Needles, Beads and Buttons

As usual, I'm playing catch up. The good news is that despite my absence online, I've actually been finishing up some projects.   We've had a busy couple of months. We have a horrible drainage problem in our back yard. We put in a french drain a year or so ago but that provided little help. Unfortunately  our yard doesn't slope towards the drain so it continues to pool in the center of the back lawn.  So, we ripped out the grass, built a small retaining wall, brought in 20 cubic yards of soil and created a slope towards the drain. (whew!) We also relocated the vegetable gardens on to the back patio so that we could get the dirt delivered as close to the back yard as possible. It was a much more laborious and expensive undertaking than we anticipated. Isn't that always the case though?  The grass is finally coming in (albeit a bit unevenly), and we under-planted with crocus bulbs so it should look pretty in the Spring. In the mean time, Autumn is in full swing here

I finished making the "blue dandelion felted bag" in Clare Youngs book "Scandinavian Needlecraft." I'm pretty pleased, although I did make a few changes. The embroidery was pretty straight forward. I used Dritz Tracing Paper  to transfer the design on to a piece of felt. I then embroidered it with navy blue DMC embroidery floss. The embroidery design calls for using bullion knots, daisy stitch,whipped backstitch, detached chain stitch, chain stitch and backstitch. Instructions for all of the stitches used can be found in the book. The bag is not rectangular in nature. It's a trapezoid.  Prior to embroidering the dandelion I drew my initial pattern on a piece of freezer paper, ironed it to the fabric and then cut it out. I was worried about my symmetry and things not lining up. To combat that I used my initial piece of embroidered fabric as a template. I just stacked everything up, set the first piece of felt on top and then used a rotary cutter t

What a long week. I'm currently having a ton of issues with my websites. I can't seem to upload photos to any of them, with the exception of this one.  I'm sure Geek will sort it out soon enough, but we're on opposite schedules. With limited time together we have to prioritize what gets done. We got our official, but gentle hand slap from the HOA reminding us to get rid of the moss on the roof. So Geek spent his last day off up on the roof brushing off moss and applying the Moss Out . Boy were we tempted to just go the Tide route . To reward ourselves for his hard work, we went to the zoo because Kitty hadn't seen the seals yet, and that's more important than web stuff. We stopped to see some of the big kitties too. We didn't know it at the time, but I think this picture was taken the day after the lion tried to eat that baby dressed like a zebra.   Same zoo I think. Instead, we got photos of Kitty feeding the Lorikeets. Not as exciting, but s

Valentine's blanket Under the needle category... I finally finished my Valentine's Blanket. I hit a few snafu's so it ended being a birthday gift for Geek instead. You can read about the project at one of my other site's  here .    I'm hoping for some serious rain so that I can catch up on some projects. I've spent the last few days out in the garden prepping beds for veggies. I still have a ton to do but I'm just absolutely beat. Sunny days are such a treat this time of year. No matter how tired we get enjoying them, they simply can't be wasted.   If it rains, I'm going to prop my feet up and get some needlework done. I'm plodding along on a cross stitch project, I'm crocheting a  blanket for Kitty and I'm just about done with Red's laundry bag. I just need to finish the felt details. I've got a tourmaline bracelet on my board. It'll take me all of two minutes to add a clasp so I hope to have that wrapped up tonig

I had a fairly busy weekend but I was finally able to finish a bracelet that I promised to a friend. It seems as though lately I've been working mostly on seed bead projects so I really enjoyed getting to play with stone beads and silver. These are the earrings and bracelet that my friend got. She was expecting the bracelet, but not the earrings so that was a nice surprise for her. I made a bracelet for myself and a necklace too.    I'm not sure what I'm going to tackle next. I'm currently working on an embroidered fleece blanket, an embroidered laundry bag, a few pairs of earrings and a crocheted blanket for kitty. I've also just about finished the table cloth that I made for kitty's play table. I think I can have that one done by tomorrow. Yay!