Mushrooms are popping up

Hi, I did not have that busy of a weekend so I made some stitching progress. The mushroom motif on Beautie Spot is moving along fairly quickly. Five more motif's and the boarder after the mushrooms are done.


This little guy hates to be photographed. On Saturday, I finished the bee hive and put in the blue colonial knots.

I thought I would take a picture of my husbands veggies. He is growing green peppers and cherry tomatoes. These hanging baskets are not my favorite. They take up a large foot print and are not that pretty. We have a deal, if they do not produce veggies they are out of here next season. Let's all give a little shout out to the rotting tomato God's so maybe this monstrosity will be gone next season. Unfortunately, there is a green pepper that looks like it is thriving.

Finally, I thought I would share the pretty Hibiscus. The red/pink color with the yellow stem looks so pretty. Maybe a color choice for a future stitching project.

This is a short week. My company is giving us Friday and Monday off for the 4th of July holiday. I am already looking forward to the weekend and I am only a few hours into Monday.

Hope you are able to get some stitching time in this week. Kelly

Back to Stitching...

Last week was really busy with life so I did not get any stitching done until a little on Thursday night an a lot on Sunday. My first blurry picture is of the bug to the right of the big flower I completed a couple of weeks ago. The two green lines go all around the design. I just had a little bit of thread in my needle so I used it up. I am sure going around this huge project in Pine will be loads of fun. I am thinking that I should occasionally stitch a thread or two so this is not 100% left to the end.

The second picture shows my completed butterflies and the start of the mushroom motif.

The clothes are from this interesting sale I went to on Saturday. It was a pop up store in my neighborhood. The store is in an empty storefront and will only be in this location for a month. They are selling designer samples at 50% to 80% off. The top is so soft. It does not have any tags other that the designers name so I am not sure how to wash it or what it is made of. The dress is for a 50th birthday party that is next Saturday. The party will have lots of gay guys so I needed something new to wear. You cannot go to these parties with bad hair or clothes:) The store is having a reception on Thursday night with food and wine. They said they would be getting more clothes in so I might go back over. It is only a block away so it is easy enough to get to.

Finally, here is a picture of my old boy enjoying a lazy Sunday afternoon. He is laying on the bottom shelf of the serving cart. A favorite summer location.

Hope your day's are full of stitching. Kelly

In my last post I mentioned the H2O sale and this is part of my haul. This stuff is for my nieces that are 10 and 12. I also bought a little bag and put 8 or 9 small bath washes in for my niece that had her 6 year old birthday party on Saturday. I had to buy some things for me but that picture did not make it to my email. We had a good time at the sale. One of my stitching friends from the Guild joined me. She bought a bunch of stuff for her 10 year old. The warehouse gives you a plastic bag and a box with a rope attached. You drag this box around the sale dumping in your goodies. When you are all done, you pay, and the products go into your plastic bag. To give you an idea about the deal the small body washes were $.50 cent each and the big lotions were under $4.00. The small body washes will be good for their swim bags and my friend is using them as Tooth Fairy gifts.


I don't have any stitching pictures to show this week. I have been too busy and really did not accomplish all that much. Soon I will have one small bug and two butterfly's to show from Beautie Spot. I also have an ornament that is a snowman. I am not sure if I will be able to photograph him until I get to the back stitching because I am not sure the white on white will show up.


I thought I would take a minute to talk about my reading. I have a Kindle and I subscribe to a Kindle blog. The blog tells me about a lot of free or cheap books that are available for the Kindle so I order some of these books. I don't want to get in to any one's religious business but Kindle has an agreement with some religious publisher and they are giving away some of their books. This would be fine if they would all be up front that these are religious books. I sometimes choose to read books with religious themes. The publisher is describing the books as a mystery or a romance or whatever genres. You start reading along, the charterers are about to go in and capture the terrorist, oh but wait, lets pray over this mission. I mean honestly, the buildup is kind of lost. The book Rooms was so religious I was expecting them to offer to sell me Bibles at the end and no where in the description was religion mentioned. This book is taking a beating in the reviews because they were not up front. Has anyone else order these books from Amazon/Kindle? They have been high on the Kindle best seller list mainly because they are free!! BTW, the Bible is in public domain so it is free.


I am so over the wholesome books, I am on to gay lit. The book is Strings Attached and it was another free Kindle book. I am still happily married and not planning on changing teams but at least this book has an interesting story to tell, some steam, and some mystery. I guess I need to get over the free books and start paying the $9.99 like Amazon wants me to.


It has been a busy week with year end financials at work, a board meeting at the Shelter, a massage tonight, and dinner with friends tomorrow night. The weekend is also booked but I will save something for later.


Hope you are able to get some stitching time in. Kelly

Hi, The weekend was busy and fun but I did manage to get some stitching done. Above is Safari by Terry Dryden. I worked on the cat and did the sections below the head. My pencil mark show up great in the picture but I could not see them well yesterday. I was working outside on the terrace and the lighting was not right for this work. In case you are interested, Terry is going to teach this project at NAN. Speaking of Nan... my friend is teaching the half day class Mayan Lightning. I am going to take her practice class for this project in September

I finished the flower motif on Beautie Spot and started the bug on the right.

We had about 10 people over for the hockey game on Friday night. Saturday was my nieces college graduation party in the suburbs and Sunday was more hockey. These hockey games are wearing me out. Hopefully we will only have one more until we win the Stanley Cup!!

Thanks for stopping by. Happy Stitching.

Oh Christmas Tree

Charlotte's Web Needlework

32 count white Belfast linen from Zweigart

DMC Floss and DMC Light Effects Precious metals

Hi, I finished Oh Christmas Tree last night. It is not perfect, as you can see the Rhodes hearts are not centered. I found this pattern very difficult to follow. I did not think the diagram was very clear about the spacing and the lining up of the different areas. Oh well, it is what it is, and I will have this made into an ornament.

I made a lot of progress on Beautie Spot over the weekend. Hopefully, I will get this flower done this week. I made a little more progress last night after pictures were taken.

Over the weekend I thought I would try something new. I went to JoAnn's and bought some reasonably priced 28 count linen in white. I wanted to learn how to dye the fabric. I started out by buying Cool Aid and thought I would look up the directions to Cool Aid dying on Cyberpointers. That was last months education segment. I really wanted to dye the fabric robin egg blue, but I soon realized that it would be easier and more economical to just mail order. Cool Aid dying was for wool, plus the teacher said she only used this for samples because the color could fade over time. Not sure why this was even taught if the color would fade. So now I have packets of blue Raspberry Cool Aid. Like I am going to give a blue drink to a kid.

Next I searched the web for Vonna's dying technique but I could not remember where I saw this technique taught. Fortunately, this morning October Eves posted a link to this tutorial so now I have it on my blog I will be able to find this again when I am ready to go into fabric dying again.

My picture shows the white fabric I started out with, tea dying for about a half hour and the small piece of linen in the front sat in the tea for several hours. The white piece is being used for another ornament. Once I took this hunk out of the fabric, not much is left of the other pieces. I am hoping to find an ornament or scissor fob to use up some of the scraps. The colors are nice with the tea dying but fairly even. Depending on the project, I like the marbling look of some of the hand-dyed fabric. I think I will try this again someday.

Here are more pictures of my summer plants. I love the look of all the colors and the green plants provide. I think I am done with my planting for the season now I just have to wait for them to fill in.

The Inpatients are on our front balcony. It faces north so it gets early morning and late afternoon sun. The building in the top picture is the H2O body products factory. They are having their warehouse sale on June 12th. This is always a good time. I will talk more about this later but if you are near Chicago, mark your calendar especially if you have kids/teens.

I have two of these planters on the front balcony. It looks like the white flowers will fill in nicely and flow over like I wanted.

My last planter box is on the terrace. This was another project for Monday. In the picture it kind of looks like a mess from this angle. Actually, it is very pretty. The purple flowers are supposed to flow over, the white flowers are supposed to grow to be 10-12 inches and the green in the back is Italian Parsley which should grow tall. I did not want to use a spike or grasses because the cat eats these things and usually goes to the carpet to puke it up. He usually does not eat the herbs plus I figured we could use the parsley. Another thing about using herbs for focal points in flower boxes is that herbs are usually cheaper than the spikes or grasses. I saw chives used in one box instead of spikes. Useful and pretty.

Tonight is game 3 of Stanley Cup Playoffs. Hockey is a very superstitious sport. Since they have been winning we have had the same people over and watched the game on the terrace. Hopefully, it will not rain tonight so we can keep up the tradition. Only two more game if they sweep!!

Thanks for dropping by and your comments. Happy Stitching! Kelly