Pass it on

The thread has been sorted by color and the stitching has begun. Just a technique to explore in my silly attempt to help create the next generation of crafty people. Kaycee was attracted by the colors in the picture and the sparkly ribbon used on the wings. I love needlepoint and I hope she will too.

Happiest Day!

I ran across this video here. This has got to be the most joyous wedding celebration ever! You will smile til your face hurts and if you don't something is wrong.

Original watercolor by Lauren Alexander.

Thirty three years ago today I got married. I still am and it is still good. I am using my one of my favorite artists to illustrate the day.

Today

On this day 33 years ago I married a wonderful man. He was in the Navy at the time. Three children, six grandchildren, seven homes, two dogs and other assorted pets later we are still married and plan to be for many more years to come.

It is hard to find pictures of him because he is usually the one taking them at family gatherings. This one comes from helping my daughter and her family to move into a home they purchased earlier this year. I like the happy look on his face.

Distracted

I was feeling strange all day. I couldn't really settle on getting anything done. I kept bouncing from one activity to another. I am hoepful that tomorrow will be a little more focused.

I am trying to build a routine of posting each day Monday through Friday and it just struck me that I hadn't posted today. I went for my favorite standby when it comes to topics. I went window shopping. I used the word distracted on Etsy to search and many things came up so I guess this feeling is rather common. That doesn't really surprise me since I have always been an average type of person living an average type of life.

Enough of that. Let me show you one of the things I found. It is from the shop Funktionslust. The piece is actually called Abstract Distraction No. 1. This shop has a category called Abstract Distractions.

At the end of this distracted day I feel as refreshed as this piece is pretty. Tomorrow is planned and I am looking forward to it.

Thinking of the Moon

Print available from the shop of Carly Laundry on ArtFire.

Forty years ago today men landed and walked on the moon. This was the summer before my freshman year in highschool. All the men who ever walked on the moon had done so before I graduated four years later. It seems so very long ago. At that time I probably imagined that we would have done so much more on the moon than we have.

Where was I that day? Probably sitting in front of a black and white tv watching Walter Cronkite tell us all about it. Where were you?

I am a mother of two who loves to be creative. I knit, quilt and daydream. Anything to do with textiles inspires me and makes me happy.

This is the introduction on the profile page in the Etsy Shop Miesmama. Below are just a few of the happily created things you can get in that shop. I can tell in each and every piece that she loves what she does, can't you?

A Personal Favorite

Bless his little heart. Jim decided that is was too hot to cook dinner at home last night. I doubt he will think so every night but who was I to argue? Any way we went to one of our favorite places to eat and I wanted to share it with you. We went to Filly's Roadhouse in Apache Junction.

Being quite honest here this is no fancy dinin' place. As you come in you enter the bar and the stage and dance floor. Keep walking towards the back and you are in the restaurant. The decor is simple, the parking lot is dirt, the music can be fun but not always the best and count on it being country of course, the hitching post for your horse or burro is in the back and sometimes it is really used.

Use the link here to see the menu because that is the best part of this place. The specialty of the house is chicken and they do it really well. This place will serve you the best and I mean the best wings you have ever had! If you have any room after dinner, and you would need plenty, one of the cobblers for dessert is fantastic. The serving is big enough to share with at least two people and maybe more.

For more info about restaurants I ran across a cool place called Urban Spoon. You can post about your favorite eatin', drinkin' and dancin' places or fine dining if you insist and connect your post to them. They give you a graphic for your blog and link to your post on their site.

More Handmade

This is something I made long ago. It has had a couple lives so far. the little doily started out in a wood embroidery hoop to hang on a wall or in a window and I used it that way for a long time. I took it out of the hoop when I was looking for something to place a new reed diffuser on. It is made of cream colored crochet thread and uses almost every basic crochet stitch there is from single to triple with a few clusters thrown in.

One of the nice things about creating with cotton crochet thread is that with a bit of care it can be a very long lasting piece of work. I wash my things in the washer and lay them out to dry. To keep things looking nice I press them with a steam iron and some spray starch to help it resist dirt.

Today's Frustration

So I am working on a summer wrap idea crocheted with size 10 cotton thread. I think this would be a lovely way to cover your sun kissed shoulders as the sun goes down. My problem is that I found a mistake several rows back as I was working on it last night. Can you see right in the middle where I missed the top of a column of stitches? The thought of having to take out all those stitches and redo it makes me want to chuck it in a corner and just cruise the web looking for travel deals. I will have to do it though to have the number of loops for the scalloped edge I have planned to come out right on both sides of the triangular wrap. Grrrr!

Handmade at Home

Today I am continuing to show the little things that are part of my daily life that are handmade. Having things from hands that care whether your own or another persons just makes it all more meaningful. To me it creates a connection to the thoughts and feelings behind the creation. In a mass produced world the only thought behind the creation of objects is probably "When does my shift end so I can go home?"

The little basket today isn't much. It started out plain white and I sponged the green paint on it. The flowers inside were left from the center pieces on the tables at my oldest daughter's wedding reception. That event was a lovely day and lots of fun. So you see at a glance I can feel better just thinking of the happy time behind the creation. This sits on the edge of the tub in the master bath so I get to see it several times a day.
As for any purists out there I will admit this is not made from scratch but rather the basket is hand altered and the flowers just placed in it but those ideas were put together by my hands.

Happy Weekend

Over the weekend one of our grandsons turned three years old. I got him a card that played the song happy birthday. He called today to thank me for the card and to play the song so I could hear it.
I want to tell this little superhero happy birthday here on the blog and share one of my favorite pictures of this cute little man. This was at Thanksgiving last year. He found a quiet spot, paper and pencil and decided to do some drawing. Sorry Tristan but I can't remember what you told me it was a drawing of now.

EtsyBlogger Birthdays

I am a member of the EtsyBloggers Street Team and have been for nearly 2 years. The group got started around August of 2007. The purpose of the group is to create buzz about Etsy and our team members. To be on the team there are a really just three basic requirements. We have a chosen member each month that all EtsyBloggers are asked to write a post about. We have blog carnivals every other week with 2 topic choices each time. You need to write a post for a blog carnival at least once a month. The last requirement is to put the links to those posts in the roll call thread for the month on the team message board.

One of the other perks of membership is that each Monday an EtsyBlogger is featured on the team blog. There is a sign up thread for that on the message board. I share doing the Mini Monday feature with Lily of Tulips Treasure Box. It is called Mini Monday beacause we use the Etsy Mini widget to show off the shop. To be featured when your name comes up on the list the member needs to be current on the membership requirements I told you about in the first paragraph.

One other thing on the team blog is birthday greetings done by me each week on Friday for those active members who had birthdays in the previous week. This week I posted about two great members and wanted to share them with you here. The first is the shop owner of Spotted Cow Soaps and the second is Shell Mitchell. Both of them are outstanding artisans and if you come to the blog here you will see why. If you are getting this in a reader please come on over because the Etsy Mini widget does not show up on your feed. I really want you to see their products.

See I told you they had great stuff!

I hope....

I really hope all my readers had a wonderful 4th of July. Ours here was simple but nice. We grilled some steaks, had potato salad, fresh corn on the cob and watermelon. That is one of my very favorite summer meals.

Later when the fireworks started I got the camera out to try for some nice pictures. A lot of them were duds of course but one of my own shots made me say wow how cool.

Take a look!



I had a lot of fun with lenses and settings. Can you tell? This picture is straight off the camera. No cropping or adjusting of any kind. Guess what my new desktop wall paper is?

Just Heard About

I just heard that Sarah Palin is stepping down as the governor of Alaska. I found the news a bit amusing. The reasoning stated is so that she would not waste the state's money doing lame duck travel and other useless junkets. Come on Sarah, just don't go huh? She also says she wants to work on changing things in this country from outside the "bloodsport" of politics. Well we all know that Mrs. Palin has no public speaking fear. I do wonder who will be paying for her to travel all over working on this change while she prepares to reenter the "bloodsport" to run for president which we all know she will do. One more thing Sarah, how will you supposedly be able to spend more time with your family while becoming the main poster child for the Republican Party? Wouldn't staying in Alaska as governor make that easier?

Reading 2009- A Mercy by Toni Morrison

Cover of A Mercy

I am continuing my posts of books with A Mercy by Toni Morrison. This book along with two other recent books I read concern the roles and suffering of women and children in male dominated societies. Each of them were placed in different countries and culture.

Any piece of work by Toni Morrison is worth reading. This author has won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the Nobel Prize for literature. The Nobel citation said,

Toni Morrison, "who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality."

I just can't say it better than that. Even though she was awarded the honor in the 90's her tradition exposing us to an essential aspect of American reality continues.

The link below is to a video where Toni Morrison discusses her book A Mercy.
To allow the author to introduce her book to you use this link.

Last Week

Last week I had the pleasure of spending some time with two of my grandkids. They got to visit here while my daughter spent some time with my mom during her recovery from a broken ankle. By the way the cast came off yesterday and she seems to be doing well so far. That is good news.

Being down here in the heat one of the best ways to entertain them was with a pool in the back yard. They used it in the mornings and again in the late afternoon. Midday when the sun is high and sunburns and heat are a problem we retreated inside for lunch, naps, movies or wii games. Nothing real exciting but just spending time together. I know I enjoyed it and I think they did too.
Of course the child with the hose always has the most fun. You can tell by Joslyn's face when Hunter had a turn and sprayed her! Does he look a bit like a guilty big brother or what?

Reading 2009- The War Within by Bob Woodward

Cover via Amazon

Typical of me once again I am catching up on my reading posts. During all my traveling I finished several books and will spread out posts about them over the next couple weeks or so. Many of them came from the library but sometimes I want to own a book to read again and find a good selection at Amazon books. My intent which I seem to fail at so miserably at is to finish a book and then post about it and move on to the next book.

I read The War Within by Bob Woodward hoping to learn more about behind the scenes planning and policy making in the Bush Administration and I certainly did. It was not an easy read, informative but not entertaining but then I doubt the author meant it to be. This book covers two years of the Bush White House, from 2006 to 2008, with an emphasis on the Iraq War, the high level decision makers, politicians and military involved during those years.

To this day I still wonder what it was about George Bush that caused Americans to elect the man president not once, but twice. I did not end my confusion by reading this book.