It's Beautie

Beautie Spot

 I have been working on Beautie Spot over the weekend.  I showed my progress on the blue star a couple of weeks ago and now it is finished.  I have the black outline done on the flower so it needs to be filled in with color and you can see a tiny black line for the tail of the Dodo Bird.  I have the Dodo, the bunny, the boarder and a few touches like spangles and initials to finish for the Guild Challenge at the end of the year. 

I have also been able to get in a few French and Colonial knots into my pig project.  I worked on the flowers and some of the sky. 

I did read a wonderful book this week.  It is Mudbound by Hillary Jordon.  It was her first novel and it took her seven years to write this book.  Her second book is coming out in October.  This book reminded me of The Help because each chapter was the voice of one of the main characters.  A question has been going around Facebook:  What book has kept you up way past your bedtime reading?  This could be one of those books.  I did not stay up but I did finish this in about a day.  I also read Mockingjay over the weekend.  This is the final book in the Hunger Game trilogy.  This series could also keep me up past my bedtime.  What book kept you up past your bedtime?  I would love to hear about any great books you have read. 

Last night I apparently gave up on walking.  I live in a soft loft (bedrooms have walls and doors) and it has exposed duct work.  When we do laundry in the summer, condensation forms and it drips on the hallway floor.  I was walking down the hall in flip-flops and fell flat on my bottom.  I was not hurt other than a bruise on my knee and a little jar to the body.  So today I decide to wear sensible shoes and I have tripped no less than 4 times today.  Seriously?  Am I determined to land on my ass again only this time in public? 

My husband has a business dinner tonight which does not happen very often.  I am planning my evening.  I am going to do my household chores like water the poor plants that are subjected to this 100 degree weather, make a quick dinner, and curl up in the stitching chair with my projects and DVR.  I am not home alone all that often so it is something to look forward to. 

Hope you have a wonderful day with at least a little stitching time. 



Belize

 It has been a couple of weeks since I have posted.  Once again this post will be light on stitching because not much stitching is going on around here.  Since I have been cooped up all winter, I try to spend as much time outside as I can.  I do take my stitching to the terrace but if it is windy or dusty, I don't like it being outside.  I have been traveling and reading to keep my idle mind going. 

 Last week we were in Belize.  Not to insult any one's intelligence but Belize is the country right below Mexico in Central America.  When I booked this trip, I thought it was an island in the Caribbean Sea.  Shows I know little about this world.  We flew into Belize City and took a small plane to San Pedro which is an island about 15 minutes flying time from the mainland.  Belize is a hidden gem.  It is a British Territory so they speak English as a primary language and Spanish is their second language.  The country is poor but the people are so nice and friendly.  The condo we stayed in was guarded but it was only surrounded by a two foot high wall and a guy with a billy club so I don't think they were expecting much trouble.   My husband enjoyed the diving and had a dive master that he was very comfortable with.





The Phoenix

Above is a picture of the condo complex from the sea.  We had a lovely one bedroom condo in the building in the back of the photo.  The kitchen was granite and stainless steel, it had a large bathroom, laundry, a great deck, and maid service twice a day.  This is not a place where you go for the beach which does not matter to me because I enjoy sitting by the pool.  Their beaches where small and kind of dirty with sea weed.  The food was wonderful.  I ate fish about every meal.  They were big on shrimp and I really like shrimp.  Their curried, coconut shrimp was on a lot of menus and it was delicious.  This trip was so great that we booked a week in February before we left.  If you booked before you left, you get 20% off your next visit.  

View from the terrace of the Caribbean Sea

View from the beach towards the dive shop

The bed on our first night

Chicken Drop

One of the big things to do on Thursday night is go to the Chicken Drop.  No animals were hurt but I would guess if this happened in the US, PETA would be all over it.  Rumor has it the birds are feed beer all day.  The board above is used in the chicken drop.  The squares are numbered one to one hundred.  You buy a square for a dollar and there is a new chicken every 20 minutes for a couple of hours.  A chicken is brought out to someone in the crowd.  The person holds the chicken, circles it around three times, shakes the chicken, blows on her behind, and puts the chicken on the board.  Where the chicken craps is the winning square and the winner gets the $100 dollar pot.  It was hysterical.  We did not win nor did we blow on a chickens behind.  I guess when some chickens feel the air, there have been some accidents on the tourist doing the blowing.  The chickens way of getting even for her humiliation. 

While I was on vacation I did read a lot.  I read Bloody Mary by J A Konrath.  It was a good beach read about a Chicago Detective/murder mystery.  It is the second book in the Jack Daniels series.  I read The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer.  This book was down right depressing but I wanted to read it because it was set in Budapest in WWII.  I read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins in a day.  This is a young adult book but it was really good for any age.  The Snowman by Jo Nesbo is this months book club book.  This book has been compared to The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo because both authors are from Norway.  It was a good book and a good mystery to read on the beach.  Still Missing by Chevy Stevens was a really good book.  It was kind of like The Room where someone is kidnapped and held hostage for a year in a small shack.  The writing style of this book was interesting.  Finally, I read Unbroken:  A Wold War II Story.  This book got 5 stars by 3,000+ people on Amazon.  I am one of the few people that was not blown away by this book.  It was good but every time I would think it could not get any worse for this guy, something else horrible happened to him.  I would have enjoyed a little more positive in this story. 

We are going downstate this weekend to visit my family for Father's Day.  I am not looking forward to the drive.  It is so much easier to see them in Florida than drive three hours south.  Tonight is a dinner with 15 of our close friends and Sunday night is a street fair in my neighborhood so it is a packed weekend. 

Hope you have a great weekend! 



Still Reading

Happy Memorial Day Weekend!  I have completely lost my stitching mojo and I am hoping to get it back in a couple of weeks.  Right now I just don't have time to stitch or when I have some time I have been reading.   Since I don't have any stitching to share, I thought I would show you my flowers on the terrace and the front balcony.  Planting flowers takes lots of time.  I had to go to three nursery's to find everything I needed.  We love the flower boxes in England with lots of flowers and plants flowing over.  I think this years boxes will be beautiful when they fill in a bit more.  I cram in the plants.  The boxes on the terrace each have 14 plants per box. 

The front balcony is shaded most of the day and Inpatients do really well up front.  I bought these in flats and each box has 42 plants.  I found a really cute table and chairs at one of the nursery's last weekend that I might have to go and buy.  It was expensive so that is the only thing holding me back a bit but any more everything is expensive. 

In my free time, I have been reading.  I read The Secret Holocaust Diary which was very sad and interesting.  It was a free or nearly free book on Kindle.  I also read The Static of the Spheres which is a novella and also free but this one was not even worth reading for free.   I subscribe to the Random House Book Club newsletter and about once a year they send me a free book.  Last week they sent me The Passage by Justin Cronin.  It is really good.  I would have never have bought this book because it was overpriced on Kindle and did not have enough star to justify the price but I am enjoying the first 100 pages or so.  If I continue to like it I will look at other things Justin has written so it was worth their time and money to send me this book.  I am also reading Executive Privilege on Kindle and IPad. 

Speaking of IPad...What a cool toy!!  No reason in the world to own one other than to play on the Internet and with the Apple Aps but it sure kills time.  I can keep up with all your blogs while I am on vacation.  How cool is that?

Saturday is the Soldier Field 10k which my husband and friends are running in.  Later in the day people will be over for a BBQ.  Sunday is our condo planting flowers in the common areas and then our neighbor is having his 40th birthday party.  Finally, Monday is a trip to my SIL's for another BBQ and a neighborhood parade.  Between all of this I have to get ready for my vacation because every night next week is busy.  Just crazy!

Enjoy the long weekend with your family, friends, books, and loads of stitching.

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

Miniature Fun!!

As I mentioned in my last post, the past weekend was full of crafting fun. The two kits above are from the miniature show. I got to meet Teresa Layman and see her personal project which is just beautiful!! The miniature show was fascinating. First, I could not believe how crowded it was. Second, many of the exhibitors were from England. I did not realize miniatures were that big in England. Third, there were no doll houses at the miniature show. Finally, I asked my friend, who is in her 70's, if they brought in a bus from the Senior Center. She just replied that she was quite comfortable with the crowd.

So many of the exhibitors were true artist. Many of the things were hand made. The chandlers, the oil paintings and the stained glass windows and doors were very impressive. I mainly went to see the needlework and tatting. People were tatting with one strand of silk thread. One lady made miniature needlepoint pictures. I believe she said it was 48 count. She was only charging $25 dollars for the pictures and not nearly enough for the work involved in the tatting.

I did not make it to the quilt show but I did go to the Do It Your Own Damn Self show. I did not find anything at that show. If you are a knitter, you might have found some yarn or there were a few random things that could have been fun but I did not buy anything.

I have been working on my scissor fob. It is going very quickly. All I have left is the flowers, a few leaves and the background. I left the flowers and leaves so I can have some fun colors to work on.

This weekend was cool but beautiful in Chicago. I tried to be on the terrace as much as possible so I read. I read Storm Front. It is the first book in the Dresden Files series. I don't remember who, but one of the blogs I follow said she enjoyed this series so I believed her and bought this book. I enjoyed the book and I think I will continue to read this series. I also read the Shunning by Beverly Lewis this week. I like books by Beverly Lewis but this book was very similar to her other books and I knew what would happen next without reading more. This was a free book on Kindle so I really should not complain. I bought Tinkers this morning. It won the Pulitzer prize. It looked good and got pretty good reviews. Without even starting this book, I am wondering if it will be another book that wins a prize but does not strike my fancy. That happens all the time. I just don't agree with the experts.

I really need to get busy. I have financial numbers out today. Blogging and the internet are so much more fun than numbers. Happy stitching. Kelly

Pictures of Beautie Spot

I have been in the mood to cross stitch so here are pictures of my progress on Beautie Spot by Long Dog. I finished the strawberry motif and got to move on to a flower on the right hand side of the design.


Here is the start of the next motif. I really like this flower so it should be fun to work on. I have worked across the bottom of this sampler because my favorite motifs are along the top. They are my treat to keep me motivated to work on this project.

Here is a picture of what I have done so far. I think it is a pretty design. It has to be a framed piece when it is done but it is huge. I am not sure I have wall space big enough for this picture.

I finished my book club book yesterday. We picked Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann. It was a strange book. It was on Amazon's list of must reads for 2009 and NPR recommended it. I should know that if the book wins an award or is recommended by the booky people, then most likely I will not like the book. I moved on to a David Baldacci book which is a no brainer which is good for now.

I have a busy weekend and I am only home one night next week. I suppose it will be a slow stitching week. Hope everyone has a great weekend and gets lots of stitching time.

New Background

That was fun!! I just added a new background to my blog. I tried this before but I did not have enough blogging abilities to make this work. Heavens knows what you may find now that I can change the background!


I don't have any pictures to post today but I have been stitching on my Long Dog Sampler and I put in another color on Safari. If I am home tonight, I will take a picture and post another update tomorrow. I finished the strawberry motif and started on a new one. After the holiday's, I have been really good and I have stayed home and stitched a lot on the weekends so I have been getting a lot done for me.


I am waiting on my supplies for my ort box. I have ordered the supplies twice. One order is on back order and the other is delayed due to bad weather. I am really interested to see what I ordered. I ordered based on names. I did not have the time to look up the colors, plus looking on line is not always accurate. We can all be surprised by what I get!! I figured I would order a couple of variegated balls of pearl cotton and I would have DMC colors that will coordinate. If not, I can run down to Michael's or Joanne's.


My book for last week was Wench by Dolan Perkins-Valdez. I enjoyed this book. Some aspects of the book were disturbing. It is historical fiction so many of these things really did happen even if they difficult to imagine today.


That is about all for today. Hopefully, I can post some pictures tomorrow. Have a great day.

How soon until spring arrives??

We had some snow over the past couple of days in downtown Chicago but we have not had nearly as much as our friends on the East Coast. The top picture is the view from our front balcony this morning. As you can see the main roads are clear. The next picture is from our back terrace and you can see how much snow we actually got. A friend few in from skiing in Jackson Hole last night and was only delayed a half hour so things were pretty much under control around here.

We had book club last night and it was a little scary getting home. Fortunately, I had taken a cab so I left the driving up to someone else. My car is a rear wheel drive and just awful in the snow so I don't take it out unless the streets are dry. Soon that car will be retiring to the Florida home so we will buy something more winter ready next time.

I have been working on my Long Dog sampler this week. I am about done with the strawberry motif. I have to finish the two flowers then I can move along. They look almost done in my picture but they need the light color filled in in both flowers and the top one still has some green to fill in. I have been spending time on this project so the strawberries were completed in about a month.

I ordered the supplies for the ort box stitching group from ANG Cyber Pointers. The first place I ordered from has the canvas on back order and I just found out about it yesterday. Two weeks after I placed the order. I reordered the supplies from Fireside so hopefully they will get my order out to me soon. Actually, I ended up ordering cooler canvas from them. It is white and silver. Plus, I ordered a couple of Threadworks variegated #8 pearl cotton balls. I have no idea what I am going to end up with because I did not have time to look them up, but I figured I would have the DMC to coordinate with whatever comes. I ordered four colors so something should strike my fancy....

I have been reading. I finished South of Broad by Pat Conroy and Already Dead by Charlie Huston. South of Broad was good. It did not get that great of reviews but I found it an enjoyable read. I like Pat Conroy's books (The Prince of Tides, The Water is Wide, The Great Santini). On the other hand, Already Dead was strange. It was about vampyers, zombies and a murder mystery. Yes, they spelled vampires with a "Y". I think this was just an attempt to get dollars from the vampire love fest going on right now and there is nothing wrong with capitalism. It was a free book on Kindle and I know why they were giving it away.

Now I am working on Pride and Prejudice. Hopefully, later today we will finalize our book club choice. Since the weather was bad, I think we are going to post a vote so some that could not make it will have a say in what we are reading next month. I am stocking up on some of the Kindle books in case they have a price war so I have several books to choose from.

Hope everyone stays warm and melts out the snowy mess. Happy stitching. Hopefully, spring will be here soon. Kelly