Little bit of everything

Thank You for all of you for taking a few moments to send me a comforting comment. First I thought that I would not write about the incidents at all, fearing that reading all the comments would make me feel really sad, but on the contrary, sharing it with you all was good, so thank you. Last week I went out to town and bought few new rose bushes and planted them where all my three furry girls rest. And the big news is that we are expecting, (hope you don't mind me putting it out this way) the due date is somewhere in the middle of July, and hopefully the new puppy will join the household sometime early fall. Really, we can't wait.

The white nights are here and when they arrive they always mix my daily routines. I would love to be up at all times, forget the sleep, and just enjoy all the different shades of the day. I stayed up until two in the morning and just admired the calm lake and the sun plus I could not put down my knitting.

I have finished two old scarves and knitted two small shawls, well, the first one was a small one (needs few finishing touches yet) but the other one is bigger. It is just perfect when the cold days return.

And I cast on for one more last night and I just could not put it down. Watching variegated yarn and waiting for it to make twists and turns in the color palette is so very interesting. I have just started but by looking at the ball of yarn, there is plenty to wait for! Knitting has somehow stepped back from the focus point but it has not been totally abandoned, it is totally mindless and just something to keep my hands busy when I am tired to do anything else.

The night before was totally different, then I picked up my quilting and quilted the evening away. While I was sewing I was thinking if there was a way to include these two crafts and even few others into my daily life and feel balanced.

What would be the best way to go? What do you do? Have you found a good way to give time to all of your handwork? Do you have a schedule or do you just go where your muse takes you?

I have been embroidering some. I know I promised to show you some of my books about embroidery and that will happen, but right now I just would like you to see this. It is going to be a butterfly at some point for someone special. Someone very small and thus the butterfly has to be intricate and that is why here and there I will need to embroider looking through a looking (ups, thank you Ellen!) magnifying glass.

For all my life I have been collecting yarns and threads and there was a time when I just had to buy few glossy threads and there were almost impossible to sew with the machine successfully and so I just kept the threads and just admired them from time to time. I was very happy when I started with the butterfly and remembered that I had those beauties. And with the good order in my space, I knew exactly where they were. (I really cannot but be happy about the new clean space, going through everything has been totally worth it!)

One other thing that has really brought joy to my days is a new web site I discovered some time ago. I am sure many of you are familiar with it, but to me it came as a happy accident one night while surfing the net. I have been spending many hours watching The Quilt Show.

Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims are the hosts and they are the nicest people to host the show. Both of them are big names in the quilting industry; I have been away from the quilting world for a long time and really don't know what is going on most of the time. Both of them are funny (in a quiet way, not this forced laughter kind of way that I don't care for in the TV show), and they are nice and polite and humble. Even though they are well known they always let their guests shine.

Few of the best shows that I have seen so far are the ones of Jinny Beyer and Suzanne Marshal and Liuxin Newman.Every single show brings me new stuff to learn and to think about. The shows are not free but in my opinion they are totally worth every single cent. (And I say this sincerely, I am not influenced in any way.)

So, white nights with some knitting, some quilting and some embroidering. All the best to you and hopefully it will not take quite this long to get back to you.

Lene

PS. I have not been playing around with the blog lately and I am having some difficulties with getting used to using this new template. Sorry about the way this site has been looking for the past month or so.