Autumn Cherish It!

Autumn Cherish It !
Here it is just as I promised, my new Crazy Stitching. I finally finshed it, and I am pleased with the results. I plan to sew it into a little shelf pillow. I hope you enjoy it. It will be posted on my website later today if you are interested in purchasing the pattern.
Happy Stitching! Carol

Stitching At Midnight & Scary Sounds

Do you like to stay up in the evening and stitch after everybody else has gone to bed? Well, I do. I enjoy the peacefulness of it and just the time for me to reflect on my day and mentally prepare for the next day. Running this business does require some quiet time for thinking! So you can usually find me up at least an hour or so after my husband retires to bed. Well last night about 1:00am, I was stitching in our four season porch which is all windows on three sides; I had a lamp on and soon I heard the coyotes. We live where there is a lot of woodlands, lakes and thickets, but also in a farming neighborhood. The coyotes are plentiful around here and we have sacrificed more than one calf from our beef herd to the coyotes. So I am used to their wailing and noises at night, but all of a sudden I heard this awful noise mixed in with the coyotes that I can only describe as a blood curdling roar that I have never heard before, but sounds like the noise a monster would make in a horror movie. The needle stopped, and I froze, the hair on the back of my neck stood at attention!!! I listened and then I heard it again and again for four times total.
I got so scared that I reached over and turned the lamp off and crept from my chair through my studio and crawled into bed and I actually woke my husband, I was so scared. It has bothered me all day as I try in my mind to figure out what it could have been. Today my husband asked me again to describe it and I said the best way I can describe it is like Sasquatch running through the woods screaming as he was being chased by coyotes. Brrrrrrrrr! So what am I doing tonight; sitting up writing in my blog and it is well after midnight!!
You have seen some of what I call my Crazy Stitching stuff before and I just love doing these things. I have finished a new drawing that I will print to fabric and then embellish with embroidery stitches or other items. This one is called Autumn, Cherish It! It is a collage of sorts
that reflects sights of autumn.

I just love how they look after I apply the stitches to it. Tune in again tomorrow and see what the finished product looks like. I am almost done with the stitching on it and I can hardly wait to show it to you. They are so much fun!!
Well, if I quick close and hurry to bed, I can get their before Sasquatch goes out for his 1:00am stroll!

Happy Stitching! Carol

Rainy Fall Days and Other Delights

It looks like we are headed for a couple of rainys days. I can't wait, I love rainy days in the fall. It freshens everything up and all of the flowers shoot out some new blooms before they get frost. I also get a lot of stitching done! I have some projects I have been trying to wrap up.

Every year about this time we plan a day for the family and we do a hayride and carve pumpkins. we usually follow that with a spaghetti supper and my daughter-in-laws Apple Pie. it is the best apple pie I have ever eaten, hands down! She is an excellent cook , and we all look forward to her apple pie. Of course, the grandkids have fun throwing each other in the leaves and trying to slime each other with pumpkin goo. It gets a little messy, so we do it in the garage and we store our little pumpkin carvers in a drawer so they are handy. The dads usually have to help with making the big hole at the top of the pumpkin, but after that the kids dig in and do the rest. It's great fun, and they each get to take their pumpkins home. We take pictures and just have a lot of fun.

Here is a quick sneak peak of one of my newest projects. Can't give all the details away yet, but you should be able to see it all completed in a few days. Bring on the rain!

Check back in towards the end of the week and I will have some more pictures of my projects for you.

Happy Stitching! Carol

Lavender Roses In My Stuff.

Lavender Roses
I was digging through my "stuff" yesterday and came upon this lavender rose that I had designed a couple of years ago, did the hand embroidery on it and put it in with my "stuff." It certainly deserves a chance to get out of my "stuff" pile and be made into something useful. I will have to ponder that awhile and see what I can make of it. Hmmmmm, I just recently joined a Round Robin group on line, maybe I will use it for my center block and see what can become of it. Do you have piles of "stuff" around that are just begging to get made into something? Being a quilter, stitcher, designer, painter, let me tell you I have piles of stuff around. i wish I could be like some people and be better at discarding things that most people view as worthless, but my problem is an imagination that I think it too vivid and so I can see value and worth in most anything that most people discard. I was raised in a family of eight kids and my parents were farmers, so we grew up ceertainly not destitute or poor in todays sense, but we defintely lived a life of frugality.
Getting back to "stuff," I used to do a lot of hand painting and so I would often search through garage sales, used a bit stores etc. to look for smaller wooden objects that can be refinished and used to paint something on, so I have a room full of that kind of "stuff" in the basement. And, needless to say I certainlty have a lot of sewing and stitching "stuff" around and a good share of it is in plastic storage tubs in my basement and it fills a couple of rooms. But, I do get rid of some "stuff' once in a while. I sent a huge box of stuff to Louisiana during Katrina to a quilter who had contacted me to say she was putting together a group of quilters who had lost their "stuff" during the hurricane. Thats a good thing and I try to give whenever I can to things like that. Well, I guess it is back to my "stuff!"
Happy Stitching! Carol