Pink Saturday #22 and I Won a Give Away!!

Another Pink Saturday has arrived! Thank you to Beverly of How Sweet the Sound for hosting this wonderful day of pinks for all of us. I am a little late getting this post up because I have been so tired after work the last couple of days. And now I am scrambling to get this up before going to work today.

Ok here goes.

I bought this fabric hoping to get these placemats and tablerunner done in time for

Valentine's Day.

Did it happen?

Nope.

Story of my life it seems.

But as my husband said,

we have them for next year.

The placemats are finished. But the tablerunner isn't yet.

I just have the long edges folded under at the moment.

It will have a ribbon trim just like the placemats do.

That angel was given to me by my new secret pal at church for Valentine's Day.

We did the reveal at a women's event at church in January.

And then we draw new names for this year.

I drew a name I never had before.

What fun!

Here is a closeup of the tablerunner fabric.

Today after work I want to try to find fabric for placemats for

St. Patrick's Day, Easter, and Spring.



Now the give away I won!

Mo of Mo's Cottage had this wonderful give away

and I won her pillow.

Here is how it looked when I open the box.

Pink Paper!

This is what was under the PINK paper!

This precious pillow and a surprise extra there.

See the pinks in the pillow?

I think this will go in my living room.

And the extra thing?

A pack of notecards that were designed and painted by a friend of Mo's.

Here are the notecards.

Too pretty to use.

But I will use them. Since that is what they are for, right?

Thank you so much Mo for the goodies.

It was a blast to win something.

Yay!!

Hope you all are having a wonderful Pink Saturday!

~Linnea~

Whatcha Working on Wednesday with Helmi

For a change I have managed to do some things to post on Whatcha Working on Wednesday.

Go and visit Leslie over at My Country Home for more Whatch Working on Wednesday posts.

I will start with Saturday.

I had to work Saturday and hubby and to tell me about what Helmi was up to while I was at work. Hubby was washing dishes for me while I was working. Hubby has been washing dishes for me a lot lately. Yay!

Anyway, Helmi decided to see what he was doing. She wanted to help, but Hubby told her that wouldn't be a good idea. She could get all wet.

So instead she hopped on one of my cookie jars to watch.

She is sitting on one that I painted years ago.

Hey, don't forget to wash this muffin pan!
Here she is continuing to boss him while he does the dishes.

Then she joins me while I make more PLARN. I have posted about making plarn before. This stuff is plastic bag yarn. I have found several patterns I am interested in making out of plarn. But first I need more plarn. A couple of my co-workers have brought me their plastic bags. That is how I got the green ones since I don't shop at a store that has green bags. Also since I took these pictures another co-worker brought me some yellow bags.

What fun!

As I was making the balls I realized I don't need to make all the plarn right away. I came up with the idea of storing each color in its own ziplock bag.

So I cut the strips and put them in the corresponding bag. Green, white with red and black lettering, white with red and blue lettering, white with red only lettering and tan bags.

I also will need to add a ziplock bag for white only bags with very little black lettering and one for the the yellow bags with red lettering.

This way I can grab a bag when ever I am watching TV or when we are driving somewhere and make the strips into the plarn.

I haven't decided yet which pattern I am going to make next.

But first I have to get size N and Q crochet hooks, since most of the patterns use those sizes.

I don't have those sizes in my crochet hook stash.

Next I go back to my Valentine's Day project which I never finished.

Sigh.......

Story of my life sometimes, not finishing things on time.

Oh well....

Anyway, Helmi helps me with this project too.

Notice Helmi is still wearing the crocheted purse I made for her while Stitching Stella was here.

Hmmm....I wonder what Stella is up to now.

Helmi has been missing her, so I better not bring up Stella in the conversation.

I don't know why Helmi has to get right in the way while I am sewing.

Helmi I need you to move. You might get your nose stitched if you don't watch out!

Now what are you doing Neabear?

Refilling my bobbin. I ran out of bobbin thread and this is where I refill it.

Oh.

Helmi had fun watching the bobbin spin real fast.

Now what are you doing Neabear?

I am pinning the ribbon trim on to the placemat.

Placemat, what is that?

You are sitting on it!

One finished placemat.

Helmi agrees with me that it turned out pretty good.

Now I need to finish the second one.

Better late than never.

As Hubby said, they are ready for next year.

I want to make a set of these for every season and holiday for our table for two.

Time to go and find some St. Patty's day and Easter fabric to make some more.

What are you working on this fine Wednesday?

~Linnea~

Blue Monday #22-More Crafting with Blue

Monday always seems to come around too fast for me these days. But regardless here we are at Blue Monday again. Thank to to Sally at Smiling Sally for hosting this for us every Monday. That has got to be a major commitment to do this every week without fail. This week I am sharing more things I have made in the past that have BLUE.
When I was taking the tolepainting class in the 80's this was the first project we did. A cute little bluebird. I did this on several things and used them as gifts that year. I kept one for myself too.

I also painted it on a footstool that still gets used a lot.

This cross stitch I made while in college in the late 70's. I believe it was my first cross stitch project. It is a small picture about 3 x 4 inches in size.

I did this one in 1989. You can kind of see the date in the lower right corner. This was from a calendar. I always wanted to do some of the other pictures and never did. Now that I am back to cross stitching I just may get back to it. I just have to find the calendar.

Another one showing the bible verse from Matthew.

And now the update of my current project that I post on the Step by Step Stitchalong blog every Sunday. I am still working on the blue checkered cloth part there.

Happy Blue Monday to everyone!

~Linnea~

Blue Monday #21-Crafting with Blue

Time for Blue Monday again! Seems it was just here and now here it is again.

Where does the time go? Out the window probably. And taking me with it.

Thank you to Sally at Smiling Sally for hosting Blue Mondays for us. Go visit her to see others having fun with Blue Monday.

First up is the update on my cross stitch project for the Stitch Along Blog that I am a part of.

I am finally finished with the bowl and now I am working on the blue checkered cloth the bowl is sitting on. Hooray for progress!

Would you believe I am already hunting around for my next project?

I have a couple in mind I want to do next.

This paper has blue on it. This is my list of colors for my current project. I am actually done with a few colors. See? I have crossed some of them off.

That will help me to ignore those symbols because I am done with those colors.

Crossing off finished colors really does feel good.

The other thing I do is highlight my finished areas on the chart. There is a feeling of accomplishment to see what is DONE. Plus it really helps me to find my place as I am working on it.

I was at my mother's after church when I remembered my daughter suggested I post pictures of the painting project I had done there years ago.

This cabinet is above their stove. When they had the kitchen remodeled I was taking tolepainting classes at the time.
My mother asked me to paint something on that middle section.
This is what I painted. The flowers are blue.
Here is another view. I was trying to avoid the glare of the light.

This blue goose is a gift I painted for my mom. The cloth it is sitting on is a cross stitch my mother did years ago.
I think it has Swedish designs.

This is another gift I did for my mom. This was a class project. I made two of them.
The other one hangs in my house. Except the word 'Welcome' is in black on mine. And harder to see. That is why I did it in offwhite on the one I made for my mother.
She has this one hanging in her entryway.
Another gift for my mother.
Two Amish children. I think this was also a class project.
I always intended to paint another set for myself.
I hope I still have the painting pattern.
Lots of blue for my mother.
Blue is her favorite color.
She has it all through the house.

Happy Blue Monday to everyone!

~Linnea~

Whatcha Working on Wednesday-Last post of Stella on here.

I am getting Stella ready to ship off to the next person.

But before she leaves we fit in more craft time together

But before I go on, thank you to Leslie and My Country Home for hosting

Whatcha Working on Wednesday!

I have a new crochet book. I show the book further down.

Anyways, I decide to try making this flower motif.

Of course the girls Helmi and Stella are in the midst of things

helping me to keep track of my yarn here.

And telling me what to do when, as if they know how to crochet better than me.

Hmpf!

Here is what the finished flower looks like.

I think I still need to play around with it more and experiment with different sizes

of crochet hooks. Except I can't find them all at the moment.

They are temporarily misplaced in my mess.

Somewhere.

I wonder if Helmi and Stella hid them.

Here is the one I did next to the one pictured in the book.

This is my new book.
Lots of interesting things to try in there.

Oh dear, Helmi and Stella jump in to see what I am sewing now.

Girls, it does not work for you to be THERE while I sew.

I need you two to move!

How about off to the side here.

You can still see what I am doing and see how a sewing machine works.

What are you sewing?

The lining to the PLARN bag I made.

See this is how I stitch it in place.

I am using quilting thread because it is stronger.

There, see how the bag looks with the lining in it?

Hides all the fun fur that was poking on the inside.

I have already sent this off in the mail to its recepient.

I will post in a few days what I stuck in there before mailing and who it went to.

Bet you can guess!

Oh, and before Stella leaves my place for good :-(

oh I will be so sad....and so will Helmi....

I want to show you what else I added besides making a purse just for her.

I found this sticker at Snoopy's Gift Shop.

So I glued on on the corner of her skirt as a reminder of her trip to the museum

and gift shop and gallery.

What a day that was!!

Happy Wednesday!

Pink Saturday #20-In the Pink with Stitching Stella and Helmi

It is that time again! Pink Saturday!! I missed particpating last week, but I am back this week with my visitor Stitching Stella along with my pal Helmi.

Thank you to Beverly over at How Sweet the Sound for hosting this fun day for us every week.
Yesterday as I got home from work, I was greeted with the beautiful sunset. As soon as I got home I ran in the house to get the camera to get the pictures before the colors faded away.

We have had rain for a couple of days. I am very happy about that.
Mandatory 30% reduction in water use has already started here.
To get the rain is a blessing.
More is supposed to be coming. Hooray for the rain!

I love it when we get a pretty sunset or sunrise!

In my previous post Stitching Stella is wearing a wee little purse I made for her.

Of course Helmi wanted one too.

So I made her one also!

Here they are modeling their handbags next to a stack of pretty pink boxes.

Those boxes spell F U N. (you can't see the bottom N too well)

F U N is what we got planned for today to show Stitching Stella a good time.

The girls decide to help me with my next project.

They get themselves covered in pink ribbon while I cut the pretty pink fabric.

Happy Pink Saturday!!