Chat

Whew! Did you all have a nice weekend?  Ours blitzed by — we got TheSecondChild all moved in to his hovel at school.  It’s so hard to imagine that this will be his senior year — it seems like we just went through all the college admission process!   I felt a bit sorry for the poor guy — he’s a neat freak and he’s moving in with some um… well, much less than neat freaks.  They’ll work it out though, I’m sure.

Amid all the work, the absolute highlight of my four days of moving was stopping in to Clementine’s Dry Goods.  Oh.  My. Gosh!!!  Those girls were hysterical!  Cami was there, of course.  And I was thrilled that Melly went to all the trouble to come from afar to meet me too.  And then sweet Rob (by now we’re old pals) and three new blog-less pals.

I left about 3 hours ahead of my guys so I had some time to shop and sit and knit with the ladies.  Cami has a perfect spot at the back of the shop with a couch and chairs where everyone can get comfy to sit and knit.  Oh, and, of course, EAT.  They spoiled me rotten and I felt SO special!  Just look at the spread they laid out for me:

We started with Melly’s absolutely amazing Banana Cream Pie.  All made from scratch.  Sooo delicious.  It doesn’t hurt that Banana Cream Pie is at the top of my all time favorites list — right up there and maybe even ahead of chocolate!  (I can hear the gasping now LOL.)  Fortunately I remembered to get my camera out before we ate it all.  Melly has promised that she’ll share her recipe on her blog so keep an eye out for it.

And then Cami.  Gosh.  She made a delicious Rhubarb Pie (a first for me) and Fantastic Chocolate Croissants.  I wish I could give you one — I’m not kidding — they belong in a bakery with Melly’s pie.  And that’s not Mrs. Smith’s (pick-a-name) puff pastry there — she makes all those layers From.  Scratch.  By. Hand.  (Oooh, and I just went to get her link for this post, and she’s letting us in on the secret behind those croissants!  Thanks Cami!)  I can’t even imagine how she has the time — there are 5 perfectly behaved children and a hubby and a quilt/yarn shop to run.

In between all that eating there was MUCH laughing and cracking up.  What a super fun group of girls — I so wish they all lived closer.  All too soon, the call came from my guys that they were passing by — my clue to catch up to them on the highway to continue our trip to Nashville.  Cami was so kind to send some croissants with me for the boys.   Not only were they to eat, they provided a little boredom relief as I lined them up on the dashboard of the car — they looked so pretty!

Speaking of the dashboard, there was some other lining-up.  Anyone know what this is?

Anyone?  Cami knows.  I gave the girls some M&Ms and little snickers bars and Cami squealed “Look, she’s given me some round row counters” and Melly said “And I have some square ones!”  while I sat there wondering whether they do recreational drugs at Clementines!  Cami says you can use M&Ms (or chocolate chip cookies or whatever floats your boat) as row counters.  Just lay out the number of rows you have to knit in M&Ms and each time you finish a row, eat one.  When they’re all gone, you’ll know you’ve done X number of rows.  Who knew???  I put this new technique into play with my Cracker Jacks and it worked!  I’ve never been able to properly count my rows…I always forget to increment that little plastic counter or put a hash mark on my piece of paper, but I certainly didn’t forget to eat my Cracker Jacks.  That Cami is a genius!

All the ladies were full of little tidbits like that and they cracked me up.  I learned all about how to fix a suction problem from Melly — oh!  and Cami had some cute new shoes on too — they were REALLY educational!  So ladies — thank you SO much for a fabulous morning.  I came away with new ideas swirling around in my head — you are all so full of inspiration.  And especially thanks for all the work and effort you put into making me feel so special — I Can’t Wait until we can do it again.

If YOU happen to be traveling on I-65 just south of Indianapolis, take a 5-minute detour into Franklin at exit 90 and visit Clementine’s.  Cami has lots of Westminster and Rowan fabrics and some beautiful yarns for you knitters.   And I hope you’ll have as much fun as I did!

XOXO,
Anna

Wow, that was fun! Thanks for all your great comments on sewing machines. I had a great time reading what everyone had to say. As suspected, people who sew are very passionate about their machines!

It’s kid moving weekend here in ThimbleannaLand. Both boys decided they needed to move on the same weekend — guess it’s good to get it done all at once. We moved TheFirstChild and SweetiePie into a cute two bedroom apartment yesterday. It’s going to be just perfect for them and I can’t wait to see it all finished — you know, with pictures hung and clothes all over the floor! (Ok, SweetiePie, you know I’m kidding LOL!) SweetiePie was so sweet and let me set up the kitchen which was great fun for me. By the time they had the truck unloaded, I had the shelves all lined and the first of the boxes unpacked. All those wonderful wedding gifts fit just right and it looked so cute with some pretty cake plates and bowls displayed on top of the cabinets.

Anyway, they’re moved now and tomorrow we take TheSecondChild back to school. His computer center job for the school year can use him this summer, so there’s no use having him hang out at home being bored, right? So, with all this moving, not much inspiring happening around here.

I have, however, been the lucky recipient of a few cool items. A very clever handcrafted, personalized pad of paper made by Sweet Melly:

This was supposed to be the weekend that I was going on a quilty trip with my quilty peeps, but the kid-moves canceled all that. I was SO disappointed, and while moping around, it occurred to me that we’d be driving right by Clementine’s, so I’m going to drop by in the morning and I’ll be lucky enough to meet Melly. Woohoo — I’m so excited!  I’m hoping she might reveal a few paper pad secrets during our visit too. It’s so cute and I just love it!

I also received the “consolation” prize during Cassie‘s recent pin cushion giveaway:

Some “consolation”, huh? These hot pads are adorable!!! I just love them and they’re perfect. I would show you the condition of my current hot pads just to prove how much I need new ones, but you’d slap your hands over your face screaming “My eyes, My eyes!!!”

Look at the binding on these hot pads:

The binding job is incredible and I’m hereby, publicly begging Cassie to show us how this is done. For the life of me, I can’t get bindings done by machine straight stitch to be even on both sides. I either have to sew one side by machine and then hand stitch the other side, or use a zigzag stitch which hides the imperfections of my binding. Maybe if if you go to Cassie‘s blog and leave her a comment too (you should run over there anyway, she’s got an adorable new chaise lounge that she recycled), she’d tell us how she gets these perfect corners and straight stitching on both sides. Please, Cassie, Puhhhh-leeeeezzzzzz?????

I’m a bit behind on reading your blogs and with the move this weekend, it will be a few more days, so I’ll catch up with you all during my move recovery when all my muscles are sore and the only thing I’ll be able to do is sit in front of my computer. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy your weekend!

XOXO,
Anna

Oh, thank you so much for all the wonderful comments on my friendship quilt!  I had such fun reading through them all.  You do know that all the credit goes to the quilty peeps don’t you?  Jewels, Junie and Gurney are the best quilty peeps ever.  (Well, there’s that little noblog flaw, but we’ll let that slip.)  I’m especially excited that a few of you have e-mailed me to say that you’ve already talked to your quilty peeps and you’re going to do a similar block exchange.  You won’t regret it — it’s SO fun!  Among the comments was one from Sarah — when she saw the beehive block she asked if I’d seen the June Martha Stewart Living magazine with the beehive on the cover.  (Photo from Martha’s site where you can find the recipe for this cake.)

Yes, indeedy I did — I love that beehive cake!  In my true Martha wannabe fashion, I made a beehive cake and blogged about it last year on my old blog.  Now that I see the two pictures together, I’m noticing that my pan isn’t exactly the same as Martha’s.

And drat.  Her pan is cuter.  And my cake’s not professionally photographed.  But it’s ok, ’cause she got the idea from me.  ‘Cause I blogged about it first.  Right?  She read my blog and decided to put a beehive cake on her cover.  Right?  Sure.  Let’s go with that story ’cause it’s way more fun LOL!  Also, Sarah mentioned that Martha didn’t say where to get the pan and I told her Williams Sonoma, but I noticed the web site says the pan is from nordicware.com.  I think Martha’s cheating a bit on her source, ’cause the beehive pan at the Nordicware site is the same pan as mine, not the cute pan that Martha used with the ropey coils.  Oh well.

Hey, one more quick thing … there’s a new blog on the block (with a few more to be outed soon!)  A reader from way back is finally blogging.  I always called her MSN Judy, but I had the name wrong, she’s Brocante and Etc. And she’s such a devoted reader, she even named her cat after me LOL!!!  (Ok, just kidding, but like the Martha story it sounds good!)  So, run over there and welcome sweet Judy to blogland.

Yipee — it’s humpday — bring on the weekend!

XOXO,
Anna

Ho. Lee. Cow. Could this be a new post here? I’m holding my breath!

It’s been about a week since my webhost moved my account to a new server. Can you spell GIANT HASSLE? It was one problem after another and night after night of fun with tech support. And can I say those guys need better manuals? Half the time I figured the problem out myself. That whole backwards listing of my posts problem was solved thanks to other bloggers who go to forums and post when they’re having problems. I took their suggestions back to my webhost and then they had an aha moment. So. Enough said…hopefully this will be it until they decide to do another upgrade. Which will hopefully be never.

Anyhoo, Scruff is a little miffed that his letter to Sirius and Cassie got lost in the shuffle.

It’s gone. Poof. Nowhere to be found. Along with all of the comments left by some of you lovelies. During that phase, my comments weren’t being forwarded to my e-mail so there’s no record of them there either. I managed to catch a few of your comments while they were still up, but I know that I missed some of them, ’cause I could see that the comment count was up, but it wouldn’t let me click on them. So…sorry for all the hassle! I’ve also managed to read some of your posts but I haven’t been commenting in the last day or two because of those of you who typically reply to your comments — since my e-mail was down, I didn’t want you to have to deal with bounced messages.

In the meantime, other things have been happening here at Thimbleannaland, but I’ll keep it short tonight — it’s way past my bedtime. Look what appeared in our backyard yesterday:

We’ve been here for 9 years, and I’ve never seen deer in our back yard. Poor little thing, I think he’s an orphan. He came running through looking for his mama. He’s a tiny little thing, certainly not any bigger than the German Shepherds that we used to have. At the time, we thought maybe mowers in the neighborhood had separated him from mama, but I’m thinking he’s probably been orphaned. I sure hope some deer mama adopted him last night.

Well…off to bed. Hopefully this post will still be here tomorrow. Thanks for all your patience!!!

XOXO,
Anna