Art on the Green or Crap on the Grass, you pick

One of my favorite events of the year in this area is an event called "Art on the Green"In conjunction with AOTG, there's two other events happening the same weekend all within walking distance of each other - if not within the tolerance limits of a 7 year old boy-The Taste of the Coeur d'Alenes and the Downtown Sherman Street Fair. All of which lend themselves to several irreverent nicknames-crap on the grass/junk on the lawn/shit on sherman. This is why they do not let me name events. They don't even let me describe pictures for publications at work. Their descriptions are things like "Bob and Sue stroll along the picturesque beachfront enjoying the shade of the 100 year old evergreens that line the Dike Road." When I write captions as space holders it ends up more like "Two dumbasses walking the wrong way down the street under a bunch of trees wearing what could only loosely be described as appropriate clothing." This is why they have writers and I just have to put the pictures and the text in some sort of readable format. Yay, graphic designers!

What this says about me marrying a writer? Apparently it wasn't just for his charming good looks and his ability to wash dishes.

Back to Art on the Green. This year I found this beautiful little glass bauble that caught my eye and wouldn't let it go. The artist was patient enough to explain to Boybat how he made these solid glass globes that had layers of colors and shapes in them that seemed to defy the physical space it occupied, but in Boybat terms. It was obviously a ploy to free me up to look around. 10 minutes I stood there staring in this glass ball before I put it down and walked away. Didn't get more than two booths away before I told Joe we had to turn around and buy it because it needed to be in our home. After the "incident"-where another piece of art wanted to come home with me, he said no way, and I pouted about it every year we went back and saw that artists work get out of our price range-he just turned around and led the way back to the booth. It's like having my own little universe.

I've had a few "finishes" since I last checked in.

Finished up Lizzie Kate's Snowman. I obsessed about this pattern for a while. It was the colors that made me want to stitch it, but I was "eh" about the subject matter. I don't like to do "seasonal" patterns because I like to put my finished pieces up on the wall year round. Finally told myself, "Hell with that, I can put whatever I want on my wall." Hence the second finish, Shepherd's Bush Green Snowman. They both have buttons I still have to sew, but that's not happening 'til I'm ready to have them framed.

Halle-freakin'-luja, I got Lo How a Rose done and did a little dance  that was mainly me pumping my fist in the air singing "Suck on it you f'ing project from Hell, I win!" Unfortunately, boy bat was in the next room and informed me that those were bad words.

I'm pretty sure that he's going to end up being the kid in Catholic school that teaches the other kids all the curse words and I'll be getting a call from his teacher asking if I was the one who taught him to swear in whole sentences. Oh well, it's a family tradition.

Baseball and little boys

Back in May, I bought tickets to see the Spokane Indians (minor league team) this weekend, forgetting that summer in the inland northwest starts mid-July.

Like most little boys, Boybat is impervious to the elements and wasn't phased by the rain or the cold. I, on the other hand, was in competition with my dad as to who could string together whole sentences (quietly) using nothing but curse words to describe how stupid it was for us to be sitting there in the rain.

Fortunately, Grandma Ginny was there to explain what was going on on the field, taught him how to read the scoreboard, remembered to bring a blanket and bought him a stuffed team mascot that he hasn't let go of yet.

He loved the whole experience–the game, the crowd, the food.

After I defrosted and dried out, I realized I had fun there, too. We'll go again.

Not til mid-July, though.

DINKs and garage sales

It’s been so nice out that I haven’t been able to make myself sit down and write this past week.

What I have done tho' is get the "seasonal" yard work almost finished and as a bonus, get the garage cleaned out.

What the hell were you doing cleaning the garage you might ask? I couldn’t find the damned weed sprayer and when I did see the tiny hint of it, I couldn’t get to it. 

Grrr!

Only because it was necessary, I cleaned and organized the garage that has been wallowing in basement cast-offs for the past year. By the end of summer last year, there was a path from the garage door to the inside door. If you needed to go anywhere in that maze of crap, you would need to tie a rope around your waist to find your way back (I exaggerate, but not too much).

I blame the DINK (Double Income No Kids) era of mine and Joe’s relationship. We had disposable income then and I had a home décor bug up my tuckus. When the whirlwind of destruction-otherwise referred to as Boybat-was toddling, a lot of that stuff went into storage and never came out. It made it from upstairs closets, to the basement, to the garage and is now destined for a garage “why would someone want to buy this” sale.

Mind you, I’m not having a sale, I’m commissioning my neighbor to tack it on to her sale, while I cross stitch outside on my lovely patio enjoying the sun and telling Boybat to quit trying to hit the neighborhood cats with his suction cup bow and arrow set.

Yay Short Attention Span!

Yay short attention span!

Which means that I started another pattern and don't feel guilty about it! Now, if I studiously avoid the basket of WIP's I can maintain this reckless disregard I have for ever finishing a project. Go reckless disregard!

With quite a bit of uninterrupted stitching time this weekend, I started Shepherd's Bush Green Snowman and cant seem to put it down. I think it's the green linen. Ooooo, green, pretty...

Started this long weekend off with an awards dinner (I won two awards for graphic design, so, Yipee!) and finished the weekend off today with a rainy day of cross stitching. Stuff happened in the middle there, too.

Yard work on the first nice day of the season. I did have an eager little helper who decided it was his job to relocate the slugs we found under a pile of leaves. Seriously though, if someone had come to me even three years ago and said "You will willingly pick up slugs so Boybat can see them better" I would have snorted in my fruity-flavored adult beverage.

Easter is a low-key holiday for us. I'm still trying to clean the egg dye off of Boybat, and I'm pretty sure he's been on some freaked out jellybean, chocolate bunny high since yesterday morning. I even hid the candy today. Probably doesn't help that he's still finding little plastic eggs with chocolate in them around the house (I forgot where I put them all–next year I'm making notes).

Hope you all had a happy Easter!

Gardening by Neglect

I want to plant flowers. I don’t normally want to garden, mainly because if I come in contact with flowers they wither and die of what I can only imagine is plant terror. 

The only plants I can keep alive are ones that thrive on neglect. Cactus. I have three cactus plants that are alive because I never water them. I don’t know how they get watered. They’re above the sink, so maybe they water themselves at night after everyone’s asleep (OK, I just creeped myself out).

The outdoor plants are only alive because there’s a sprinkler system. When I go to the plant stores, and some nice lady who probably loves to garden asks me if I need help, then starts inching away from me when I say “I want flowers that are supposed to come back next year providing that I don’t kill them first."
 

My need for flowers is brought about by the fact that it’s the end of April and we have yet to hit the 60 degree mark here. In fact it snowed today. I want some flippin’ sun. I shouldn’t have to scrape my car windows in April, damn it!

Haven’t got a lot of stitching done this week. This week seems like a whirlwind of crap I have to do, but when I try to nail down what I did with my week, I cant think of anything important. Boybat made me an organizer box. It’s just the right size for some floss and scissors. As far as I’m concerned he’s a architectural genius in the popsicle stick genre and he’s thrilled that I’m using it. 

Boys with Paint

Eight 7 year-old boys with tempera paint and too much energy. That's how my week started. Oh, and parents shooting me laser death ray eyes about the paint. It wasn't really that bad, I did make sure that the paint was washable, and they boys all had on their tiger cub shirts, which are normally navy blue unless some irresponsible/mischievous adult gives them paint with the only instruction being to mix it up and make art.

It was fun though, I like watching kids create. They aren't intimidated by the idea of creating. I enjoy watching their willingness to just try. If you put  a big sheet of white paper in front of them, they'll go to town, painting and coloring and drawing whatever they can imagine. A lump of clay will become a spaceship, dinosaurs, zoo animals or with boys, a gun. (I don't know whats up with that, but Boybat will nibble his toast into the shape of a gun. It must be boy genes. I used to get concerned about his obsession until I saw that all his friends did the same thing.)

The rest of my week has been chiropractor visits and massages. Tomorrow is a parent teacher conference that I'm assuming will go well. I haven't heard from any of the other moms that Boybat is the demon spawn of Beelzebub. And he does his homework, so how bad could it be? After that I'm dragging his little Boybat butt to the cross stitch store in Spokane.

I put a small dent into Sweet By and By on Sunday, but have ignored all things stitching the last three days.

Back to it tonight.

If you get a chance, remember to become a follower by March 31st so you'll be eligible to win the sampler below. I'll announce the winner that evening.

Irradiated Pink Floss

This past three day weekend gave me some time to work on "Lo How a Rose." Of course, I didn't use it. Every so often, a weekend fills up with activities. This time it was getting the taxes done, going to a birthday party (which we missed, because I am a dumbass and thought the party started a 2 instead of 12:30), a memorial service for a past coworker and Boybat's pinewood derby race–he won a trophy for the most creative car. The dance/jig he did on his way to show Joe and I the trophy was priceless.

Which gave me Monday morning to cross stitch. Until Boybat decided to sort his Legos according to color. Apparently he's inherited my obsessive compulsive nature.

I've decided to rip out the box around the L on this pattern and use a darker pink instead. The one that's there now looks like it was exposed to some sort of gamma radiation and could glow in the dark.

Puff balls vs. zombie crafts

2 bills, 3 pieces of junk mail, 1 catalog, 2 magazines and a package full of floss, linen and pattern goodies.

Everything I ordered to start "Lo How a Rose" arrived today. I have the book next to me right now and the floss laid out, waiting for me to get going.

After I help glue 100 fuzzy puff balls to a cowboy hat for Boybats' 100 day celebration at school.

100 fuzzy neon puff balls. On a hat. I was all for finding 100 tiny zombie figures and have them marching around but apparently the stores around here do not share my views that zombie hoards could be amusing. Especially when used for first grade craft projects.

Another finish!

WooHoo! Another finish!

I designed and started this when Boybat was 3. It was about then that I stopped cross stitching for a few years. Apparently, at that age, he was not nearly as self sufficient as I thought he should be, and required me to do things like feed, clothe and nurture him. This put a serious dent in the "me" time that I keep reading about in magazines that I wont admit to reading because they make me feel old and responsible.

I took this pattern back up again this summer after discovering it in a long lost basket of household flotsam. Since then, it would get put aside in favor of other projects, mainly other projects that didn't have red or blue floss in them. Friday, I finished up the last 45 minutes of stitching and can declare it done.  

Now I can start another project without feeling guilty.

Quiet mornings

It's Sunday morning here at the Butler home. Still quiet.

Oops, spoke to soon, I hear Boybat stirring in his room. I wish I could wake up like that kid, full of energy in the morning. From 0 to 100 mph.

I got the errands done yesterday. Fortunately, there weren't that many, because I hate errands, unless it involves pedicures–does that make it an errand if I enjoy it? Crap, forgot to pick up the dry cleaning. It'll wait, the longer it stays at the dry cleaner, the longer it stays clean, since I seem to bring ALL the dry cleaning in at once. Joe makes a pile of them in the laundry room, so about every three months I  say something like "have you seen my damned green sweater set?" The reply is always "its downstairs in the dry cleaning pile" and I inevitably tell him "It's not doing me any good down there, is it?" It's a ritual now, we've been doing the same cycle for almost 12 years. If it stopped, that means something has gone terribly, horribly wrong. Armageddon wrong.

Yesterday afternoon I decided to take the floss for this new project off the bobbins (that's them in the picture) and get it on floss project cards (not nearly pretty as the bobbins, so no picture). That way, I don't have to find out what color number goes with the pattern symbol. With the color key on a separate piece paper–which is never where I thought I left it–and all the color changes I'm doing in this pattern, it was taking more time to find the next color to use than it was to actually stitch the color.

Gotta go, Boybat just opened his door.

Way too busy!

This month it dawned on me that I am WAY TOO BUSY! I haven't had a moment to write a post lately and the minutes here and there that I have had I've been steadily plugging away at the project I started in July.
This week started out with me staying home for 2 extra days to straighten and clean–which I had done the first morning–so I went through a basket filled with patterns, threads, linens and UFOs, and a lot of household detritus at the bottom of the basket (mainly pieces of disassembled Transformer parts courtesy of little one, who has demanded that wonderful husband and I refer to him as BoyBat). I had a lot of fun digging through the layers, finding treasures that I had forgotten about. One of the UFOs is a project that I had designed myself and I'm almost done stitching (it felt like when you find $20 in a jacket pocket that you hadn't worn since last fall!)
I don't remember why I stopped-probably distracted by other shiny objects....but its next on my projects to stitch. Now that boybat is done with t-ball, there might be a little extra time for stitching!