Thimbleanna – Page 147 – My little online diary.

An Easter Banner

35 Comments / March 17, 2008 February 18, 2011 / Holidays

Whew! We had a busy, busy weekend here in Thimbleannaland. I don’t think I turned on the computer for most of it, so now I’m really behind with all of your blogs! Thanks for all your Hester concern — I had a message on my answering machine today that she’s recovered and ready to come home. Can’t beat that service! I’m assuming it was a fried power supply but they didn’t really say. Unfortunately, I can’t pick her up until Saturday, so we’ll have to find other entertainment around here this week.

SweetiePie’s shower was awesome this weekend. I’m still going through pictures so it will be a few days before I can show it to you. In the meantime, I thought I’d give you a wedding break and show you the little crocheted Easter banner I made.

The letters in this banner are from Martha Stewart. I crocheted around each letter and then joined them all together with a chain stitch.

The pictures are from The Vintage Workshop and I crocheted around them in the same manner that I crocheted around the valentine cards that I made, except that I used an edging more like the one I did around the letters in this banner.

In case you’d like to make a Happy Easter banner for yourself this year, I’ve written up some instructions here. Each letter took me about 20 minutes to crochet, so you still have plenty of time between now and next Sunday!

I hope you’ve all had a wonderful weekend. I’m sure you’re sick of hearing wedding stuff here, but I’ll be back soon anyway, with bridal shower tales!

XOXO,
Anna

Sewing and Mourning

33 Comments / March 13, 2008 February 18, 2011 / Sewing, Wedding

Thanks for all the SweetiePie apron love! I forgot to tell you that the apron came from a pattern — Simplicity 3752. And for those of you who asked, the fabric is an Alexander Henry print called “Life is Sweet”.

It’s busy, busy here this week helping MyDadLovesMeBestSister prepare for a wedding shower this weekend. I’ve been making these little favor bags from Monica’s wonderful pattern. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — that Monica is a genius.

This is the perfect pattern for quick gifts. (And btw, I’m seeing all over blogland that Monica has a beautiful quilt in the new issue of Quilts ‘n More. As soon as I can un-chain from my duties, I’ll be procuring a copy!) We’re putting a little Body Shop gift pack in each bag, along with a poofy shower scrubber. I hope the girls like them. Anyway, a big huge ol’ smoochie goes to Sharon for letting me know about this pattern — I love it!

Now, once again, I must request that you all join me in a moment of silence.

{Sigh}

My beloved Hester has had a massive stroke. Here she is all bundled up in preparation for her emergency trip to the hospital tomorrow.

I love my Hester. I’m flailing around without her and there’s a gaping hole in the dungeon — it’s so lonely down there now. I’m just holding my breath that this stroke hasn’t affected her brain. We’ve been so close, sharing many hours and late nights together. I thought our relationship was all one-sided, that she really didn’t care about me. But in her final selfless act, she waited until I finished all the monogramming for the favor bags before she slumped over. I still have several bags to put together but I can do that on my old machine. I don’t have a backup embroidery machine though, so her compassion makes me love her all the more. And, I suppose it could be worse — I saw a funny line at Kelly’s today: Things could be worse, we could be trying on bathing suits. Indeed.

Come back to me dear Hester (and please don’t bring that awful Big Bill back home with you!)

Have a wonderful weekend my sweet peeps — I have no blog reading time this weekend, so you all have my permission to take the weekend off LOL!

XOXO,
Anna

I’m Dead, Jim

42 Comments / March 10, 2008 February 18, 2011 / Sewing, Wedding

Continuing with the Star Trekkie comment from the previous post, I think the weekend did me in. It felt like it was non-stop running and to punctuate how tired I was this morning, I got to work and realized I’d left my computer at home, so I had to come all the way home to get it. That’s never happened before, so it was a little distressing!
This was the weekend plan:

Saturday:

Drive 2 1/2 hours to Dayton, early Saturday morning.
Drop TheFirstChild and SweetiePie off at their day long pre-marriage counseling session.
Visit potential rehearsal dinner restaurants.
Visit The Fabric Shack to pick up fabric for the quilt that we will be tying at SweetiePie’s wedding shower next weekend.
Nice relaxing evening of dinner and games with the future in-laws.

Sunday:

Nice relaxing morning with possible visit to church where TheFirstChild and SweetiePie will be married.
Pack some of SweetiePie’s belongings to bring back home.
Bridal shower for SweetiePie in the afternoon.
Taste-testing at reception venue at dinner time.
Home not later than 10 p.m.

Then….Dayton had a blizzard-thingy on Friday/Saturday. They declared some sort of snow emergency level so we were advised to stay home for awhile. It was touch-and-go whether they would cancel Sunday’s bridal shower.

So, this was the weekend reality:

Saturday:

Run a few errands with SweetiePie in the morning while making frequent calls to check the snow situation.
Visit MeMum for a few games of hand and foot.
Visit MyDadLovesMeBestSister to finish up details for next week’s bridal shower.
Decide not to go to Dayton today. Return home at 5 p.m. and decide to clean bedroom level of house with SweetiePie. That took 5 hours with dinner thrown in. Feel sorry for SweetiePie — TheFirstChild is a slob.

Sunday:

Drive 3 hours to Dayton.
Check out one rehearsal venue on the way into town.
Drop TheFirstChild off at future in-laws.
Go to The Fabric Shack with SweetiePie to pick up fabric. (Can I just have a little sympathy from you quilters — we blitzed in, got the job done, and blitzed out. Do you know how hard it is to go there without browsing time? So sad.)
Very lovely bridal shower all afternoon.
Leave unfashionably early to run and check out 2 more rehearsal venues. One closed, one ruled out.
Meet group at reception venue for taste-testing.
Return to future in-laws at 7:30 p.m. and pack SweetiePie’s things.
Make it home at midnight.

We crammed the weekend into one day and now I’m tired. But it was all fun and mostly successful. Except for that rehearsal dinner thing. Woefully unprepared for that. McDonald’s in formal wear is looking good.

The pictures are of an apron that I made for SweetiePie’s shower. We make chocolate chip cookies together, so I gave her cookie sheets, spatula, parchment paper, and the mandatory just-right-size ice cream scoop that we use to scoop the cookie dough, along with the apron. After the shower when SweetiePie showed the apron to TheFirstChild, I commented that it was for Naked Newlywed Cooking Sessions. To which they both rolled their eyes and said “that’s disgusting.” Which, I guess, is the appropriate thing to say to your mother.

And, just how was your weekend?

XOXO,
Anna

I Got Nut ‘n Honey

28 Comments / March 4, 2008 February 18, 2011 / Chat

I was going to title this post “It’s Dead Jim.”* Our computer has really been acting up tonight and the video card appeared to be dead. Somehow, it revived itself (well, ok, TheManoftheHouse worked some sort of magic.) Then our internet service was down. An hour on the phone and more ManoftheHouse magic fixed that too. Sometimes that ManoftheHouse comes in pretty handy!

So, instead, I’ve got nuttin’. Not much blogworthy going on around here. I did hang a little chandelier up in the dungeon. The kid’s old school had their yearly auction and they decorated with tons of these little chandeliers. After the event they always sell the decorations, so I snapped one up for a ridiculous price, considering the darn thing is plastic.

Whatever … it adds a lot of cheer to the dungeon, hanging above my cutting table. You’re getting the chandelier level view, ’cause if I gave you the view from the floor, all you would see is floor joists. (The dungeon is an unfinished room that I share with the furnace — swanky, we’re not!)

For those of you who love pictures and taking pictures, check out this short little video that I love. (Sorry, I tried to embed the video box, but I can’t get it to work.)

There’s a longer (6 minute) version here, if you have the time. I also enjoyed this 1960s Kodak video. Pass the kleenex please!

XOXO,
Anna

* Dr. Spock says that to Captain Kirk in Star Trek. What can I say, I work with a bunch of nerds.

Black and White Trees

41 Comments / March 1, 2008 February 18, 2011 / Quilting

Wow! You are all awesome! I had great fun reading all of the six word memoirs that you left in my comments. You’re a very clever group — thank you so much for taking the time to leave me some inspirational reading.

I have no idea where this last week went. I think it’s been five lost days. I was gone all week for work travel, so there hasn’t been much crafty inspiration going on around here. (Although, courtesy of the O’Hare air traffic controllers, I had enough airport time to finish the messed up monkey sock pictured in my previous post and start the second sock — I heart you, ATC!)

Anyhoo, I thought I’d show you some pictures of one of MeMum’s quilts. These are pictures that I took to put in the blurb book that I made her for Christmas. MeMum is a fantastic quilter, and if you only know one thing about MeMum, it’s that she’s a perfectionist. Pretty little hand-quilted stitches and perfect points.

She made this quilt for MyDadLovesMeBestSister, quite a few years ago. Each tree is made with a different black and white fabric. Three of the trees have one dark red triangle, so technically, the quilt isn’t entirely black and white. MeMum made this quilt back when black and white fabrics were pretty hard to find and it’s sort of a family joke now, ’cause whenever we go into a quilt shop and see a great collection of black and white fabrics, she always says “You have no idea how hard I had to search to find so many different black and white fabrics.”

There is a really pretty quilted feather edge running all along the outer borders. When MeMum marked the quilt, she flipped the template some odd way and one long border was backwards. She didn’t notice it until she had that whole edge quilted. All those hours of beautiful quilting — if it were me, I would have said — “Look, it’s just like the intentional mistakes left in the Amish quilts!” But not MeMum — she unpicked that entire border and re-quilted it. See what I mean? I told you she’s a perfectionist!

Eventually, I’ll make a section on my projects pages for MeMum’s quilts. I’m woefully behind in updating those extra tabs up there. In the meantime, you’ll probably be seeing a few more of her quilts in blog entries.

XOXO,
Anna