new son Henry! He was sleeping most of the time we were there save for his one waking moment where he demanded some food. Mommy and Daddy are looking quite sleep-deprived, but very happy. Catherine was unable to join us as she and Noah and Stephen had a cold. We missed them terribly and were even more upset to read about Noah’s visit to the hospital while they were in Houston for the holidays. I am very glad that they are home now! *hugs!* Back to ornaments…. Cindy drew my name and knitted the most adorable winter blue mitten with a snowflake on it! Dingy me forgot to take a picture of it before it was packed away, though. *sigh* Dingy me also nuked the pictures I took of the ornament I stitched for Jenni, too.

Last picture and this one is just for you, Nicki… I wanted a new phone – one with a PDA in it to keep track of all these schedules that I can’t keep straight in my head in my dotage… but I was quite attached to my red one… so lookee what I have now!

When getting from point A to point B it’s theoretically most efficient to go in a straight line. But hey, I’m not only female I’m blonde, too! Where’s the fun in missing all the other bright shiny objects along the way? And why stop there? I’d hate for any less than bright and shiny objects to feel left out, so I have to stop and check those out, too. Yup, my brain is all over the place and with all that’s been going on these past few weeks, it’s no surprise. But I’ll make up for the length between posts with some pictures. One of which is a stitching picture… sort of.

First, I’ll start with a crafty picture from my seven year old daughter Margaret who had to do her first “for real” report – which totally made her feel like a big second grade girl. What excited her even more was the topic: bugs. Maggie loves critters of every kind. Snakes are one of her favorite, but bugs aren’t too bad, either. She got to pick from a list, and chose a praying mantis. Along with this report, she also needed to make a visual aid of some sort. She decided that she wanted to do a sculpture in clay. Sooooo… I decided that in order for this thing to not fall over that it needed some sort of supportive inner skeleton. So Scott and I made a rudimentary wire skeleton (but didn’t call it that being as praying mantises have exoskeletons) for her to wrap clay around. She then spent half an hour mixing brown and green clay, examining the picture and creating a creature that I named “Melvin.” Aside from smoothing out a few of her seams, I didn’t give her much help at all. She did insist on the huge yellow googly eyes, but you can still tell it’s a praying mantis and that’s what counts! I’ll spare you all the interesting facts we all learned as she was doing her report.

A happy belated Halloween to everyone! Some of you have heard about my favorite decoration which is my splatted witch. Here’s a picture of her along with two little goobers standing on my front porch. Maggie is a ghost, but not a scary ghost, as she informed me when she chose her costume… she had to be a cute ghost. Lindsey is a jack-o-lantern. She is missing her two front teeth. She did have makeup on her face, but it was stressing her out with major itchies, so we had to remove it right away.

I’ve been kitting up Golden Kite’s “A Peacock and Doves in a Garden” for the past few weeks and I was originally going to preblend all 120 blends before starting. Well, after over a week of blending (this following a week of bobbinating and gridding) I was getting stitching withdrawal and needed to make some Xs. So last night I stopped blending and sewed the fabric on to the (no laughing now) 34 inch scroll rods. These rods are a few inches too large, but they weren’t in use and I didn’t want to buy or make other ones. Today, I actually made Xs! *does a little dance* When I was walking into the room later in the day, I just stopped and my jaw fell open. It’s huge! Not just large… but huge! I don’t think I’ve ever posted a picture of my stitching space before, so here you go… my winter niche. I will actually have to move my light based on which part of the chart I am stitching. (Doh!) Do you see how wide my stand has to go for Peacock and Doves? It’s wider than the chair!! *makes a goofy face* That red blanket you see is my very important heated throw. Or, I should say, Nikki’s heated throw. Nikki is Scott’s kitty and she loves sleeping on it. In this picture, though, you can see her snoozing under the table next to her toy. In the winter she’s sleeping on my feet (on her blankie) and Ziggy will be on one arm of my chair and Stardust will be on the other. I feel like an Egyptian cat goddess when they do that!

Next — Jenni has tagged me as someone who makes her smile! Who makes me smile?

Jeannie-Maree

Jenni

Kathie

Mike

Nic

Nicki

Scott

Sharon

Sonya

Vicky

And finally… while trying to find my furniture underneath all the Halloween clutter on Thursday, I came across several tennis balls and this made me sniffle and shed lots of tears. Why? Because last Friday, I lost my favorite four-legged lady. Sheba passed away and while it wasn’t unexpected, it was (and still is) very difficult to accept. My heart goes out to Kathie and Mike for their loss and I know they know that we adore her and miss her very much.

We love you, Sheba. You will always be The Queen.