Appreciated

I know many of us are in the throes of holiday craziness with the added bonus of working on gifts, and thus having nothing we can show on our crafty blogs. The dude and I find this time of year to be a little quiet at work so we decided to take a couple of days off. On Thursday we went to see the Magna Carta at the Library of Congress (through January 19). You might recognize the document as the predecessor of our own Constitution and Bill of Rights. One of the things I found most fascinating was that the Magna Carta was loaned to the US during the 1939 New York World's Fair. When it became dangerous for the document to return to the U.K., it was held at the Library of Congress. And when the U.S. entered the war, it, along with the Constitution and Declaration of Independence were moved to Fort Knox. If you get a chance to see the Library of Congress, you should. It's a beautiful building with some fabulous displays even without the Magna Carta. On Friday we went to Longwood Gardens to see the Christmas decorations. We did a few other things about town. It was a nice, relaxing day. It definitely has helped us gear up for this last full week of work this year.

Today, my mother texted me a photo of her outfit. "Thought you'd like to know that I still wear this. So many compliments!!!!" I have talked about it before, but I've never shown the photo. It's from Hollie Designs and I took it as a class, I think, at Spirit of Cross Stitch. It took a long time because we had to flip the Santa (stitched on the other side of the vest). I have the distinct inability to rotate shapes in my head, so it was a nightmare to do the second half, but I persevered. Lots of fun fibers in this one. I'm glad she still wears it because the vest I made myself (photo at the above link) never sees the light of day! 

Have You Seen This?

This Blackbird pattern is coming soon. I want to stitch it for my mother, but instead of putting in children and grandchildren (since that will be pretty pathetic given the current lack of  progeny in our family), I'd go backwards. I'd like to have my mother's matrilineal line as far back as I can take it...or eight generations because there are eight trees. I'm only at five--Maureen, Marguerite, Mary Anne, Maria Eugenie, Mary (whose initial are MOM). If things don't pan out, I can always put myself on there because I make my mother a mother, right?

And if you're one of those people who recognize patterns, no I don't feel bad that my mother didn't name me a name beginning with M. Maria Eugenie was probably called Eugenie because that's how the French Canadians did things back then. All Catholic girls were named Marie and all boys named Joseph with everyone going by their middle name. Although usually it's "Marie" rather than "Maria" so I wonder if her name were more deliberately chosen? Who knows? She's the one who got married in Lowell, Massachusetts one day and then two days later got married in Nashua, New Hampshire. (Probably a religious thing, but two separate marriage licenses. AND she lied about her age on both of them.)

You can probably tell what I've been doing instead of stitching, right?

Quilts

Over the next few days I will be bringing you the little quilty things we rescued from the house-o-clutter. Prepare yourself!

This pile contains eight quilts: three antique, three stitched and hand-quilted by my mom (some are UFOs), and two store bought. I'm not going to show you the latter, but we brought them back in case anyone can use them. I thought someone would take some of these last night--Sunday dinner* was at our house--but only the antique floral quilt on top (oops forgot to photo) got snapped up. There's also a bag of patchworked squares just off to the side.

I think this exercise will be a morality tale for those of us who have an extensive WIPs list.

I myself plan to learn nothing from it.




*It was a Pioneer Woman dinner: Chile con queso, revved up (aka crack dip); to die for white chicken enchiladas; Simple. Perfect. Enchiladas!; and Flat Apple Pie from the new cookbook. I'm exhausted. Completed satisfied, but exhausted. Make those chicken enchiladas tonight; you can thank me later.

Weekend Stitching

On Saturday, we decided to head out to Lancaster to make fun of the Amish to show my MIL, who still doesn't believe the Amish don't use electricity, how the other half lives. I nearly finished the Santa ornament for my nephew before I fell asleep in the back. We went to the Quilt Museum, which is really just a small section of a shop, and saw some beautiful contemporary quilts that made me wish I could sew. (Yes, that's ironic.) I dragged my hands over some beautiful fabric and contemplated buying some felted wool. Then we went in search of a quilt that we could hang in our living room with our other textiles. But we're too poor. Even when we got off the beaten path, we just liked the really quilty ones. And those cost. My husband decided he needs a hobby, and he was thinking about turning bowls. I tried to convince him to learn quilting, but I think he finally settled on jam making. My mother was a bit disappointed, since she was willing to give him free lessons... Saturday ended with us stuffing ourselves full of hearty Amish food, like we were about to lead a team of horses into the field.

On Sunday, we took both the mothers (yes, mine arrived Saturday afternoon) and one father for dim sum. Sissy, the dude, and I also picked up the tab for everyone, including my cousin. This is what happens when you give birth. Everyone came back to our house so dad could get the grand tour. Then my mother rearranged the furniture in the living room. As they departed, my father told the dude that he was going to call in twelve minutes, and he wanted to hear the sound of the lawnmower in the background. Since it takes about 12 minutes to mow the lawn, he missed it. Then the dude, MIL, and I set about to finish the desk we bought at IKEA two weeks ago. (We stopped about halfway through when we realized we had just spent hours making extra holes in the piece because we were too dense to follow pictograms--yeah, there were 5 advanced degrees in the room.) We still haven't finished but I think that may be on the agenda for today. We had to stop in order to make it out to Exton for Mother's Day dinner my cousin was cooking for everyone. I thought that place used to be full when we lived there, but on Sunday there were 8 adults, two kids, and three dogs (my parents brought their chocolate lab, Coco, with them).

Today sucks. Everyone else got to go to the Classic Diner for breakfast. I had to put on my duck boots and slosh to work.