Monday Madness

I don't know if you saw this article on the latest news but this is absolutely unthinkable. They are using animals as well as children for suicide bombers now. What has this world come to? You can read the article below:


Animals killed in suicide attacks Afghanistan
SunMonday 30th November, 2009

In their latest ploy to cause maximum damage to international forces stationed in Afghanistan, the Taliban is using donkey suicide bombs to attack British troops in southern Afghanistan.Recently, a senior British Army officer and six other military personnel survived an attack when a tethered donkey laden with explosives was detonated as their armoured vehicle passed in southern Afghanistan.“We’d spotted the donkey tethered to a tree as we were on our way down south to monitor an operation that had been going on that day, but thought nothing of it. There are donkeys around everywhere,” The Times quoted an officer, as saying.Troops in Afghanistan have been attacked by a boy with a wheelbarrow full of explosives and a bicycle with a bomb attached, but the explosion south of Garmsir in southern Helmand province is thought to be the first using tethered livestock.


This is totally insane. I sure hope the President's speech and unveiling of his plan for Afghanistan tomorrow night at 7pm is going to be strategic in managing this craziness.

Stash Sunday

The long weekend is at a close and the night is still young at 10pm; however, I have to say today was the most productive of the days. I took all my threads and whatever was in and around my stitching chair and sorted and sorted .........I sorted and labeled and rechecked to see if I had duplicates so much that I watched 4 complete Lifetime movies with it in full spread all over the living room floor! That was 8 hours! They were back to back incredibly good Christmas movies. All with happy endings! But the first one was so sad in the middle. I cried every movie. The third one I watched had Susan Sarandon and Robin Williams in it. So, so good.

I got my Santie out for this year. I had a patient 4 years ago give me this. She painted it meticulously as a gift. She was a sweet, sweet woman who actually the day I told her of her probable ovarian cancer, just smiled and told me she would be back to give me a "Santie Claus". She did 3 months later at Christmas. She died 6 months after that. Sad story but I have to put it out as long as I can. She painted this on small gourds of some sort.
These Dutch shoes were the Body Guard's when he was little and attended the Dutch Tulip Festivals in South Holland, Illinois. I can't imagine seeing him in this..........

This is my DMC box. I use the bag system. It needed alot of attention and this afternoon I got it in order. The box was a wedding gift from BG he had made for me for my threads. It has so much sentimental value that I will always keep the baggie system to put in my special box.

Now, I can pull my colors for some stitching without having to think twice about if I need that particular color or not.

The area is quite improved from this morning. I have one basket for my stitching supplies, qsnaps, frames. and the other one has all my specialty threads in floss bags but on rings according to company/brand. One for Weeks Dye, Anchor (I never use it), Crescent colors (it's full, full), and Gentle Arts Sampler threads. This is a random thought but one day, I want to upholster this chair in a colonial williamsburg blue. Just random here. You know what, I got an estimate to have it recovered and it would be almost as much to just get a new chair? Now, this is totally off subject.........anyway.

Filed away my patterns..........the most recent ones so and put in big holders underneath to get ready for stitching non-Christmasy ones after the holidays.

And this picture is.......well, this is my hubbie, feeling better now, obviously, joking about his light he found while he was tootling around the workshop. While I was watching Lifetime movies and sorting stash, he was in the workshop. I think he might have had a pain pill here.......LOL

Honestly, can you believe I gave him this one Christmas? He loves flashlights and I was about to run out of ideas for kinds of flashlights.

He is giving Abbie a little halo here.............:0

So, are ya ready for Cyber Monday? That's what I keep reading about and hearing. I guess I will be spending mine catching up at work from 4 days off. And that my friends, is usually busy, busy with the office closed for several days.

The one true, must-see this week is the President's speech on Afghanistan at 7pm, Tuesday night. I will be there for sure in my stitching chair listening to what his next agenda includes.

I hope you have a great Monday morning!

Jennifer

Projects for the day...hmm...month

I'm pulling colors for this pattern by The Sampler Girl. It's a sweet pillow and will be placed by my Christmas tree this year. I have to get busy with it now though. It's called Clara's Christmas Dance.

Bodyguard and I always have a change jar. At the end of the year we take it to the bank and it's usually a good sum amount to help pay for a weekend trip or getaway. It'a huge jar. But my start this year is for the Christmas jar. It won't be full but maybe half by then. Christmas Eve will be fun to drop off somewhere around here.

This is an ebay find. I was ordering to put in with the giveaway because it also has scissors but the quality is not so good so I got different ones. I need to work on it to keep my scissors in.

There is thread and 3 inch banding that comes with it as well.

I have some pretty Christmas fabrics I accumlated from remnants and fat quarters from a couple of quilt shops this year. This is just a long remnant.

Remember this Fat Quarter? I'm going to first, iron! Then sew into a pillow for our sofa. I love the Dutchy blue colors and I am going to use the long remnant of red holly to go at the bottom.

Last night I started this. I emptied my sewing baskets by my chair and then went to bed..... Not a good thing to wake up to. How did this all fit in there? And this is not my entire stash but just those recently acquired items. I'm into organizing threads I've dropped in there over my last few projects, so that I will not repurchase those in particular. I found some zipper bags or just plain zip lock bags to organize my linen and patterns together, if I've already got the linen.

Here's Scarlet. She is placed in a bag with a DMC thread organizer for 72 colors. I think she has more than that but I figured this would be a good way to keep threads for her project.

At least I"m at the bottom where my q-snaps and hoops are located.

So, this is what I worked on late last night. I couldn't decide exactly what to do with this. I decided not to do it as a pillow but a little hanging and sew jingle bells on the fabric ties to the hanging and at the bottom. The back of this is all red dot material like the banding. This is a freebie design from The Sampler Girl.

So, what do you sew your jingle bells on with? Sewing thread? or Floss?