Thimbleanna – Page 135 – My little online diary.

Guess What I’m Knitting

71 Comments / September 18, 2008 February 18, 2011 / Chat, Knitting

How’s everybody’s week going? I’m just doing my monthly hang-out-in-a-hotel thing, so I started a new knitting project. Can you tell what it is?

Anybody? It looks kind of goofy and that’s not the greatest picture for you to be able to tell. But I guess that’s sort of the idea. I’m thinking maybe we could have a little Guess What I’m Knitting contest. If you want to play, put your guess in the comments and everyone that has a correct guess will have their name thrown into a pot from which I’ll draw for a prize. (I’m pretty sure there’s something grammatically wrong with that sentence, but you get the idea!)

How ’bout a brand new, only-out-of-the-cellophane-for-this-picture, Vera Bradley wallet/passport holder?

No cheating. Not sure how you’d cheat, but I thought I should say that. I know someone will ask, so how ’bout three guesses per person? I’ll just leave the contest open until I have a finished project to show (which, at the rate I’ve been completing stuff lately, could be February!)

In case you’re not a knitter or don’t follow Little Cotton Rabbits (IS that possible?) I thought I’d repeat, as she said, “an opportunity to spread a little happiness.” If you’d like to take a few minutes out of your day to send a card to a very sick little girl who loves to receive mail, you can get the address and more info HERE. Wouldn’t it be great if this little girl received more cards than the wall in her room could hold?

(Update: Brilliant Brigette noted that the link above is a little confusing about where to send your card. It needs to be sent to the TN address. You can find out more HERE.)

And one last thing. Felicia posted about a book festival she attended recently and one of the attending authors was Billy Collins, a past US poet laureate. Several years ago I convinced two of my coworkers to go hear Billy Collins do a reading at the Library of Congress and we had an amazing time. I LOVE Billy Collins. He’s written MANY awesome poems (and has quite a few books available.) If you have a few minutes, you can check out my FAVORITE poem of his HERE. Oh, and you might need a hanky.

Have a great weekend!

XOXO,
Anna

A Day with the Girls

39 Comments / September 15, 2008 February 12, 2012 / Chat, Peep Days

Did you all have a good weekend? We got lots of sorely needed rain — yipee! Our rain came from the leftovers of Hurricane Ike and it was gray and perfect for a day inside sewing with the blogless quilty peeps.

Jewels was our hostess and she went all out. She had her house all decorated for fall and I had to take a picture of her adorable china closet. How cute are these dishes? They look like they just walked off of the Martha Stewart set!

Jewels greeted us each with a fantastic Halloween gifty bag. She had them all tied so pretty with a little Halloween ornament — I hated to open mine up. But I had to, ’cause just look at all the wonderful goodies. (I LOVE candy corn season!) Look at the Halloween fabrics — I love them!!!

We had enough food for the four of us AND all of you, and I’m not kidding. By my count (and I’m sure I’ve forgotten something) we had two appetizers (fresh veggie dip and pumpkin cracker dip), two soups (Pumpkin and Maritatta — YUMMY for both!), 5 (yes FIVE) salads (Bruschetta, Broccoli, Apple Taffy, Seven Layer, and Hot Chicken), and umpteen desserts (Martha’s S’More’s Cupcakes (YUM and they looked just like Martha’s!), Apple Cake, Iced Sugar Cookies, Karen’s Awesome White Chocolate Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies, and HolyCrapTheseAreAmazing Cookies (Holy Crap, the other stuff was more amazing!)) Oh, and a wonderful variety of drinks which included hot apple cider — perfect for our stormy weather. Ok, so we got carried away. But it was all fantastic, and I don’t know about the other girls but TheManoftheHouse and I had leftovers all weekend.

In between all the eating, we sewed. Jewels worked on her fantastic Grandmother’s Flower Garden.

Gurney worked on these super-cute embroidered squares for a baby quilt for her granddaughter.

Junie made these adorable pillowcases for her daughter. I wanted to take them home!

And I worked on my little blue wren project which STILL isn’t done. I was hoping to get it done this weekend, but I’m getting slow in my old age.

There were no Princess and the Pea beds or alcholic beverages harmed in the making of our day (like at SOME wild parties), but we did have a lot of fun and I can’t wait to do it again SOON! Thanks for all your hard work and for hosting us Jewels — and Big, Big Smoochies to the best quilty peeps ever!!!

XOXO,
Anna

Bedtime Stories

27 Comments / September 13, 2008 February 18, 2011 / Chat

Holy Cow! You guys are hysterical!!! I knew I’d get some great ideas for how to use that cookie writer! What a clever and ambitious bunch you are. I’m really happy that so many of you managed to get one of them — I’m thinking I need to write the seller and ask for a commission LOL!

Other than all the cookie writer excitement, it’s been a quiet week here in Thimbleannaland. A little boring actually, and it worries me that it might be the calm before the holiday storm. (Notice I did NOT use the “C” word — I’m not ready!)

Anyway, I caught TheEmptyNestChild yawning and it reminded me of the big yawns I’d get out of the boys when we read bedtime stories. We loved reading together and I thought I’d tell you about my two favorite memories of those times.

One night we were reading 2095 by Jon Scieszka. (2095 is from a great series for early readers called The Time Warp Trio — a group of books about three boys who travel in time. Most of the time they traveled to historical eras in the past, but in this book they were traveling to 100 years in the future. Kids love these stories ’cause they’re so funny.) Anyway, I read this passage:

“What’s the date today?” I asked.

Director Green slid her finger across another panel. The blue numbers 9/28/95 appeared.

“September 28,” she said.

And then I stopped reading and we had a wow moment and a laugh — the actual date that we were reading was 9/28/95. What were the odds of that??? Ok, maybe you had to be there, but we were really excited!!!

(Hey Look! I won a prize at Anna’s and it arrived in the mail this week. Thanks for the moda squares and chocolate Anna, I love it!)

Here’s one of my favorite passages from a children’s book, ever. It’s from The Twits by Roald Dahl and it’s describing Mrs. Twit. (Oh how we love Roald Dahl.)

But the funny thing is that Mrs. Twit wasn’t born ugly. She’d had quite a nice face when she was young. The ugliness had grown upon her year by year as she got older.

Why would that happen? I’ll tell you why.

If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until it gets so ugly you can hardly bear to look at it.

A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.

How cool is that? Did I mention that we love Roald Dahl? Well…speaking of bedtime… I hope you all have a great weekend. I get a sewing day with the quilty peeps tomorrow. Yipee!!!

XOXO,
Anna

Playing With a New Toy

74 Comments / September 10, 2008 February 18, 2011 / Recipes

Back in July, Tartelette had a fantastic giveaway. She was giving away this really cool Brigitte-Keks “Ausstecher-Set” which is a tool to “write” on cookies. I seriously wanted this new little gadget, so I left a comment and I won!

Ok, I didn’t really. Are you kidding? I’ve won a few giveaways lately, but there were 493 comments in Tartelette’s contest! I’m not that lucky! I searched all over the place to find one and they seemed to only be available here, on Amazon Germany. I decided shipping would probably be too much so I gave up. About a month later, I got an e-mail from an enterprising person selling them on e-bay. I can only assume this seller contacted all of Tartelette’s losing commenters.

Anyway, I ordered one and I’ve been having fun playing with it. I made a batch of shortbread (using Ina’s recipe) and “wrote” on some cookies. It’s really fun and it really works! (Of course it works better if you actually know how to make shortbread. Since I didn’t have my Baking Buddy Extraordinaire here to advise me, I rolled my shortbread too thin and many of the words disappeared by the time the cookies came out of the oven.)

My next batch of shortbread should be perfect though, ’cause “third time’s the charm”. The first time I made shortbread I cooked it too long and subjected the quilty peeps to really cute snowflakes that were as hard as rocks. I’ll be ready for that recipe next time — I’m even thinking about getting something like these rings to help me roll the shortbread out to the proper thickness.

Just think of all of the possibilities for this little gadget. I think they’d make great stocking stuffers or gifts for friends. You could make cookies that say “Welcome Baby” or “Hello” or even individual names that could be used as place cards the next time you have your peeps over. How ’bout insults? Or Jokes? The sky’s the limit! I even had fun making a cookie for that darling little boy who belongs to Dear Fii.

I just wish he lived closer so that I could give it to him!

XOXO,
Anna

P.S. I was going to provide the link to the ebay store where you could buy one of these gadgets, but the link appears to be empty. I’m guessing the seller has sold out. Hopefully, it’s just temporary. His/her name is tesa999 in case he/she gets them in and you want to check later.

Excuse Me, Please…

38 Comments / September 6, 2008 February 18, 2011 / Embroidery

I’m interrupting this mighty-fine weekend to show you the wonderful package I received in the mail today. A few weeks ago Nancy of Nancy’s Sting Og Ting had a blog anniversary. She gathered her comments, randomly selected one, and yelled “Thimbleanna, Come On Down!” Today, the fabulous prize package arrived!

Just look — an adorable bag, a Norwegian moose magnet, a thimble and a note to me on a very pretty card.

I was so excited to see the pretty thimble — isn’t it cute? It’s from the town where Nancy lives.

And look at Nancy’s exquisite hand embroidery. I LOVE embroidery and hand embroidery is the frosting on the cake. Look at those perfect little stitches. And I love the way Nancy colored a little shading inside of the embroidery lines.

Every little detail about this bag is fantastic, from the label inside of the bag, to the drawstring cording with it’s own little pouch on the end to protect the cords from fraying. Nancy’s workmanship is awesome. I’ve been carrying the little bag around with me all day. I feel like Nancy came over here and gave me a big hug. Thank you so very much Nancy for making me feel so special!

And while we’re on the subject of embroidery, I’ve done a little embroidery this week too. Natalie at Cinderberry Stitches offered this adorable free pattern a few weeks ago. It came along just at the right time for a little project I’d started. I was amazed at how small the little birds are — I’ve put a nickel in the picture to provide some scale.

Thank you so much for your gift too Natalie! I’ve really enjoyed this little embroidery and have learned a few things. I grew up embroidering on dishtowels and I always forget to put an extra layer behind my embroidery. I didn’t notice until I took this picture how much that extra layer is needed. I also love this new way of doing straight stitching. I’ve always used a traditional running stitch, but this method seems so much cleaner.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled, busy weekend. I hope it’s a fun one with great weather where you are!

XOXO,
Anna