Timothy Teacup

Oops! I forgot to share the awesome mascot/stuffie made for me by Peachcake!

Here's Timothy Teacup:



And the whole package:



She added some yummy teas and a delicious walnut chewy chocolate candy. Thanks, Peachcake! She even came to my meeting of the Chicagoland Craft Collective so we could exchange in person. At the meeting, we practiced some of my personal fave embroidery stitches. I prefer doing the chain stitch, while Donna is a master stem stitcher. French knots are tricky too, but once you get the hang of them, they are awesome. Here's a post from one of my new favorite blogs about french knots.

I got wrapped up in a giant project uploading all of our family photos onto flickr. Good Heavens! We've taken a LOT of photos! It could be that we've actually taken a normal amount of pictures, it's just that uploading them all makes it seem like more.... I ordered one of those bound books you get from those publishing services with some of our pictures from this year. I hope it looks good, I'm not so much into organizing photo albums and scrapbooking, although I do like to page through pictures.


And totally outside of crafting and collecting: I came upon this article in Slate. So do you know the Aunt Jackie dance? I guess it's the latest thing in Harlem. Last year's big craze was the Chicken Noodle Soup("with a soda on the side".) I totally missed that one, which is not surprising, since I'm a 39 year old housewife in the middle of outer-suburbia. Those kids are really having a blast. Here's a school principal entertaining his school last fall with the "let it rain" move. That's probably the only move I can do too. I need a very supportive jogging bra if I really want to take up this sort of dancing, but my daughter is trying it out. My son is getting to that middle schooler age where he is too cool for silly moves like these. I have very few opportunities to test out dance moves since we only go to weddings every couple of years, and I'm of the "Love Shack" era. These songs with their "old school flow" are really stuck in my head now.

Vacation at Lake Superior

Our week at a Cabin on the Apostle Islands, Wisconsin was fantastic. Truthfully, I'm not used to a vacation where you have no outings planned and its just all relaxation, but it was completely terrific. We shared our place with Nana and her friend TK. My husband really needed a break from the daily driving he has to do for his job, and our kids were an absolute dream to be with. There was not one mention of the television, we all read books, got excited about the rocks and geology, napped, swam, and gazed dreamily at the water and passing sailboats and loons.



Lake Superior's water levels are down more than 18 inches. Almost an historic low. I guess there wasn't much snow last winter and the water has evaporated more than usual. At any rate,our beach was on a little bay and we could wade out very far. The water was crystal clear and still. Early in the week it was too chilly to swim, but after several days of quiet waters, and unlimited sunshine, we could splash away all we wanted. That's exactly what the kids did!



One day I'll have a better camera and I'll be able to take arty photos of flowers with all the right colorations and such, but for now, enjoy this wild lupine. It was blooming all over the place in the north woods to the delight of a considerable amout of butterflies that I never photographed. Lupine needs chillier temperatures, moist air, and full sun. It will not grow in my yard.....


My husband dreamily says he want us to try to go away like this every 3 months. He remembered that back in high school when you take those aptitude tests for what career you should work toward, he came up with high scores as a forest ranger. At that time he didn't think that made any sense, but now, he longs for a job like that and is thinking that we should volunteer at national parks during our retirement which is decades away. He even decided that we should try to go to all the National Parks in the USA. Wouldn't that be nice!

He also wants to see every one of the presidential libraries, birthplaces, and museums. (FYI, the Kennedy Museum in Boston stinks, the Ford museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan is great... isn't that pretty much the opposite of what you'd expect?) I just hope we can swing this next summer too. Next summer is the year we go to the Colorado Rockies which is my most favorite place ever.

Felt Squirrel

We had a great vacation up at a cabin in the northern coast of Wisconsin at the Apostle Islands. I brought some felt and stuff to make mascots for a swap while we were gone. Nana even made a cute little hamster and my daughter did a flowery heart. My son did not suddenly decide to become crafty, he was pretty interested in rock collecting and rock skipping with his dad.

Here's what I made for Peachcake. I was inspired by our northwoods surroundings on our trip. Every morning I was awakened by the chattering of a squirrel in a beautiful pine tree outside my window. I'd peek out at him and see our little cove on Lake Superior.... Ahh.....


Here's his bio. My daughter thought up all the details:

I drew the tree myself, but Mr. Squirrel and his mushroom are from this book ISBN 4834755894:

More of Mom's Hankies

A little hankie that was my mom's when she was a girl.

This is the last week of school for my kids. It's pretty crazy! First graders had field day today and I was in charge of parachute games. Friday is field day for the 4th grade and I don't know what I'm in charge of for that, but something.

Next week we'll be up in Northern Wisconsin at Lake Superior at a cabin we rented with Nana. Normally we don't vacation until August, but this was the only time we could get a place. It'll be chilly, but I prefer chilly to hot weather and the north woods are our absolute favorite.

Here's another little cute hankie that was my mom's. She went to a one room schoolhouse when she was a little girl before they moved into town:




I know lots of people don't like clowns, but they were popular once upon a time!


This will be my last blog post for a couple of weeks. Happy Summer!

Cheery Quilt top

Yay! Quilt top is finished! I'm going to send it out for quilting though. My friend uses a service that she is happy with. I am capable of doing it myself, but I just really don't want to....

It did turn out pretty. My awful camera gives the color a slightly bluer hue than real life. Those yellows are supposed to be bright and sunny.

Here's another angle:

Now I'm sort of between projects... hmm... well I do have a striped crochet blanket to finish, there's all those tea towels I wanted to embroider and use as cloth napkins...I promised my daughter an apron ages ago... Yikes! I better sew the new curtains for the living room. My current ones are looking awful with sun fade.

edited to add: This quilt is a pattern by Atkinson Designs called Lucky Stars.

Cicadas are just getting started

We had to go to Grandma and Grandpa's house to see the beginnings of the 17-year cicadas. Chicago has a tremendous emergence that is just getting started. I think my home is too far away from the old growth trees to have much of an emergence, but my parents area and my old stomping grounds on the north shore suburbs of Chicago will have a gazillion. Well.. 1.5 million per acre, so more like several gazillion.

We are pretty excited about this. It is a remarkable natural phenomenon that I seem to have missed the last 2 times it occurred in my lifetime. In 1973, we just moved to Chicago in June when it was at the end of the cycle. In 1990, I was living in Texas, but came up for a friend's wedding at the tail end of it. They were still dropping out of the trees, but had finished mating and so were finally quiet. Of course there were still abundant exoskeletons everywhere and the bride decided to move her outdoor reception indoors to the great relief of most of the guests.



Cutie girl here thinks they are pretty awesome. They stay pretty still after they get out of their first skeleton and wait to climb up the trees. They have no mouths and no defense mechanisms whatsoever so although they look creepy, they don't skitter about in the typical insect creepy fashion. Her older brother got over his considerable squeamishness, but still prefers not to handle them. He said, "thank goodness the next time they come out I'll be 27 years old." He wants to move to Ohio for the summer where they don't have a cicada brood like this.

It's still chilly at my parents house near Lake Michigan, so we saw only just a few on Memorial Day yesterday. Last time I remember the birds were so fat from feasting, they couldn't even fly, but hobbled across the road, stuffed with the little delicacies. I'm told they are delicious and the newspaper is printing up recipes for cicada pizza and stuff like that. I doubt I'll get that into this though...

***Edited to add: Most of the Eastern USA has periodic cicadas. If he was in Ohio for the summer, my son would only miss the emergence of this particular brood. Ohio's brood emerged a few years ago...

Tea Towel Swap

I've had a respite from the parade of tea towels I've been getting for a Craftster Swap. Here's the whole guitar motif I did for rectangel. Pattern is Sublime Stitching:


Sublime Stitching Lanterns for PinkyK:





And a vintage style kitty for doo_leroux. Pattern from Aunt Martha (available at Hobby Lobby, JoAnns and many craft retailers):


When I placed the kitty on doo_leroux's towel, it ended up that she was stealing a peek at the pinup motif done by another embroiderer. I think this is kind of cute:


I love embroidery so much because it is easy to do, but looks great all finished. The biggest decisions are making the right color choices for the various parts of the motifs. A good stash of embroidery floss in various colors helps a lot. I think we are going to do some simple embroidery lessons at my next Meetup.