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.

these are making me happy

The top picture is one of my dozen bookmarks, #8, and I finished it Sunday. The bottom picture will be #9. It's a new idea that I started working on Sunday evening. Yesterday at work, it was pretty mellow, so I had time to stitch in the evening. I finished the buttonhole edging, then started working on the stitching up the sides and the eyelets in the middle of the kloster blocks. I used a white silk floss with a Kreinik opalescent metalic for the stitching along the sides and for the eyelets, and,while the photo doesn't really show it, it's really pretty. Reminds me of snowflakes, and maybe a bit of drawn thread work. I'll cut the center out and needle weave it, probably doing some twisted threads to make a snowflake pattern in the center. We'll see. But I'm really happy with how it's looking.

I sat up late last night, stitching. I was at work for a 24 hour shift and the babies were mellow, as I said. The resident and the med student took naps, but I sat up watching Bill Maher on the Craig Fergusen show. I've been so nervous about the election, that it felt really good to work on something beautiful. Bill Maher was talking about his movie, Religulous, and he sounded like a fair idiot. "So, let me see, Mr Senator, you believe in a group that tells stories about talking snakes? Don't know if I want that kind of person running my government". Well, yes, Mr Maher, there is a talking snake, if you will, back in the Garden of Eden. But do you need to be so absolute, concrete and literal? Perhaps there is more to life than what you can see and hear and smell and taste. My faith brings such a beautiful rich sweetness to my life, and reducing it to talking snakes and old bronze age stories "told by people who didn't even know where the sun went at night" sorta misses the point. But I wish you well in your determined literalism. It was a good reminder that, on the eve of this most important election in my life, there's a bigger picture.

Addendum: I was talking to the unit Pharmacist yesterday, telling her about my fear that I was holding Sarah P to a different standard that was increasing my negative reaction to her. She said that we were obviously holding her to a different standard, pointing out that no one in the media has published or cares about how much $$ any of the male candidates spent on their wardrobe. Being an attractive woman, and using it to your advantage, is a double-edged sword.