Sissy Sunday

Last fall, I showed you a wreath my sister made. Today, I was futzing around on Pinterest, and I saw that my sister had posted a new photo of her Halloween wreath. She made it last year. I love it. Her husband is so proud of this wreath; I find that charming. She posted another new wreath she made, and you can find it on her board "I Made It." It's all her Pinterest successes; to my knowledge, she's had no failures.

Don't get lost down the Pinterest wormhole now, you hear?

Scared Straight

Perhaps I was a little humorless on the last SBQ. After all, I read my horoscope occasionally even though I think that's a load of crap--and a lot more of you would tend to agree with me there. My parents are both first borns so the traits should be strong in this one, Obi-Wan. But they're not. Many people who answered the question said, as first borns, that cross-stitch played into their perfectionism. But I am no perfectionist. Stitching relaxes me. I can't get all het up if a stitch is out of place; you know I rarely unstitch. My stitching may reflect my need for approval. I do like people to make a fuss over what I've done. I can hardly see myself in the description of the first born. I'll concede that I'm scholarly. I think I show more of the traits of a last born: idealist, good sense of humor, hard working. Oh, and what about "tends to go against the norm?" C'mon, that's me all over! You could see my first born "need for approval" above as last born "attention seeking." See how much this is like astrology? (For the record, I'd say Sissy shows many first born tendencies, except for the part where she enjoys sales. FWIW, both my first born parents were also in sales. See? Load of crap.)

So I'd like to receive approval on my latest finish, Scared Silly. This is by Birds of a Feather, and I stitched it on the recommended fabric with all but one of the recommended fibers. I couldn't find the green the pattern calls for so I substituted one of the Loose Threads from GAST.

Sorry I couldn't show it to you sooner. The family descended on Thursday. Yesterday we went to New York to Kleinfeld's. Dianne waited on us. We aren't going to be on Say Yes to the Dress, though you may see the back of my head if the tattooed Asian girl from Manitoba makes it on the air in January or February. Keep watching! Sissy chose this dress* (with my help) after trying on about ten. (She only showed us five.) As it turns out the designers were there. Readers from Down Under may recognize the brother of the designer, Henry Roth. He is the mentor on Project Runway Australia. He congratulated us and gave us wet kisses after my sister chose his sister's design. For such a big (Australian) star, he was a delight.

*Link removed at my sister's request. Someone (ahem, Jersey) is trying to get a sneak peak of the dress. Please e-mail me if you'd like the link. I will have to vet you and be sure that you won't be passing this information on to anyone (ahem, Jersey).

SBQ: Birth Order

Lee asks: Where do you fall in the birth order of your family?  Do you think that birth order traits have had an effect on your choice of hobby and craft? How so?


No because I think birth order traits are a load of crap. Oh, let me be less offensive. Psychologists of merit have found no significant correlation between birth order and self-reported personality. Really, now, you wouldn't expect me to go in for pop psychology, would you? (I really am no fun, and I don't think it has anything to do with birth order.)


 Besides, my sister (only sibling and younger) and I craft together on occasion. Let me show you what we did two Saturdays ago:

Two envelope-style candy holders and a thank you card

Gift box and two cards. Yup, I made the flower on the box.

Who's Afraid of the 13th?

Yesterday's library stitch-in was ill attended. Was it paraskavedekatriaphobia, we wondered? One woman, whose sister was born on Friday the 13th, reported that she claims she hasn't had a lot of bad Friday the 13ths, but an awful lot of bad Thursday the 12ths.

I almost finished the threadkeep by noon (our regular ending time). I had to wait a few more hours, but another one on the finishing pile! Yay, me!

More good news! Mabel will be coming home this weekend. She talked to our stitching librarian Thursday who reported that Mabel had been reading--and loved!--the book I recommended for her last time we were together. Another librarian had given her a book "that was all rapes and violence." It didn't look that bad from the cover, but I suggested she might like The Shop on Blossom Street. They didn't have it in large print so our librarian gave her A Good Yarn. Our library delivers to "shut ins," so Mabel will have more knitting adventures to delve into soon. I hope to see her back when I return from Maine.

On an entirely different, but still happy note, Sissy--who once complained she had been "dating for 20 years and was tired of it"--got engaged last night. Her boyfriend gathered as much of the family as he could and proposed in front of everyone. I think they'll be quite happy together, and I am over the moon with joy for my sister. I'm on the look out for an appropriate wedding sampler, so if you have an ideas, I'm listening. Her place is pretty stylish; I might say elegant traditional.

Nerves: Shot

If you are missing your little stitched pieces, please send me your address so that I may return them to you. ;)

I had a lot of intentions of blogging about something, but we left NH today so we wouldn't get stuck in Thanksgiving return traffic. Only instead we were in this traffic. Six hours after the original accident, it took us two hours to move seven miles. I'm a little frazzled. I'm going to have a cup of tea in bed now.

Kudos to my sister who drove the whole way, and tonight, narrowly averted full blown road rage.

Odds and Ends

I went to the fiber store this weekend and bought a bunch of flosses that I needed for my Monthly Mania charts. I got back to work on February today which means I have finished neither April nor February, as you can see. While I was at the needlepoint store, I found these Nano cover needlepoint kits that are still not shown on the AMH website. I got the pink and green one.

My at home project is Mirabilia's Emerald Mermaid. I am working on this as part of the SAL with Michelle. So far she's just an arm (the mermaid, not Michelle). She does violate the "Selfish Stitching in 2008" mandate, however. Maybe I'll start something new and selfish this week.

Thanks to all of you who kept a good thought for my sister. Last week, we finally found out that she does have a spindle cell tumor, but it is benign. The pathology took so long because spindle cell whatsit is so rarely benign that no one in the lab had seen it. They had to send it to a pathologist at Harvard. Of course, my mother thinks it was the nuns in Canada that Father Rick had organized. I think the diagnosis just confirms my feeling that my sister is a freak of nature.

It's supposed to be Delurking Week, but I can't find anything on that for this year. Last year I found out about it on, like, Friday so I didn't participate. Now I am ready but the nation, nay, the world is not. Why so cruel? I know only about 10% of the people who visit here comment. I know I don't always comment because sometimes I don't have anything new to add to the "conversation," but still 90% of you? Recently, I wrote in response to SharonB's post about commenting that commenting rarely feels like entering a conversation. I know how difficult it is sometimes to respond to the comments. There are lots of things that keep me from responding, the main one being which medium to use? It's a pita to e-mail partly because of the yahoo address Anna has and partly because you sometimes have to search out a commenter's e-dress; or if you respond in the comments, you worry that the original commenter won't reread the comments to see your response; addressing comments in posts just makes my posts too long...and on and on. But I will ask you one thing: lurkers, would it kill you to comment?

Down the Sidetrack

I got a little sidetracked from my goals this weekend. I picked up Anna's Bird. This was not on my list; I'm supposed to be working my ten hours on Toy Gatherer. But we had company this weekend--the dude's aunt foist herself upon us. I couldn't whip out a project that required as much attention as the last few stitches of Toy Gatherer would require, so I picked up something that called to me from the WIP pile.

Tonight, I'm really, really going to try to pick up Sissy's bag. I should try to get this completed. I only have a little tiny bit to do, and only a little tiny bit of May left in which to do it.

At least I didn't start anything new.