Hello everyone. I've been sorting through my photos
and deciding what to blog about this time around and
have come up with a few things that I hope will be of
interest to you all. If not feel free to skim through the
boring bits until you (hopefully) find something that
does interest you.

Let's begin with the long awaited arrival of Spring. Oh yes!
After waiting through a long, drawn out Winter that seemed
even more long and drawn out then it usually does Spring
finally arrived, bringing with it the hope that we'd soon see
the last of the cold weather and the interminable snow falls
that we've had and welcome the return of the glorious
sunny, warm weather.

Hurray for Spring!!!!

Pictured above .... the second day of Spring. Heaviest snow
storm of the season .... at least around here. Hurray for
Spring??? Phooey!!!

But that's all in the past now (Fingers crossed). The above
picture was taken in our back garden yesterday. After a
weekend of gorgeous sunshine, heavy rain and thunder,
and strong winds plus some very decent temperatures,
the crocuses are bursting out in bloom, with the daffodils
not far behind.

Note the busy little bee in the center of the picture with
his head stuck in a blossom and his butt in the air. If
you click on the picture it'll give you a close up and you
will see his wings clearly, including the segments or veins
or whatever it is that divide each delicate wing.

The grass still needs to green up and we've still got a long
way to go before it's properly Spring like outside, but at
least we're on our way.

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And now for my first report on the SAL that I'm doing
with Maggie. My very first SAL. April 1st was the
start of our SAL and I was so excited!! Do you want
to see my progress from that first weekend??? Do you??

Well, here it is!

Note the simplicity of the design. See how the delicate
shades of color in the threads enhance the background
color of the fabric. Gaze in wonder at the fine texture of the
25 count Mushroom Lugana. Marvel at the dexterity and
uniformity of my needle work.

Consider the possibility that I'm loosing my marbles.

Okaaayyyy. So the first weekend of my first SAL wasn't
quite the roaring success that I'd hoped for. I'd eagerly
placed my fabric on my Q-snaps, set out my threads and
got to stitching. Five letters and a bit of the inner border
later I came up for air, contemplated my progress so far
and realized that something wasn't ... quite .... right.

I got out my trusty measuring tape and removed the
fabric from the Q-snaps. Ah ha! A word to the wise.
When you have it in your head that the fabric you'd
had cut a month or more previously for a project has
allowed for a border of three inches you should
(if you're me) double check that fact before you begin
to stitch.

Two inch border.

Yup. I really must write this stuff down on the info
paper attached to the fabric so I don't have to rely on
my defective brain cells. I really, really should know
better. Soooo ... I ripped out all my stitching and
once that was done I'd run out of time to stitch any
more that weekend.

Weekend number two. Okay, this is a bit more like it. Now
remember, I'm not the worlds fastest stitcher by any stretch
of the imagination. This is three hours of stitching done on
Friday night while watch episodes of "Location, Location,
Location" on my computer compliments of H&G TV.ca. If
you want to see real progress on this project and find out
what the pattern is that we're stitching then I suggest that
you check out Maggie's blog.

Meanwhile, there's another weekend heading this way and
I'll be plugging away at this once again. Wish me luck!

The first Saturday in April there was a stitcher's Marketplace
put on at a hotel by Gitta's needlework store and of course
I was eager to go. You may have read about this little event
on Dani's blog or on Alisa's blog. Above is a picture of Alisa
and myself taken at the restaurant/pub where we went for
lunch after exhausting ourselves, and our credit cards, at the
market. After lunch we went to Gitta's store proper and did
a bit more shopping. Hmmm.... I didn't take any pictures
of what I bought. How did that happen??

Actually, I really didn't buy a lot of stuff that day. Just some
lavender and some crushed walnut shells, some fabric, a
chart that's been haunting me for awhile since my last visit
to Gitta's and some fabric to stitch it on. But it was a fun
day and the best part was meeting Dani there plus running
into another stitcher from down Kathy's way in eastern
Ontario named Fran, who I'd met during a stitcher's
gathering at Kathy's nearly two years ago. Hello to Fran
from "the other Judy".

Stash of another sort. I've been naughty. It's been a while
since I've had a mad burst of clicky finger on the Indigo
bookstore site and my wish list of books there has been
growing like Alice. Finally I just had to do something about
it and these pictures show you the results of my mad shopping
spree. Everything from historical fiction to murder mystery
to supernatural romance plus one memoir.

Half of these books are by authors that I've read before and
the rest are books that I've either read reviews for in magazines
or on Bookbrowse. See anything you like??

I finished reading Angelology a few days ago and enjoyed
it immensely. This is actually the cover for the Audio
book but it's almost the same as the book's cover so I'll
just leave it as is.

Click on the link to read a synopsis of the story from
Bookbrowse.

An interesting, well imagined tale that I really enjoyed.
But there had better be a second book in the works, given
how this one ends.

And then we have my current obsession. I read a review
in Entertainment Weekly for this book a few weeks ago
and as soon as I read the description of the story I had
to add it to my wish list and order it as soon as possible.
When it arrived, along with the rest of my order as
pictured above, I couldn't resist opening it and taking a
peek inside. From then on I was hooked!! This is the
sort of book (for me, anyways) that has me nearly
missing my bus stop, makes me forget to eat my dinner
as I read a few more paragraphs at the table (now that's
a recommendation for a riveting good read if ever there
was one ... it made me forget food!!) and keeps me up
at night when I should be in bed.

Here's the synopsis of this book also on Bookbrowse.

Now that the good weather is finally here I can pretty
much say good bye to Phil for the next six months or
so. He'll be in the garden from dawn to dusk and
the most I'll see of him will be as pictured above.

And that brings us to the close of this little post.
Thanks for visiting. I'll be back with progress
reports on my SAL and what ever else catches
my fancy soon. Take care.

Cheers!