Crazee4books-Cross Stitch-cats

2011-04-26T19:02:00.008-04:00

Hello everyone! Welcome to another addition of ... my blog!
I thought that I would begin with a few more pictures of my
garden in an attempt to convince you, if not myself, that Spring
is most definitely here, temperatures and frigid precipitation
not withstanding. The crocuses are done, and we're in the
midst of daffodil season at the moment, with tulips due to
take over in a matter of weeks.

The flowers in the first picture and the ones in the picture
above are in our backyard. They are small in size but there
are clumps of them growing together so they make a pretty
carpet of color in their part of the garden.

*******************************************************

Had another problem develop with my computer. The CD/
DVD slot wouldn't pull discs in to play them. After my
experience last summer when I was without my computer
for over three months while an Apple representative/repair
guy tried to effect repairs I was understandably reluctant to
entrust my computer to them again and kept putting it off.
But the warranty expires next month so I finally bit the
bullet and called Apple.

Phil drove me and my computer to Square One mall a week
ago Saturday to take it in to the Apple store for repair as per
instructions of very nice Apple person on telephone. Twenty
minutes to find a parking spot in the bucketing rain. Phil was
not impressed. It seemed that every single citizen of Mississauga,
Etobicoke, Port Credit and parts of North Bay were at Square One
on that Saturday afternoon!! Two thirds of those people were in
the Apple store!!!! Dropped off computer at Genius Bar and ran
for our lives!

Got a phone call on Sunday morning around 9:45 to say computer
was fixed and ready for pick up. Wow!!! To say the least. Since
weather on Sunday was a tad crappy, which foiled Phil's plans to
spend the afternoon working in the garden, we drove back to Square
One to fetch the infernal machine. Place was a bit calmer on that
day. Which means that most people were smarter then us and
didn't bother trying to venture out into that incredible dogs breakfast
of a weather system that invited itself into the province for a visit
and definitely overstayed it's welcome. We passed through five
different stages of weather on our trip back to Georgetown. Ugh!
There should be a law against snow squalls occurring after the
middle of April!!

Computer is now playing CD's. Let's hope that's the end of
any problems with this machine. Forever!!!

**********************************************************

Remember in previous post when I said that I'd gone to a
Needleworker's Marketplace event put on by Gitta's?? I
went with Alisa and with my friend Linda. Well, the week
after the show Linda got a phone call from Gitta's store.
There were door prizes at the event and she'd won second
prize!!

Here is Linda at the restaurant where we had lunch
the day of the market.

And here is what Linda won! A skein of every solid
color thread that DMC makes!! Have you ever seen
a pile of DMC thread ~ every color that they make ~
all together like that??? Beautiful, aren't they??

Need something to offer you perspective of just how
big that bag is??

Behold my charming assistant Vanna .... er Rupert ...
gallantly offering his services so you can see just
how big that bag is.

Because Linda doesn't live in Toronto Alisa and I
volunteered to travel all the way down to Gitta's
store to pick up her prize for her. Yes, we really
are thoughtful and self sacrificing that way .... uh
huh.

The lure of an opportunity to poke around in a
fabulous cross stitch store ... again ... never even
crossed our minds. Really.

So guess what followed me home from Gitta's.
Yes, I was a baaaad girl!

Well, I've been thinking about investing in a
floor stand for quite some time, and dithering
back and forth about it as is my wont in such
circumstances. Saw this stand set up in Gitta's
window and after careful (five minutes) consideration
decided ... what the h*** ... and bought one.

Here's a picture of the box the stand came in so you can
get a proper look at it. I've been using it for my SAL
project and after two weeks have decided that I really,
really love it. Now I can sit on the couch and stitch
instead of being confined to my computer desk or
dining room table.

So let's see .... what else is new??? Hmmmmm .....
Oh, yes ....

TA DAAAAA ...

I have another finish to show you!!!! Yes, unbelievable
as it may seem I have finish number FOUR for the year
to brag about. The Book Store is done!!

Glamor shot!

I'm telling you guys, I've never had so many
fair sized finishes so close together in years!!
And now I can do some stash diving and
consider one or two small starts to stitch on
when I'm not working on my SAL.

And speaking of my SAL ... Drawn Thread's
Game Board Sampler .... week three. Those
little house squares are so much fun to stitch
and I can't get over how different they all are.

Close up of my first house square and the first motif.
I'm stitching my motifs right side up, like the houses,
instead of upside down as charted. Let's see how
long it'll take me before I get confused and mess up
a motif because I either forgot to stitch it right side
up or I miscalculated my starting point.

Back last November Phil celebrated his 35th anniversary
with the company that he works for. To mark the
occasion he was given a catalog of items to choose a
"gift" from. The company also offered to take Phil
and a few of his co-workers (his choice of who to take)
to a really nice restaurant for lunch. Phil asked if pizza
or something could be brought in for the entire staff
instead so everyone could share in the food and celebration,
and the company agreed.

The gift that Phil ended up choosing was a bench for
our back garden. This week he is on vacation so he
spent part of the day Tuesday putting the newly
arrived bench together and setting it in it's new spot.
I haven't had a chance to get a close look at it yet,
never mind sit in it, but from a distance (the dining
room window) it looks pretty nifty.

Note the grass. Last week was the week that the
lawn turned green ... seemingly overnight. You
know how it goes. One day the grass is brown and
withered from Winter's callous abuse ... and the next
day you would swear that you can see it turning green
before your eyes. One more step forward to real
Spring.

Had a nice long Easter weekend, which included lots of
stitching time and allowed for my The Book Store finish
plus progress on Game Board Sampler. I also made a
small start on a new project while visiting Alisa at her
house Friday afternoon for a stitch together. I'll
post debut pictures of that piece when I've had time to
put a few more stitches into it. I had literally just put
the final stitches into The Book Store when Alisa arrived
to pick me up that afternoon so I only had time to grab
an already kitted up project which is a tad bigger then
I ought to be tackling considering how big Game Board
Sampler is. Oh well.

Re: The picture of Phil in the previous post .... it has
been pointed out to us ... and we noticed it too ... that
it looks like Phil is resting his head on the bird bath
stand ... rather like someone going to the block in the
time of Henry VIII. And yes, that photo does feature
Phil's "good side". :)

Finished reading the Kathy Reichs book "2006 Bones"
that is featured in the pile of books in my previous
post and I finished "A Discovery of Witches" as well.
Judy: Reich's book is not her most recent. I think it
may well be two years old which is why I was able to
buy the hardcover for a ridiculously low price.

Well, I've run on long enough here and ought to
finish things off. Hope you all had a wonderful
Easter with great food, friends and family to
celebrate with. It's hard to believe that May is just
a week away!!

Thanks for visiting. Cheers!

2011-04-12T20:12:00.008-04:00

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.

*****************************************************

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!

2011-03-22T19:02:00.004-04:00

Greetings all!! Look who's actually updating her blog just
three short weeks after her last blog posting. Yes, it's only been
three weeks since I last posted here and I'm back again. Can
you stand it??

To begin the festivities I've put an artsy shot from back in the Fall
when my SIL, a friend and I were wandering the shops in St.
Jacobs and I was playing with my camera in one of those shops.
It's kind of a cool, abstract look don't you think?

Remember in my last post how excited I was to actually have
not just one stitching finish to show you but two? A rare
event for me aka the worlds slowest stitcher and I was quite
thrilled about it. Well, guess what?

There's another one!!!!!!!

Presenting Halloween Quaker fresh off of the Q-snaps and
submitted for your pleasure and approval. Yes, it would
seem the prospect of starting that SAL with Maggie plus
sharing stitching get togethers with Alisa has inspired
me something fierce and my needles have been smoking!
Little tiny puffs of smoke perhaps, but smoking nonetheless.
I am very happy with this one.

Alisa and I went to Michaels on Sunday and I picked up
four picture frames, including a black one that will suit
this project quite nicely. I hope to frame it myself as soon
as I have an afternoon free to concentrate on it. So that's
two Halloween projects stitched and ready for final
finishing. Kind of strange how that worked out.

There was another reason why Alisa and I went to Michaels
on Sunday though. They had a 60 % off the regular price
discount on framing a few weeks back and I decided I'd
take advantage of that sale.

I dug Cottage Garden by Country Cottage Needleworks out
of my pile of finished projects and took it to Michaels for
framing and here is the result!! Isn't it pretty?? I'm so
pleased to have this project framed at last. As you can
see by the date on it I finished this project back in 2008.

A close up of the frame showing the detail along the inner
and outer edges. Michaels framing costs are still pretty
steep even with the extra discount and I hate to imagine
how much this would have cost to frame at full price, and
that's without the added cost of a matte around the stitched
piece.

Spring officially arrived on Sunday night and that's
welcome news for those of us who are sick to death
of Winter and all it's quirks and eccentricities. We
have had some nice temperatures here in the past
few weeks and even some sunshine (gasp!!) which
has melted most of our snow.

The Robins are back from wherever they spend their
Winter vacations and we have little clumps of yellow
crocuses opening their flowers in the front garden.
Both are sure signs that Spring is truly here.

So why more pictures from the Allan Gardens conservatory
you may be wondering. Well, because they're pretty. And
because they are soon going to be the only signs of Spring
that we'll have around here for a few days.

We're getting snow tonight while we sleep! Snow and colder
temperatures which will continue on into tomorrow and
might give us around 10 cm of snow before it's done. Oh joy!
So to those of you who are lucky enough to be sharing this
final blast (or so we hope) of Winter with me ... keep looking
at the pretty pictures of the pretty flowers and think happy
thoughts.

I finished reading An Echo in the Bone a week ago and
decided to read something completely different from
the historical romance theme. I try to avoid reading
several books in the same genre, one right after the
other, unless they are a series by the same author. I
chose Kelly Armstrong's Frostbitten which features
her werewolf characters Elena and Clay that was
published a year ago or so.

Another fun romp which also allows Elena and Clay's
relationship to grow and develop and become even
stronger, which is something I really like about K.
Armstrong's stories. Her couples are always evolving
and strengthening their bonds with each other,
even when they have been together for many years.

It was Phil's birthday on March 6th so we had a nice
little celebration for him, which is just the way he prefers
it. His sister came for dinner and brought a cake that
she'd made for him while I prepared the dinner that he'd
asked for this year. Macaroni and Cheese served with
sliced ham and biscuits. Pretty yum, if I do say so myself.

For his birthday this year I got us tickets to the Stratford
production of Jesus Christ Superstar. As soon as I heard
that they would be putting on a production of JC Superstar
at Stratford this year I knew that I would have to get us
tickets because the youth choir that Phil use to belong
to (called the Chancellors) performed the music from this
wonderful show many times. We're going in August
during our summer vacation and we're really looking
forward to it. It's been years since I'd last been to

Stratford for any reason so I'm happy for this excuse

to go. And I love musicals anyways.

In two weeks Gitta's Stitching Marketplace is happening
and I'm really looking forward to going with Alisa and
my dear friend Linda. Am trying to save my pennies in
case there's one or two (okay who am I kidding here ...
lots and lots) things that I might want to get. I'll take
my camera of course and provide a full report once it's
over.

Meanwhile, thanks for visiting and hope you've
enjoyed your stay. Come again soon.

Cheers!

2011-03-01T19:48:00.015-05:00

Hello. The wayward blogger has returned. It's been a
month since my last post but I do assure you that I have
been using that time wisely and well and have a huge
surprise (or two) for all of you.

I can't remember the last time that I had a finish of
any consequence to share with all of you. And I have
to admit that it's kind of discouraging not to have a
happy dance or two every few months to celebrate
the completion of a project that's been the focus of
my limited stitching time for weeks or months (or
longer ... Gulp!).

I've been exchanging emails with Maggie in the
past few weeks and she mentioned a couple of
projects that she hoped to begin stitching in the
not too distant future. I remarked that I had
one of those charts on my to-do list as well and
she came back with the idea of the two of us
doing a SAL together for this project.

I've never participated in a SAL before and was
quite intrigued by the idea. And a bit hesitant
as well. You see I've got two projects on the go
right now, plus I've had a couple of more that
have been ... well .... lets just say they'd been
temporarily put aside when something else
shiny and new came along and distracted me.

I was reluctant to begin a new project, and a
BIG one at that, with those others still unfinished.
So I got to thinking (as I sometimes do) and
decided that perhaps it was time to pick up a
couple of those lost and forlorn projects and
just get 'em done already!!!

Ahem!

So I did.

Remember Prairie Schooler's Winter??? Everything was
completed on this one except for that darn header at the
top. Lots of brown. I'm not a brown person. I left this
project propped up against the wall at the side of my work
desk and tried to ignore it. It's been there since last
summer, emitting accusatory guilt vibes whenever I sit
here. I finally picked it up a few weeks ago and gave it a
couple of hours of effort.

And voila!! It's done. No more brown stitching. No more
guilty vibes. It looks pretty good and it's DONE!!!

I love the alphabet section at the bottom of the design.
The thread colours look so pretty against the white
background.

At this point I was feeling pumped and decided to
keep the momentum going by picking up another
long abandoned project and finishing it off as well.

May I present Waxing Moon Designs Halloween Short
Stack. This pretty piece has been sitting in my craft
cupboard for two years!! Don't ask me why I've
never finished it until now. I don't really know why.
It was a fun project start to ... belated ... finish and I
love it so much.

Artistic shot.

Faced with the prospect of having to make a couple of
those dreaded french knots (Ugh! Yick!! Phewy!!!)
I remembered some sage advice received from Dani a
couple of years ago and made Colonial Knots instead.
I'm quite proud of the results and just had to show
them off to you with this close up photo of the little
mouse.

So, two finishes in one month ... two projects to
remove from my "in progress" list and two
deterrents to my participating in my first SAL
that are no longer there. So Maggie and I are
going to be starting our SAL at the beginning
of April and I'm so excited!

*********************************************

So, hands up all of you nice people out there in blogland who
are fed up to the back teeth with Winter. There's snow on the
ground and the wind feels like it took a detour through the
wastelands of Siberia before visiting your neighbourhood
and there's nary a Robin or a crocus or a pussy willow in
sight to offer encouragement and hope.

Well, I can't do anything about making Winter go away
any faster (or slower, as the case may be) then it already
is (or isn't, as the case may be). But I can offer a bit of
Spring like visual therapy to help clear your mind and
perhaps go a little ways to restoring your faith in the
eventual return of Spring.

My friend Elaine, her daughter Katherine and I took a
stroll through the Allan Gardens conservatory during
a cold Winters day a few weeks ago and of course I had
my trusty camera with me to record the event for
posterity ... and my blog. So here are a few of those
photos for you to ... hopefully ... enjoy.

Just follow the pathways that curve and wind their
way through the conservatory and take in the sights
and the scents of all the beautiful plants growing
there.

There's even a bit of desert landscaping to admire
with cacti of every shape and size and texture to
gaze at and admire.

And admire the Spring bulbs that are in full bloom
right this very minute. Crocus, daffodils, tulips and
Hyacinth in every colour imaginable.

Now see how that nasty Winter seems to just disappear
from your memory as you take in all the bounteous
beauty that is Spring.

Deep breaths ... in and out ... that's good. Now hold
those thoughts of Spring in your mind as you go
through your day .... and whatever you do don't
look out the window!!!

Thought you might enjoy seeing what the cat's got
for Christmas this year from their favourite Aunt.
A water fountain. Yes, the cats now have their
very own drinking fountain to enjoy. No more
letting Phoebe into the bathroom whenever she
orders me to and turning on the tap in the bathtub
only enough to allow a few dribbles of water to fall
at a time.

She loves this thing!! She doesn't bother drinking out
of the bowl but instead goes right to the stream of
water falling from the spout and laps from that. And
when she's not drinking the water she's batting at the
stream with her paw showering the floor and the wall
with water. Oh joy! We've even seen Rupert take a
few sips from this which is the first time I've ever
seen him drinking! Honest.

This little contraption sits in the kitchen next to the
table which is a bit of a problem for us since the
sound of the constantly running water kind of
makes us want to ... er ... well ... you know.
Skip to the loo, so to speak.

I'm in the final quarter reading of Diana Gabaldon's
most recent addition to the Outlander series and as
always am enjoying it immensely!! I do love
me a nice big and juicy book to loose myself in.

I've browsed through all the postings for the
new stuff released from Nashville last week,
as have all of you I know, and have found
just a couple of must haves and one really,
really must have.

Aury TM Designs: A Sampler for My Mother

Ink Circles: Just Rosey - this is the really
really must have.

La D Da: Flowery Alphabet

Lizzie Kate: all three designs are lovely

And that's it from me for now. Thanks for
visiting. Hope to have more stitching type
news for you soon. Take care.

Cheers!

2011-02-09T20:20:00.007-05:00

As we all know winter officially arrives on December 21st.
However here in our little section of southern Ontario
winter played coy and didn't make much of a fuss and
bother for several weeks after the official date. Long
enough to lull us into believing that we were in for another
relatively mild, almost snow free winter such as we'd had
last year. Which was fine by us.

But we weren't going to be allowed off the hook that
easily after all. We've had many scatterings of little
snow falls since mid January with most depositing
either a few centimeters to around five centimeters
at a time. Not a lot compared to what a great many
of you have been receiving this winter. But those
little snow falls began to add up to a decent pile of
snow on the ground.

Then we had a fair dollop of snow last Wednesday
(which was touted as being the "storm of the
century" ---- but wasn't so much) which added about
15 cm to the snow that we already had. And then on
Saturday we were surprised with a good five cm of
snow when we were only suppose to receive a "dusting".
So we have a bit of a winter wonderland going on at
the moment and depending on our moods it's either
very pretty or pretty annoying.

Makes for nice pictures though.

I left The Book Store after the progress that I showed you
in my previous post and picked up Halloween Quaker
again. I've been adding to it in spurts when time and
inclination allows and it's looking pretty darn cute if
I may say so. At this point I'm not sure if I'll keep working
on this project, go back to The Book Store, or maybe
start something new. Depends on my mood I guess.

This little fellow visits us regularly and takes advantage
of the suet cakes that DH puts out every Saturday. He's
a Downy Woodpecker and he's a regular in our backyard,
usually pecking away at the peanut feeder down at the
back of the garden. We only put the suet cakes out in
the winter and probably two thirds of those are eaten by
the squirrels who also adore them.

We mainly have black squirrels and grey squirrels visiting
our yard but we also have a few red squirrels which are
half the size of the other kind but are twice as fierce.
And pretty darn cute, don't you think??

DH has another winter feeding project that has been
keeping him occupied since October. In the industrial
area where he works there are three feral cats hanging
around and in October one of those cats got into the
building where he works. It happened to be the
Thanksgiving long weekend actually.

Now it's nice to think of the poor cat being indoors
on a cool Fall weekend but in reality DH's workplace
isn't a safe environment for an animal to be in, with
chemicals, heavy equipment and machinery. And
the bosses wanted the little fella outta there sooner
rather then later.

DH tried calling a feral cat society but they
didn't return his calls before the weekend began.
So he worried and fretted all day Saturday and
Sunday about how to handle this situation. He had
taken some cat food in to work and left it for the
cat for the weekend so it wouldn't go hungry but
he wanted to get it out of there before it got hurt.

So he ended up renting a humane animal trap
and on the holiday Monday he drove into work
(one hour trip ... one way) and set up the trap,
baiting it with cat food. Then he went into his
office to read some emails. It wasn't five
minutes later that he heard the trap being
set off and went out to find the cat huddled
inside. He took it outside and set it free to
rejoin it's family and then made his way
back home again (one hour trip ... one way).

The feral cat society was in touch with DH
and let him know that in winter they don't
trap the cats for spaying or neutering because
when the cats are in the vets for a week or so
recovering from their surgeries they start
shedding their winter fur and then don't
have a proper coat of warm fur for the rest
of the winter.

Since the events in October DH has been
busy caring for the little feral colony. There
are three cats making up the family including
the mother and her two nearly grown off-
spring. DH has his co-workers keeping an
eye out for the cats when they're outside
working in the yard or having a smoking
break. They think he's a little nuts but
they do let him know when they spot one
of the trio out and about.

And DH has built a deluxe apartment for
the cats to use if they are in need of shelter.

Raised off the ground, plastic sheeting below and above
to keep the inside dry and warm, and with a door cut to
allow only a small cat to enter. Inside it's stuffed with
straw for comfort and warmth and the entrance is facing
away from the direction that the wind normally blows
in from and is protected by stuff that is stored in the yard.
DH puts food out in little Styrofoam cups all around the
yard a couple of times a week as well.

It's sad that these lovely cats are not lucky enough to
have a warm and loving home, with humans to love
and care for them and see that they're well fed and
happy. They are too wild to allow anyone near them
and they don't trust humans anyways.

DH said that the feral cat society told him that there is
another colony of feral cats living not too far away
from where he works. That colony has about 50 cats!!

******************************************************

I'd like to thank everyone who was kind enough to go and
visit my friend Alisa's new blog, leave a comment there and
gave her such a warm welcome to our stitching community.
I know that she's having a lot of fun with her new blog and
with exploring all the stitching blogs that are out there, not
to mention all the online LNS and the designer's sites.

She and I had a fabulous day last Saturday. We joined forces
to hit the craft stores - namely: Michaels for general craft
supplies, Gitta's for cross stitch supplies, and the Hobby Horse
for finishing fabrics and batting. I guess we were in Michaels
for an hour and a half, wandering up and down the aisles looking
at everything, and then we headed down to Gitta's (with a brief
break for a pizza lunch to fortify ourselves for the shopping
ahead) where I'm sure we spent at least an hour and a half as
well. Then we checked out the Hobby Horse which is a fabulous
quilting store not too far from where we live. Alisa dropped me
off at home around 3:30 and not twenty minutes later it
began to snow like the dickens. I'm glad we were home safe
and sound by that time and not driving around in it.

Gitta's is sponsoring a Cross Stitcher's gathering during
the first weekend in April with a market place, classes
with various designers and a stitcher's retreat. For more
information about it all check out Gitta's home page:
http://www.gittas.com/

If you are planning to attend this event leave me a
comment so we can keep an eye out for each other.
Hopefully Jennifer, Alisa and I will be there although
we're not planning to stay at the hotel overnight for
the retreat this year. Maybe next year.

Thanks for stopping by.

Cheers!

Introducing ....

2011-01-31T20:35:00.003-05:00

Just a short visit .... with a longer one coming soon I promise ... to
introduce you all to my friend Alisa who has jumped into the
blogging world with her brand new blog:

http://stitch-lady.blogspot.com

Please go say hello and let her get to know you. You'll be so glad
that you did. And do check out the amazing wolf that she stitched.
Its at the bottom of her blog.

Thanks so much.

Cheers! Judy

2011-01-11T19:31:00.002-05:00

It's been a long time since my last blog post. I know, I tend to over
state the obvious don't I?? The Christmas season was a whirlwind
of busyness, with parties every weekend and deadlines popping up
left, right and centre. The overseas cards were mailed out just under
the post office's official deadline, the cards being mailed around
North America were dumped into the mailbox just two weeks before
Christmas, and as predicted in my last post the Christmas baking was
started on New Years Eve!!!

I'm still not sure where December went in all honesty. Seriously.

Both DH and I had the days between Christmas and New Years
off from work and during that time we hardly had time to breath.
I think that there was only one day when we had absolutely nothing
to do and nowhere to go. I think I might have subconsciously
planned it that way so that I wouldn't have time to think about my
Mom and miss her. It didn't work.

We had a lovely Christmas day at the home of our friends Matt and
Charmaine who were good enough to realize that Christmas at home
for us this year would not have been a Merry one. So DH, my SIL
and I were invited to share their Christmas with them, their kids
and Charm's parents. Believe it or not I've never celebrated
Christmas with kids in the house since I was a kid myself so this

was an extra special treat.

I was thrilled to pieces when I opened a package from Jennifer
of Seasonal Stitches before Christmas (I couldn't wait for the
big day itself ... could you??) and amongst the tissue and the
other goodies that she sent me (and I forgot to take a picture of
... DOH!!) found this lovely pinkeep. What a wonderful gift to
receive from such a special friend. Thank you again
Jennifer. You're going to have to teach me how to make
my own pinkeeps this year since I've made a New Years
resolution to make a pinkeep or two and perhaps try some
other simple finishes as well.

And yes, I know that's the same New Years resolution that I
made last year but never got around to accomplishing. I
did buy a few cuts of fabric with the best of intentions last
Spring but I still need to collect other "finishing" stuff. But
that's all part of the fun ... right??

Before Christmas I went on a little (!!) shopping spree and
picked up a few charts that had been calling to me (as they
do) for awhile. Quite a few of these would make nice
pinkeeps or flatfolds or pillows etc ... so hopefully this will
turn out to be an investment ... in encouragement.

I love those wonderful dragon silhouettes and the Quaker
witch ... er ... pileup made me laugh the first time that I
saw it.

I look forward to picking up any one of these new additions
to my stash someday and stitching them up.

I did have an unexpected surprise this Christmas season.
While attending the annual Christmas party for my DH's
choir group Kahila (pardon spelling) I discovered that
another choir member's wife was also a cross stitcher!!!
Hello Alisa!!!

In no time we were planning stitching get togethers and
in fact we've gotten together twice so far this year ... and
it's only the 11th day of the month. What an unexpected
surprise (shock) to find another stitcher who actually
lives in Georgetown!! Now with Alisa and Jennifer I have
two fabulous ladies to stitch with and I am a very happy
camper let me tell you!!

Now I just have to talk Alisa into starting her own
blog so you can get to know her too. :)

And just to prove that Alisa and I did actually do some stitching
when we got together (as well as the talking and the stash diving
thing) here is The Book Store with a significant amount of
work done on it since the last time that you saw it.

I hope to get back into the swing of things as far as blogging
(updating my own) and commenting (on yours) is concerned
now that the Christmas festivities are over. Hope that you
all had a wonderful Christmas and my warmest, best wishes
to you and your families for 2011.

May your needles be swift, your thread never tangle, your
fabric lay flat, your projects be a joy from start to finish,
and may the frogs go jump into someone else's pond!!

Cheers!!

It's Official!!!

2010-11-21T18:27:00.006-05:00

Guess who arrived in town today?

Can it be??? Has that time of year arrived once
again and caught us all unawares and unprepared??
Why yes, yes it has. So what else is new???

This is the day that Santa Claus arrives in Toronto
for the Christmas season and as is traditional the
city went all out to welcome him by throwing a
parade in his honor with marching bands and magical
floats and upside down clowns and all kinds of
wonderful stuff.

And in keeping with tradition Darlene came here
for the weekend and we spent two days decorating
the Christmas tree and the house. DH got the
multitude of boxes of every shape and size that the
Christmas decorations were packed away in from out
of the basement storage space and then got the tree out
and put together so that we could decorate it. Then he
went out and put the Christmas lights up on the outside
of the house.

Here is the newly decorated tree loaded down with
ornaments and lights and holiday bling. When it
comes to decorating for Christmas I'm as traditional
as you can get. My colors are red, green and gold
and my ornaments sparkle and shine in the glow of
the tree's lights.

It's a lot of work getting everything in place and
looking just right but Darlene and I and DH make
a great team and we manage to get the majority of
the work done in one weekend. We've done it for
so many years that we know where everything
should go and how it should be placed.

Plus I keep pictures of previous years decorating
finishes to help us remember where everything
should go. So every once in awhile one of us
would dash upstairs and check a picture on the
computer to see if we were putting something
in the right place.

Next up on the holiday schedule is writing the letters
and cards for our overseas relatives and friends.
That is going to be occupying me for much of this
week I am sure, and once that's done it'll be time
to work on the rest of the cards.

So stitching time will be non existent next week I'm afraid. And
I have just a small progress photo to show you from last week's
efforts. A couple of cute motifs from Halloween Quaker
that were a delight to stitch. The scaredy cat is finished but the
pumpkin still requires vines and leaves before it'll be done.
Love the stand up fur on the pussy cat's back.

One of the highlights of my four day vacation last
week was when I got to spend Tuesday with
Jennifer of Seasonal Stitches. We had a lovely
visit at her home in the morning and I got to meet
her cat Emmie (sweet little cat). We stitched and
drank tea and ate yummy cinnamon scones, then
we went out to lunch at a crepe restaurant near
where she lives, and then went for a nice drive
afterwords so that Jennifer could show me around
her neighborhood.

Jennifer was kind enough to allow me to jump out of
the car during our drive around town, so that I could
take some pictures of the beautiful neighborhood and
city where she lives.

Her neighborhood is right near Lake Ontario and
in fact she can walk down her street to get to it.
How incredibly lucky to be able to do that, eh?
These pictures were taken in a small park right
on the lake. It was an overcast day but the
pictures turned out pretty good in spite of that.

One of the hospitals in Toronto holds a big lottery
draw every year to raise funds and the grand prize
is a fully furnished, newly built home in the same
neighborhood where Jennifer lives. Here is the
house that was this years prize. Pretty nice little
abode don't you think? Betcha I could have a
library and a craft room in there easily.

I was even lucky enough to have the opportunity
to meet Jennifer's daughter Elisabeth before
Jennifer dropped me off at the train station so
that I could make my way home at the end of
our visit. It was a wonderful visit and we hope
to get together again soon to stitch and visit.

********************************************

I spent Thursday Christmas shopping with my
friend Charmaine at Yorkdale mall and picked
up a few things on my Christmas shopping list.
Because it was a week day the mall wasn't too
busy or crowded which was nice for us.

I also bought myself a new bathing suit because
of something special coming up real soon ( but
I'm not going to tell you anything about that
until after it's over). Let's just say that it's been
many years since I've had to buy a bathing
suit and it's not the most fun that I've ever had
while out shopping for clothes. Tried on about
seven or eight styles of suits (and often had to
try on two different sizes of the same suit to figure
out which would fit) so that whole process took an
hour out of the day.

In this weeks mail there was a parcel from Portugal.
Inside were a number of small packages wrapped in
Christmas paper, and a Christmas card from Paula
(Cantinho do Ponto Cruz). A dilemma. Do I open
the parcels right away or do I wait until Christmas??

What would you do??

Well, I had every intention of waiting until
Christmas to open those interesting little
parcels, and I did manage to hold out for a
few days. But this weekend, with the tree
up and decorated and Santa coming to town
and Christmas music playing on the sterio,
I'm afraid that I just couldn't help myself.

Paula is a generous and kind Christmas elf.
She sent me some lovely Christmas fabric,
a cute cat button, an Eiffel Tower key ring,
(drat!! Forgot to put that in the picture)
a pretty toile covered note book, aaannnddd....

Isn't he cute??? A wonderful Prairie Schooler
Santa ornament. Oh, I am so very glad that I
decided to open those packages early instead
of waiting. Now I can display this little Santa
during the entire Christmas season and enjoy
it every day.

Thank you Paula for your generous and
delightful gifts, and most especially for
the Santa ornament that you stitched for
me. You're awesome!!

Loreena McKennitt has a new CD out called The
Wind That Shakes the Barley. It's a return to her
roots in that the music is all traditional Celtic songs
which is the sort of music that Loreena made when
she first started her career. I've been enjoying the
new album very much but then for me a new
release from Loreena McKennitt is always a reason
to celebrate, and I've always loved her Celtic
inspired early CDs.

This week's artsy shot is of the dried up buds on
our Rose of Sharon bush in the backyard. DH
has put the heater in the bird bath so the water
doesn't freeze and the birds have somewhere to
drink. He's put suet cakes out for the birds as
well although the squirrels get as much enjoyment
out of those as the birds do. Ditto for the peanut
feeder. Most of the leaves are gone from the trees
in our yard and DH has mulched most of them and
put them in the garden to protect the plants from
Winter's icy bite. During the final pass across the
grass last week before being stored away for the
winter the lawn mower died. Good timing I
suppose but it looks like we'll be investing in a
new lawn mower next Spring.

Thank you to everyone who left comments about
Ian's commercials on the previous posts. Would
you believe that someone (he has no idea who)
has started a Facebook page for "The Flute Guy
From the Burger King Commerical"??? He's
somewhat bemused by this. There are over 300
followers on it so far.

I don't know if I'll have time to leave comments
on blogs this week but I will try to find a few
minutes to visit when I can to keep up with what
you're all up to. I'll be back to commenting once
the cards and letters are in the mail and on their
way to friends and family.

Anyone been to see the new Harry Potter movie
yet???

Thanks for visiting and I hope you have a great
week.

Cheers!

2010-11-13T20:02:00.008-05:00

Today my SIL Nora, our friend Nancy and I drove over to
St Jacobs which is a small town near Kitchener which
is well known for it's many small shops and restaurants.
We took the "scenic route" which was my suggestion
and of course since we also followed my directions we
got hopelessly lost. How lost?? The trip to St. Jacobs
started from here at 11:00 am and we got to the town
just before 2:00 pm. The trip home on the highway,
without getting lost, took 70 minutes!! Oh well, it was
a lovely day for a drive.

And the moral of the story is: don't follow my directions
unless I'm holding a very good map book in my hands.
I'm a good navigator as long as I have a map book to
refer to.

Anyways, getting to the point of this whole opening
monologue ....

I love sparkle and glitter. Especially at Christmas time.
Whenever I am out somewhere and come across

Christmas ornaments for sale you can bet that if there
is something that sparkles and especially if it is gold
or red or green (my favorite Christmas colors ~ yes
I am very much a traditionalist when it comes to
Christmas decorating) I am drawn to it.

Many of the shops in St. Jacobs had Christmas stuff
for sale and the picture that I have heading this blog
today was taken in one of those shops. I'm trying to
get a feel for pictures taken indoors that weren't
arranged by Mother Nature specifically for my
benefit, so I was taking photos of some of the things
in the stores that caught my eye.

Another shop was selling quilts and I thought
that this one was especially nice and that you
might like to see it since I know some of you
are quilters too.

I love the detail and the colors in this quilt, although
I have to say that I don't remember ever seeing pink
Lily of the Valley. Artistic license??

I did a little stitching on both of my currant projects
this week. I finished the big motif on the bottom of
Halloween Quaker and can now start moving upward
to do a few small motifs which will be lots of fun.

On The Book Store I added curtains to the upstairs
windows even though I haven't put the roof on the
building yet. Hmmm. Hope it doesn't rain (or
snow) before I can get that roof on else my curtains
will be ruined. More leaves and flowers on the
right hand tree and another section of fence under
that tree.

I've got four days off of work this week. I'd like to
think that I'll get lots of stitching done during that
time but I just might jinx myself by stating it as a
definite fact so I'll just keep my fingers crossed
and hope for the best.

I had the day off work on Thursday because it was
Remembrance Day but I didn't take advantage of
the free day to sleep in. No sir. I got up at my
usual time and had breakfast with DH. Then he
drove me to the Go train station and I caught the
7:06 am train into Toronto.

The trip took an hour so by 8:00 or so I was making
my way through Union Station and out onto Bay
Street. I use to work in this neighborhood and so
know it pretty well. I walked from Union Station
down to the shore of Lake Ontario and wandered
along the boardwalk there for a bit.

As you can see from the pictures above and below
the waters of the lake were an incredible dark blue
that day. It was sunny and remarkably warm for
this time of year and the opportunity to just walk
and enjoy the view and the wonderful weather
was a blessing.

The downtown area of the lake shore is lined with condos
and apartment buildings and co-op housing. And all of
this land is landfill and man made. Originally everything
in these pictures was covered by the waters of Lake Ontario.

Tourist season is over so the excursion boats are all docked
and closed down for the winter. Because not everyone here
gets Remembrance Day off (mainly just banks and the
government) it was fairly quiet with none of the summer
time crowds that normally fill the public areas of the
Toronto waterfront.

Once I left the lake shore I walked up through bustling
downtown Toronto until I reached the area where
the New City Hall and the Old City Hall are located.
The picture above is of the Old City Hall, now used
as a court house. This venerable old building was
restored a few years ago revealing details and
ornamentation lost and forgotten for many decades
under grime and pollution.

See the tall clock tower in the above picture??

I walked until I was across the street from the building
and then used the zoom on my camera to take close up
pictures of one of the gargoyles that flank the clock.
Pretty neat huh? I was thrilled that I could get such a
close up shot of these handsome beasties.

Tucked away amongst office buildings, hotels and
the Toronto Eaton Centre (a mall) is the old
Holy Trinity Church, built circa 1846. This church
and a couple of other buildings associated with it
are hidden and dwarfed by the newer, modern
buildings that surround them but when you find
your way to them they offer an opportunity to
spend a few minutes in Toronto's past.

The main reason that I went into Toronto on Thursday
was to spend the day at my friend Linda's doing some
crafty stuff. So this picture is me trying to make some
artsy pages in my so called "art" journal. I am a wanna
be artist. I gather my art stash and other stuff and try
to make something out of them. I have issues with
self confidence and a tendency to dislike anything that
I do like this which is something that I need to work
on and get over so an afternoon creating like this is a
good exercise for me.

I'm in the midst of reading a book right now so
instead of a book recommendation I thought
that I'd do a magazine recommendation instead.

My name is Judy and I'm a magazine addict. If
I really let myself go (and had unlimited funds)
I could easily spend all my precious reading time
with my nose buried in the pages of the magazines
that appeal to me.

Over the years I've loved and bought Country
Living ... Mary Engelbreit's Home Companion ....
the old Victoria magazine ... This England ....
Entertainment Weekly ... People ... the new
Victoria magazine ... Country Sampler
Plus many more. If it appealed to one of my
interests then I couldn't resist it.

This summer I discovered all the incredible and
wonderful magazines published by Stampington
and Company and went crazy for a month or so
hitting stores whenever I was in Toronto looking
for the many publications that this company puts
out. I think I picked up about six or so different
titles published by them that appealed to me
personally, but there are many more available
then those.

These are more like books then magazines in my
opinion and are just beautiful to look at and to
read. If browsing through one of these beauties
doesn't get your creative juices flowing then I
don't know what will.

If I had to choose just two or three magazines
from this publisher to recommend then I'd have
to suggest "Where Women Create" and " Artful
Blogging". The titles are pretty self descriptive
and either or both of these would appeal to any
one who loves crafting and blogging.

Each artist/crafter/blogger featured in the pages
of these magazines tells a bit about themselves,
their particular style of art, their inspirations and
their advice or encouragement for others who are
intrigued and interested in creating art and or
crafts. In the case of Artful Blogging the wonderful
photos are taken from the featured blogger's own
blog, as are excerpts from posts that they've written
for their blogs.

These magazines are well worth looking for and
checking out if you are like me and can't resist a
great magazine. Just don't blame me if you can't
help buying up more then a few of the different
titles available. At least most of them only come
out four times a year.

**********************************************

Well, it's bed time and I've had a busy day so am
ready to toddle off to sleep. Thanks for visiting
and may I suggest that you check out the two
extra posts following this one that features the
Burger King commercials that my godson appeared
in. As I said in those posts ... I'm a mighty proud
godmother.

Cheers!

The first Burger King Breakfast March Commercial featuring my godson -

2010-11-13T19:52:00.002-05:00

I've never put a Youtube video on my blog before so this is
something of a test post. This Burger King commercial
features my godson Ian as the Flute playin' guy. As a
proud godmother I am posting this here so you can all
watch it. You may have already seen it on TV at some
time.

There is a second commercial which I've also
attached to a post but since I can't figure out how to get
them both on the same post they are separate posts.

The Second Burger King For Breakfast Song Commercial 2010 Epic Flute Solo!!

2010-11-13T19:51:00.002-05:00

Here is the second commercial. Please note that the
voice you hear in this one is not Ian's voice. It was
recorded by someone else before the commercial was
even made. Too bad since Ian's voice is much better
then the dubbed one. It's not a good overdub either.
Ah well.

2010-11-07T09:11:00.010-05:00

I've been playing around with the gadgets and
tools on my i-photo application to see what I
can do to my pictures to make them more
interesting. One of my favorite tools is the
"antique" application which is what I have
used on the above picture.

This is the door of an old church in Toronto
that I walked passed the day of the Word On
the Street festival. Love the vines growing
over the brick and over the door itself. And
the stained glass window over the door is
wonderful with the framed round center-

piece. A bit of a Gothic look.

This is a Mourning Dove sitting on the railing of
our deck, preening his feathers and basking in
the warm sunlight. I caught him in just the right
moment, with tail feathers spread out and wing
lowered to show off his under feathers. Quite a
common bird around here and easily overlooked
because of it's lack of color but they do have nice
markings on their feathers and have an understated
but elegant look about them.

The pose sort of reminds me of those stuffed birds
that used to be arranged on top of lady's hats back
in the 19th and early 20th century.

I have almost finished a large motif on my Halloween
Quaker. I spent quite a bit of Saturday afternoon just
stitching away on it which was quite enjoyable. A bit
of Stitcher's Numb Butt syndrome never hurt anyone.
And since my weekends for the rest of November are
pretty heavily booked I'm not sure when I'll have
time to spend an afternoon stitching again.

I have a four day holiday during the week of the
16th to the 19th and although two of those days
are booked I do have two free days (so far) which
might be good stitching time, unless something
else gets penciled in.

I do have to take a few hours to pack away the
Fall ornaments and to clear the living room /
dinning room / den and bedrooms to get ready
for Christmas decorating which will be happening
on the weekend of the 20th.

Oh, and Christmas cards will need to be done as
well, once I find ones that I like. Which also means
Christmas letters to overseas friends and family to
write .... Ack!!!

Don'tcha just love the Christmas Season???

I've never introduced you to this little darling
who followed me home from Black Creek Pioneer
Village back in September. A lady was selling
some of her crafty stuff in one of the buildings
and she had a couple of these bunnies on
display. I thought that this one was especially
adorable and couldn't leave her behind. I love
the fabric that she's made with and she is
beautifully crafted.

And since we're speaking of Black Creek Pioneer
Village I should add a couple of more pictures
of the samplers that I found there during our
visit. This is one of a pair of matching samplers
which were stitched in memory of Thomas and
Ann Newman.

A close up of Thomas's sampler. The verse is
made up of such tiny stitches it's hard to read
in the pictures that I took and the glass covering
both samplers made it difficult to get really
close because of the camera flash.

I'd really love to know the history behind these
two samplers. It appears that Thomas and Ann
died within two days of each other. Were they
husband and wife?? Siblings??? Who stitched
these two samplers in remembrance of Thomas
and Ann?? I'm nosy that way.

My book finish this week was another fabulous
read that I had trouble putting down and got
totally lost in when I was reading it. Part
historical fiction and part young adult story
it is a rich, engrossing and often times emotional
read that keeps you hooked every step of the
way.

Andi is a young musical genius who is caught
up in the guilt and grief relating to the death
of her younger brother Truman. Depressed
and suicidal Andi is going through the motions
of her life at an exclusive school in Manhattan,
while caring for her mother who is herself
immersed and lost in grief for her son.

When Andi's father, a Nobel Prize winning
genetic scientist who is physically and emotionally
separated from his family, discovers his ex-wife's
mental state and is informed about Andi's failing
grades at school he insists that Andi join him in
Paris where he's involved in a project requiring his
expertise.

Once in Paris Andi discovers a diary hidden
inside the case of an old guitar which belonged
to Alexandrine Paradis (Alex), a girl who lived
during the French Revolution and who became
involved with the french royal family and in
particular the young Dauphin Louis-Charles.
As Andi reads the diary she becomes caught up
in Alex's story and the events during this turbulent
and violent time in Paris's history.

Donnelly deftly weaves the many strands of story line
that include Andi's work on her senior thesis about
the mysterious composer Amade Malherbeau who
also lived during the revolution, the budding
relationship between Andi and a young rapper
musician and taxi driver named Virgil, and Alex's
struggle to save the doomed Louis-Charles and
herself from falling victim to the horrors of the
French Revolution.

This is one of those books where you become so
emotionally attached to the characters you find
it very hard to let them go when the story ends.
And although you can't put the book down and
are eager to find out what happens next at the
same time you are sorry to have it end.

I've read two other books by Jennifer Donnelly
(The Tea Rose and The Winter Rose) and loved
them too but this one has more of an emotional
connection then those two which were more
"fun" reads. Check out this book for yourself
and see if it doesn't draw you in as well.

One of the best books that I've read in ages!

It's been ages since I've featured a picture of one of
the cats for you so here's Phoebe in all her furry
sweetness to say hello.

Halloween last weekend was cold and windy and
as a result we had fewer trick or treaters then we
did last year. We even had snow ... sort of ...
during the day. It was probably more like tiny ice
pellets then snow, but it gave us pause to see it
coming down in brief blizzard style spurts.

Oh, yes ... winter's coming ....

We had a cauldron full of mini chocolate bars
left over at the end of the night which I insisted
DH take to work with him the very next day.
I'd been picking my favorite mini bars (mmm...
Kit Kat ... mmmm ... Aero .... mmmm ... Coffee
Crisp ... mmmm ... Smarties etc) out of the cauldron
and wolfing them down between shelling out to the
kids Halloween night and didn't trust myself to have
them in the house any longer then could be helped.

I'm glad you all managed to survive the previous
"foodie" post. It seemed to have many of you
scrambling for the kitchen once you'd read it and
seen the pictures and for that I apologize ... with
a wicked grin on my face. :)

Hope you all have a fabulous week and thanks
as always for dropping by.

Cheers!

Caution! Do not read this post on an empty stomach

2010-10-31T11:12:00.024-04:00

The first sign of Fall around here is when the Robins all
more or less suddenly disappear at the end of August,
beginning of September. The first birds to return in the
Spring from their Winter down south somewhere and
the first to head back down there at Summer's end.

Well, most of them anyways.

We have a Mountain Ash tree in our back yard and this
year it is loaded with berries. The berries are still fairly
hard because they haven't fully ripened yet, but that is
not something that concerns the birds who gorge them-
selves on them. There have been a half dozen or more
Robins who have put their vacations down south on
hold while they do their very best to strip the tree of it's
Autumn bounty.

Robins are so common around here and they aren't
the most handsomest of birds, red breasts not
withstanding, but this picture I took from our dinning
room window of this fellow in our tree looks pretty
good with the red of his feathers and the red of the
berries and the red of the changing leaves all around.

And following the red theme even further ... this is one
of the cherry trees at the front of our house. These
berries are also quite hard and since they are also quite
a bit bigger then the Mountain Ash's berries they don't
get eaten as early in the season. In late Winter and
early Spring the Robins and the Ceder Waxwings will
devour these bright red globes as fast as they can
swallow. In the meanwhile we have the berries hanging
on the bare limbs of the trees for color and for our
enjoyment during the dull, cold days of Winter.

I love RED!!

I've been stitching away on Halloween Quaker this
week and enjoying working on the little motifs as
a break from the larger ones with the ... uh ... less
then enthralling borders.

Don't you just love that little bat with the BIG eyes?
So cute. I love the little off white accents in this
design which add just a little extra oomph to the
whole piece. There are a couple of pumpkins to
stitch of course and I considered stitching those in
a shade of orange of some kind, but in the end I
decided to keep to the designer's vision of how this
should look.

What I've been up to this past summer
and Fall - an ongoing report .....

Regarding the trip to the Mennonite Fall Fair at
Black Creek Pioneer Village in September. There is one
major reason why we love going to this fair whenever we
can. It's not just the ambiance, or the quilt auction, or
the costumed volunteers demonstrating various skills
and activities in the buildings. No, it's not even for the
ride in the horse drawn wagon.

What is the real honest to goodness, just
between us, reason why we go to this fair??

It's the FOOD!!

Check this out!!! The Mennonite folk arrive at the
fair every year with tons of delicious home made food for
the enjoyment of us dedicated fair goers. Home made
bread, cakes, pies, cookies and other delectable delights.
You can buy whole loaves of bread, or entire pies etc to
take home with you or you can buy slices of this or that
and eat them right there and then.

Pie anyone??? How many flavors can you spy there??

There are also booths set up selling food cooked
on the spot. So, having been doing this for years we have
our agenda all thought out and ready to follow. First stop
... the booth selling back bacon and a fried egg on a bun.
Then we hit the booth selling spring rolls which were
three per plate and came with a home made sweet sauce.

That's me noshing down on my back bacon and
fried egg on a bun. MMMMmmmmmm!!!!!

Then it was time for a sweet. Deep fried rosettes with
home made strawberry preserves and home made ice
cream on top!!

After that we took a break from eating and began
to walk around the village, taking in the sights and letting
our first course settle. I think that I had a cup of hot
apple cider during this time because after all there's
nothing like apple cider to put you in the mood for
Fall, right??

In one building a couple of ladies were busy
making bread. There is an outdoor brick oven to bake
these yummy loaves of whole grain goodness and the
flavor of these is unbelievable. You can put in an order
to buy a loaf or two when they're done if you like but
you have to be there pretty early in the day to do so
because they sell out in no time.

Is this what it looks like when you're baking
bread at your house Barbara???

After seeing (and smelling) the bread making and
baking we decided that it was time to have something else
good to eat. After all it had to have been at least forty five
minutes since we'd last had something good to eat.

Another highlight of the day is the open fire pit
where chicken legs and thighs are roasted to a lovely
golden brown and then offered to hungry foodies ...
like us!!

From left to right: Darlene, Helen and I enjoying
our finger lickin' good roast chicken legs.

After that we decided to have a veggie so that
we could at least say that we'd had a balanced meal
that day. Corn on the cob, dipped in melted butter
and sprinkled with salt. Sounds healthy doesn't it?

After all that ... er ... healthy eating (!!) we of
course had to have a desert. We planned on a slice
of pie (see photo at beginning of this report) but
were horrified and dismayed to discover that the
tables formerly covered in pie slices were now bare.
Not a flake of pastry or a bit of fruit left in sight.

Sigh!!

So we went to plan B. Hot, deep fried apple fritters
covered in maple syrup and sprinkled with cinnamon
and icing sugar. MMMmmmmm .... maple syrup.

Another cooking demonstration that we
found was making beet butter. I think I mentioned this
stuff in a previous post. It was so delicious, hot from the
pot and spread on little biscuits taken hot and fresh
from the brick oven, that it just bears mentioning
again. Sweet, sticky and delicious!

Here are Helen and Darlene about to help
themselves to their share of the beet butter samples.
There was also pickled beets and eggs soaked in
beet juice that we were encouraged to taste.

At the end of the afternoon, having walked (and
eaten) our way all around the village we were tired and
ready to head home. The booths were mostly sold out of
food anyways so there was no added incentive to stay.
But just before we left the village proper and headed
off to the gift shop we stopped at the back bacon on a
bun booth and bought one more round for the road.
Why no, we have no shame! Why do you ask?

In the gift shop located near the exit to the
village and in the old merchant store in the village
itself you can buy old fashioned candy and other
treats. You know, just in case you get peckish on
your way home.

I've been busy reading several awesome books
in the past few weeks and have ripped through these
totally awesome stories as fast as time allowed. The
first is book two in this series by Jacqueline Carey.
As usual wonderful characters, enthralling story, and
incredible imagination for creating a world from
geography to mythology and traditions make Ms
Carey's books fabulous reads for any fantasy lover.

And for those of you who enjoy their knitting,
or who love stories with characters that you fall in love
with and come to believe in totally then this one is for
you. Loved this one sooo much I immediately went on
line looking for sequels and anything else by Kate Jacobs
that I could find. If she'd published her weekly shopping
lists in a series of books I think that I'd have bought 'em!!
Yes, she's that good!

**************************************************

Monday night was election night here in Ontario.
We voted for our choices for local government including
Mayor, councilors and school trustees. Except that
our mayor got in by acclamation because no one ran
against him.

But what our local election campaign lacked in
drama and excitement was more then made up for as
we watched the goings on down in the big city of
Toronto where the Mayoral candidates have been going
at each other hammer and tongs since last January.
Fun to watch, but I wouldn't want to live there.

It was reported in our local newspaper that
only 25 % of our areas eligible voters actually
bothered to turn out to vote. It wasn't raining, there
wasn't a foot of snow, there hadn't been a total
eclipse of the moon or anything like that. People just
didn't bother to show up and vote. Ah Democracy!!

And yes, Phil and I did make a point of getting
out to vote. We always do.

*************************************************

Well, it's getting on and I've got chores to do
and candy to put out and special treat bags to make
up for any trick or treaters who show up at our
door this evening for Halloween.

Hope you're all having a great Fall and enjoying
any festivities that might be occurring in your
neighborhood this weekend to celebrate Halloween.

Thanks for dropping by and leaving your
always welcome and greatly appreciated and enjoyed
comments.

Take care!

Cheers!

2010-10-24T11:41:00.009-04:00

Hello! I'm starting off this week's blog post with a photo
that might be one of my most favorite of all the pictures
that I've taken so far with my new camera.

DH and I were invited to a birthday party for a little boy
turning one year old back in September. The gathering
took place in a park near the parent's home so we were
outdoors for the entire time.

It was a cold, windy day unfortunately and there really
wasn't much in the way of shelter to get away from the
elements. We tried huddling around the barbecue but
it got a little crowded which made it difficult for the cook
to work, so DH and I went for a little walk around the
grounds to try and keep the circulation going and perhaps
warm up a trifle.

One side of the park grounds was edged with tall grasses
and weeds, all of which were nearing the end of their life
cycle for the season and were either drying out to brown
stalks, or were bursting their seed pods and sending the
tiny seedlings out to find themselves a safe place to set
down roots and sleep for the winter. With the wind
blowing and blustering that day there were a lot of
fluffy bits dancing through the air.

The tops of these plants caught my eye and I just
held up my camera and took a quick picture as we
passed by them, and here is the result. I love it!!!

Yesterday I actually sat down and did some stitching!
I've been itching to start a new project that had caught
my eye recently so I ignored The Book Store and started
digging around in my fabric stash looking for something
suitable for the irresistible new design. I chose a cut of
Sassy's Fabbys Jobelan, 28 count, in the color Toffee.

The design is a Halloween Quaker by Jardin Priven
which is stitched in black and off white DMC thread.
As you can see I haven't gotten much done yet, and
since Halloween is just a week away it won't get done
in time for the holiday itself this year (and we won't
make any promises for next year either because we
know better) but I'm enjoying myself and that's the
important thing.

This weeks featured sampler from Black Creek Pioneer
Village is by Margaret Ann Todd and it uses some of the
same motifs as her sister Sarah's did, plus the same
colors. But the border is different and obviously so is
the verse.

I should note here that I'm just assuming that Sarah and
Margaret were sisters since there was no information
provided about the samplers that were hanging in each
of the buildings in the village. Maybe they were cousins?
I still can't get over how well the colors look on their two
samplers. Still quite bright and vibrant after all these
years.

And this just in .....

I am once again in love and lust!! What a beautiful
design Diane has come up with here!! Wonderful
colors (RED) and lovely motifs. And bunnies!!!
'Scuse me while I go rifle through the laundry and
the bottom of my purse to rustle up some coin for
this sweet chart ... and maybe one or two others.

Note: Photo above filched from Stitching Bits and Bobs
website.

What I've been up to this past summer
and Fall - an ongoing report .....

In August my DH's company arranged a boat cruise and
dinner to take place on one of the many boats that sails
around Toronto Harbor in the good weather. The boats
leave their berths during the late afternoon so you can
enjoy the views of downtown Toronto, the Toronto Island
Airport, and the Toronto Islands during daylight. The
cruise continues into the evening, ending around 10:00 pm
so you also get to see the Toronto skyline all lit up after
dark. It's quite spectacular to see.

DH and I arrived over an hour before we were to meet up
with everyone for the cruise so we had time to wander
around the Harborfront, looking at the attractions and
venues that are there, and people watching as well.

I use to work in this area and so know it pretty well, but
it's been 11 years since our company moved it's office
out to the suburbs, and things have changed considerably
since then.

Condos, rental apartment buildings and Co-Op buildings
have been going up everywhere on the valuable, much
sought after and somewhat limited shoreline of Lake
Ontario and that has caused some concern for the other
residents of Toronto who are loosing their views and
their access to the waterfront.

But we're not here to debate Toronto's building choices
today. So let's move on and do some site seeing instead.
A much more pleasant topic, don't you agree??

This is the ship that we were to spend the evening on.
Two levels with tables to eat at, places to set up the
buffet meals, and small dance floors for those who might
wish to work off their meals a bit afterwords. The top
deck was open to the sky, and you could sit up there and
watch the views pass by.

There was a market in full swing at Harborfront, with
booths selling clothes, jewelery, and all kinds of other
treasures and trinkets. And food vendors selling just
about any type of cuisine you would care to think of.
In this picture you can also see the stage on the right
where live music was being played, and the ubiquitous
condo's surrounding the area.

There is a very shallow pond where you can rent a canoe
and paddle around for awhile.

And right next to that is an artificial (obviously) skating
rink where you can rent skates and take a spin on the
ice (??). There was one or two kids wobbling their way
around the square ice pad but I didn't manage to get
them in this picture.

Walking along the boardwalk at the water's edge you
pass the many small cruise ships as well as this
bigger, masted schooner.

A pair of smaller cruise ships that can be rented for
group excursions on the Lake around the harbor
and the islands.

There are bays where people can rent a space to dock
their boat and I suppose that they can even live on
board for the season if they so choose. I would imagine
that the rent would be quite dear for a space here and
there's not a lot of privacy.

And sometimes the neighbors can be a bit ... er ...
off the wall??

Anyone for tennis???

It occurs to me that this post is getting pretty photo
heavy so I'll finish off the narrative for this fun day
next weekend. Here is a view of the Toronto skyline
taken as dusk is falling and the two most famous
of Toronto's downtown buildings ... The Skydome
where the Toronto Blue Jays play baseball, and the
CN Tower, one of the tallest buildings in the world.

Scrounging money out of the pockets of clothes in
the laundry to buy stitching charts. Why???

Wellllllll ....

Ya see, there was this sale of books at Chapters and
... well ... uh ...

And did I mention the new second hand book store
that's opened in downtown Georgetown as well???
The one that I now walk passed just about every
day of the week???

******************************************************

The week just passed was pretty uneventful until Friday
afternoon at work. I was just sitting at a table in the
cafeteria reading during the final few minutes of my
lunch break when the evacuation alarm sounded.

After climbing down from the ceiling (damn, that thing
is LOUD) I gathered up purse, lunch bag and book and
joined the rest of the employees shuffling out the front
door.

Heading through our parking lot we walked toward
the parking lot of Leons furniture store which is next
door to us and which is where my department is suppose
to meet so the team leader can count noses. At first we
had no idea what was going on of course but then our
noses clued us in.

Do you guys smell gas???

Uh oh.

Yup. Workers at the back of the building had been
drilling (no idea why) and of course they hit and
punctured a gas pipe.

We milled around in Leons parking lot for awhile
with those of us without coats huddling together
for warmth. Then we were sent to a banqueting
hall nearby where we waited inside where it was,
thankfully, nice and warm until it was safe to
return to work. It took about an hour for them
to shut off the gas and then we headed back to
our desks.

And that was our excitement for this week.

********************************************

Is it my imagination or is this the never ending blog post??
I've gotta learn not to be so verbose I think. I don't talk
like this, on and on and on and on, in real life ... do I Jennifer??
Darlene?? Linda??? Dani??? Kathy???

On second thought ... never mind.

Have a great week folks! Thanks for stopping by and
plowing through all this stuff, and for leaving comments
for me. Love hearing from you.

Cheers!!

2010-10-17T10:59:00.007-04:00

Good day one and all. It's Sunday morning once again which
means it's time to compose and create another post for my blog.
Thanks to my long absence from blogging during the summer
I've got a backlog of pictures and other "stuff" to catch up on
as well as reporting on the things that have been happening in
the here and now. And I've got to keep from boring you all to
tears or into a coma in the process. Well, I'll do my best to
make this entry entertaining and informative and ... AHA!!
Your eye lids are drooping there!! Just for a second ...
Stay with me now ...

We're starting out with a couple of glamor shots. I was out
walking yesterday morning when the sun was just clearing
the tops of the trees and houses and the light frost was still
spread in patches on the ground. I happened to notice a
carpet of leaves lining the sides of the sidewalk and each was
limned with frost along veins and edges. Lovely. I
wondered if my magical camera would be able to capture

this amazing detail. It did.

I'm really delighted with how these pictures turned out.
Click on them for close ups so you can see the tiny beads
of frost on each leaf. Especially in the above picture.
Mother Nature is a whiz with her magical paintbrush and
knows just when and where to add the bling ... and how
much is just enough.

Last week I gave you a small glimpse of my current
stitching project and wondered if you could guess
what it was. Well, here is the full picture showing
my progress so far. Now don't tell me you're surprised
by my choice of this design because I know you're not.

I'm all over the map with this one, stitching a bit of
this section, and then a bit of that section, and then
working on a bit of the border. Do you do that??
Or do you just stitch each section and finish it before
moving on to the next part?

I've been dabbling on Ebay this month as well and found
a great dealer selling lovely small cuts of fabric in gorgeous
colors. I love the color of the piece on the right which is
called Autumn Blush, appropriate considering the season
we're in right now. So much so that when I placed another
order for a few more cuts of fabric in other colors I also
ordered another one of these. These will be a joy to work
on.

Another of the samplers that I found and photographed
during our visit to Black Creek Pioneer Village. This one
is lovely too, with some wonderful motifs and amazing
colors.

Here's a close up of the verse and some of the motifs.
Sorry about the flash in the centre of the picture. Isn't
that butterfly wonderful?? Next week I'll post a picture
of Sarah's sister Margaret's sampler which is a variation
of this one

What I've been up to this past summer and Fall - an ongoing report .....

A few weeks ago a bunch of us attended the twentieth
annual Word on the Street festival which took place
on the grounds of the Ontario Legislature ... also known
as Queen's Park ... in the heart of downtown Toronto.

A beautiful place to have a festival of any kind because
of the many wonderful old trees on the grounds and with
the lovely stonework of the Legislature building itself as a
backdrop.

We ate hot dogs and samosas and spring rolls and
corn on the cob, and I had my first Funnel Cake.
Look at that thing!! Deep fried batter sprinkled
with sugar and lots and lots of cinnamon. I love
cinnamon!!! And yes, I'm ashamed to admit, I
ate the entire plateful of it.

Now you know why I walk ... a lot!!

The booths were scattered amongst the trees and
shrubbery on the park's grounds and there was so
much to see and so many books to buy. We worked
our way around from booth to booth, browsing
through the books that caught our eye and making
the odd ... ahem ... purchase.

There were celebrates on hand for the occasion, including
this well known fellow who was, if I remember correctly,
celebrating his 70th birthday this year.

I've been chasing this lady around Ontario for years!!

Uh ... let me explain.

One of my most favorite authors is Kelley Armstrong.
I've got all of her books and love 'em so much!! Ms
Armstrong is from Ontario, and presumably doesn't
live all that far from me. In all the years that I've been
reading her books, and in all the years that she's been
making promotional appearances around Ontario, as
well as the rest of North America in general, I'd yet to
meet her and get some of my books signed.

There were lots of Canadian authors appearing at this
years Word on the Street and one of them, happily
enough, turned out to be Ms Kelley Armstrong!!

Of course me being me I forgot to pack one of her books
to be signed during the event so had to buy another
copy of one that I already had just so she could sign it.
DOH!!

But the important thing is that I finally got to meet her,
have a book signed and my picture taken with her. I
was delighted.

So guess who showed up in Georgetown on Friday for
a visit and signing???

Isn't that always the way???

Sponsored by a local kids bookstore, The Freckled Lion,
Ms Armstrong appeared in the gallery that is in the same
building as our library to give a talk, read excerpts from her
Young Adult book series, answer questions and sign
books.

Well yes, of course I went. And this time I
remembered to pack a few of my books for signing. And
I even remembered my camera. It was a great evening.
Kelley (may I call you Kelley??) is a funny, eloquent
speaker and it was cool to hear her read some of her latest
stuff to us and answer our questions.

Did you know that Angelina Jolie wanted to play Elena when
the screenplay adaption of one of Kelley's early books was
shopped around?? Wow!

Sadly the movie never got made. The powers that be in
Hollywood decided that chick flicks featuring women with
super powers just were not in demand thanks to the failures
of the movies Catwoman and Electra. Of course the fact that
these two movies were badly written and produced in the
first place might have had something to do with that, but it
would never occur to those bozos to take that into
consideration.

Well, another epic production comes to an end for
another week. So many of you left wonderful
comments after last weeks post offering comfort and
sympathy for the emotional first Thanksgiving
dinner without my Mom and I am so very
grateful to you for that. It helped so much to
read your understanding and eloquent words.

I hope you all have a wonderful week with lots of
stitching time and I'll be back next week no doubt
with more stuff to share. Take care!!

Cheers!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

2010-10-11T11:17:00.018-04:00

This has been something of a whirl wind weekend for
DH and I, as all such holiday weekends seem to be. An extra
day added on to a weekend does not necessarily mean more
time to do whatever we want. Rather it means more stuff to
do and not enough time to do it all, even with the extra day.

My days all started with getting up around 7:00 am,
getting dressed and heading out for my walk. Knowing
how much of Thanksgiving is celebrated with knife and
fork in hand I figured that I'd better be getting my walking
exercise in, no excuses and no slacking off. So each day
I've walked for one and a half hours and covered six miles
per walk. As of today I have therefore walked eighteen
miles over this weekend!!

Saturday I took my camera with me during my walk and
stopped often to take pictures of the trees in their Fall
splendor, or of favorite houses, or of the Farmer's
Market that we have here in Georgetown every Saturday
morning from June until the end of October. This little
house and the beautiful Fall foliage around it caught my
eye and begged to be photographed. I was happy to
oblige.

At the Farmer's Market there was lots to entertain my
camera and me both visually and gastronomically. Not
only the fruits and vegetables of the season, but also the
added pleasures of back bacon on a bun, maple syrup,
fresh honey, and baked just that morning strudels. Not
to mention hand made jewelery, knitted things, and so
much more.

The Fall foliage this year has been spectacular. It seems as
though we're getting more reds and oranges in the mix (along
with the usual yellows and golds) then we usually do and the
resulting display of Autumn's glory is breathtaking. Do you
have more of these colors then usual in your neighborhood as
well?? We still have plenty of trees left that haven't yet begun
to have their leaves change color so this awe inspiring show
won't be over for some weeks to come yet, I'm happy to say.

I had another stitching finish of sorts this past summer. I worked
on this piece while my Mom was in the hospital and found it to be
perfect because of it's size and because it only used the one color
so required no color changes and only one skein of thread to be
carried around. And it was silk thread too, which is always such a
pleasure to work with. I haven't decided whether to put in the
date and initials as charted in the original design. I kind of like it
plain and uncluttered, the way it is now. I'm not planning any kind
of a specific finish for this right now so I can let the decision simmer
in my brain for awhile yet.

And here's a tease for you. My current project, though it's
been sadly neglected these past few weeks. I owe it a good
long chunk of dedicated stitching time today if I can, but
that may not be possible. We'll just have to take it one step
at a time. Can you guess what this design is??? It won't be
hard I'm sure.

I got this years JCS Christmas Ornaments issue a few weeks
ago and there are quite a few designs that I really, really like.
I would love to stitch a few Christmas ornaments and actually
have one all picked out and ready to go. It means time
away from my above project but thems the breaks. Diversity
is the spice of life, right??

What I've been up to this past summer and Fall - an ongoing report .....

A couple of friends and I went to Black Creek
Pioneer Village during the third weekend of
September.

One of the things that I look forward to every Fall is the
Mennonite Fall Fair at Black Creek Pioneer Village in
Toronto. An authentic village recreated using buildings
from around the Toronto area that were moved to the
site to save them from demolition and neglect. Black
Creek Pioneer Village is a wonderful opportunity to travel
back in time, and spend the day in a country setting
while still being within the city's borders.

Volunteers in period clothing put on demonstrations
of various sorts in the buildings, including the lady
in the above picture who is putting out freshly made
Beet Butter onto small also freshly made biscuits
that she'd just taken out of the brick oven behind her.

Have you ever tried Beet Butter??? Me neither. Oh
boy was it delicious though!! Sweet and sticky and
so wonderful on those little biscuits. I confess that I
snuck back and had seconds of this yummy treat.

Each building is furnished as it would have been back
in the nineteenth century, including those decorative
features that would have made these places a home.
And that of course includes a number of samplers.
I took pictures of any that I came across that day and
here is one that I particularly liked. Isn't it a beauty?
Love the border, and the bouquets of flowers. It's
perfectly stitched and check out that little dog at the
bottom. You can click on the picture to get a closer
look at all the details.

I'll post pictures of the other samplers in future posts,
as well as some other pictures taken around the village.

I have been reading while this computer was off for repairs, and
I'll try to post a brief report about the ones that I enjoyed the
most and would recommend to you. I need to update the list at
the side of my blog there of the books that I've read since it is
woefully behind.

I just finished "An Impartial Witness" last week and I really
enjoyed it. It's the first time that I've read this author or, to
be specific, authors because this series is written by a Mother
and Son duo. They have two mystery series on the go, both of
which take place during the first world war era. This is the
Bess Crawford series, and is the second book in that series. I
haven't got the first book yet, but after reading this one plan
to get it as soon as I can.

I really enjoyed this book because of the main character, Bess,
and because the authors have done a wonderful job of
recreating the WWI era. The mystery is interesting and keeps
your attention but it's the strong, vividly well drawn characters
that kept me reading this book whenever I could grab a free
minute. Bess is a strong, intelligent and intuitive woman with
a strong belief in doing the right thing and taking duty and
responsibility very much to heart. She will not walk away from
the investigation until the truth is discovered, no matter what
the danger to herself. I really, really loved this book and will
be getting as many of the author's other books as I can find.

On Saturday DH and I went to visit my Aunt and we all
went to Swiss Chalet for lunch. DH and I had their
spare ribs which were part of a special offer where if
you ordered the ribs you also got a quarter chicken for
free. Great deal. We'd never had ribs at Swiss Chalet
before and were quite pleasantly surprised by how
fantastic and delicious they were. You know how dry
ribs in a restaurant can be?? These were fall off the
bone tender and so very tasty. Back at my Aunt's
we had a slice of cherry and a slice of apple strudel
with French Vanilla ice cream. The strudel being
from the Georgetown Farmer's Market and was
fresh baked that morning. MMMmmmmm!!!

Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday was just DH, his sister and
myself. I made turkey and all the trimmings, and my SIL
brought pumpkin pie for desert. Then we sat down at the
table, just the three of us, to eat and I found myself over-
whelmed with emotion. I guess that the empty fourth chair
was a glaring reminder of my Mom never being here again
and it caught me off guard. I'm afraid dinner wasn't as
enjoyable as it would otherwise have been for me. But we
got through it.

Today is leftovers day. Left over everything, including the
pumpkin pie, whipped cream and the strudel and ice cream
which my Aunt would absolutely not allow us to leave
behind with her.

Now you know why I walked 18 miles this weekend.

DH and I went to the Terra Cotta Conservation area,
a twenty minute drive from here, this afternoon and
spent a couple of hours walking some of the trails.

Yes ... more walking.

It was overcast but dry and the scenery was beautiful.
I'm trying to get DH to get out and walk with me more
and explore some of the many wonderful parks and
conservation areas that we have here in southern
Ontario. I think that he enjoyed our walk today so
here's hoping we can do it again.

I think it's time I wrap this up and published it before
it gets too much longer. Besides, the turkey and other
leftovers that having been warming in the oven for the
past two hours are calling to me. It's time for dinner.

Hope you are all well and if you are fellow Canucks I
hope that you had a grand long weekend and Thanks
giving. Thanks for dropping by and slogging through
my little (!!) post here. Take care.

Cheers!

Hello!! Remember me???

2010-10-02T16:33:00.011-04:00

It's been far too long since last I posted any sort of an

update on my blog and I've missed being able to do so.
My computer was in for repairs for over two and a half
months (!!) which was about one and a half months
too long in my opinion. It was under warranty so I
didn't have to pay for the work ... thank goodness ...
but the length of time that it took to get this thing up
and running again was shameful.

I could go into all the gory details, but that would just
get me all hot and bothered all over again and would
probably bore you to tears. So let's just sum up by
saying: I-Mac computer - pretty, versatile, awesome
to use ... pain in the lower extremities to get repaired.
And don't hold your breath waiting to get it back in a
timely fashion.

So let's just forget that this summer ever happened
and move on, shall we???

I think the most exciting news that I have is that I finally
bought myself an awesome, freakin' wonderful new camera!!
I'm so excited about this, let me tell you! I've been all over
the place with it, taking pictures left right and centre and
then getting all giggly happy over them when I download
them to my computer. All of the pictures that I'm posting
here today were taken with my new Powershot camera.
Hope you enjoy them as much as I've enjoyed taking them.
Prepare for this blog to become very, very image oriented
from now on.

I haven't been stitching a whole lot this summer which
is both sad and frustrating but there are only so many
hours in a day, week and month to do everything. The
trouble is that I have so many things that I love to do,
and not enough free time to do them all in. I'll bet
you're all nodding your heads and agreeing with me on
that score.

But I did manage to finish Sew Red by Carol at I Stitch
(see sidebar for blog link - but you all know Carol anyways
don't you?) I used that wonderful DMC variegated red
thread #115 and thoroughly enjoyed creating this little

beauty.

And here is a "glamor" shot taken with the new
camera and showing a close up of the stitching.
I use to envy all you folks who would take close
up shots at all levels and angles to showcase
your stitching and now I can too. Did I mention
how much fun I'm having with this new toy???

During one of my weekend walks this summer I came
across a garage sale and stopped to poke around and
see what was available. Lo and behold I found this
little gem in amongst the stuff for sale and didn't
waste any time in grabbing it up to take home with
me. I don't have many scissors in my collection so
this little milk glass thingy is just dandy for the four
pair that I do have.

Thought that you might like to meet a couple
of very special (to me) people who I've often
mentioned here in various posts and one of
whom you've heard from directly during this
past summer.

Linda is on the left (black shirt) and is the gal
who introduced me to cross stitching and got
me started with this wonderful hobby wayyyyy
back twenty (YIKES!!!) odd years ago. She is a
talented lady who is a constant source of inspiration
and encouragement for me. She can do anything!

And on the right (green shirt) is Darlene, who is
another source of strength, support and comfort
whenever I've needed it. She was kind enough to
post a couple of blog entries for me so that you
could be kept up to date with things when my
computer was off being ... ahem ... fixed.

This picture was taken in August during our
annual Christmas party. This is the third
year in a row that we've had it in August and
it's always a blast. This year was a bit ... um ...
difficult for Phil and I since it was the first party
without my Mom who always loved coming to
the parties that we'd throw and seeing all the
gang.

I was enjoying the last days of our annual two
week August vacation in the days prior to the
party so was able to devote some time to cooking
up a few delicious dishes for our "Holiday" meal.
I wonder ... do you say that you are "cooking"
when writing about making salads??? Anyways,
above is the table with all the main course food,
except for the meat and the lasagna and the baked
beans that a friend made and brought for our
considerable enjoyment.

Most of the deserts were brought by our guests
so here we have the sweet and treat table.

Another view of the sweets and treats table.
My mouth is watering for some reason.

And here is the guy who did all of the
barbecuing for the day, wearing a color
combination appropriate for the festive
occasion. Note the Santa hat wearing
guy in the picture. Our god son Ian.

I've still got lots of stuff to write about but
it's time to start dinner so I'll have to leave
it all until next time. Thanks for dropping
by and not forgetting about me. I'm so glad
to be back.

Cheers!!

2010-07-09T21:44:00.002-04:00

Hi everyone!! This brief post is another notification that
my computer problems have not been resolved and so this
machine is being returned for further repairs. Hopefully
to be completely fixed this time.

I have no idea when I'll get it back so will just have to hope
for the best. Just wanted to let you all know what's going on.

I also want to thank all of you who left messages of condolence
for me on my previous post. I cherished each and every one of
them and each helped to raise my spirits and ease some of the
sadness and made me smile. You are all so incredibly awesome!

I hope this will be a brief hiatus and that I'll be able to get back
to blogging soon. Holidays coming up in August and I can't
wait for some free time to catch up.

So until further notice my e mail will be unavailable, and so
will my blog and my spot on facebook. Bye for now.

Great Big Hugs to ALL!!! Love Judy

My Mom....

2010-06-20T11:02:00.004-04:00

Norma Gwladys Hattey nee Fogden

December 5th 1921 to June 18th 2010

Hello everyone. It is with a very heavy heart that my return to
blogging is with the sad news that my Mum passed away on
Friday morning after a brief illness.

Phil and I are dealing as best we can under the circumstances.
There is much to be done so a proper post here will have to
wait until there is more time and my thoughts and emotions
are more coherent.

I've missed you all and am catching up with your blogs as a
way to take my mind off of the events of the past few weeks
for a little while.

These pictures I share with you in remembrance of happier
times and as a small tribute to my Mum.

I love you Mummy!!

The Continuing Saga...

2010-06-05T15:07:00.003-04:00

Hello again! Darlene here...

Okay, where to begin... Well first of - Judy's computer is still not fixed - they are waiting for a part to come in. She's going through computer withdrawal as you might imagine. It's not that easy to give up something that you depend on every day, that's for sure. If she doesn't hear anything back from them next week, she'll be calling them. She misses you all and can't wait to start blogging with you again!

Stitching News: She is managing to get her stitching done since she's been without you know what. She's happy to report that she has finished "Sew Red". She actually finished it at 3 AM this Saturday morning (June 5th). She says that she couldn't sleep. But hey, it got done - can't wait to see her pics - she'll post those as soon as she can I'm sure.

Family update: Judy's Mom is making progress, but she still has a long way to go yet. They are just taking it one day at a time and hoping for the best.

Garden News: She is getting her flower pots done. She's working on them quite a bit today since you couldn't ask for a nicer day. The sun is shining brightly and there is a nice breeze. And luckily the humidity mostly blew away.

Shopping front: Judy walked to the local mall today and discovered that there were clothing items on sale today that she liked, so of course she bought them! Who wouldn't? Then after that, her and Phil picked up some groceries. It can't all be about fun I guess!

Judy's missing everybody muchly and wants to thank everybody for their well wishes for both her and her Mom. She's hoping to be back soon. Myself, I'm on vacation - the first week I'm around town, but next Saturday I'm flying to my home town in Nova Scotia, so this may be my last post...aw...LOL

Take care everybody!

Over and Out!

Darlene

Ah...The Technical Difficulties of Computers

2010-05-28T19:14:00.005-04:00

Hello Judy's Blog Followers!

Let me introduce myself - my name is Darlene, I'm a friend of Judy's - you may have read about me in previous blog posts...LOL. I sometimes come to Judy's place on the weekends to go to movies and other fun stuff!

I'm writing this because currently Judy is having technical difficulties with her computer, but soon she should be back. She's bringing her comp to the repair shop tomorrow to see what's happening. So let me see what has gone on lately...

Family update: Judy's Mom has been in the hospital for two weeks that's why you haven't seen her on here for awhile. She was released from the hospital today and is doing better, but not 100% or at a state where we can all breathe completely easy.

Garden news: She was able to get her flowers and things for her garden last weekend, but hasn't had much time to work on it. And has quite a full plate this weekend as well, so she may have to aim for next weekend.

Stomp out those obsessions: One good thing that came out of her computer's difficulties is that she was forced to give up Bejewelled - I'm sure she has told you guys of this recent obsession. Let's see what happens when the computer comes back. LOL

Note to Jennifer: Please give Judy a call - your number was on her computer -- urgh - so she can't get in touch with you. Please leave your number on the answering machine if no answer since she is going to be with her Mom most of the weekend.

Judy would like to send her best regards to everybody and hopes to be back soon!

Take care!
Over and Out!
Darlene

2010-05-01T19:50:00.011-04:00

Why is it that whenever you're close to finishing a project
the temptation to start a new project is all but irresistible??
I just have the top section of Winter Wind to stitch and it'll
be done, finished, completed. So am I working diligently
away at it, nose to the grindstone and all that??? Heck no!!

I started poking around in my stash a few weeks ago and
ended up pulling Sew Red (design by Carol at Istitch) out
and settling down to stitch it instead. This past week I had
a three day holiday thanks to three floater days that I chose
to use because the weather's been nice and my DH is off
for two weeks right now and because things at work have
been really slow lately. Because of that I've had extra time
to stitch and have devoted it to Sew Red. The picture above
shows my progress so far which is about half way done.

I will get back to Winter Wind. Maybe after Sew Red is done,
or maybe when I get to the point on Sew Red when I just have
half of the top line or the last bit of border to stitch. I do have
to make sure that I finish Sew Red this year though, one way
or another, because I've already stitched the year on it.

I think the highlight of this mini holiday is that I got to
meet another stitcher/blogger who doesn't live too far
from me. Jennifer from Seasonal Stitches was a sweet
heart and didn't mind the short notice invitation from
me to get together on any day of my three day holiday
that might work best for her and her schedule.

She came here on Wednesday and we spent a lovely
time getting to know one another and talking, talking,
talking. We went out for lunch at a local bakery in
Glen Williams and we visited a quilting store called
The Hobby Horse which is located on a farm a few
miles outside of Glen Williams looking for fabric
for finishing stitching projects.

Did I mention that Jennifer is a sweetheart??? She
arrived on my doorstep bearing gifts and spoiled me
rotten. Looky at the above picture. Two charts that
I didn't have in my stash, one of which was a Prairie
Schooler!!! And a new puzzle to feed my other addiction
(see previous post) which features some adorable Cats!!!

We got along like a house on fire!! The time flew and
we found lots that we had in common and we talked
until we ran out of time and Jen had to head home. So
sad. So we agreed that we'd really have to get together
again soon to talk some more and maybe stitch too.
I'm so happy to have met another stitcher who lives fairly
close to my little part of Ontario, and to have her be as nice as
Jennifer is is just icing on the proverbial cake.

I have one regret from Wednesday though. Somehow in all
the excitement of meeting for the first time and then going
out for lunch and stashing shopping, we both managed to
forget our cameras to take pictures! DOH!!!

Thanks for coming Jennifer and for driving us around
and for the wonderful gifts and for everything!

Here are the fabrics that I picked up at The Hobby Horse

on Wednesday. The first step towards perhaps finishing
off some of my stitching someday. I still need some of
those pearl headed pins, some pretty ribbons and whatever
else might look good on a pinkeep or a flat fold or a little
pillow. All in good time.

I got some new stash a few weeks ago that I have to
show you before I forget entirely. Of course I had
to get LHN's The Book Store which was newly released
recently and at the same time a few other charts jumped
into my shopping basket, as often happens when one is
shopping at a favorite on line store.

I've been finding a lot of designs that appeal to me
from My Big Toe and ordered three more of their
charts plus one from Lizzie Kate and one from LA-D-
Da. I also got the fabric to stitch one of the My Big
Toe designs. The other two charts were wins from
Ebay and are by a designer that I was unfamiliar with.
They're both very pretty, don't you think??

I did order one more chart in the splurge from the
on line store but it wasn't in stock at the time that
the rest were mailed out to me. I understand that
that chart is now on it's way to me, and I can't wait
because it's another one that I've been drooling over
since it came out during Nashville. Guess which one
it is.

Rose Quaker!!

******************************************************

Of course I've been reading whenever I can find the time
and I've finished three books recently that I highly
recommend to you, each one a different genre from the
others but all wonderfully well written with great stories.
I'll let you check out the synopsis of these books for
yourselves because this post will be way too long if I
tried to do it, but in brief here's what you should expect
from each novel.

This is the second book of Jennifer Donnelly's that I've
read, the first being The Tea Rose, which was the first
book in what will eventually be a trilogy (I think). I
suppose that you could read this one on it's own but
when books share characters and history I prefer to
read them in order so that I get the most out of them.

This series would be categorized as Romance I guess
but Donnelly has done a lot of research into the era
in which her stories take place (the early twentieth
century) and so you get lots of historical detail which
adds depth and color to her stories. I love how she
creates such wonderful characters, whether they are
the hero or heroine, secondary players, or those with
small parts.

I've also read Michelle Moran before and this is the
second book of hers that I've read. This is historical
fiction which takes place in Egypt during the time of
Ramses II and is about Nefertari, niece of the despised
heretic Queen Nefertiti. Another well written, well
researched book with memorable characters and a
enthralling story. A fascinating time and place in history
that I can't read enough about.

And now for something completely different. Tongue
in cheek, witty and wry, a comedy of manners and a
Supernatural mystery, all rolled into one. This is Gail
Carriger's first novel and she's done a fabulous job of
creating a unique mythology for an alternative Victorian
era England then the one we're familiar with. Lot's of
imagination and more then a bit of the eccentric went
into the creation of this delightful debut which I loved
from the get go. You'll have fun reading this one.

******************************************************

Went to a baby shower today for a friend who's new
daughter is just a month old. Lots of pink clothes, lots of
cute accessories and lots of sweet girlie things that we all
had a lot of fun shopping for. Baby slept through most of it.

Have spent a lot of time walking in the past month as the
weather has been mostly fabulous. I think we're about three
weeks ahead of schedule in the growing season with trees
that should only be starting to leaf out actually in full leaf now
and flowers such as tulips and hyacinth in full bloom when
they should just be starting to bud. The weather forecasters
claim that it's El Nino (pardon if spelling is off) causing the
warmer and dryer then usual weather. Whatever it is, we're
enjoying every minute of it. I keep forgetting to take my camera
out walking with me so that I can get some pictures of the crab
apple and cherry trees in bloom, as well as other pretty signs of
Spring around town, to show you.

So that's about it from me for now I think. I do have a pile
of new books that I will be showing off in my next post, if I
remember that is. There was a book sale in town today and
I was one of the first in line for it. Also got a stack of new books
from the bookstore that I've been anxious to get my hands on.
My library's shelves downstairs are getting full again. Oh Oh!!

Take care all and thanks for dropping by.

Cheers!!

2010-04-19T20:45:00.004-04:00

Hello. My name is Judy. I have a problem. I'm an addict.
What is it that I am addicted to you may be asking?? Well,
let me tell yo....

"You're addicted to cross stitch!!!"

Oh ... well ... yes I guess I am. But that's not what I'm talking
about tonight. This addiction is actua ....

"I know!! I know!! You're addicted to books!!!"

Er ... um ... yes, I suppose that's true too. Yes, books are another
of my addictions. But that's also not what I'm trying to explain
here tonight. This addiction is much mor .....

"Blogging!!! It has to be blogging!! We're right this time
aren't we??? It's blogging!! It's obvious!!"

No!! Not blogging!!

Ahem. As I was saying, I am an addict. And the thing that
I've been addicted to so ardently lately, almost to the exclusion
of all else, is Ji .....

"Chocolate!! Cats!!! Walking??? Vampires???? Those
little candy coated Easter Egg thingies???"

JIGSAW PUZZLES!!!!!!!! I'm addicted to JIGSAW PUZZLES!!!

"Oh"

That's why I haven't been around blog land for awhile now.
I was loaned three puzzles by my Mom's friend Flora,
who loves to spend part of every day working on a puzzle,
and I haven't been able to leave them alone. I especially
adore puzzles made from Charles Wysocki paintings. I
collect those.

They sit out on the dining room table and they call to me.
I wander over and put a few pieces in while dinner is cooking
... and hopefully not burning. I put a few pieces in while
guarding Phoebe while she eats her dinner (Rupert tries to
steal her crunchies if we don't watch him). I sit down for
"just" half an hour before going to bed and end up an hour
or two later glancing at the clock and realizing that it's
almost 11:00 pm and we get up at 5:30 for work!!

Well, the third puzzle was finished this weekend and so
I have no new ones to do. I can finally return to my first
love which is ....

"Books!! Cross Stitch!! Blogging!! Cats!!"

All of the above actually. Hi gals (and any guys out
there as well). How's it going??

I finally bit the bullet and took one of my stitched pieces
into Michael's to be framed. I got one of their coupons
out of the local newspaper which gave me something like
60 % off the regular price and I put it to good use. This is
one of my most favorite projects of all time and I've been
wanting to get it framed ever since it was stitched about
two years ago. I'm delighted to have it done and it does
look pretty darn good. Someday I'm going to have me
one of those big, wondrous stitching walls like some of
you talented stitching folks out there. It'll probably take
a couple of decades given how slowly I stitch but I'll do it!!

This is a short post tonight just to get myself back into the
swing of things. I have a few things to post about next time
that might just interest yo ....

"Book reviews?? New stitching stash?? New book stash??
New stitching projects??? Personal observations on
currant events??"

Uh, yeah.

Missed ya!! Thanks for putting up with me.

Cheers!!

2010-03-21T20:46:00.016-04:00

I think that it's time that I updated this poor neglected blog,
don't you??? Time just has a habit of flying by and
before you (I) know it it's been three weeks since the last
update and people are deleting you (me) from their blog
lists, which isn't good.

First on my list of things to write about is progress on
Winter Wind. I'm happy to report (and show) that I've
finished another section of the design and have just
one more section to stitch which is the header.

I chose to stitch the square that the designer had used
in the centre of the design instead of choosing one of
the other four designs on the back of the chart. This
one is my favorite of the five and I am very pleased with
how it's turned out.

I'll confess to having the "mid-project blues" for a few
weeks and during that time my stitching was half hearted
and sporadic on this piece. But I wasn't about to start
another project and leave this one unfinished and
abandoned, possibly to turn into a UFO. I want to see
this one finished. Now that I'm so close to a finish
(relatively speaking) I've gotten something of my mojo
for it back and am eager to get going on the final bit.

Pictures can be clicked on to get a closer look.

Stash enhancement!! These arrived from Mary Kathryn
a few weeks ago and I'm tickled with them all. Of course.

Along with everyone else I kept an eager eye on the build
up to Nashville, and the releases from that weekend. I
have been through the listings on many on line stores
and have picked out the ones that appealed to me the most.

This design was first brought to my attention by Mary
Kathryn and as soon as I saw it I was mesmerized!!
It's Rose Quaker by Stickideen von der Wiehenburg
and I have to tell you that I have been dreaming about
this beauty every since first laying eyes on it. Then I
saw on Mary Kathryn's blog that she'd begun stitching
it and it truly is gorgeous!!!! I haven't ordered it yet
because funds are tight this month and this is not an
inexpensive chart, but it'll be ordered soon and I am
so looking forward to stitching it.

Which leads me to a question that I'd like to put out
there for anyone who'd care to advise me.

I'd like to try stitching on 40 count fabric. Don't know
if my eyes (even with my magnifier) will allow it, but
I'd like to try. Usually I stitch on even weave fabrics
such as Lugana or Jobelan. I'd like to hear from any
of you who stitch on 40 count fabric for advice on
what is the best fabric to use for this and any other
advice that you think that I should know.

I would order a small piece of whatever fabric in this
count is best and try a small project on it first and if
it is doable then I would try stitching Rose Quaker on
it. Maybe. We'll see.

I've also seen designs by La D Da and Brittercup Designs
that I have added to my list of "must haves". Hopefully
I can place an order in April.

Then there's this little gem. Need I say more???

************************************************************

Last weekend I got my dear, long suffering hubby
to drive me to Michael's on the pretext that I
needed a skein of DMC 3371 to finish Winter
Wind off with. The night before we went I thought
that I'd better go through my DMC spares and
doubles pile to check and see what I did have in
there just in case I already had that color. And I
did!! Rats!! No reason to go to Micheal's then,
right?? Oh but then I realized that I was awfully
low on DMC #3777. I would have enough of it
to finish Winter Wind, but what if I needed it for
another project in the future??? I'd be caught short!!
The horror!!!

Excuse intact the trip to Michael's happily remained
on the weekend agenda. I got a handful of DMC
threads to add to the spares and doubles pile and
got to browse through the store for a bit as well.

When we got home I decided that I needed to sort
through my S&D pile and perhaps work on winding
some of those threads on bobbins and putting them
in my S&D box, which would make it easier to keep
track of what I had.

I then decided, after a day of winding thread on bobbins,
and putting them in my S&D box, that it's an excellent
way of encouraging meditation. No need to chant mantras,
light tapers, burn incense or do whatever else it is one does to
enter into a meditative state. Just wind skeins of DMC thread
onto bobbins. Over and over again. Skein after skein.

Not only is it relaxing, but it takes piles of floss
that have been tossed willy nilly into a basket
like those above.

Sorts them into color groupings.

And then places them neatly, numerically into my
floss box, where they encourage productivity and
creativity without frustration and chaos.

I still have quite a bit of work ... sorry ....
meditating ahead of me, but that box will be full
before you know it.

******************************************************

I have had to spend some quality time at the dentist
in the past week getting a couple of fillings done. You
should know that I don't handle dentists visits very well.
So two weeks ago when I was dreading the appointment
that lay ahead of me that day it was almost impossible
to keep my mind focused on my work, and my nerves
became more and more frayed as the time grew nearer.
I shook and I shivered (mostly on the inside, but not all)
and forced each step of the trip to my dreaded destiny of
dental doom. Only to discover that my appointment
was for the following week!!!

A week later, on the actual real day of the appointment, I was
a bit less freaked out then I'd been the week before, probably
because I'd worked some of it out dreading the bogus
appointment. The dentist knows how nervous I get and
was very kind and accommodating during the procedure.
It was done in no time at all, with minimal fuss and bother.

This Wednesday I'm going to another Dental appointment.
This time it will be for a root canal. The specialist will give
me something to relax me and make the procedure more
bearable, both for me and for him. Wish me luck!!
Wish him luck too. He'll need it!!

A few book reviews to write here. The first being the
biography of Beatrix Potter that I'd picked up at the
used book store about a month ago. It took me three
weeks to read this tome, which is about par for the
course for me when it comes to biographies. I don't
sail through them as easily as I do fiction.

What a fascinating woman Ms Potter was!! Her
artist's skills are obvious and well documented, but
her knowledge and her work in the fields of sheep
breeding and in the studying of the natural world in
general and in particular the studying and painting
of fungi and small animals are impressive and
extensive and her observations and her theories
are still viable and in use today.

She was a passionate proponent of the conservation
of the farms, villages and wilderness areas of the
Lake District and used the money's earned from her
books to buy up large sections of the area to save
them from being lost to development and exploitation.
Upon her death most of her property was left to the
National Trust.

But Beatrix was also a dutiful Victorian daughter who
was expected, by society and by her parents, to dedicate
her adult life to the care and well being of her father and
mother to the exclusion of any kind of a life of her own.
That she somehow managed to look after her difficult
and demanding parents while still pursuing her own
dreams and interests is a testament to her strength of
character and her determination to live a useful life.

This is a well written and very well researched book
that brings Beatrix Potter to life in it's pages and
reveals the complex, strong and determined woman
who was a talented artist and writer of children's
books, a scholar, a naturalist and a conservationist.

There are seven House of Night books out now, and
number eight is due out sometime this month I
think. I've enjoyed all the books in this young adult
paranormal series and recommend them highly.
Quick reads too. I'd suggest reading them in order
though since the story continues through each book
and a lot has happened to make up the back story
building to the newest installment of the series.

Phil was taking a nap on Sunday and Rupert, his
constant shadow, soon joined him on the bed,
bringing along a small token of his affection to give
to Phil. The little brightly colored "crinkle" ball
there is one of four that Rupert "gives" to us whenever
he wants to let us know that he's missing us, or
wants to be made a fuss of. Often when Phil comes
out of the bathroom after his shower Rupert will
have brought a couple of those fuzzy, colorful balls
right to the door for him, and Rupert will be
waiting right next to them for his buddy. So funny,
and so sweet.

Spring like weather arrived here a few weeks ago,
and we reveled in it let me tell you!!! Temperatures
in the double digits soon got rid of the last of our
snow (good riddance!!) and now the crocuses
and the daffodils are coming up. The robins are
back in town, but the gold finches are still wearing
their drab, olive green feathers. The chipmunks
are running around in the garden and the red winged
black birds are making pigs of themselves at our
bird feeders.

The warmer weather has meant longer walks out
doors for me and I'm finally getting the opportunity
to break in the new pair of running shoes that
Darlene gave me last Christmas. No more ice patches
or deep puddles to worry about thus no need for boots.
I jump over the muddy bits.

Mind you, the nicest weather was during the
weekdays, while gloomy gray rainy weather was
reserved for the weekends which was annoying,
but what can you do?? This week is going to be
cooler again with more seasonable temperatures
and you can pretty much bet that there will be at
least one more snow storm before mid April
since that always happens every year.

I guess that's about all from me for the moment.
Thank you everyone who left such nice comments
about me reaching Lifetime at Weight Watchers.
The support that I've received from everyone in
the past year has really helped me to achieve my
weight loss goals and kept my spirits up.

Take care! Cheers!

2010-02-21T19:54:00.014-05:00

Hi there!! Well, here we are again. This is most
definitely not going to be anther epic post this week
(okay, who just let out a sigh of relief out there????)
but there is stitching progress, a few new stash goodies,
and feline cuteness, so stick around and we'll get started.

Not a huge amount of stitching going on this week, but
some basic stuff was done that will allow me to concentrate
on the prettier colors and parts of the design this week.

I finished the verse and extended the border to enclose
that area of the sampler. At the bottom of the third
line of the verse is the halfway point for this design. At
this point I had to adjust the fabric on my Q-snaps to
allow me to continue with the stitching comfortably so
the bottom of the design will not be visible in future
progress photos.

This is the rest of the weeks progress, mostly done this
weekend. That wavy border gave me some grief as the
frogs came home to roost, and I had to pick out several
mistakes made when I either miscounted or just ignored
the chart altogether and stitched the pattern as it was
imagined in my brain. The scene inside the square will
be solid stitching so I'm thinking that it's going to take a
bit of time to accomplish. We'll see how much time I
have to stitch this week.

I don't usually collect the pretty little accessories that
can be a fun sideline for stitchers. I have a couple of
magnetic needle minders, a lovely scissor fob made
and given to me by Kathy last summer (my camera
steadfastly refuses to take any kind of a half way
decent picture of it, unfortunately) and a couple of
pairs of scissors. The scissors are one pair in the shape
of a rooster and a pair of the ubiquitous stork scissors
that everyone in the world has.

Then I saw the Kelmscott Designs Tudor Rose
scissors when they came out last year. Oh Boy!!!
I loved them the moment that I laid eyes on them.
When I placed my order with Mary Kathryn at
EHandcrafts for the newest LHN designs I also
ordered those gorgeous scissors, and they arrived
this week. Love 'em, love 'em, love 'em!!!

The chart is another Ebay win and I love this so
much. A wonderful Quaker design, in beautiful
colors, with a verse taken from the bible that was
also used in that classic song from the 60's sung
by The Byrds and written by Pete Seeger called
Turn Turn Turn. Come on now... you all know it
I'm sure. You're probably humming it to yourself
right now.

**********************************************

Weigh in at Weight Watchers this week had me
caught in a dilemma as I worried that I'd put on
too much weight because of my indulgences of
my holiday week, and then fretted that I'd not
put on enough to finally get off of maintenance
and on lifetime.

I'm relieved and delighted to tell you that I
was only up by one pound, and that was enough
to allow me to become a lifetime member of
Weight Watchers!!! Woo Hoo!!!

What a relief, let me tell you. So now I only have
to go in to meeting once a month for weighing in,
and as long as I stay within two pounds of my
goal (above) I don't have to pay any more money
to Weight Watchers. I plan to attend two meetings
a month, to keep up with the friends that I've made
there, to continue to learn how to handle my food
issues, and to pick up the boxes of snacks and things
that are only available at the meetings here.

*************************************************

Yesterday I was at the hairdressers by eight thirty
in the morning for a trim and a color/rinse. This
is the third time I've been in to have my hair colored
and each time I go I have it darkened a bit more
to see how I'll like it. I've always wanted brown or
auburn colored hair with red highlights so that is
what we're striving for. I've also invested in a hair
straightening thingy to use at home to help smooth
my uneven, frizzy hair. I'm getting quite fashionable
these days with new clothes and new hair style and
color. I hardly recognize myself. :)

We have had some nice, warmer weather in the past
week, with temperatures around +1 or +2 Celsius, which
is all the encouragement we need to have us dreaming
of Spring and shedding a few layers of Winter wear.
Unfortunately tomorrow we're suppose to get about
10 cm of snow and it looks like the weatherfolks are
calling for snow all week long. Nuts!!!

No book review this week I'm afraid. I've been
reading the biography of Beatrix Potter and it's quite
interesting, but it's also a slow read for me. Lots of
information and lots of names to process and remember.
And it's one heck of a big book.

It always seems like I'm featuring funny or cute pictures

of Rupert here, and if I do have a picture of Phoebe she's
usually with Rupert and not solo. So today I'm posting
two pictures that feature Phoebe alone! Above shows
her sitting, with one paw daintily raised, on ... er .... the
kitchen counter. Um... No, we do not encourage this
behavior in our cats. I guess there were birds on the deck
and she was looking out the back door from the higher
vantage point of the counter. She got down as soon as
the photo shoot was over.

And this picture does show Phoebe and Rupert but
since all you can see of Rupert is his back legs and
feet Phoebe is the queen of the shot. They're sleeping
in a spot of sun light in the living room, side by side
but with heads at opposite ends.

I'm thinking that I've covered all the topics that I had
to write about this week so we'll finish off this weekend's
blog post by wishing you all a wonderful work week,
with lots of time to stitch and read. Take care and
thanks for visiting.

Cheers!

2010-02-15T10:13:00.010-05:00

Today is the last day of my first week's vacation (insert
dramatic sigh here) of this year. Today is also Family
Day in Ontario, which is a new holiday on the vacation
calender for us. It's only been in existence for two years.
So DH is also home today and right now is downstairs
playing with the document shredder and a pile of paper
which requires disposing of. The hum of the shredder,
and the whir of the dishwasher are the soundtrack of my
morning, along with the muted click of the computer keys.

Of course the past week included stitching time so I have
an update on Winter Wind. I just have one word left in
the verse to add, and the border to extend and this
section of the sampler will be done. I hope to do that
this afternoon after taking care of a few household chores
that need doing.

It's funny how the colors of the threads being used in a
Prairie Schooler project look so uninspiring and dull
when you first pull them. Shaking your head and thinking
"I'm not too sure about this....yawn!!" you put the first few
stitches into the project, work at it for a while and suddenly
start to think "ahhh...this is so pretty!!".

Paid a visit to a local second hand book store the other day
and found a lovely biography of Beatrix Potter in excellent
condition amongst the biographies of movie stars,
politicians and historical figures. Of course I pounced on
it and brought it home, eager to get started reading it.

The book reminded me that I had "Miss Potter" in my DVD
collection which I had never watched so Friday afternoon
I sat down in front of the computer and watched it. What a
lovely movie! And I mean that both story wise and visually.
For you Beatrix Potter fans out there (Hi Sandra!!) this movie
is a must see but it's a wonderful story for anyone who loves
these wonderful little books and the talented artist/writer
who created them.

Valentine's day I spent the afternoon visiting my Mom.
I had lunch with her and we visited and chatted the
afternoon away. DH gave me a lovely bouquet of red
and white carnations and a beautiful card, pictured
above, to celebrate the day. Unfortunately I have to
keep the flowers shut up in the craft/computer room
because both cats would love nothing more then to
get their paws on them and play with them and then
eat them.

A few weeks ago I paid a visit to Mary Kathryn's blog
(caution: visit at your own risk) and discovered that
there were some new Little House and Country Cottage
Needlework charts out. Oh, Oh!!! My fingers seemed
to click on the EHandcrafts logo of their own accord
and the next thing I knew I was ordering these little
beauties. Love 'em!!!

This week I visited Mary Kathryn again (you'd think
I'd know better, but I can't seem to help myself) and
there she was announcing four new Prairie Schooler
charts! Oooooooohhhh!!! Ahhhhhh!! Eeeeee!!!
Sigh!!! I expect they'll be here sometime around the
beginning of March.

Ebay is another place I should really try and avoid. But
you all know that I'm weak and have no self control.
The Prairie Schooler on the left is an oldie that is a
welcome addition to my PS collection, and the Leisure
Arts chart on the right was purchased for a mere pittance
but is full of colorful designs that delighted me when I
first saw them. Even if I don't use the scripture verses
the borders/bands will be great to stitch and adapt to
other projects if I so choose. The book in the middle
I found at the Humane Society thrift store and was
only .50 cents. Lots of cute Christmas motifs to play
with in this one and you can't beat the price.

Our friends Charmaine and Matt's eldest daughter
graduates from University this week (congratulations
Danielle!!!) and was accepted for a five month research
position located in (wait for it...) Switzerland!!! I know,
it's a dirty job but someone's got to do it. So on Saturday
we all went to Charmaine and Matt's for a celebration.

Charmaine is a phenomenal cook. She makes meals
that you will be dreaming about for weeks after eating
them. Saturday's feast included little puff pastries
stuffed with creme cheese and bacon, corn chowder,
little corn muffins, various salads and turkey burgers
with all kinds of wonderful toppings.

And dessert?? See the picture above??? Chocolate
brownie pudding, hot from the oven, with a scoop of
vanilla ice cream. I'll pause here for a moment while
you check out the picture. You may wish to move your
keyboard so as not to drool on it.

As you can see DH thoroughly enjoyed the meal and
was quite enthusiastic about the turkey burgers.

The latest two books that I've read were both lightweight
Supernatural Romances. Both are by authors that
I had never read before and in both cases I picked up
the first two books in each series so that I would be
able to move on to the next book without having to wait
to order them, if I so chose.

Karen White's " The House on Tradd Street" takes place
in Charleston and is about real estate agent Melanie
Middleton who specializes in selling old houses, though
she herself does not share her client's enthusiasm and
fascination with the historic wreaks that require tons of
work, sweat and money to restore and maintain. It
doesn't help that Melanie also has the dubious gift of
being able to see ghosts.

Melanie is shocked and dismayed when she unexpectantly
inherits a run down, historical old house on Tradd Street
from an elderly gentleman she'd only met a few days
previous to his death. The terms of the will require that
she live in the house for a year before being able to sell it,
and the funds attached to the estate be used to restore the
house to it's former glory.

With the assistance of writer Jack Trenholm who offers
his personal expertise to help restore the house in exchange
for being allowed to write about the mysterious disappearance
of a former resident of the house, who happened to be the
mother of the old man who left Melanie the house.

As Melanie and Jack discover unexpected connections between
Melanie's family and the former residents of the Tradd Street
house, and old rumors of diamonds hidden in the house during
the Civil War begin to evolve into something more then fiction,
an evil presence in the house makes itself known and threatens
Melanie's life if she does not abandon the property, it's secrets
and it's ghosts.

I liked this book. I didn't love it. Don't know why for sure.
The character of Melanie for some reason didn't charm me,
and I found the secondary characters more fun then the leads.
The story was predictable in many ways, which usually doesn't
bother me much, but was just one more thing to put me off
in this case. I'll read the next book at some point, since I have
it, and hope that it will hold more interest for me.

This is one of those books centered on a knitting store
and it's proprietress. Not an epic, literary opus but a
charming, magical and very funny story.

Sugar Maple Vermont is a delightful, picture postcard
small town that draws in the tourists. The knitting
store Sticks and String, owned by Chloe Hobbs is a
popular destination for knitters. A place where
"your yarn never tangles, your sleeves always come out
the same length and you always, always get gauge."

But Sugar Maple Vermont has a secret that the
tourists are never allowed to see. For it is home to
witches, vampires, pixies and elves who hide their
otherworldly selves behind mundane facades and
depend on the protection of an ancient spell to
conceal and safeguard their magical town from
threats and exposure to the mortal world.

But the ancient spell is fading, and a suspicious
death has garnered the attention of the authorities
who send a mortal detective Luke MacKenzie to
investigate Sugar Maple's very first murder. Now
the town's residents are scrambling to present a
united, mundane front to the suspicious new
comer until a way is found to bolster the spell of
protection over the town and the mysterious death
is explained to the satisfaction of both the
detective and his superiors.

Chloe is the last descendant of the witch who cast the
protective spell, and is the last in a long line of
powerful sorceresses. But she herself has never
developed any powers and is not likely to do so
unless she falls in love and provides the town with
a daughter of her own to continue her line. Plus
manages to locate the missing book of Spells that
will (hopefully) provide the tools necessary to restore
the spell. The trouble is Chloe finds herself drawn like
a magnet to the very mortal, very human Luke
MacKenzie and that's a mix that can only lead to heartache
and big trouble.

I really enjoyed this one. Again, it's a light read and
fairly predictable, but I loved the heroine and the
detective and their struggle to understand the incendiary
attraction that causes sparks whenever they touch, and
the irresistible urge to fall into each others arms and
make out like bandits. The secondary characters were fun
too. A nice magical love story with a bit of mystery and
menace mixed in for flavoring.

Rupert, who never seems to run out of new places to nap.
In this case underneath the tablecloth covering the TV
tray that holds my printer here in the craft/computer
room. Cave and blanket all in one.

But eventually he has to move to a softer, more
desirable place. And why is this spot desirable??
Why, because Phoebe is laying there already. So
he has to shove his way onto the blanket, and she
has to give way and make due with his backside as
a pillow.

Weight Watchers update. A week ago my friend
Darlene came for a movie weekend. She, DH and
I all went to see Avatar in 3D and it was fabulous!!
For dinner that night we ordered in pizza. Two
medium sizes, one Hawaiian style and one with
lots of meat and cheese and stuff. The Hawaiian
had lots of cheese too actually. Anyways, it's been
almost a year since we'd last ordered in pizza and
I thoroughly enjoyed scarfing down five slices (!!).
For dessert I bought a Mississippi Mud Pie and
had a big hunk of that. So I figured Tuesday's
weigh in would be a breeze for making goal by
gaining a couple of pounds. Ha! I was the
same weight as the week before.

So this week I've been very, very bad. (Did I
mention the Chocolate Brownie Pudding???)
I won't go into all the gory details (lemon loaf,
pumpkin spice loaf, crusty bread etc) but I
weighed myself at Curves on Saturday and
their scale has me up about three pounds.
We'll see if it sticks around until Tuesday.

This post has turned into quite the epic but I've finally
run out of things to say so will close off for now. Thanks
for dropping by and sticking with this rambling, never
ending narrative. Take care and happy reading and
stitching until next time.

Cheers!!!!

2010-01-31T20:26:00.002-05:00

I am very pleased with my progress on Winter Wind this
week. I have mentioned before that I am not a fast
stitcher and finding time to stitch can be difficult at
times. But this week I took every opportunity, including
a nice chunk of Saturday afternoon and evening, to work
on this piece and the results show it. I am now ready to
stitch the verse in the center of the design.

This week will be more hectic because it's the first of the
month, our most busiest time at work and we're also
very short staffed. So I may have some late nights
that will curtail my stitching and blogging time. But
in one weeks time I'll be on vacation for a week and then
I'll be able to stitch a lot more. Which means that I'll
probably start another project. Maybe. We'll see.
I can't wait!!!

I mentioned in an earlier post that I'd ordered some new
stash, and to my delight the package arrived from Stitching
Bits and Bobs on Friday. In this order I chose charts from
designers that I don't usually collect, with a couple of
exceptions.

Since being on Weight Watcher's I've found that I've
been drawn to Casey Buonaugurio's sweet designs,
more so then usual though I can't imagine why, and
so I ordered three of them to add to my collection.
The design by Plum Pudding NeedleArt which
celebrates the many varieties of apples also appealed
to me since I've been eating a lot more apples during
the past year. Hmmmm.... Another food related chart.
Then there's The Cafe by CCN. A cafe is where they
serve food. Oh dear!!! Ummm...

Lizzie Kate's Life's a Stitch bucks the trend and deals
with my other obsession. I love this design, but not
in the colors chosen by the designer. I recently saw
a blog post with this piece stitched in colors picked by
the stitcher and loved it. Wish I could remember who
it was now.

The rest of the order. My first designs from My Big Toe,
the four sweet little girls from Imaginating's Joan Elliott,
and the wonderful Midnight Watch from Blackbird Designs.
See. No food connections to these designs whatsoever!!!

And stash of another sort. More books from my ever
growing wish list at Indigo/Chapters. Laurie R. King
writes fabulous mysteries, including her own take on
Sherlock Holmes, although this book is not one of
those. It was on sale when I checked my wish list items
and so I was obliged to pounce on it. Hotel on the
Corner of Bitter and Sweet has been featured on Book
Browse and other book blogs and comes highly
recommended. Hiroshima will be a difficult read
because of the subject matter (survivors of the
bombing of that city tell their stories) but I've read
other books by this author and this is a story that
should never be forgotten. And finally the two
paperbacks are by Karen White and are light reads, one
the sequel to the other, and there are ghosts involved
in each book. Lots of great reading to look forward to.

I finished Girl in a Blue Dress this week. It is the story
of a hugely famous, beloved author from 19th century
England, who wrote about the poverty stricken world
that he grew up in, and his relationship with his wife.
Yes, this book is a fictionalized account of the life of
Charles Dickens, with the names changed but many of
the infamous facts of Dickens life woven into the story.

It begins with the death of the author and is told by his
widow Dorothea, who has not seen her husband for ten
years and is not invited to be a part of his funeral. A
virtual recluse for those ten years, separated from her
children, her place in the home taken over by her own
younger sister, Dorothea takes the reader through the
events leading up to the estrangement from her husband
and follows her as she ventures out into the world and
confronts the sister who took her place, as well as the
mistress who turned her husband from her.

I knew a little about the strange relationship that Charles
Dickens had with one of his wife's younger sisters who
died young, and I knew that he and his wife had parted
after some years of marriage and eight (!!) children, so
I was curious to read this book and see what the author
would have to say about this very well known man who's
books are still read and loved today. It was a well written,
fascinating story which has received a lot of acclaim for
it's first time author. It reveals the era, it's people, it's
principals and it's flaws with well researched precision
and detail. I enjoyed it very much and am now on the
lookout for a Dickens biography to see how much truth
was written into the novel. It'll be interesting to compare.

******************************************************

Weight Watchers this week: I gained 1.4 pounds. My
facilitator was pleased. My DH was pleased. My Mom
was pleased. Me??? The phobia about gaining weight
and falling back into the old me look had me muttering a
halfhearted "Yippee!!". But if I can gain another pound
by this Tuesday I can become Lifetime and that's my goal.
I've not been actively trying to eat more this week though.
I just plan on wearing my jeans and a heavy sweater when
I weigh in. So there!!

The January thaw in this part of Ontario came to a crashing
halt last week as the temperatures plunged and we were
treated to temperatures in the -17 Celsius range. Brrrr!!!
It's going to be warming up to a more clement temperature
of -2 now that the weekend is over which will be much more
bearable. Tuesday is Ground Hog day. If the rapacious
rodent is hauled out of his den on that day and sees his
shadow we're in for six more weeks of winter. Oh fun!!

Rupert will join Phoebe and I in the computer/craft
room at night. His preferred place to sleep at the
moment is behind the door of the room. Why??

I can't think of anything else that needs reporting
here at the moment so I'll finish off with a thank
you to all my visitors for dropping by, and I hope
that you all have a wonderful week. Take care!

Cheers!

2010-01-24T19:12:00.004-05:00

I thought that I'd check in and show off a weeks worth
of stitching on Winter Wind. Don't know if I have much
else to write about though so we'll just have to see how
we go and I'll try not to prattle on about nothing for too
long.

I've just about finished the main part of the house,
although the window panes have yet to be filled in,
and there's still a bit of roof to stitch in and then the
two chimneys. I couldn't resist stitching in the two
trees this week otherwise I would have probably
finished the house. The more that I add to this
design the more I love it. But that's Prairie
Schooler designs for you.

I ordered a few things from Anita's Little Stitches for the first
time a few weeks ago and was thrilled with her service. I swear
that the day I placed my order was the day that she mailed it
out to me. My main reason for ordering was to get a selection
of mesh bags for kitting up and transporting projects so I ordered
a variety of sizes and colors and am quite pleased with them.

I also ordered a couple of cuts of fabric, just because. The
one on the left is Bone Lugana, which is a favorite color of
mine for fabric, in 28 count and the other piece is Vintage
Marble Lugana in 25 count. This has a really nice marbling
effect on it (hence the name) and I'm eager to try my first
stitching project on it. Wonder what it'll be. Anita threw
in a package of needles with my order which was incredibly
nice of her.

********************************************************

Yesterday I spent practically the entire day at a gathering
to celebrate the birthday of a friend. We do this every
year and it's become something fun to look forward to at the
end of January. There were nine of us gals there for lunch
and it was a great afternoon of good food and talk and catching
up. Lots of talk. It was 9:30 in the evening before I got home.
As I said...lots of talk.

Today I spent the day in my pajamas. Outside it was dreary,
dark and, in the afternoon, it pelted with rain off and on. I
puttered around the house a bit, doing a few necessary chores
and then I sat down and stitched for a couple of hours and
also blogged a bit. It was great fun and so very relaxing.

********************************************************

Weight Watchers update. I dropped another pound as of
last Tuesday. I'm baffled. I'm eating so much and trying
to follow my facilitator's advice to eat lots of protein, but
still I loose. I should have eaten more of those chocolate
biscuits I guess. Note about those biscuits: I went to have
a few tonight and discovered that someone had beaten me
to it and polished them off!!! Now they're all gone until
next Christmas when, hopefully, Loblaws will carry them
again. It's probably for the best, but I wasn't too impressed
at the time I realized that there were none left.

This week is my sixth week on maintenance and I'm
suppose to be within two pounds, below or above, my
goal weight of 146. I was 141.6 last Tuesday. We'll see
if I managed to gain anything this week. I've never
thought to ask what happens if you're not within those
boundaries at the end of the six week period. Do you
start another six week period? Gackkk!!!!

I finished reading The Book of Illumination this week. I
just left it lying on the kitchen table and whenever I had
a few minutes I picked it up and read a few pages, or
chapters. And I loved every page of it. This is a first
time novel for these two writers and I sincerely hope
that there will be lots more to look forward to in this
series.

It's about the theft of a fabled and priceless illuminated
manuscript from the 12th century called The Book of
Kildare, a treasure that many scholars have doubted
ever existed. Helping to search for the manuscript and
the person responsible for it's theft is Anza O'Malley, a
single mother who is a bookbinder by trade, and who
is also able to see and speak to ghosts. The manuscript
has been accompanied over the centuries by the ghosts
of two monks and Anza must deal with them when the
book is stolen. Anza also meets the ghost of a butler in
the home of the owner of the manuscript who also
requires her help to retrieve a missing document from
his past. All this while she must also spend time
looking after the needs and demands of her five year old
son Henry.

Anza is a wonderful heroine with a great
sense of humor and a caring heart who gamely tackles
the problems that she encounters, whether it be the
chauvinistic abbot and his refusal to deal with anyone
other then an Bishop or Cardinal of the church, or her
son's participation in his school play, with compassion,
determination and a great deal of forbearance. I loved
her.

One of the authors of this book is the person upon whom
the Ghost Whisperer series is based and she is a
consultant for that show, which I've never watched I
should add. I really loved this book because of Anza
and I recommend it for anyone who loves a mystery
with great characters and no gore or excessive violence.

I'll end this weeks post with a photo of Phoebe, trying
to take a nap in the bathroom. Hope everyone has a
great week and thanks for visiting.

Cheers!

2010-01-17T16:36:00.009-05:00

I've been working on my latest project for two weeks now
and felt that I had enough done that I could show it off to
you all. The chart is Prairie Schooler's "Winter Wind" and
I've been stitching the bigger design.

I began by stitching the alphabet and as always I started in the
bottom, left hand corner. Once the alphabet was done I began
to fill in the white background. I wondered at the time if I
should have done it the other way around, and worried that I
might find the background boring to do. Fortunately I found
that it was actually fun to figure a "path" for myself around
each letter and was eager to get it finished so that the full
impact of the alphabet would be seen against the "snow" white
background. I'm now building the house and loving the DMC
#3777 that the design calls for.

I'm trying to stitch at least three strands of floss per night to
keep this project moving, and I'm also trying to do a couple
of blog visits per night to make some attempt to keep up with
my commenting. Some nights (such as Tuesdays which is
shopping/Weight Watchers night) I have less time at the end
of the day then others to follow this plan exactly, but I do
what I can.

Speaking of Weight Watchers....

Lost over two pounds between the 5th and the 12th of January.
Am currently on maintenance which means that I'm suppose
to be maintaining my goal weight. So my facilitator upped my
daily points to 29 and reminded me to eat more protein. This
Tuesday is my 6th week on maintenance and I'm suppose to be
within two pounds of goal. Um...not so much. We can adjust
my goal somewhat, but I still need to gain two or three pounds
to complete the maintenance program. Ironic, isn't it??

Last night a friend came over for tea and a chat. We were at
it until 1:00 am! We got into the chocolate biscuits that our
friends from Scotland brought me at Christmas. They are
Marks and Spencer's chocolate covered biscuits and I am
crazy about them. I ate quite a few of them. At least six!
DH and I took the rest of them over to my Mom today and
left them with her to be shared and enjoyed with her friends
and to get them the heck away from me!! Perhaps gaining
those two to three pounds won't be too much trouble after all.

I'm still waiting for two stash packages (!!!) to arrive
from different locations. One will be awhile because
of an out of stock leaflet but the other I know is in
the mail somewhere. I did receive my monthly
addition to my Threadworx collection this week,
plus a chart that I scored off of Ebay which happened
to tickle my fancy when I saw it there one day. Love
the colors in these two designs but I had no idea of
how BIG they are when stitched on 28 count fabric.
Oh well.

A book order did arrive in the mail this week as well. I've
got a wish list a mile long on Indigo/Chapters site of all
the lovely, tempting books that I want to add to my
library and these made a wee, tiny dent in that list. I
started "Girl in a Blue Dress" as my travel read and on
Friday night nearly read past my bus stop because I
was so absorbed in the story.

The book on the top of the stack "The Book of
Illumination" I casually picked up just to read the
first couple of pages to see what it was like since I'd
never read anything by these two writers before.
I'm over half way through it and can't help but pick it
up whenever I have a spare second. While waiting for
the dinner to cook, while eating breakfast, while
passing the time on the porcelain throne .... uh .... well,
you get the idea.

Actually, the only writer in this pile that I've read before
is Michelle Moran who focuses on Egyptian history for
her fictional stories. She's a brilliant writer.

I finished Men of the Otherworld this week and it was
fabulous!! I adore Kelley Armstrong. Her sense of
humor, her wonderful, colorful characters and the
mythology that she's created all make her stories irresistible
to me. An author who's books I buy without hesitation or
second thought as soon as they come out. And of course
she's from Ontario so I can take pride in helping to support
a fellow Canuck.

Rupert lazing under the Christmas tree. Dignity, as we all know,
is very important to a cat and must be maintained at all times.
More or less.

DH and I dismantled the Christmas tree and packed away all
the decorations a week ago on the Saturday. It took four and a
half hours to do that. Sunday I vacuumed, dusted and cleaned
the house and returned the every day knickknacks (once I'd
found them again in all the places that I'd stashed them in to
get them out of sight during the holidays) to their proper
places. It's kind of nice to have the house back to normal
again, but I do miss the Christmas tree, which seemed to look
especially nice this season for some reason.

The new Little House Needleworks and Country Cottage
Needleworks designs that are coming out next week have
caught my eye and got me itching to reach for my mouse,
my credit card and my "gotta have" list. "Rose Hill
Plantation" and "Liberty Lane" and perhaps "Mississippi
Riverboat" are the ones I love most.

Thank you everyone who commented on my last post
and were so generous in their compliments on my first
finish of 2010, and for my ongoing weight loss battle.

I'm off to stitch on "Winter Wind" for awhile so thanks
for dropping by. Hope you have a great week.

Cheers!!

2010-01-03T10:38:00.003-05:00

Happy New Year!!! Here we are at 2:00 am on Friday
morning. The party is about to break up and the weary
celebrators are about to disperse to home and bed after
talking, laughing and eating their way into the New
Year. I'm on the right, seated. DH is in the middle, in
the back row, in the black and white stripped shirt. The
short (!!!) guy on the left (arms crossed) is our little
godson, the actor.

After getting up for work at 5:30, working all day and
being very, very busy, getting home at 5:40 and making
dinner, heading back out at 7:30 to our friend's home
for our yearly gathering, and staying out way, way, way
past our normal bedtimes, DH and I fell into bed at
2:30 and didn't stir until 8:30 (him) or 9:30 (me) New
Years Day. And then it was only because Phoebe was
demanding breakfast.

I spent all day Friday in my pajamas, stitching and
blogging and listening to music. It was wonderful.
On Saturday I walked down to Curves and worked
out, which was the first time since last Monday that
I'd had a chance to do that. The walk to and from
Curves was a cold, frigid one as the temperatures
dropped considerably from the previous day...and
year. When I got home it was to settle once again
into my stitching chair for more blissful, all the
rest of the day stitching. And the result?? My
first happy dance of the year.

Lizzie Kate
Christmas is Forever
special edition kit for 2008
Stitched with Crescent Colors and a couple of DMC threads.

Loved the wonderful, bright colors that went into this design.
And I love stitching with Crescent Colors threads so much.
I am very happy to have finished this one in such a timely
manner and am thinking that it would make a wonderful
flat fold finish.

I don't usually do the New Years resolution thing, but if
I did I'd want this years to be to try and stitch more. I'm off
to a good start, but it is vacation time so not our normal
routine. I'd also like to attempt my first "finishing" of
some of my stitching and even frame a few more pieces as
well. We'll see how all of that works out.

And yes, I have started a new project. I spent a couple
of hours rummaging through my stash, from charts to
magazines to books, and then back to the charts again.
Finally I settled on something that suits the season, and
that will keep my well occupied for some time I suspect,
slow stitcher that I am. Pictures to come in my next post.

I haven't blogged much about my reading lately, so I'll
do a brief catch up here of the final reads of 2009.

The first was a book that I saw reviewed and recommended
on a couple of book blogs and was intrigued and eager to
read it for myself. So much so that when it arrived here in
the mail from Chapters I started reading the first few pages,
to see what it was like, and ended up temporarily abandoning
the book that I was reading at the time to keep on going with
this one and finishing this story in a week. Keep in mind that
this book is over 500 pages long too.

Categorize this one as Young Adult, supernatural fiction but
know that it's a wonderfully written, enthralling story that is
first and foremost rich in character and visual imagery and
a well imagined history and back story. And no drippy, mournful,
vampires and dreary, obsessed teenage girls. There's wry humor
and a strong feeling for family, and for life in a small town. I
really enjoyed this book and recommend it highly.

I finished off the 2008 reading year and began the 2009
year reading my first trilogy by Robyn Carr, again based
on recommendations from book blogs. I finished off this
year by reading the second trilogy and enjoying each and
every book.

Yes, these are somewhat formulaic, and the heros and
heroines are somewhat too good to be true but on the
other hand these are books to be read for escape and
pleasure, not to experience real life in all its disappoint-
ments and warts and what-have-you.

I enjoyed being sucked into these stories, falling for the
handsome, rugged men and the lovely, strong yet
vulnerable women, and the quirky characters that live
in the small town of Virgin River. So much so that,
like eating peanuts, I couldn't read just one. I have
picked up three more books by this author that also
take place in Virgin River and feature characters
introduced in the first books. If that's not a
recommendation for these novels then I don't know
what is.

***********************************************

Thank you everyone who left comments on my last
post about my weight loss and new look. It's going
to be an interesting year ahead as I work to find
that perfect balance of eating, working out and
relaxing that will allow me to maintain this look.

I've been naughty and ordered some new charts
and fabric and some of those mesh bags from
various places. The charts are mostly from
designers that I don't normally collect because
I wanted to expand my horizons and try new
things. Pictures to come when the stash does.

The end of the Yuletide holidays is always a bit
depressing as we face the rest of the long, cold
winter without the lights, the decorations, the
food, the parties and the time away from work
to enjoy.

Will any of you be watching the Winter Olympics???
The Olympic torch came through Georgetown before
Christmas, but it came through at 7:00 am on a bitterly
cold Saturday morning and I for one was not inclined
to leave my warm bed to stand on the side of the
road to watch it go by. I'm not keen on sports or the
Olympics anyways so I probably won't be watching
any of the coverage while it's on.

I think I'd best finish off today's post since there are
chores to be done, and a new project to stitch on once
those chores are done. Hope you all have a great
week settling back into the normal routines of life
and get lots of time to stitch and read. Thanks for
visiting.

Cheers!

2009-12-27T16:29:00.015-05:00

It doesn't seem possible that Christmas is already over, and
it won't be long before the New Year arrives. Time has flown
by and I can't really explain where it went and how it got away
from me. So a belated Merry Christmas to everyone who
still finds their way here after such a long silence on my part.
Hope it was wonderful and magical and everything that you
had hoped it would be.

For me this year has been about getting fit, loosing weight
and building up my nearly non-existent self esteem. Joining
Weight Watchers was my first step towards those goals.
I attended my first meeting on March 31st, and since then
have only missed one meeting. I started walking short
distances as my first attempt at exercise and slowly built up
my endurance and my strength while increasing my route.
For five months I walked pretty much exclusively.

In September, realizing that the weather would be turning soon
and walking would become difficult (if not impossible) during
the Winter months, I looked for an alternative to the walking.
I began to climb the stairs here at home. We live in a four
level side split house so stairs we have aplenty and I figured
I might as well put them to good use. Again I started with a
short routine, marching up and down perhaps 30 odd times
before running out of steam. But that number increased to
50 times a night fairly quickly, every other day, with my
normal walking routine in between.

Worried about wearing out either my knees or my carpets
before the Winter was half over I decided that I needed to
find a better solution to my Winter exercise problem and
in October I joined Curves. I go to Curves four times a week
and I walk home from it's location in Georgetown afterwords.
I also try to get one long walk in on the weekend, and so far
the weather has been good enough to allow it. And I still do
the stairs occasionally too.

The time spent on exercise, fixing healthy lunches for work,
and dinners for home, attending Weight Watchers meetings
etc has eaten away a substantial portion of the time that I
use to spend on the computer blogging, and time I use to
spend stitching. Bummer!!

Well, what can you do?? I need to work on my commitments
to both since stitching is the hobby that I love, and blogging
connects me to the friends that I have made whose crafting
inspires me and whose tales of their lives and their beliefs and
their daily challenges, often written with humor and insight,
often enlightens and sometimes educates me.

So what has been the end result of all this work???

This picture was taken back in early May at the residence
where my Mom lives. I had been with Weight Watchers
for about six weeks and had lost about 14 pounds at this
point.

This picture was taken at the end of November.

And so was this one. I have lost a bit more since that time
and in mid-December I achieved my goal weight, went on
maintenance at Weight Watchers, and then lost more
weight while on my first week of maintenance. In total
I have lost 74 pounds and now weight less then I did on my
wedding day nearly 20 years ago. I can wear my wedding
rings again which is something that I haven't been able to
do for about 15 years.

Of course Christmas is a heck of a time to go on
maintenance but what can you do?? I have not been
a good girl this weekend but decided that for Christmas
I was going to enjoy the food and the holiday and get
back on program after New Years eve. I will have to
humble myself on weigh in day at Weight Watchers on
Tuesday night though.

I did do a bit of crafting during the holidays, which
included making a few new bows for family presents
and making gift tags out of last years Christmas
cards as well.

My camera doesn't take the best pictures in the world
but you get the idea. This gold one is my favorite but
I annoyed myself to no end when I hot glued it to my
DH's present upside down. See ... the goose on the
wrapping paper is standing on it's head. DOH!!!

Surprises in the mail included a lovely piece of hand dyed
fabric from Staci at Snippets and Stash. I was thrilled and
delighted to receive a package in the mail from her a few
weeks ago with this beautiful fabric that will soon be put
to good use. Staci has been making a great many of her
Christmas gifts for friends and family herself and I think
that's pretty awesome. Those are the sorts of gifts that
mean the most.

Andrea at the Crafting Room had a draw in November
for eleven different Christmas ornaments that she'd
stitched and finished in her usual exquisite manner
and I was thrilled to be one of the winners. I haunted
the mailbox and probably gave the mailman a complex
at the same time until this little beauty showed up
safe and sound. I adore this pinkeep and it will be
something I'll treasure forever. Thank you again
Andrea.

And here we have another reason for my blogging
absence. I'll admit it. I've been held captive by a
Lizzie Kate design that I started a month ago and
have been working away diligently at whenever I
can. I am loving this project so much. I'm stitching
it with the threads and the fabric provided in the
kit, but have made a change to the top square because
I couldn't figure out what the green squares and the
pink squares in it were meant to represent. Christmas
presents??? I got out another Lizzie Kate chart and
translated my own thoughts on how those squares
should look from a design on that chart. I feel much
better with how it looks now.

Christmas Eve DH and I attended a Nativity Play put
on by a local church at a horse farm about 10 minutes
drive from here. The stage was set up in the riding ring
which is a large, enclosed space. The barn with the horses
is attached to the riding ring so before the play began DH
and I and all the other people who came for the performance
got to walk around and visit with the horses before the play
began. It was snowing when we left here but it was
relatively mild compared to other years when we've attended
this special service. Still, by the end of the service our
fingers and toes were frozen, not to mention our backsides
from sitting on wooden chairs in an unheated building.

When we got home friends came to spend Christmas
Eve with us and we laughed and talked and drank tea
and ate home made scones with cream and jam, and
other yummy things until midnight.

Christmas day it was just me and DH and my Mom and
my SIL. I cooked roast beef with yorkshire pudding and
all the trimmings, and my SIL brought a home made
coconut cream pie (with whipped cream) for dessert.
Yeah, I know.... It's a good thing Christmas only comes
around once a year.

Although we had snow on Christmas Eve on Christmas
day itself the temperature rose and in the afternoon it
began to rain, and it rained steadily and often quite hard
until the next morning. So it was a soggy, grey
Christmas for us this year.

This weekend has been fairly quiet and we've been
relaxing somewhat, though tomorrow we have
friends from Scotland coming for dinner and their
yearly visit with us. They come to Canada every year
to spend Christmas with family and their time with
us is a highlight of the holidays for us.

Tuesday I go back to work (ugh!!) but DH's place
shuts down over the Christmas holidays, lucky guy,
so he's off for the entire week. He will still get up at
5;30 with me though and drive me into work so I don't
have to leave the house at 6:00 am and take the Go
bus/train service and public transit to get to work in
Mississauga. He's a sweetheart.

I guess that's pretty much it from me for the moment. I'll leave
you with another picture of Rupert, crammed into a box and
sound asleep. This can't possibly be comfortable!! But he loves
boxes of any size and shape and will force his way into the
smallest size until it either bursts or he ends up wearing it.

My best wishes for the New Year to you all. Hope to be back
again in a reasonable time and perhaps with a happy dance to
share.

And thank you for your support and encouragement through
out the year.

Hugs!!!

2009-11-16T20:17:00.013-05:00

Greetings all!!
Would you believe that I have not one but two finishes to
show off today??? I know. Will wonders never cease.
See, there was a reason for my absence.

Phoebe's sampler came together and was finished off last week.
Well, the stitching part anyways. This is of course a design by
the most incredibly talented Gazette94 and the colors are all
various shades of DMC pinks. Phoebe has informed me that
she quite likes this finish but wonders why her name hasn't
been stitched on it somewhere. Hmmmm....

And then we have Prairie Schooler's Prairie Birds all finished
at last and ready for Christmas. I had to make a trip out to
Michaels to pick up a skein of 520 green thread before I could
finish this, and once I had that there really wasn't all that much
left to do. Actually I was wondering if perhaps I should stitch
some sort of a border around the six squares just to finish it off.
What do you think??? The one square is a bit bigger then the
others (why??? It was designed that way. Again, why??) so
sticks up a bit. Should I leave well enough alone??

I have started a new project after these two finishes. It's a
Christmas design and I'm having a great time working on it.
What is it, you may be asking..... Well, you'll just have to wait
until my next post to see what it is. Hee Hee Hee!!!

A few posts ago I mentioned that one of my favorite of
Blackbird Designs was Their Song, but it was out of
print and didn't seem to show up on Ebay whenever
I checked for it there. Soon after I got an request from
Rowyn (Stitching Under the Southern Cross) to email
her my address because she had something for me.
Well naturally I was curious but Rowyn would say no
more on the subject so I had to wait a little while to
find out what she was up to. An envelope arrived in my
mail box and when I opened it guess what fell out???
How cool is this??? Thank you so much Rowyn for
sending me this wonderful design. I am so looking
forward to stitching this and your RAK really made
my week.

I was lucky enough to win a gift from Andrea (The
Craft Room) recently and in my next post I'll post
a photo of the incredible, beautiful treasure that
she sent to me. Until then, you'll have to wait and
see.

In the plaza located on the outskirts of the subdivision
where we live there is a thrift store run by the Upper
Credit Humane Society. I like to pop in there once a
week or so to see what treasures might be available,
whether it be books or nick knacks or something
totally unexpected. Such as a cross stitch chart. On
Saturday I found the above Mirabilia chart on sale
for a mere 25 cents (Canadian) and my immediate
first thought was "Oh goodie!!! I can have a give
away on my blog for this." When I got home with
my prize and opened the envelope to check on the
chart I discovered a second chart inside, which is
the little freebie from 1996. Bonus!!!

So, you all know the drill for this sort of thing.
Leave a comment letting me know that you would
like to enter the draw for these two charts, and
perhaps one or two other little goodies, and I'll
have a draw on Sunday the 22nd for the winner.

Good luck!!

Books read in the past few weeks:

I picked this book by Ariana Franklin up when it appeared
in the sale bin of my favorite bookstore a while back. When
a hardcover book is being sold for a paperback price, and it
sounds like a really good read, or is a book that I'd been
thinking of buying when it was on for it's full price, then I
get all giddy and happy.

I thoroughly enjoyed this story. In fact I enjoyed it so much
that I went looking for the rest of the books published in this
series so far and have added two more to my collection. The
story takes place during the rein of Henry II in England. A
combination of historical fiction, mystery and forensics (as
imagined for that time period) with a fascinating heroine and
cast of characters, including a brief, scene stealing cameo by
King Henry II himself, this was a great read.

I love Charlaine Harris and I adore Sookie Stackhouse.
I was two books behind in the series and so rectified
that situation by reading them both back to back.
Both were excellent reads, as usual.

We don't get HBO in our cable package so I've never
seen the TV series True Blood which is based on these
books. But I've heard and read lots of good things
about it and am curious to see for myself how it stacks
up against the books. I'm always leery of movies or
TV shows that are based on books that I love. It's rare
to find an adaption that is worthy of an author's vision.
The best adaptions of a book can bring it to life (hello
Peter Jackson, and thank you) the worst can make you
swear off seeing any other adaptions forever.

I'm going to see if Santa will bring the first season of
True Blood on DVD for under my tree this year.

Our godson Ian went to Fanshawe college for two years
studying acting. Last Friday DH and I went to see him
performing in a play put on by the Georgetown Little
Theatre.

The Mumberley Inheritance is a comedic take
on the old melodramas that were once performed for
audiences in the early 1900's. You know the type. The
villain twirls his moustache and flaunts his black cape,
while the heroine bats her eyelashes, is forced to marry
the villain to save the family estate, and swoons all over
the stage. And the hero's name is Rodney Stoutheart,
a likeable, dim bulb of a hero who saves the day, in spite
of himself, sort of.

The audience's role during these sorts of plays is to boo
and hiss whenever the villain does something rotten
(which is fairly often, seeing as how he's a villain), to
cheer whenever the hero appears and manages not to
trip over his own two feet, and to repeat lines along with
the characters as they are used over and over again
throughout the play to either establish that character's
identity, history or evil plan.

It was a lot of fun to watch, and we were fit to burst with pride
as Ian showed his comedic talents were more then up to the
challenge. He had the audience in stitches with his antics.

We'd seen him performing in plays during his time at Fanshawe
but those were all dramas so this was our first experience seeing
him in a comedy. We had a blast.

Rupert is very fond of boxes, bags and blankets. Anything
he can get into, he will. Which is why I always make it a
point to check the dryer before loading wet clothes into it
just to be sure that it's empty at the time. And really it's
also why I should just make sure that I close the laundry
room door so that this sort of thing doesn't happen. He
won't get out without an argument.

********************************************************

Weigh in at Weight Watcher's this week was something of a
surprise. For the past couple of months my weight loss has
slowed down, as it tends to do as you get closer to your ideal
weight. But I was content with the one pound or so loss
that I achieved each week (sometimes a bit more, sometimes
a bit less). I've been going to Curves faithfully and find the
workout there to be great for all of me, not just my legs. I
still have a long way to go before I'll be able to work those
machines like a pro but I'm getting style and method and
endurance finessed first and the rest will follow.

So, tonight at Weight Watchers I weighed in expecting my
usual loss, and was told that last week I lost 5 pounds!!!!
This means that I am now past the high end marker for
what I should weigh for my age, height etc and could now
go on maintenance if I wished. But my own goal has been
to get to the weight that I was when I got married, and so
I'm going to keep going a bit longer until I reach that goal.
I just have 3 pounds left to go, but this is the Christmas
season now so my main focus will be to try not to over
indulge too much, and to maintain my current weight.

So as of today I have now lost 67 pounds on the Weight
Watcher's program, and have gone from a size 22 to a
size 10.

Also, last week at Weight Watchers the Georgetown
groups, which meet on Tuesdays at the Superstore,
one in the morning, one at the lunch hour and one in
the evening (which is when I go) rose to the challenge
issued by Weight Watchers and brought in over a
thousand pounds of food for our local food bank.
We're feeling pretty proud of that accomplishment
and we sure surprised the folks from the Food Bank
who had 10 grocery carts full of food to haul out of
the store and to their cars. Weight Watchers will be
making some sort of donation as well to compliment
our donation.

Hopefully I'll find time to post again soon. Until then
thanks for dropping by.

Cheers!!!

Autumn in Georgetown

2009-10-19T20:26:00.012-04:00

I bought this wee treasure during a quick trip to our

local mall yesterday. I had a coupon and my discount
card for that particular bookstore chain so got it for
a decent price. This is one of those instances when
it doesn't matter if you should be treating yourself
or not to a new book, what with Christmas coming
and all that. This is an author and a book that you
just have to have now!!

Well, I do anyways.

I haven't cracked it open yet since I'm finishing up
another book first but judging by the thickness of
it this installment in the lives of Jamie and Claire
must be well over 700 pages. Perfect!!! Thank
you Ms Gabaldon. It's usually a three year wait
between installments of this series, but I'm willing
to wait because I know it'll be good. So good!

Since we're in the midst of the season when the
leaves turn from green to the most amazing
reds, yellows, oranges and golds I decided to
take my camera when I went for my walk
yesterday morning. It was a perfect morning
for being outside and enjoying the very
special pleasures that Autumn offers.

Note: all pictures are clickable for a better
view.

Breathtaking color!

I love this house, with it's bright red door and the
little roof over that door also being the same
bright red. This is an older part of Georgetown,
that has a wide range of house styles ranging from
cottages to big farmhouses and everything in
between. Lot's of huge, old trees adds ambiance
and charm to each street.

This little play area is in the Georgetown fairgrounds.
I love trees!! Especially these really tall ones with the
long, graceful trunks.

Another section of the fair grounds.

The back of a home as seen from the road that
leads into the Georgetown fair grounds.

Not everyone decorates their home for Fall and/or
Halloween around here, but it's nice when an effort
is made to celebrate this wonderful season in some
way. So, pumpkins, corn stalks, chrysanthemums
and the last efforts of the past summer's garden plants
make a nice showing on this home's front porch.

This house has a mix of Autumn and Halloween
decorations. Can't say I'm too thrilled with that
giant spider by the door, but I like that fellow in
the green cloak that's just hanging around.

Some local businesses get into the spirit of the season
as well. This is the front door leading into The Shepherd's
Crook pub.

And then there are the Halloween decorations. I love
these "headstones" in someone's front yard. Pretty
realistic looking, aren't they??

*********************************************

Not a lot going on around here at the moment ... hence

the walking tour of Georgetown as seen above. I did
stitch a bit on the weekend, and am almost finished
the last cat on Phoebe's sampler. Would probably
have finished it by now if I hadn't had to rip out a
bit of stitching thanks to some dang frogs that
hop-pened by. (Get it???)

Sorry.

I did get myself a new winter jacket while at the
mall yesterday and am quite pleased with it. The
old jacket doesn't fit anymore, and the weather
here last week was downright cold so I decided
that I couldn't wait any longer to pick out a
replacement coat. Of course now that I have the
new coat the weather for this week is suppose to
be warmer, so I can wear my Spring/Fall jacket
and be comfortable. Figures.

Leaving you with a bit of furry sweetness. They
actually do get along pretty good....most of the
time.

Cheers!!

2009-10-12T20:40:00.008-04:00

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

The Thanksgiving long weekend has drawn to a close
and today it was back to work, back to Weight Watchers
(Gulp!!) and back to Curves. Why do these long weekends
always seem to fly by faster then you can blink?? It's so sad.

Above is the table set for dinner on Sunday afternoon. We
can't set the table earlier then the day of an event because
the cats would probably have everything on the floor or
flying through the air before we could do anything to stop
them. They chase each other across the table you see.
The little angels.

Dinner was the usual Thanksgiving fare of Turkey,
stuffing (made by my sister in law - it was a new recipe
and very, very tasty), mashed potatoes, cauliflower in a
white sauce, and gravy. Dessert was pumpkin pie with
real whipped cream. Delicious!

Monday night DH and I warmed up the left overs and every
thing tasted as good or better then it did on Sunday night.
Considering all the food that I ate during the weekend, and
yes that includes pumpkin pie with whipped cream two nights
in a row, I am amazed that tonight's weight in at Weight
Watchers went better then I had any right to expect. I lost a
whole pound!! Hey, I'll take it.

Well, nothing new on the stitching front to show you.
I worked on Phoebe's sampler a bit today, but there's
nothing worth showing right now. So, to make your
visit worth while, I'll show off two very old projects
from many, many years ago. Stitched on Aida I'm
afraid, but I still love them none the less. They are
designs by Alma Lynn.

I stitched these in the early 90's, when I first learned to
cross stitch and I eventually had them framed and hung
them in a spare bedroom.

Last week I got a wonderful surprise in the mail. Cathey
of Pumpkin Patch and Co. sent this to me, along with a
beautiful card and a hand written note that had me all
teary eyed and smiles at the same time. Needless to say
I am just over the moon. Thank you Cathey for your
generosity and most especially for your friendship.

Thought you all might like to see what I did last week.
As part of my rejuvenated look I decided that it was time
to get rid of the white strands of hair that were beginning
to take over my head, and get my hair colored for the
first time. Nothing drastic for this first attempt, it's
a rinse instead of a dye, so in about six weeks it'll be
pretty much gone I suppose. It allows me to see
results and decide if I like it or not before committing
myself to a more long term change. And yes, I like it.
I got it trimmed too, but not too much because I'm
growing it out to one longer length.

Finished this book early last week and I strongly
recommend it to everyone. The Help has been
receiving generally good reviews and strong endorsements
from both professional reviewers and from reviewers
in the book blogging world. I'll let a quote from the
author's website give you an idea of what the book is
about.

“Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from

Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother

will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally

find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her,

but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white

child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who

died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl

she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in

Mississippi. She can cook like nobody’s business, but she can’t mind her

tongue, so she’s lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position

working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new

boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will

nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will

put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the

lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.”

(description taken from author's website:

http://kathrynstockett.com/book)

First time novelist Kathryn Stockett has written
a compelling and enthralling book from the
point of view of three different characters, two of
whom (Minny and Aibileen) are black women
serving as domestic help during the early 1960's
in small town Jackson, Mississippi. The third voice
in the book belongs to Skeeter, a young, well to do
white woman recently returned home from College.

I loved this book, start to finish, and found it hard
to put it down once it was done and to leave the three
main characters behind. I highly recommend this one.

Thanksgiving is a time for families to get together.
And in our case it's a time for Rupert to get a chance
to snuggle with his favorite grandmother.

And to sprawl at her feet in ecstasy and adoration.

And in general just to hang out and be together.

What a guy !!

Cheers!

2009-10-04T20:48:00.005-04:00

The pumpkin twins welcome you to yet another addition
to my blog, and the third update in as many consecutive
weekends. I'm not sure how stimulating or interesting
this post will be since nothing much has been going on
around here, but I'll do the best I can with what I've got.

Note: the pumpkin twins have fiber optics in their ... er ...
hair??? And around their faces as well. So they shine
quite nicely in the dark and look fabulous in the front
window on Halloween night. Phoebe likes to chew on
said fiber optic hair though, so for the time that they're
out on display before Halloween the pumpkin twins
remain perched on the plant stand, well out of Phoebe's
reach.

Update on Phoebe's sampler. Honest. There's new
stitching there. See??? The cat sitting on it's haunches
is finished, and there are a couple of little doodads next
to him, and there's more border too.

I know. Mind boggling, isn't it??? What can I say? I'm
a slow stitcher with limited stitching time.

Which isn't to say that I can't dream of the day when I
have a whole lot of free time to stitch (and read, and
visit blogs) to my heart's content. And I can collect
charts and floss and fabric for when that happy time
arrives. And so I scrolled through the new charts and
goodies from the St. Charles Market and made note of
the things that made my heart beat faster, and my
Visa card grow heavier.

And this is the pattern that has my soul singing!!!
Now, I have to admit that I don't own a single, solitary
chart of any sort by Blackbird Designs. Nary a one.
I admire their designs, and I do admit that I'd like to
add Their Song to my heaps of charts waiting to be
stitched, but other then that .... nothing. But this one.
This design. It calls my name. It really does.

So what new release has your stitching fingers
tingling and reaching for the debit card???

This weekend I joined Curves, and had my introductory
tour of the Georgetown facility on Saturday morning.
Since the advent of winter will probably put an end to
my walking, or at the very least curtail it considerably,
I've been looking for alternatives to keep myself active
and I think Curves might just fit the bill. I tried out
the equipment, and it really does seem like I'll get a
good, all over workout from the three visits a week that
they recommend for their program.

DH has been entertaining a cold since Thursday, and
even took a day off of work on Friday to rest up and
keep the germs away from the workplace. What with
all the fuss and bother about the H1N1 virus, flue
season and what all else, we're being encouraged by
the government to stay home if we're sick. So far
I've managed to avoid contamination, and hope I
haven't jinxed myself by putting that down in print.

Since I'm reading the final chapters of a wonderful book,
right now but don't want to tell you about it until I've
finished it, I'll write instead about another book that I read
last month and loved.

Mackenzie Ford is an alias (according to the book's jacket)
for a well known and respected historian living in London.

This story takes place during the first world war, and begins
during that famous occasion that you may have heard about,
the unofficial truce that occurred on Christmas Eve 1914.
At that time, the soldiers on both sides of the lines in France
ceased hostilities, and for 24 hours they ventured from their
trenches and mingled together, exchanging small gifts,
talking and putting the war and it's horrors aside for the sake
of the day.

Two officers meet in no-mans-land and exchange gifts and
small talk. English officer Hal Montgomery meets German
officer Wilhelm Wetzlar and during the course of their
meeting Wilhelm gives Hal a photograph of a beautiful
young English woman named Sam, who is his fiance.
Wilhelm asks Hal to seek out Sam, if he is able, and let
her know that he is alive and has not forgotten her and
loves her still. Wilhelm lived in England for a time before
the war, and taught German at a school in Stratford, where
he met Sam, and fell in love. Reluctantly Hal takes the
picture and agrees to the request.

Not long afterward Hal is injured in the fighting, is
invalided out of the army, and returns to England to
recover from his wounds. Once released from the
hospital he sets out to find Sam, and indeed does
find her easily as she is still teaching at the same
school where she met Wilhelm. Hal observes the
beautiful young woman for a time before attempting
to approach her with the message entrusted to him
during the Christmas truce and before too long falls
in love with her himself.

Sams situation is precarious as Hal soon realizes
when he arranges to meet her, as if by chance, and
discovers that she has a baby son. Wilhelm's son.
Scorned and ostracized as an unwed mother,
facing the loss of her job because of it, things would
get much worse for Sam if it were known that the
father of her child was German.

As they spend time together Hal falls more and more
in love, and finds himself unable to give the photo-
graph and the message to Sam that she so desperately
needs to hear. Alone, not knowing the fate of her
fiance and facing the loss of her job because of her
baby and unmarried status, Sam is still very much in
love with Wilhelm but does not know if he is alive or
if he still loves her.

A relationship begins to develop between the two,
and Hal chooses not to give the photograph to Sam
in the hope that she will forget Wilhelm and come
to love him instead. Eventually the two move to
London, living as a family, and Hal begins working
for military intelligence, meeting Sams family and
building a life with her, while guarding his secret
that would change everything.

I was intrigued by the set up of this story, and I
was fascinated by the history of the era and the
circumstances that the main characters find
themselves in. Though Hal's choice is deceitful,
his motive is a strong, wholehearted love for Sam
that I couldn't help but feel sympathy for.

Since I don't know the author's true identity I
don't know if he/she has ever written anything
else before this work of fiction, but this novel is
a fascinating depiction of the times, the people,
the hardships, the sacrifices and the consequences
of a choice made out of love. I enjoyed it very
much.

I haven't carved a pumpkin as yet, but I did decorate
one this weekend. These decorations are just poked
into the pumpkin, and came from Avon. Kinda cute
eh???

Then this behavior resulted in me having to move my
pumpkin kitty up off of the floor and out of reach of
annoying, pesky, cheeky orange cats.

It's getting close to bed time so I'd best finish off this
post and get it loaded onto my blog. Hope you have
a wonderful week, and thanks for stopping by.

Cheers!

2009-09-27T20:00:00.003-04:00

Greetings all!! I'm trying to compose and post a complete
blog post on blogger before my bed time, and I'm typing
with Phoebe in my arms (she's using my arm as a resting
place for her paws while she washes them, and the rest of
her furry self) so I've got a bit of a handicap here. Lets see
if I can manage to pull this off.

First order of business....I forgot about this project when I was
putting together last week's blog post, and since I've been
working on it a bit this weekend it's appropriate that I show it
off now.

Last year I stitched a LHN design for Rupert (orange cat) so
it's only fair that this year I stitch something for Phoebe (grey
cat). This is a freebie from Gazette 94 (I think) and it's all
done in pinks which suits Phoebe's personality to a T since
she is a very feminine cat.

I worked on this while at Kathy's for the stitcher's gathering
and I even managed to stitch on it while taking the bus back
to Toronto at the end of that weekend. It helped pass the
travel time nicely. So I have one and a half cats left to stitch
plus a few hearts and the rest of the checkerboard border and
then we'll have another finish. This is a really cute design
and I think Phoebe must really like it because I caught her
earlier this evening tea-cozied on it, napping. Sigh!!!

New release from LHN. The Library. I want!!!!

(picture borrowed from LHN website)

Today DH and I cleaned the living room and we got out
the Halloween/Autumn decorations since of course
Fall arrived this week. I love having my Fall decorations
out and find it hard to resist buying/collecting a great
deal more then I already have. A serious lack of storage
space prevents me from going hog wild, although one or
two new pieces always seem to sneak in once in awhile.

Last year I took a picture of the above table all decorated as
a reference for this years decorating so as to avoid the "now
where did I put this again??? And this??? And this!!" syndrome.
It makes the decorating process much more efficient and quicker.
But for some reason I did not take a picture of the room divider
last year. I've done both this year and you lucky people get to see
them here. Next years decorating should be a breeze. Uh huh.

If you want to see what I've been reading since May you'll
have to refer to the list at the side of my blog here. But
this is the book that I just finished last week for you to see.
And especially for Kathy who asked me if I'd read it yet.

This is Jacqueline Carey's latest release, and the start of
another trilogy. This one takes place a hundred years after
the first six books (two trilogies) and I wondered when it
came out if I would enjoy it as much since it wouldn't
feature any of the characters that I'd grown to love from
the earlier books. The answer is a resounding YES!!!!

Carey retains her position as my favorite fantasy writer
as she brings all of her talent as a storyteller and as a
creator of worlds and people as three dimensional and
fascinating as you could possibly wish to this, her ninth
book. This is an author whose books I grab as soon as
they are published. I don't wait for reviews or descriptions
of the storyline since I know I'll love it.

Kathy, get this one. It's every bit as good as the others!!

*******************************************************

In August DH and I went out and bought a new mattress
to replace the nearly 20 year old mattress that we'd
received as a wedding gift from his parents. Now
mattresses have changed a lot in the past 20 years so
we weren't sure just what to look for when we went to
Sleep Country Canada. But the salesman was very
helpful and guided us through the store and it's row
upon row of beds. We made our choice and a week
later it was delivered.

The delivery guys (in their trademark booties worn
over their shoes to protect our carpets) put the new
mattress and box spring in place on the bed and
took our old set off to be either donated to charity
or to be taken to a recycling place if it was deemed
too old and worn out for further use.

When the delivery guys were gone I went upstairs
to put sheets on the bed and discovered that Rupert
was the first one to try out the new purchase. He
must have liked it because he was asleep in no time
and I had to delay putting on the bedding until he
woke up.

We've been getting use to the new pillow top style
of this mattress, although it didn't take me long to
settle in and decide that I loved it!! So cozy and
cushiony and sink-into comfortable. The height of
the thing sort of gave me pause as it's quite a bit
higher then our old bed, so getting in and out
requires a bit of finesse and a good hop to achieve.
When sitting on the bed my feet dangle a good
six inches off the floor. DH, at six foot five inches,
just walks up to the bed, turns around, and sits.
The cats take a bit of a run at it but seem to take
the added height in stride when bed time comes
around. I wouldn't care to fall out of bed in the
middle of the night now though.

*********************************************

I am so overwhelmed and delighted with all the
visitors and comments that have been left here
in the past week since I posted my previous blog
entry. After such a long time I didn't expect so
many to remember me. Thank you for the warm
welcome back and if I haven't paid you a return
visit yet then be sure that I will at some point
this coming week.

And thank you as well for all the wonderful
compliments and encouragement regarding
my weight loss as well. I only went down another
4 oz last week, which is probably thanks to all the
delicious food at the party we'd gone to on the
Saturday. But a loss is a loss, regardless of how
little it might be. I'll take it.

No parties, barbecues or meals out this weekend
and I've been working hard on my exercise
regime so hopefully things will be better this week.
Next week I'm going to be joining Curves and we'll
see what I can achieve with their program and their
equipment. I'll be rejoining Weight Watchers for
another six month run this week too. Maybe by
next Spring I'll be lifetime!

And here's a picture of the two darlings of the household
since I didn't include any pictures of them in the last post.

We're into true Autumn weather here now, with cooler
temperatures and rain. It's the first rain that we've had
in over three weeks though and so it was welcome. We
even had a bit of a light frost last week, although it didn't
touch the plants in our backyard. People are decorating
their front porches and yards with scarecrows, hay bales,
pumpkins and pots of Chrysanthemums in a wonderful
assortment of Fall colors. I love this time of year!!!

Have a great week everyone and thanks for visiting.
It's great to be back!