God Bless America

I love the 4th of July for two primary reasons: 1) My birthday is on the 2nd of July and I always look forward to that and then there's a major holiday right after it and everyone is in a good mood in spite of the heat. 2) It's a major holiday celebrating our freedom and basically being a great country to live in and let's face it, it's a beautiful country where you can travel all over and see beautiful sites and scenery and for the most part, people are friendly and intriguing where ever you roam.

Every year I stitch something patriotic, usually after the 4th (heehee). I always hang my stitched piece of America by Jean Farish that I completed on July 4th, 2007. I am proud of this design because it represents something unique to each state. Here's a picture below:

And here are a few close up pictures:

Here's the middle section:

and here's the bottom, what's funny about the bottom is I made a booboo. I didn't consult the chart when stitching the box for the bottom and made it the same height as all 50 boxes, then when I started stitching "Land that We Love" I discovered my mistake. So I changed the words to say "Land That I Love" and inserted a flag mounted in the "land" (with flowers) surrounded by "sea to shining sea". I couldn't believe how well it turned out and am so proud of the whole thing in general. Such a fun piece to stitch on, if you have this pattern do it!

Here's a couple of other smaller designs that I display:

This one is titled "Boston Tea Party", I get a kick out of the titles of some designs, they just make you want to stitch them and this one makes me laugh:

Those were all a Secret Needle Night design from The Silver Needle, so cute.

This last one to me, represents the whole summer:

Hope you enjoyed these lovely pieces. If you like Landy Antebellum's music listen to "Perfect Day", that's how I feel about the 4th, carefree!

Happy 4th of July Y'all!

Celtic Spring - before and after the snow/ice storm

OK, I believe I am back on the "able to post an image" again! I have been trying all sorts of things to get my computer unblocked from posting pics. I finally just left it alone a few weeks and stitched, stitched, stitched. Much progress there and now all of a sudden, I can post pictures again. So, on to my update.
Here is the before picture of Celtic Spring in January 2011, before any of the cold spells swept the desert land of El Paso:

The above picture is of the bottom portion of the skirt, the very top of the picture is the rest of the fabric rolled on the scroll rod.
Now, here is current picture after the snow/ice storm from early Feb 2011, plus 10 days more:

I still have a little bit more to fill in the scrolls near the bottom of the skirt, then the ornamentation along the sides. Then, the fun part. BEADS! I am giving myself a deadline of 2 weeks and 2 days, which will be March 6th, my mom's birthday. I want to start another large project on that day and it's a date I'll remember.

The bad thing is the fabric I ordered for the next project was in December stupidly expecting it to come in that month and I would have a New Year's start, but it didn't come in. In January, I was told the fabric was shipped to the United States from Zweigart and will be dyed. Well, mid February I was told the dying process was complete so I might be expecting shipment soon. Great! I'll be done with Celtic Spring by then. Now I'm getting nervous about the cost of this piece of fabric, I think I ordered a yard, it's to stitch a flag with each of the states listed in order that they joined the union, starts with Delaware and ends with Alaska. I'm imposing a very ambitous finish date of July 4th for this one. Hopefully, July 4, 2011 and not 2012! Wish me luck.

I'm going to post a picture of the humongous cactus in our backyard that has "fallen" from the incredibly cold temps from early in Feb. El Paso set a record low of 1 degree. For this region that is extremly low. I realize other areas can have temps lower than that, but this is a desert region and the vegetation cannot handle that temp.

I tried to clean up the cactus expecting to cut it up and make it look attractive (small) but the cactus literally attacked me, first I got a thorn in my right hand and had to go inside to have my husband take out the thorn but the very tip broke off in my skin and it hurt like the dickens. Had to get my nurse instructor in class to dig in and remove it - it really hurt! But when I went back to finish my task, I was hatching at some of it and juice was flying everywhere, ok, well mostly in my face. I kept at it until it spit some of that juice right in my eye and I had to take off the gloves and use my shirt to wipe my eye. Then I spoke to the cactus and said, "let me finish chopping this one little area that I started and I'll leave you to thaw out and return to upright position." Things went well after that. I picked up all the pieces that had frozen off and left the cactus to heal itself.

Driving around town, many of the cactus are still wilted over. It seems as though ours is beginning to stand up a little bit again so I'll post updates. Every year in May, this cactus has the most beautiful, vibrant yellow flowers. One day I counted 135 flowers in bloom, not counting the ones that had already closed up, nor the buds that had yet to open up. It's a big cactus! A neighbor has a giant sequoia in the front yard and another on the side of his house and today I noticed that it looks brown like it's burnt from the cold. I really hope they both survive. Each year I take pictures of the blooms that happen only one a year for about a week. Beautiful white flowers like a crown on the top of the cactus. Very unique! Pray for them too!!

This post is long in lengh and long overdue! Happy stitching and enjoy the spring like temps!
S~

Happy 1/11/11

Today is a much anticipated day for different reasons. First off, the obvious: the abbreviated date with all the ones - 1/11/11. Then, my son has been waiting to update his phone since Nov and our contract will allow it later in Jan so he has been patiently waiting, and today Verizon has announced the iPhone will be available early in Feb. My son has been anticipating this moment since iPhone first came out 3 yrs ago but at the time we were under contract with T-Mobile. We had to switch although we could have gone to AT&T, the fees were higher and my son decided on a Droid at Verizon and so we signed with them last year.
Verizon's press conference was at 11 am, on 1/11/11! Then, driving him to school this morning, this very anticipated day, there were white pigeon doves on the electrical lines crossing the street above us. That was very unusual because the birds on a wire are almost always a black or dark color and these were all white, can't say I've seen that before. Then, for some unexplained reason, I decided to count them and lo and behold, there were 11 "white" pigeon doves! We both could not believe the irony of that number. We are praying that is a good sign and not a bad one like 9/11 turned out to be.
Needless to say, I had to text him with the info from Verizon's announcement. He was hoping that the iPhone would be in a white color and I was hoping for a Verizon Red. We expected the 3G network which is fine with me because 4G costs more. No tears lost here!!! He's a little disappointed they didn't mention white (his favorite color) but now he'll finally get an iPhone, his little dream come true. Now, we'll have an extra itouch that is less than a year old.
What a fun day, yes? So happy 1/11/11, make it a great and memorable day! Blessings to you and your needle.
ps. I still can't add images to my post and so far, my pc hasn't crashed - yea!