Happy Birthday today!

I am being thoroughly spoiled today.
It's my birthday. I actually forgot about it until my PGD#1 was being dropped off this morning (she always is with us before and after school) and she had a card in her hand with her pleased with herself look. I asked what is that? and she beamed a gorgeous smile at me. Be still my heart! anyways I thought to myself, oh isn't that sweet, she made a card to thank us for all that we do. Recently we have been travelling into town to help with transporting grandchildren and their dad while life
was getting too busy and it seems we've had more on our own agenda just helping them complete their agenda. If you know what I mean. Anyhow, it actually was a Birthday card that was adorned with much personalization. Hand drawn castles, and younger brother wrote on it too. Adorable and a nice surprise, I had actually forgotten it was my Birthday!

Since I have been very bad (good) with filling up my stash recently ,
I have been drooling over Yuko's scissors that she shows on her blog be happy scissors. DH was getting ready to go shopping and I showed him the scissors that I was wishing for and he said go ahead and get them. Little did he know that I had already ordered them and that sweet Yuko actually invoiced me today, my birthday of all days to fulfill the order. Oh I am one lucky girl, thanks Honey and Yuko! Typically we celebrate each Birthday with cake and ice cream, but I asked DH if we could
celebrate tomorrow since I need to leave the house this afternoon around 4:30. There will be a guest speaker tonight at the monthly guild meeting talking about Amish quilts and I don't want to be late. I also need to stop by Michaels on the way and if I stayed until my daughter picks up PGD#1, I would miss the first 15-20 minutes of the lecture. And I am so looking forward to that topic. I'll bring my camera and try to capture some photos of any quilts she may show and let you know more later.

With all of this kismet and fate going on, I just know today's going to be the best. Hope your day is one of your best too! Thanks for stopping by.

Jane

Upon reflection and DMC,

After my post on Sunday, I did ponder how I ever got started on my collectives and why.

After much thought, (quite deep and it hurt just a little.. VBG :~) Hopefully I think I have figured out the why of some of it. I have always led a rural life which is one I am blessed to have grown up in and also have raised my family in. As far as great and big selections available locally though, there are limitations in many areas not just threads. So, up to that point I just planned ahead and waited until I went to town to purchase the required pieces needed to do my craft. Then it changed in the summer of 1983 or perhaps some year quite close to that.
I was doing CXS and when finishing a project, I would quickly want to stitch something else. I used to always try to keep my hands busy and actually had trouble stopping and just being at that point in my life. Too much to go into the whys of that now, perhaps a bit of my self proclaimed ADD or OCD was kicking in. Anyways, it was a major hindrance when I didn't have the required threads in stock at home and wouldn't be going into town for several more days. To compensate for that I would routinely buy 10 or 20 skeins of colors I knew I didn't have (courtesy of keeping track on the little DMC cards they used to have available) hoping to acquire the full collection of DMC skeins. Then eureka!  A family vacation to Myrtle Beach and you know about their Wakauma Pottery retail and their prices? Egads!  You'd think I had died and went to heaven.
They had DMC threads priced at 6/$1.00 a too good to be true price, so at that time I finished filling in my collections of DMC.  And you know what they say....THE REST IS HISTORY! Here is my stack of boxes of regular DMC and some of the Kreineks for cross stitch.



The DMC 8 is in another tote in my sewing studio for crazy quilting. Now mind you, they have all different sorts of threads, brands and I continue to do my part in supporting our nations economy, but perhaps I'll challenge myself to brazen away from following these charts so closely and start making the stitchings MY OWN. The next photo is how I organized my other "cross stitch" threads.



The rings seem to work the best for me. On E bay I found a seller that was auctioning off some thread tuxes. The tuxes are actually a long thin bag to hold a skein of thread with a punch hole in it to pull the thread from. That would work for storing, but with a plastic baggie the thread package would be slip siding every witch way. Not great in my mind's thinking. With storing my threads on these rings in a large plastic bag, I can locate what I need quickly (If I have it) and then it can slip on to my thread ring of the current project I'm working on. I did punch an additional hole into the cardboard tags that the threads came on to slip the parts used back onto the bobbin.




Of course with working on a couple of quick Halloween items, I became aware of the Kreinek Glow in the Dark and the DMC Glow in the Dark threads so I did order the Kreinek filament blenders in all the available colours besides a couple of Prairie Schooler patterns, and 2 pairs Kelmscott scissors of LOVE and spiderweb. Drool!

Check out how cute they are next to my recent find at Michaels. When I saw it I thought  Eeeks! a seasonal pincushion. Isn't that sweet, oops I meant kreepy! LOL



Now I'll have to try to wip up an appropriate scissor fob to complete "the package". This is what I'm currently working on.


It a freebie called Boo Thyme from Sandra S. of Homespun Elegance. Love the look of this and since it has a key too, it just appealed to me. Thanks to Berit from the blog of Along the Paths of Pins and Needles is where I found a link to it after my webbing hopping from blog to blog.

And lastly, I just have to share about a fantastic giveaway of HalloweenY items and treasures be given away over at Missy and Annette's ~ 31 Days of Halloween Giveaway!



Check them out for yourselves and good luck! They are both really creative and have a lot of eye candy to check out.

Jane