the shower was a success

Had a shower for the kid's school music teacher on Sunday, and, if I do say so myself, it was a great success. It was also clearly a team effort. I had to clean house, but it was Dear Husband who freshened up the paint in several places and who took the kids off to a movie during the event. My friend D did all the flowers, which were just over the top (see above), and my friend T did the cake, which was delicious (also above). My friend the Kitchen Goddess took over and ran the food. It was great fun to bring up the vintage Wedgwood that I've collected from Ebay over the years and it all just looked so cool when we pulled it together. Instead of party games, we decorated onesies w/ fabric paint, so now she has a stash of newborn to 18 month sized onesies. I know the mother-to-be appreciated it, and I've heard back from some who attended that they had a lot of fun. Good times - and since I ended up working 2 - 24-hour shifts the week before, I could not have done it w/o the help that I had.

And then there's the ongoing saga of the bookmarks. I finished the white snowflake bookmark that I'd started on the night before the election, and I liked it so well that I did another one. I think it's the prettiest pattern I've come up with so far. The picture doesn't really show the sparkle. It's subtle, but I used a Kreinick opalescent thread for the eyelets, for the border between the buttonhole stitch edge and the kloster blocks, and also for the starbursts in the middle. They look really cool, and I'll probably do one more. I also finished another new-ish idea. It's cream 22 count (I think) lugana (I think) fabric with ecru perle cotton for the hardanger and a variagated green Weeks Dye Works floss for the blackwork stitches around the hardanger cross. It's pretty, but I wish the green were just a tad darker so it would stand out more.

I've done a total of 11 bookmarks so far, and my goal was to take 12 to the Advent Fair 12/7. Last week, however, a friend saw them and liked them so well that she ended up buying one from me. I tried to give it to her, but she wanted to support Operation Nightwatch (which is where all the $$ from the bookmarks is going). So I actually only have 10 on hand, and I was debating whether to stitch one more and take 11 to the fair, or stitch two more so that I'd have 12. I was worried, though that then I'd have stitched a total of 13, which might be a bad omen. Told my friend T that, and she said, "They, there were 13 at the table, so it'll be ok". That was the end of that worry. So I'll probably stitch one more snowflake pattern and one other TBA before the fair. But for today, I'm going to start crocheting socks, because I'm starting to stress that I won't have enough time to get 3 pairs done before Christmas.