Am I there yet!?!?

I'm getting close to being able to retire.  With any luck I'll retire in September 2013.  However, it's looking more and more like it will be sometime in 2014.  Any hoo, I took last Thursday and Friday (June 28 and 29) and Monday and Tuesday (July 2 & 3) and had Wednesday off.  So a nice little mini staycation.  But!  My daughter had a hysterectomy on Thursday so I spent the entire day at the hospital and Friday she was to be discharged at 11:00.  Well, that didn't happen - she wasn't discharged until 7:00 p.m. that night!  Urgh!  So her husband and I spent most of the day Friday at the hospital.  Saturday hubby and I had lunch at Berardi's in Huron, Ohio, then took the lake route up around Catawba and Marblehead.  We got home around 5:00.  My big plans had been to re-arrange my craft room so I could set up my large rug hooking frame on a stand and put my sunflower penny rug on it with the intentions of pulling a few loops for about 10 minutes as often as I could.  Did it happen?  Nooooo!  Why you ask?  I was just burned out from work!  Aargh!  I did manage to work on my Christmas gifts a little but was so disappointed that I didn't do the things on my "to do" list.   Most of my time off was spent staring at the tv and not necessarily watching tv.  Yesterday was the worst!  It was hot and I was crabby at the aspect of coming back to work.  I want to retire and enjoy life.  I want to retire and not be dragging by the end of the week.  I want to retire and enjoy hooking or stitching or whatever strikes my fancy... Sigh....  ok, huge SIGH....  :)  I want to retire so I can do my walks in the morning so I don't find excuses not to do it like I do when I get home from work.  I am sooooo ready to retire but I just might have to put it off one more year.  So there is a light at the end of the tunnel!

I hope you all (well all that celebrate it) had a wonderful 4th of July!  And for those of you that don't celebrate the 4th of July - I hope you had a great day too!

Thanks for stopping by and listening to me whining.  I will get better about posting and posting pictures....some day - I know - when I retire!  LOL!

Major Brain Freeze

Good morning all!

So, I've started on my Christmas gifts (sorry no pictures just in case the recepients check out my blog).  I started them last week but decided the background was too light so I went and purchased a darker background.  Then I retraced everything and started doing the actual work over this past weekend.  Yesterday while I was waiting to come to work I remembered another gift I wanted to make - it's cross stitch so I figured I'd pull it out and get the floss I needed - maybe it would be something I could work on on my lunch break.  So, as I'm looking for the pattern I came across a file folder in my desk labeled "rug hooking" and I thought it was kind of thick.  So I pulled it out to see what all was in it.  DUH!  Several rug hooking patterns including one that similar to what I was trying to design!!!!  I have a shelf in my living room that I plan to hang seasonal quilts or rugs.  On the shelf I have some antique thread spools and a couple of other things.  I had purchased a stencil that said "Welcome" to stick on the wall above the shelf.  But we couldn't get it up correctly and ended up ruining it.  So I decided I'd create my how "Welcome" out of wool.  I knew what I wanted and kept looking and couldn't find anything like what I wanted so I drew it out on a piece of paper.  All I needed to do was get some graph paper, draw it out a little neater, then take it to Staples or some place and have it blown up.  Well, lo and behold, when looking for the cross stitch pattern and found that folder - there was a pattern I had purchased - don't remember when, don't remember where that was exactly what I wanted!  LOL!  Along with 2 other patterns that I liked.  Moral of story - GET BUSY RUG HOOKING!  LOL!  I now have 2 patterns that I'm currently hooking, a just bought a Flag pattern, a chair pad pattern, this Welcome pattern, a larger pattern - sunflower penny rug that I bought two years ago (and I have all the wool I need to do it) and two more that I'm not sure what they are - they're in that folder!  Note to self:  take better inventory of rug hooking patterns and put them in some kind of order in which I want to work/complete them!

Just had to share that!  I'm sure I'm not the lone ranger doing this, but I now know I need to start getting wool so I can actually hook these projects!

Thanks for stopping by and listening!

Have a great day!

Pictures of this and that!

Ok, while hubby is trying to unclog the sink I have some time to post some pictures!

First is a yo yo tree that I made for my girlfriend last Christmas:

It's not the best picture - but gives you an idea.  I'm going to make a smaller one for her this year and one for me and one for my daughter.

Next - pics of my progress on my City Village quilt (which is paper pieced):

This is what the pattern looks like.  Each section is numbered and lettered according to the order it should be sewn and the fabric it should be sewn with.  You place the fabric on the wrong side, but sew on the right side.

Here is the first placing of fabric.  You can't see it on this picture but there is a solid fabric (that's the window).

Here is what it looks like after being sewn together and pressed.

This is another view.

Another view.

What the houses looked like before joing them together.

Here they are joined together.  The blank fabric to the right is for the embroidery - trees or flowers and sometimes birds.

Here is a different house - Cottage.  The blank fabric above the green pole is for an embroidered birdhouse.

The church which needs the cross embroidered on as well as some flowers.

Another house and again the blank fabric to the left is for embroidery.

I have five houses completed and need to sew 7 more.  Once they're done I'll add the embroidery and take more pictures.

My antique spools.  Some of them I bought and the rest are a gift from my friend, Stacy.  Love them!!  This is where I'll be hanging my quilts or rugs.  However, I need to get a longer shelf to hang the City Village quilt on - this one is about 8 inches too narrow.

Some of my treasures from Gathered Treasures show.  The wool and the "Wool" sign is from Alice Frazier of "A Day In The Life".  The camera doesn't do the colors justice.

This cabinet is from another vendor - can't remember the name off the top of my head.  The wooden bowl I got from an antique store in Norwalk, Ohio.

There are more pictures - but I'll post those later! 

I hope you've enjoyed your visit and hope you come back!  Thanks for stopping in.

Where did the time go!?!

Wow! I can't believe I haven't posted since January!  Sorry - no pictures today.  I have a bunch to post - just don't have time in the evenings to post them.  Then when I'm on my lunch break I pop in to see who is doing what and thing I need to post my pictures!  I have pictures of some things I bought when my two friends and I went to Ault's and then an antique store back in early March.  I have pictures of my progress on the City Village quilt - I've finished 5 blocks and have 7 more to go.  After that I'll do the embroidery on them.  I have pictures of our adventure to Gathered Treasures - my purchases there.  I'm going to try to get those posted soon! 

Like many of you - life has just been a whirlwind for me.  I come home from work exhausted and after being on a computer all day I just don't want to be on one at night but if I'm going to post pictures I'm going to have to get on!  :)

Went to Tennessee to visit my dad and rest of my family.  This is my second week back at work and my desk looks like I've been gone for six months!  So much to do!  Ugh. 

Sadly I haven't been doing much hooking.  Between the quilt blocks and working on my brother's afghan I'm pretty busy.  My plan is to have the blocks finished by the end of May and I'd like the afghan finished by May 14 so I can send it to my brother for his birthday.  After the end of May - whether I've completed the blocks or not, I'll need to put them away to start working on my Christmas gifts.  They're stitchery items so I need to get started (I have 30 I need to do).  The good news is that they aren't detailed stitchery so they should go quickly.  Then I'll need to decide if I want to make pillows out of them or frame them or what! 

Have a great week!

Planning on making a new quilt/wall hanging

This is a picture of the wall hanging that my friend, Sharon, and her daughter, Sarah, and I are planning to make.  I need to make mine smaller because the only place I can hang it is about 40 x 40 while this is 57 x 60.  We will do a block at a time.  We plan to meet this Thursday to have a "planning" session and then every other Thursday after that until we at least have the top completed.

This coming Saturday (2/4) my friends Stacy and Sharon and I are going to drive down to Ault's for wool, stop at an antique store along the way and maybe if time permits off to The Door Mouse in Bettsville Ohio for fabric.  :)

I've been very lazy lately - not real motivated to do much of anything.  I have my Saltbox rug sitting right beside my chair to work on but haven't done any work on it in two weeks.  I've just been cleaning and organizing my craft room and reading.  Sigh... I hope I break out of this rut soon!

Hope you all have a good week!

Char

Happy New Year 2012!

I hope everyone had a great holiday and safe New Year's eve!  We had a very quiet New Year's Eve and I loved it!  Friday, December 30 hubby and I went to see Transiberian Orchestra!  They are wonderful.  If you ever get a chance to see them - you must!  At least once in your life time!  The light show is phenomenal, the music is great, the atmosphere is charged!  For many years in my youth I took piano lessons and was pretty good - played at our church a few times when I was 8 years old and again when I was 12.  I found myself, for the first time in a long time, wishing I had kept up with those lessons and continued to learn.  If I were ever to have had a career in music this would be the type of music/band/orchestra I'd love to be in.

New Year's Day I started working on cleaning/organizing my craft room.  Decided to do it in sections.  After spending about 3 hours just clearing off my desk and finding a place for everything that was on my desk I came to the conclusion that I needed to downsize my crafts.  I went a little crazy and thought I could be Wonder Woman of the Craft world and took on jewelry making, card making, knitting, crocheting, cross stitch, crocheted rugs, locker rug hooking, primitive rug hooking, needle punch, rug punch, quilting,...I think you get the picture.  Any hoo, work gets in the way of being able to accomplish much with these crafts so I've decided what I need to do is buy some small plastic containers and go through my crafts - the ones I rarely do or don't do at all because I just don't have the time will be boxed up, labeled and put in the attic.  Once I retire (hopefully in 2 years) then I can pull them out and decide if I a) have time to hone my skills and/or b) if I really even want to.  I want to stick with the quilting, cross stitch, rug hooking and occasional crocheting for now.

So, it's back to work today which means I probably won't have time or energy to work any more in my craft room until this weekend.  By then I'll have my containers and can start de-cluttering even more!

I did start a rug hooking project - Salt Box houses (12 x 24) to hang above the door leading from the living room into the kitchen.  It looks fairly simple so I'm hoping it goes quickly.  I want to start hooking my Sunflower penny rug by March so I need to stay focused on the Salt Box rug/mat!

Sorry - no pictures - I still haven't gotten into the habit of taking pictures as I go along - that's one of the things I plan to try to get better at.

Thank you all for stopping by.  It's been a pleasure meeting each of you! 

Here's to a wonderful 2012!

Happy Belated Thanksgiving and an early Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

I've been very lax in blogging and as I've read your blogs I just don't know how you fit it all in.  I can't even say I've been so busy because so have all of you!  Anyhoo, I've done some things - sadly no rug hooking yet.  But I wanted to share with you some of the things I've done.  First we painted the hallway and living room of our house about two weeks before Thanksgiving.  I took some before and after pics.  My living room had previously been mostly light houses - well actually all light houses and I decided after viewing a lot your pictures that I liked the primitive/country look so I did not put back all my light houses. 

 Before - light blue

 Another before shot - light blue wall

 Now - a Colonial revival tan (sorry about the clutter around the sewing machine!)

A Christmas ornament I made for my staff - from a pattern idea in Create and Decorate.  In Create and Decorate the designed used buttons to make a hate and lace as the scarf.  I wanted a more rustic look so I did the homespun, no hate, and peppercorns for the eyes and mouth.  Everyone seemed to really like it when I gave it out yesterday.

I took a class at a local quilt shop in Vermilion, OH and made this lovely Santa wreath.  I loved it!  It was sooo easy to make.  I'll be making more for gifts next year!

I still want to take pictures of some of my purchases from earlier this fall, but my craft room is such a mess I'd be too embarassed to take pictures!  LOL!

Next weekend my daughter and her children are coming over so we can bake up a storm.  I need 8 dozen cookies for a cookie exchange at work, she needs cookies for them (there are 7 of them) as well as gifts.  I'll try to take pictures along the way!  I hope I maintain my sanity when it's all said and done!  LOL!  It should be fun.

I hope you're all staying warm and are not too overwhelmed with all that needs accomplished yet for the holidays.

Thanks for stopping by.  Leave a comment/let me know how you're doing!

Char