I'm the voluptuous one in the middle

Lately I have been dreaming of the sea.  I want to feel the salt air in my lungs and the sand shifting under my feather light body.  I want to spread out a blanket and set up a chair under a big pink umbrella.  I want to sip on ice cold Diet Pepsi and complain that the sand is getting into my stitching bag.  I want to hear the gulls complaining that I won't share my Pringles with them.  I want to gossip with my bosom chums about the latest projects we need to purchase.  I want to bemoan the fact the sun is so bright that I need my sunglasses.  I want to giggle about the silliness of our latest adventure.  Yes my congenial friends I want to be taken away to the sea.

 

You may be asking why, why would a girlish girl with a perfect life want to be somewhere else.  Well it is all Ms. Tanya Marie Anderson's fault, yes the Sampler Girl designer.  She tempted me with a sale on her darling designs by daring to slip an e-mail into my box.  Shame on her and how could I resist?  How could any Jane Austen fan resist "By the Ocean with Jane Austen"?  And then there was "Gertie Sells Yarn by the Seashore".  Not to be left behind was her cute Halloween design "Out Flying".  Because my finances were in short supply I decided to forgo her new design booklet "Mermaid Booklet".  I shed a tear as I vowed in one month to purchase it so we would never have to part again... 

I can't wait to start a new project but I will contain myself even though I want to stitch Gertie and Jane for my necessary room...no dearest ones, girlish girls have no bathrooms, only necessary rooms.  Just like girlish girls do not sweat, they glisten.

I indeed have been making progress on Princess Wiggle Wiggle's birth sampler.  I have to finish her name and then the crown at the top and the right blue bird and I can start on something else.  This one has the 2 different colors of green hand-dyed floss.  At first I was not happy and swore I could tell a huge difference but as the rest is stitched it isn't noticeable.  I won't tell you which part of the vine is with a different brand but let me know what you think.

 

My next UFO to tackle will be the above design.  It really is darling, a French designer.  This is being stitched on Color Bloom 32count in Enchanted Night.  It is cute and look forward to getting started on a "Sea" design.

And I have a weeks vacation coming up soon.  One of the things I would like to accomplish is making a slip cover for my love seat in the front room.  I found this denim fabric at the Thrift shop...11 yards of 60" width for $6.60!  I don't know if you see the pattern well in the photo but it is a throw cover with gathered corners.  I want to make a throw but then make cushion covers so it will stay in place better.  If I have enough fabric I would like to make a padding for the arms too.  I will wash the fabric first to remove the starch and shrink it.  I am so excited about doing this and will definitely share the finished product with you.

Pears are ripe and for the picking!  I brought some home from work and the above pears came from Brother 1's pear tree.  The Professor has commented on how sweet they are.  I may pare some up to freeze for pear bread or pear cobbler...yum!

 

Oh yes, I found a great Spanish rice recipe and my Prince loves it.  I put the recipe up on my other blog, The Lilac Thicket Cooks.  The link is up on the right.

 

The time has come for this girl to sign off.  I am going to fix me a bagel with some Nutella...yum!  May all your Thickets be blessed and your adventures delightful!



 

Time for an Underwear Finish Dance

I am just so excited, yes dear friends, there is a finish in the Lilac Thicket!  "I Love You", a UFO started over a year and a half ago was completed as I watched some programs I recorded!  My work of art is washed and pressed!  I even recalled seeing some fabric in my stash that is perfect to finish it with.  I am thinking a tuck pillow or a heart shaped stuffed door hanger...what do ya'll think?  Any suggestions?  I think I probably will work on finishing it next weekend.

So onto the Lizzie Kate piece and as I look at it I see it isn't a very big piece so only the crown and the right swirl with bird along with Princess Wiggle Wiggle's name remain.  There is one fly in the ointment. I chose different colors then the pattern called for. I didn't write the names down which isn't a problem because the skeins are in the bag, except that the green was a Six Strand Sweet hand-dyed. They are no longer in business and I used all but a length that is in the needle dangling from the fabric.  The floss tag is missing so I don't know what the name is.  That means trying to match it up with something else.  I suppose the worst that can happen is I have to pull the left green swirl out and start over with another color...rats!

Well if one finish is a roll, I am on a roll and I feel good about it.  I enjoyed stitching which is something that hasn't happened in a while.  Life is sweet within the Lilac Thicket this evening.  Time to embarrass my husband by doing an Underwear Finish Dance for the neighbors in my front room window!  I think the dance song will be..."hot stitcher, check it and see, her needle temp is 103"!

Waving at the neighbors!

No you haven't stumbled into the wrong place, I did a bit of a face lift to the Lilac Thicket.  I updated the room with some appropriately girlish wallpaper and changed the color scheme to a different shade of pink.

I had a rough week at work as I told you about in the last post and barely hung on like a parched wanderer finally finding the desert oasis until my weekend started at 3:30pm yesterday! 

Wednesday evening I came home to dinner and a lovely bunch of flowers.  Aren't they sweet?  I tell you I did pick the right man this time.  I wouldn't trade my Caribbean Prince for all the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups in the whole world!  Even when he gets his nasty dirty fingerprints all over my laptop! Now ladies, that is saying something!

Last Friday the Professor and I made our round at our favorite Thrift Shop.  He gets mad at me when I tell people how much I pay for our fabulous finds.  I guess he wants folks to think we buy full price or something.  I just get excited about the nice little things we get that make our lives a little more robust on our meager earnings.  I think it might inspire people to realize new is not sophisticated, you can have a nice home or wardrobe at a fraction of the bucks.

Each of these pieces of fabric are 2 yards a piece and they were each $1.20, which is 60¢ a yard.

This pair of pillowcases...$1.00!! I think they are lovely!

This doily....$1.00! It will go in our living room which is blue! I need to place it under my lovely vase of flowers!



At work we have the plants changed every 2 weeks and they then give them away in a raffle instead of throwing them out.  I won, I won!  These are the ones that I really wanted to win too! I felt like I won a million dollars!

 

And the doctor crabbed at me about drinking too much Diet Pepsi, can you imagine?  I was NOT happy with him at all!  Drink more water...can you spell "Y-U-C-K"! So my Crazy Cat Carol gave me one of those little drink flavoring packets and it was good!  So now I have a selection.  I don't really care for the Lime Margarita one, I love the Peach Ice Tea one.  $1.87 for the Great Value at Wal-Mart.  The Lipton brand was $2.83 and I had coupons which brought it down to 2.23.  Okay, I am still drinking Diet Pepsi but only one or two a day, the rest is the water!

Okay, don't faint but there is stitching going on here in the Lilac Thicket.  I picked a UFO which happens to be a free design whose designer I can't remember or find at the moment.  It is on Navy Blue 28ct Lugana with Crescent Colors floss in "Cupid".  I love the red.  I figure I should have it finished by the end of the weekend.

When I finish the "I Love You", I want to start on this Lizzie Kate design "Happily Ever After" for my g-g niece Princess Wiggle Wiggle.  Yes, I would like to finish it before she can legally drink liquor!  Let's see...a fast calculation is 18 years to finish it, it will be a tight schedule, but if I buckle down I think it is doable!

Yes I am waving good bye and I would like to leave you with a visual.  I need to get to the laundry mat and so I have been hand washing snickers and hanging them outside to dry.  I go to retrieve them from the patio 2 nights ago and the Professor startled me as I didn't know he followed me out, "What are you doing?"  With raised snickers I wave them to the north, then the east and finally the south, "I am giving the neighbors one final good look!".  One never knows what they will see as they look out their back window towards the Lilac Thicket.

God Bless!

Frump Week

I just wanted to post a little something as I am in the middle of "Frump Week" here in the Lilac Thicket.  I am hardly recognizable without the make up and cute hair accoutrement's.  I am just worn slick, it's probably the heat.

My dear Brother 2 and my dear Professor wired up my dragging air diverter on my car on Sunday.  A prim and proper girl should never let her parts hang out of her bottom for all the world to see, should she!

My dear sister and I did a good job of teaching our dear darling great great niece to play with her grapes at the dinner table, by popping one in our mouth and holding it with our lips so it is sticking half way out of one's mouth.  It was grand fun and it aggravated the elders at the table.  My sister in law told us we were going to choke to death and it wasn't fun to grab a child hang it upside down and beat the crap out of it to dislodge the food that was causing the choking.  That inspired me...

The next time I see a bratty child in Wal-Mart I will grab them, hang them up side down and beat the crap out of them..."Yes sir officer...he was choking...honest!"  Next time you hear from me I may be in jail.  Do they allow cute hair in jail?