fun...

Do you like puzzles? Scary/suspense movies? Go here.

Stumbled to me via Aunt Doot.

hey...

This is good news! Now I'm sure to get a chance to buy something designed by Jennifer Murphy.

ready for another round of atc swaps?

Have you started taking your Halloween decorations out of storage yet? I have. And I would probably have them up and out already if it weren't for the fact that things around here have been going a break neck speed lately!

Seeing as I'm ready for Halloween and I know alot of you out there are too, now is as good a time as any to announce the next round of ATC swaps hosted by the Lyons' Den.

The theme is "A Haunted ATC Swap". What does this theme encompass? As far as I am concerned anything and everything Halloween related. You can go as campy/cute/creepy as you like!

This will be a five for five swap with some sort of trick-or-treat from me. You'll need to enclose two 39 cent stamps for postage as well. International swappers please send along $1.70 to cover postage.

Sign-ups will close when there are fifteen participants or Friday, the 29th are closed.

The mail-to-me deadline will be October 20th and the mail-to-you date will be October 23rd.

a month of softies: same body, different spin

One down and four to go. The rest of these girls are going to have to have a different style of face. Number one, my fingers can't take stitching up four more of these without my thimble (which is nowhere to be found). Number two, the fabric I used for the body is crazy busy and sort of swallows the ever-so-lovingly stitched features of this sweet girl's face.

Once the sisters are finished I'll post a group picture! Plus there is a little more to the story with these gals anyway...

home is where the heart is...

See the flipside here.

My contribution for Fiberart for a Cause. I hope noone looks at this on the wall at IQF-Houston and says, "I could make that in fifteen minutes." Because I'm here to tell you, if you can, MORE POWER TO YOU! Originally I was going to machine sew all the quilting and edging but decided it would definitely take away from the charm of the hand-embroidered patch. I ended up machine piecing the blue squares and hand stitching e v e r y t h i n g else...all the while hearing the clock tick-tock in the back of my head. I am extremely pleased with how the piece turned out though. Caleb thinks I should make one of our house just like the ones I draw for him on his Magna Doodle...if I'm going to do that, I need to start drawing less elaborate versions of our house for awhile and see if he catches on before I start stitching it up!

One more project down, a bunch more to go! Next in line for completion are my letters for Moki's Initial Swap.

bit by the stitching bug...

The first and second weeks of waiting in line to pick Logan up from school I spent re-reading a couple books I'd been thinking about recently. The third week I packed up a small embroidery hoop, some muslin, a handful of random skeins of floss, snips, a needle and my marking pen. I sketched up the live, love, laugh thing with no real purpose in mind other than to keep me busy while Caleb napped and we waited for Logan. Once it was finished though I thought it might make a nice beginning to a log cabin quilted pillowtop. I'm going to start on that today I think. I did the little monster guy over the long weekend just as something to keep my hands busy while we watched movies and whatnot.

Now I'm working on my postcards for FiberArt for a Cause, my letters for Moki's letter swap and a few other things to be revealed later and they all involve a good amount of embroidery. Anybody else obsessing over embroidery lately?

the humpty dumpty project results...

Find the slide show here. As noted on the conclusion poster, the three that broke did not break due to unsafe packing...two were "accidentally" dropped and one was thrown.

Logan's egg survived the experiment! He was a little disappointed his box didn't slide as fast as some of the other kids' did, but he did figure out that it was because of the (two yards of) masking tape he'd used to tape his yarn to the bottom of the box. He also figured out (several days later) that if he'd rolled it down on it's side it would have gone REALLY fast.

same body, different spin...

That's the theme for this month's A Month of Softies.

The challenge is for everyone to use the same basic doll pattern and then give their doll a unique personality. The doll can be a girl or a boy. Humanoid or monster. Animal or alien. Dressed, embellished, finished anyway you see fit. Go wild. Or not.

I hope you'll join in on this month's challenge! Click here to print the pattern. Click here for instructions.

happy labor day!

We spent the holiday weekend in San Angelo. Aside from a nasty attack of allergies for Caleb and Logan a good time was had by all. Sunday was my youngest brother's birthday. Patrick is eighteen now! I said to an old (as in we've known each other since elementary school) friend recently, "having my own child start Kindergarten didn't make me feel as old as having my youngest sib start his senior year of high school did." How over dramatic is that?

Anyway, we made it home safely and kept the boys on their bedtime schedule last night (hooray for mom and dad!). Lynn left for Austin this morning, Caleb kept asking when we were going to the gym (my very own three foot tall task master!) and Logan kept asking if I was sure he didn't have school today. We (and most of the state, it seems) had rain all day (finally!! please keep it coming!) so the boys were a bit stir crazy. After lunch we went to see How to Eat Fried Worms. They got such a kick out of that movie. Logan was very concerned about dying in the eigth grade and what a death ring was. Fortunately, though, as the movie progressed his interest shifted to the worms and how he would never, ever, E V E R eat a worm unless it was a gummy worm and thank goodness those boys quit being friends with that mean boy because that's just not nice. While I'm in here fixing stuff, I should mention Logan also thought it was very nice that all the boys became friends in the end, especially when they stood up to the mean boy's mean big brother.

I managed some craftiness over the weekend as well, but with the rain comes no sunshine for decent pictures and no pictures means no show and tell. Maybe tomorrow...but I'll take the rain over a couple of good pictures right now!