Thursday, January 27, 2011

Scraps ATC

I hate to throw something away when I think I can use it but sometimes there are just too many bits and pieces lying around. When I made the last ATC, the lazy daisy one two posts ago, I was bothered by the nest of leftover bits of thread from previous projects, so I took an ATC back that I had cut from the back of a Christmas card and started poking holes to make rectangle shapes, doing a few of the larger ones and then filling in with the smaller shapes. Then I just got to stitching and voila! the thread nest is gone.

By the way, I posted the ATC upside down. I'm sure that if you will just stand up, lean over and look at it in the correct orientation you will see what a difference it makes. Probably only because your brain will thank you for an extra little rush of blood and your body will enjoy a little stretch, but you never know.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Lazy Daisy ATC

This is an ATC for my partner in the Embroidery ATC Series #2 -- Lazy Daisy swap over on Swap-bot.
Oddly enough she was also my partner in the first swap of the series which was for the chain stitch.
The Lazy Daisy stitch is also known as the detached chain stitch and it is a great stitch to use for simple flowers. I also used it in this very small (2" including the tail) Dotee doll pin and in some bottle cap pincushions here and here.
If you would like to know how to do the stitch yourself you can take a look at Sharon B's stitch dictionary. While you are there you can take a look at her amazing I dropped the button box crazy quilt. Click on any of the thumbnails and see the beautiful work she does. Eye candy.

Monday, January 24, 2011

Hmmm

These are some of the things that have caught my eye.

Very clever idea for making faux wrought iron wall decor.

A few years ago my brother and his wife were talking about a contest they were having to see which of them could read the most books that year. That got me wondering how many books I read each year so I started keeping a list of the title and author and a quote from the book.
Then I thought it would be better to write down the main characters and a summary of the plot. This has turned out to be very helpful.
Combine that with a love of bookmarks and you can see why I really like this idea from the Making Books blog.
Another great place to keep track of the books you are reading, to write reviews and to read other people's reviews and to get ideas for new books to read is Goodreads.
By the way, I read 88 books last year, including the Bible. If I was doing the contest thing I would have counted the Bible as 66 books.

And then there's this. How do people think of these things?

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Randomness

Every year I like to take all the letters and pictures that came with Christmas cards and put them in a special album just for that purpose. Well, if you can believe it, the people who send me pictures do not get together and coordinate their pictures so that they fit beautifully on the pages and I am left with blank spots to fill in with whatever. Luckily for them, that is one of my favorite parts.

The last few years I have tried to use what they actually sent (stickers on the envelopes, stamps,
parts of the cards) to fill in any blank spots. This is my favorite from this year -- well, last year, but I did it this year.
The image of the angels is from a return address label, and the background is from the back of a card. I thought it was a nice way to use something that might have been thrown away -- the address label -- and something that would have ended up in a pile of things I might use for something eventually -- the back of the card.





Then we have a picture of Rover guarding the vegetable patch or what is left of it after he ate most of the lettuces. He looks so serious, making sure the camera doesn't think it is going to get any of these vegetables.

Off to his right there are actually a lot of broccoli plants. My son loves broccoli, and we hope that it grows well. The leaves have gotten quite large and healthy looking, but we have not seen anything that looks like broccoli growing on them yet. This is our first year trying to grow it, so it is a learning experience for all of us. Except for our daughter who doesn't much care for vegetables and would probably prefer us to grow some nice meaty livestock.


I am Elinor Dashwood!


Take the Quiz here!


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Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Valentine's Card


This is the card I made last night at our church's craft night. Most people made more than one, but I was having fun with a friend who was working on a garland that spells out L O V E.
It was so fun to see all the many styles of cards that were available to make and of course even people who were following the same sample ended up with cards that looked so different.
Kathryn Mullins is the woman who hosted this and she was so generous with her time and talent and supplies and so encouraging as we worked on our cards and as some went on to come up with their own ideas. What a talented lady.

Rover's 1st Haircut


Last Friday, my husband took Rover in for a haircut. When the groomer saw that he was only 6 months old she did not want to give him a haircut because it can be pretty scary for such a young dog, but my husband assured her that he would be fine so she gave it a try. He jumped once when he first heard the clippers, but after that he was fine.
He is just as handsome as can be and he knows it.

Monday, January 17, 2011

A Thought

"Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it."

~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Just wanted to share a thought from Dr. King.

In a few minutes I will be going to a craft night at church. We will be making valentines and working on our own projects. After valentines I will be working on a zentangle pattern zine for a swap.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Monday, January 10, 2011

Angela Hunt on the Devil and Demons

This is part two to the article I mentioned last week that Angela Hunt wrote on angels.

A quote from the article:
Demons can do scary things, but they’re much more likely to do beautiful things in order to fool people into following false religions. Because Satan hates God, he wants to keep people from following God. So he uses every trick in his book, not to convince people to follow him, but to follow anything but God.

Very much worth reading the whole thing.

Sunday, January 9, 2011

The Point

"The battle is not the point. Evil is not the point. The point is the love story. We live in a love story that is set in the midst of a war. When you understand those two things, you will suddenly understand Christianity, and you will understand your own life."
-- John Eldredge

When I was adding list of books I had read in 2010 to the archives of books read, I found the above quote from the book Adam by Ted Dekker which I read in 2009. It isn't in the book itself but in an interview included with the book.

Saturday, January 8, 2011

Chain Stitch ATC

This is for a swap on Swap-bot for the first in a series of Embroidered ATC's. This one is for the chain stitch. My first thought when I saw this was to use some of the South African embroidery -- love the 2 Ndebele ladies pattern there -- techniques I had learned last year which often start off with a chain stitch and then embellish that stitch, but finally I decided to just go with a plain old chain stitch.
One thing I learned when I did the dragonfly ATC is that I did not want to draw on the card itself and then punch the holes, because there is always erasing to do and that doesn't always go so well on the darker background. So this time I drew on a piece of scrap paper cut to ATC size and once I was happy with that I used that as my template as I poked a pin through it and the actual card. The nice thing is I have the pattern for myself if I want to try it again with the more embellished chain stitches.
Next, I picked some shorter lengths of embroidery floss I had in my stash and that I thought looked good with the ATC card (which was cut from the back of a Christmas card) and got busy doing the chain stitch.
Hope my partner likes it.
The next swap in the series is for the lazy daisy stitch.

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Thursday, January 6, 2011

Two Ads I Hate and One I Like

Twice today I saw the Bayer aspirin ad with the man on the plane who is suffering from back pain. He asks the stewardess for help by pointing to a page in some booklet that shows some Asian characters and the English words "back pain." She offers him Bayer aspirin.
"I'm not having a heart attack," he says.
The stewardess assures him that aspirin can also relieve pain. And it turns out she is right! Who knew stewardesses were up on the latest in medical research?
And that's right, I am saying stewardess instead of flight attendant because it reminds me of an earlier time when people knew that aspirin could relieve pain.
Here is the real question: Why is this man allowed to travel overseas all by himself? Where are his mommy and daddy?

The second ad I hate is the one that starts off saying, "Many men over 45 [insert random symptoms here]." It ends by saying, "don't blame it on aging."
Was this written as one of those party games where each person writes a different line without knowing what anyone else wrote and then hilarity ensues when you read all the lines together? Am I just missing the joke?

Then we have the Mayhem ads. I enjoy them so much. This might be my favorite:


It reminds me of this scene in Fried Green Tomatoes:

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Folder Journal

The most recent issue of Cloth, Paper Scissors (Jan/Feb 2011) has an article called Folder Journal about making a journal from a manila folder.
When she came over for Thanksgiving my mom gave me an almost full box of surplus legal-size manila folders from her office.
So clearly this was meant to be:



Since this was my first attempt at this project I decided to use some paper I didn't like very much which is some of the orange papers. As the project came together I found myself liking the way the orange paper looked and adding other papers and bits & pieces that I thought fit in . Eventually I will be adding some of my favorite Bible verses and maybe some other inspirational things to the back of the journal cards. Once I get that done, I will have a better idea of just how to finish the fronts of the cards.

Monday, January 3, 2011

Angela Hunt on Angels

I think it has only been in the last year that I read my first Angela Hunt book, The Canopy which is about an American researcher who is dying of a particular type of brain disease and is looking for a cure in the Amazon jungle. It was fascinating to learn about the people of the Amazon and their spiritual beliefs, especially about Yai Pada (so impressed that I remembered that name).
Next I read The Debt. I had to force myself to get into that one since it is about the wife of a televangelist, but it turned out to be one of the most worthwhile books I read last year. The title is based on the story Jesus told of the the two men who each owed a debt to another man. One owed a large sum of money while the other man owed a small amount. Neither could pay so the man they owed the money to forgave both debts. Jesus asked the listeners which of the two men loved the one who forgave their debts more. I don't want to say anything else about the story because you should read it for yourself. Wonderful.
More recently I read The Novelist about a very successful author who is teaching a community college class about writing. The way Ms. Hunt tells that story is very interesting as she writes about the author/teacher and her family and students and then also shares the story she is writing as she teaches the class.
Of the three, The Debt is my favorite, but I have a few more of her books waiting in my to-be-read stack so that may change.

Anyway, the only reason I am sharing that with you is that I wanted to share the post she put up yesterday about angels. It debunks some of the popular myths about angels and I look forward to reading part two next week.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Christmas Wish

Normally our church raises money in October to be sent to our missionaries as a Christmas gift above and beyond their normal support. Last year they raised about $4,000 dollars. We support about 25 missionaries.
This year nothing was said until after Thanksgiving. The elders and staff had decided they wanted to buy new mattresses for the local homeless shelter. Including our missionaries' Christmas gift, which they had already sent out on faith, they would need to raise $15,000. Now we have a pretty giving church as it is and we haven't escaped the current economic situation so that was quite a step of faith. I forgot to mention that they did not tell the homeless shelter they would do what they could. No, they promised the mattresses.
The Sunday before Christmas was the big day when they would be taking a separate offering just for this "Christmas Wish." Of course, some money had also come in the previous two Sundays since they made their announcement.
At the Christmas Eve service they told us that they had met their goal and had enough money to send the missionaries a second Christmas gift. Then, with the money leftover after the two Christmas gifts to the missionaries and after buying the mattresses they gave the head of the homeless shelter a check for $10,000 for anything else they might need.
This Sunday they said that a little more money had come in for this same project and they had used it to pay medical bills for two missionaries who have had some serious health problems this year.
Wow.
**********
I have received full payment and have more than enough. I am amply supplied, now that I have received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent. They are a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God. And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4:18-19

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Happy New Year!

So clearly I have not been a faithful blogger, but I have been looking forward to making trying to be better at this one of my new year's resolutions. Let's see how long it takes me to break this one.
The sad part is that even though I have been looking forward to this and have been on the computer twice earlier today, it did not occur to me that I should actually post something until after my husband came back from the dog park and became involved in some British comedy series (curse you Netflix "watch now").
Now you may be asking yourself why my husband would be at the dog park. This is why:

This is Rover. Our son picked out the name since this is "his" dog. It is a classic dog name and yet I have never actually known a dog with that name, but I love it.
Anyway, Rover joined our family the week before Thanksgiving. He is a Miniature Schnauzer. Neither my husband nor I have had a Miniature Schnauzer before, but we think this one is wonderful. So far he has learned the commands sit, stand and come. If he thinks you have a treat for him he will go back and forth between sit and stand until you realize that you should have a treat for him.
He loves to go outside and being a terrier, I am sure that he would love to find a mouse or gopher in our yard, but so far he has had to content himself with pincher bugs and earthworms. My only hope is that the rabbit we had visiting last year decides to not come back again this year.

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