And This Is What I Did With It!

In my last post, I showed you the little thread catcher that I had made.  Here's what I did with it.  We have a gift exchange on our Saturday Stitch Days and Starbucks cards are always very popular.  So the thread catcher became a gift card holder!  Sheila picked my gift and became the owner of this cute little ort catcher.  Now she can stitch and enjoy some good coffee too!  My fellow stitchers gave the thread catcher good reviews, so I'll be whipping up more of these for sure. 

Flowering Cherry Tree

Encore Azalea

Spring is in full bloom here and the pollen has actually abated.  Yay!  The temps here are more like mid-May than early April.  All of our perennials are showing signs of new growth, if not already blooming.  It seems really early for some of them, but it's so beautiful that I'm not questioning it too much.  Both of these blooms are from my backyard.  The flowering cherry tree was a total surprise to us during our first spring here.  We didn't know what kind of tree it was until the pretty pink flowers appeared.  It's just a wonderful springtime treat to see it.

Not much stitching or craftiness of any kind has been happening here lately.  Mark and I went on a mini-spring-break trip to Florida last week.  It was a busy kind of trip, so I didn't even take my stitching.  And now I'm back to work and using my free days getting caught up with laundry and house cleaning.  We're having our family and some friends over for Easter dinner.  And wait!  There will actually be some creativity involved with that!  I'll include photos on my next post.  Have a Happy Easter!

A Teeny Tiny Sewing Project

We've been looking at the world through ocher colored glasses lately.  Yes, it's that time of the year when lovely yellow particles rain down from the sky to tint our cars and make some of us miserable.  Pollen time!  Yesterday our pollen count was 9369, and today it is all the way down to five thousand and something.  I heard once that somewhere just over 100 is considered extremely high.  If I tell you that right now my car appears to be orange, you can guess what color it really is.

This week I did a little sewing project that turned out so cute that I will make more.  It's a triangular thread catcher.  This appealed to me because of the geometry of it all:  a perfect equilateral triangle turns into a tiny receptacle for your orts.  I found the directions for it on the blog "Needling Things".  You'll find the directions very easy to follow with clear photos to guide you along.  The only change I made was to apply "soft" fusible interfacing to one of the fabric triangles.  I know exactly what I'm going to do with this one, and will include a photo in an upcoming post!

I've been making a little progress on "Folk Eggs" and will have a photo update soon.  I'm starting to think about that Kitty Kalendar again, and might work on that a bit.  Saturday is Stitch Day and I'm looking forward to seeing my stitching group.  We meet at the Stitch Store one Saturday a month.  Sometimes that doesn't seem like enough!  It's always a fun time and I get in a lot of stitching time, which is very much appreciated.

I just had to share some photos of what's blooming in my yard right now.  The fringey looking shrub is a Chinese Loropetalum.  It's always been a healthy plant, but has never bloomed so profusely as it is now!  I see this blast of bright pink whenever I look out the dining room window.

Dianthus

Chinese Loropetalum

Phlox

What a surprise to find out that the dianthus we planted last year are perennials!  In fact, they bloomed most of the year.  Nice to have so many flowers in March!  And finally, here are some sweet little Phlox, which we hope will take over some of our "island" areas.  Ahhhhh, spring!

I now have 60 followers!  You don't know how it makes my day to go to my blog and see that another person has decided to follow my blog!