Viva Mexico!

Happy Monday to All!
Some of you may have wondered where I have been hiding the last few days? No posts and no comments on any of your goodies... Well, I do have a perfectly reasonable excuse; DH and I sneaked off to Mexico for a week. We got back in town yesterday night, the laundry is done, the pets have been cuddled with, and it's back to work tomorrow. All is good.

I did finally receive my iPad2 a day before we left and thought in my naivety that internet would now be set for the week in Mexico - finally, I would be able to catch up on my blog reading (I think that I am 2 weeks behind now and I have a feeling that I may never catch up!). Not so much... The iPad-net works great at home, but DH explained to me that it's because he set it up to work here. So that is great, but still not parade.... You know what I am saying, right?
Today, he added Netflix so that I can watch movies and stuff, which is cool, but the more suspicious part of me feels that this may be DH's strategy to keep me off the TV now when the football and basket ball seasons are starting back up again (at least I believe that they are, hmmm?)
Anyway, here is a photo of the "cool toy" and some of the fabric that I grabbed off Etsy so that I can finish my Hidden Nine Patch runner some day. I am thinking that I will try to use the newspaper print as the border and the green flower prints for the backing.

I hope that I will have time to write more about Mexico later this week, but in the meantime, here are some pics showing the stitching that got done on the plane rides/while slouching by the pool.
I did pack a huge bag of kits. (As in "a hugely optimistic bag" - funny, I am generally so realistic that some claim that I am a pessimist. They ought to see my stitch-n-go bags... no pessimism there, I promise!)
The bag (this is not even all of it - one kit was too large to get into the bag...):

Here is a quickly finished Wobble Gobble by Bent Creek (this is a pretty big piece, since it is stitched on a low count linen with perle cotton):

A patriotic design, also by Bent Creek (Patriotic Coins, I think it's called. Note how I ran out of the border color? I hate when that happens - just 20 more stitches and it would have been a "finish" rather than a WIP... aaargh!);

The one that didn't get quite finished was Bountiful by Trilogy. It showed up that the colors used for the turkey's body and his head were pretty much almost exactly the same in my kit. That was a big turn-off and I was not real keen on whipping him out after that. I will root through the over-dyed floss box here at home and see if I can find some better colors, so that there is a bit of contrast between his body parts (white and dark meat, you know...). This one should finish up in no time too, theoretically. There really is less left to do than it looks. And I do have about one year left until he will go on display too...

Another very fun and creative exercise, that DH and I did together during this trip, was pottery paining. A lady had a well-packed booth down on the beach which contained all kinds of unpainted pottery. You get to pick whatever piece you would like to decorate (she has vases, plates, ash-trays, piggy-banks in all shapes, candle holders, flower pots - you name it!), sit down at a table with probably 20 different paint colors, paint-brushes, water, and wipe cloths. Then, paint your little heart out! The designs have already been outlined on the pottery, so that you can simply fill in the fields. She has a bunch of finished pottery too, that you can draw inspiration from. After you are finished, she adds the finishing touches and fixes any messes, so in the end everything looks amazing! After that, she lacquers and dries the pieces and they are ready to pick up the next day. We had so much fun and look how cool the pieces ended up being:

Let me be rather obnoxious and brag a bit here - the only details that she added on my turtle were the black rings around his eyes and the blue lines on the bottom of his shell. I spent a good 2-3 hrs on him and I had decided not to leave until I was satisfied, so I was happy when it came back pretty much in the same state as I turned him in (yes, I know that I sound smug, but keep in mind that I burned my back while working on him - oh, the pain of the creative process! LOL)! I had so much fun and so did DH and it was great to do something like this together. He was much more clever that I was and painted the inside of his piece yellow. It looks really warm and pretty when there is a burning candle in it! (We tried them out the same night that we came home...) My dark-blue inside swallows all the light up and makes the turtle look like a dark blob sitting on the coffee table. Lesson learned!

Before skipping off to bed, let me show you the three awesome non-stash finds I happened about on this trip. I love all of them!
My silver earrings (they are HUGE!) in the shape of magnolias, I think. They are a gorgeous design by a local artist. Sorry about the fuzzy pic.

The monarch butterfly scarf was purchased on the Cozumel airport on the way home. I almost fell over backwards when I spotted it! A few months ago, I saw someone on TV wearing this scarf and I found it breathtaking. I searched on-line like a desperate person but had to give up after many fruitless hours of scrolling through irrelevant photos and trying out any potential key word that I could come up with. I even e-mailed one of those women's fashion magazine columns where they tell you where stars get their stuff, but my subscription ran out, so I don't even know if I ever got an answer. Here we are sitting at Cozumel's tiny airport, we have 2 hrs to kill before the plane leaves, and I see the very same scarf!!! I love it.

My absolute favorite find - a sugar skull purse from Loungefly. I already have some very ambitions (and probably not so realistic) plans to stitch up a matching sugar skull fob, just for fun. (Here is another cool one and a "cranky Bubba" fob here.)

Once I came home, I confirmed that the purchases were not financial finds as much as "lucky to find" items. The bag is already sold out on-line (I searched a bit to compare prices - did I get taken for a ride or not? LOL), the scarf was pretty much identical to what it would have been here in the US assuming that shipping would be ~$10, and the silver earrings may have been a slight bit cheaper in Mexico than here, but not by a lot. I am happy with all of them and can't wait to "grow up" so that I can be a lady that wears silk scarfs... :-)

Finally, here is a picture showing Bubba and Princess. They are still very weary of each other and we don't let them close to each other without supervision. Look how huge Princess is! She gained probably 50% in weight and it shows. She is a big girl now. Still cute and active as ever, but she does not fir in anyone's hand anymore. Henny is pleased - back to being the smallest body with the biggest personality!

I'll leave you for tonight with a photo showing a stunning sunset on the Eastern side of Cozumel on Friday night. Note the tiny light-house in the middle of the photo!

Take care, Happy Stitching and I promise to come by and visit your blogs soon!

Letting the Machine Do All the Work!

Hi all - thanks so much for popping in! As you may have noticed, I have really tried to come over and visit all of you, but I am still working myself into a zombie at work. In all honestly, I don't really think that all of it can be blamed at work, but the season doesn't help. It is definitely getting darker and cooler out there, but compared to Sweden, it is a breeze! :-) I can't really whine too much; today DH and I finally took a long walk, which I have been promised for about three weeks now. DH calls it "walking the Swede", LOL! The sun was not out and it was really windy for central Kentucky, but it was warm and the trees are just spectacular to look at. We saw hawks and a bluejay and a bunch of neighborhood dogs on the way - it was really nice. I always used to roll my eyes at all those "looking for a future spouse" ads in the papers where people claimed that "taking long walks" were among their hobbies. Guess what - I'll have to do a lot of eye-unrolling now, since that is probably one of the things I enjoy most nowadays...

Speaking of neighborhood animals, we got a new family member! Introducing Princess:

"Hi, I'm Princess. Look at me - am I not the cutest?" "Oh, you are not sure... - we-e-ell let me move closer so that you can see my big eyes and my long, dark eyelashes..."

Bubba is furious! He can not believe that we brought home a white rat!!! I think that he is secretly terrified of her... She is super-energetic and happy-go-lucky, which infuriates him even more. She has jumped over to sniff him a few times (while Bubba has been restrained by yours truly), and he is not at all amused. Back when we got Bubba, I bought him a cozy basket for him to snuggle up in. He simply looked at it, wrinkled his nose, and turned his back to it. In all honestly, it was a tad too small already in those days.... Since then, Bubba has grown quite a bit and DH got him a dog-basket that he loves to sit in. Princess got to inherit the tiny basket:

Princess says: "It takes so much energy to be this adorable. Time for a power-nap!"
Both bunnies are hanging up on top of the couch...

...when Bubba suddenly decides that he does like the tiny basket after all...

"Whaddaya mean I'm "being silly"? I have always loved hanging out in this thing!"

That reminds me of a funny story Littlest Sis told me about our niece, who is turning three in December. She got a baby-brother a while back and is having a hard time readjusting to not being the baby and having to share her parents and all that jazz. The other day, she came up with a pretty clever idea, which she shared with her parents. She thought that it would be great if her little brother could move in with mormor and morfar (my mom and dad) instead of living with her. After mulling things over a little bit longer, she suggested that maybe it would be even better if little brother moves in with farmor and farfar (dad's parents). What is so funny about this is that their paternal grandparents live pretty far away, so they only get to meet them 2-3 times a year, while they hang out with my parents several times a month. That is one clever young lady right there!

Since Princess' arrival on Saturday last weekend, a certain big black rabbit has been even more of a snuggle-bunny than normal. Bubba demands that consistent cuddling is kept up, which means that there has not been a whole lot of stitching going on in the house lately.
I did manage to finish one of my finds form Salty Yarns last weekend. This is Sow Kind Seeds by Bent Creek. It comes as a "Zipper Kit" containing pattern, 18 ct linen, button and WDW perle cotton. I decided to stitch it with tent-stitch over one to make it smaller and I finished it as a little planter sign. The stick was a broken bunny-toy that was finished up with a button tied to the top using a thin ribbon.

A super-quick stitch, easy finish, and now I feel a lot less guilty about picking up so much stuff at Salty Yarns...

Other than that, I have spent a lot of time with my sewing machine. One of DH's co-workers asked if I could help her finish a Christmas stocking that her mother stitched for her husband. Here are the before and after shots:

Since the machine was up and running, I decided to tackle that "scrappy star quilt" that I found in a BH&G magazine a few weeks back. Here are the fabrics I picked out:

Progress on Wednesday night:

The star in the front center is made from a couple of fabric cuts that L-bug gave me last year. It may be hard to tell from the photo, but the dark-blue fabric is star-spangled - how cute is that!? The "US star" will be the center star in the finished piece.
Finally, this afternoon:

I noticed pretty quickly that I enjoy the sewing and pressing steps so much more than cutting the pieces. That cutting process was really boring and I am thinking that this may be what will keep me from doing a lot of patchwork/quilting in the future. Now I only have to find backing, binding and some other assorted fabrics to finish this up with.
Here are a couple of blocks that ended up being left-overs. I am toying with the idea of making a narrow table-runner, but I am not sure that I feel like playing with the cutting mat again... Maybe I'll give it another go one of these days.

After that, I decided to swing right along into a table-runner project that I have been thinking about for a long time. I found some really neat tutorials for Disappearing Nine-Patch runners on-line (here is a link to one of a vast number of tutorials) and decided that I wanted to give it a try. I had always been attracted to the fabric line Authentic by Sweetwater for Moda so when I saw the D9P I finally knew what I would love to use the Authentic fabrics for. The problem is that Authentic sold out really quickly and very seldom pops up at Etsy or Ebay. After searching for the layer cake for weeks, I finally got lucky and here is the result:
Nine-Patch:

Cut, Flip & Disappear!:

Love:

While I am at it, I really ought to get this tiny topper done too:

Oh, how I wish that I livd a lot closer to my quilting-buddy L-Bug!!!

Other than that, not a lot of crafting going on. I have been stitching a bit on a gift for Littlest Sister:

I spoiled myself with yet another Vera Bradley bag (from the Floral Nightingale collection):

An article was published in Sweden about my great-aunt Vera Frisen (and thanks an old blog-post, the self-portrait of Vera that my parents own was published!):

Yesterday, members from our SWE chapter (Society for Women Engineers) volunteered at a GEMS event (Girls Enjoy Math and Science) from 10AM to 4PM. I was pretty much beat after that, but it was fun and the girls seemed to learn a lot. We talked about chromatography, color science, and women inventors through US-history. Here are a couple of the slides that we showed:

Really makes one think, right? We are so ucky to be born in this day and age (and in free societies)!

Well, I had hoped to jump over to Stitching Bits & Bobs for some 20% off sale shopping, but I see that it is past 1AM, so off to bed with me.
Take care, Happy Stitching and talk with you in a bit!

I am still alive and stitchin'

Hi everyone - I hope that you are all great! I am fantastic, but super-busy both at work and at home, so I have been slacking both on the blog-posting side and the blog-reading front. I hope that I will be able to shape up soon! I apologize for not keeping up with all of your blogs, but that is the big goal for Sunday! As always, thanks for all your comments; they mean so much to me. I am still in awe every day about the fact that blogging is such a wonderful connector to stitchers all over the world. I am still as excited about blogging today than I was when I started.

Well, enough blubbering - let's get down to business! As you may remember, last weekend I took two classes with Sherri Jones of Patricks Woods; The Lucet and Hare Pyns. We had a blast and we learned so much! Now I have taken 4 classes with Sherri and I am always impressed with her teaching skills, her personality and sense of humour (her stories are simply hilarious!) and her fantastic designs. I have never taken a class with her without learning something new.
We started off with the Lucet class on Saturday morning. We were about 20 ladies, I would guess, and we were lucetting our little fingers off all day long. So much fun!
Here is Sherri showing off various types of lucets:

.. and here is a small sample of different types of cording you can make with the lucet (beaded, flat, square, multi-colored - you name it!):

DH often claims that I am "easily amused" (is that a bad thing? - I don't think so) - and he may have a point... Apparently I found something to really laugh about here - note that the ladies around me look more skeptical than grinning their faces off like yours truly.... ;-)

Here is a close-up of the Rovaris necklace upon request! (Thanks for taking the pic Froggie and enjoy Joyce! LOL)

Lady P was the hostess for the Lucet class. We crashed her house on the way out to dinner and wow, we were in heaven! She has a vast collection of gorgeous samplers everywhere. I took photos of pretty much all of them, but I will only give you a teaser here.
The is Lady P next to her Dutch Beauty. I can not even begin to tell you how pretty this sampler is - or how huge it is!

A true Kentucky couple's home - samplers on the wall and NASCAR on TV!

Part of Lady P's smalls collection - is this not just the best piece of furniture for a fabulous display?

And this is a fantastic - simply beautiful - large box topped with a Periwinkle Promises sampler. I am pretty sure that this was a class project.

Well, I had too much fun to remember to get my camera out. Dinner was great - Sherri, Lady P, L-bug and a new friend, Amy, and I went out for dinner at a steak place. We had such a nice time. Amy is just the sweetest lady and she got us all desert off the menu simply by giving the waitress one of those puppy-dog looks that you can not say no to. Amy is also a blogger - she blogs e-v-e-r-y d-a-y - can you believe it!? If you get a chance, please swing by over to check out her blog and say hi - she would love to have you stop by, I'm sure: Thread in Hand!
After dinner, L-bug and I went back home to her house. She was kind enough to let me stay over from Friday night to Sunday, which decreased my travel time by 150%! She is the sweetest friend one could ever wish for; she left chocolate and candy in the guest-bedroom for me, had a full breakfast menu, and let me play in her stash for hours. What 4-star hotel has a stash to play in? Not many, I bet!

The Hare Pyns finishing class started early Sunday morning. We were about 12 ladies at various stages of completion and we had a great time! I brought my sewing machine all the way from Kentucky and was so annoyed that I could not get the tension of the sewing thread right through the entire class. It wasn't until I was all packed up and half-way back home that I realized that the thread spool should have been in the vertical position and not the horizontal position - sigh!!! Well, that's what happens when you try to sew too early in the morning... LOL
I love the concept of "finishing class". I am pretty good about whipping up the stitched part of a design, but the finishing step is one that generally takes me a loooong time to get to.
Well, I did not get everything finished in class - far from it - but I got enough done to motivate me to stick to it. Lookie what I finished yesterday night!

The only thing that I am not 100% happy with is the overlap of the ribbon used for the pocket border. I have one corner that sticks out too much and I do not like the look of it. However, it is way too late to try to fix it, so unfortunately, it is what it is. I am very happy about most of the rest (but I seriously do have to invest in a great pair of scallop fabric shears so that my felt pieces don't look like I chewed them into shape....)

Well, so one project down, hundreds to go. It does not help that I accidentally picked up a bunch of new kits and patterns from Sherri. I am really excited about starting on a couple of these, but seeing that I have a 20-project WIP list and that the lucet piece will require many hrs of TLC before I have manufactured the required number of yards of cording, I will have to brace myself. By the way, did I mention that I am going to another stitching retreat in about a week? I'll tell you more about in my next post.... Wink-wink...

And speaking of stash - a huge box awaited me today when I finally got home from work ay 9:30 PM. Stash!!!!! The pile of silks in the front is for the Shores of HRH SAL that Valerie of A Shenadoah Sampler and I are planing on doing here soon. Oh, I can't wait!!!!

I know that 9:30 sounds pretty late to come home from work, but today was a special occasion. We had in our Swedish representatives and customers for meetings at work all day today. It was a lot of fun to speak Swedish and it is also easier to ask and discuss harder questions a lot more directly in someone's native tongue, so I was invited to come along to do the wine and dine thing. Dinner was held at one of the local Bourbon distilleries and we had such a great time! The weather was even good enough that we sat outdoors for most of the dinner. The guests did not want to leave, but luckily they did not have a choice (good planning on the hosts part...) since the chartered bus came and whisked them back to the hotel at 9PM sharp! Good thing too, they are leaving town 5:30 tomorrow morning! :-o
Well, I need to get up pretty soon here too, so I'd better get going (I can hear DH snoring all the way from the bed-room...). Bubba is sitting behind me on the couch back-rest and seems a bit antsy, so it is time to get him back to his cage for some night snacks, I think.

Well, since Henny is already in bed, I guess that I don't have any choice but to end this post with some bunny pictures.
Bubba says "Do not touch my carrot!!!"

It is a hard life being this cute. Better take a nap...

Looking at Bubba napping makes me tired too. Time to get to bed!
Good night and sweet stitching dreams to everyone!