In the photo above are the two embroidery stitches that I just learned. The Palestrina Knot and the bullion knot. I learned the Palestrina knot from a tutorial on the in a minute ago blog, click here!
The bullion knot I learned from various YouTube videos and the Erica Wilson embroidery book that I have.
I know it’s nerdy, but I’m pretty excited about it.
Tags: embroidery
Based on how I’ve done so many dropcloth samplers, I thought I’d try designing one of my own. Right now I’m just embroidering little motifs on a tea towel. I’m going to use that as the basis for my sampler. And the resulting embroidered tea towel will become the centerpiece for a quilt I’m dreaming up.
I’m liking these little trees the best. In making up this sampler I pulled out an embroidery dictionary I have (from Erica Wilson, of course) and and trying to learn new stitches. Next time I’ll post my new favorite stitch – the Palestrina stitch. It’s a knotted stitch.
What new projects are you working on?
Tags: embroidery
I know I’ve mentioned my various obsessions on here before. I found a new one this week:
Paper cranes! I’ve always loved them but could never make them. For some reason I googled directions this week and it clicked. I made a small army:
I’m planning on stringing a bunch together to make mobiles for the babies’ rooms. I think it’ll be cute. Or at least I hope it will be cute.
I also noticed this week that while Lucien’s obsession with the choo choo train pjs calmed down a bit, a new one popped up:
You’re seeing it correctly, he’s wearing his sister’s purple snowpants over the choo choo pjs in one picture and over his clothes in the other. Yes, this was in the house and no we didn’t go outside. He loves the snowpants. I think he thinks that because they’re puffy they’re made of pillows – because when he’s wearing them, he’ll purposely fall.
I also wanted to make a post about this last thing all week but never got around to it, but Holly, who used the same adoption agency we did, wrote a really good post about adoption in the Congo. She brings up a lot of really good points about corruption and how to fix it. Personally, having gone through the process, I think that if there is to be real change in the way that the US side of Congolese adoptions are handled, it needs to come from the parents who make their agencies accountable for every cent they give them. A lot of agencies talk about transparency but are they really? I also think that if there’s to be change on the Congolese side, then it needs to come from there. If there’s to be any change in Congo at all on anything, it needs to come from the Congolese. I mean, we all know Congo is a mess and that there’s no really oversight in the government. Once when I mentioned (before my adoption was completed) how the Congolese government was corrupt, another mom from my agency told me that I should be thankful that Kabila was “allowing” us to adopt their children and that we should respect him and what he’s doing for the children of Congo. Yeah…and people wonder sometimes why I don’t like other adoptive parents? This is why.
Anyway…There’s a pretty good discussion going on in the comments. Check it out here.
Tags: adoption, Congo, lucien, Paper cranes, snowpants
I finally finished the knotted stitch embroidery sampler. It’s from dropcloth on etsy. I can’t rave about Rebecca’s samplers enough – seriously I’ve done like 4 of them and loved them all.
The knot in the middle and the French knots are my favorite parts.
Tags: embroidery, sampler
We never really paid attention to Valentine’s Day before this year. Yes, we’re a lame couple. I know that.
This year my mom sent the babies some pajamas for gifts instead of candy, which is good. Here’s Lucien in his “choo choo train” pajamas. Do you think he likes them?
He actually doesn’t want to take them off! He asks to put the back on the second he walks in the door if we’ve gone out!! As someone who gets obsessed with things, I can get behind his commitment to the choo choo train pajamas.
Also, in honor of the holiday I make cupcakes for J to bring to work. Dark chocolate cupcakes with coffee icing.
My decorating skills are lacking, as you can see but that frosting is so good. Then again, I love coffee flavored anything. I very much love coffee liqueur, so good…Anyway…if you’d like the recipe to the frosting it’s on my other blog, here, and the frosting is vegan even if the cake part isn’t.
How was your Valentines Day?
I made whoopie pies today. Chocolate cake and a vanilla & blood orange cream cheese filling. I think I didn’t add enough confectioners sugar because my filling/frosting was a bit runny. It’s a bit more clear in the cupcakes below:
Runny. But tasty. I’ll have to worn on that frosting. I’m usually pretty good at making the frostings but awful at the actual baking part of it. This time my obsessive watching of baking shows and reading of baking blogs has paid off.
It hasn’t been all baking around here, I’ve started a new embroidery sampler. This one is also from dropcloth on etsy, I love her samplers.
I just started this one:
Lastly, I wanted mention that Mr Lucien got into one of the boxes that holds all my embroidery floss. You are probably guessing correctly that the floss ended up everywhere. It looks nice now:
I feel like this year is starting out productive on my end. I like that. What have you been up to?
Tags: baking, embroidery, Whoopie pies, yummy!
I saw on quite a few blogs that you could mix a box of cake mix with a can of soda and make a cake. I figured it would be the perfect recipe to try with the Babycakes cupcake maker that J got me for Christmas.
Yes, J got me a Babycakes. When I first heard about them I thought they were silly, but then the more I thought about what I could make with them…the more I needed one. I’ve actually made a bunch of things with it – quiche, mini pies, lots of cupcakes, mini pancakes, muffins…
Anyway…
I mixed a can of orange soda with a box of funfetti cake mix. I then plugged in the Babycakes and waited for it to warm up. It took about 5 minutes we batch and I made a bunch. The result was a whole bunch of moist and very yummy mini cupcakes.
In a couple of them, I used another trick I found on the internets – cook the cupcakes for a few minutes and then drop in a Hershey kiss. I only did it with a couple of them in case it didn’t turn out good. I should’ve done it with all of them, next time…
I had a bit of unplanned silence on the blog last week. I went to visit my mom in Connecticut. Her apartment complex is like an anti-cell phone fortress. I can’t get Internet or calls, but for some reason sometimes texts come through. I find that a majority of CT is like that.
Anyway. The babies had a blast at their grandmaman’s. She took them outside to play for hours every day. She and her next door neighbor stuffed them full of treats…and best of all she babysat and I was able to go out at night with friends! There was a lot of Indian food involved – so much so that my tombstone should read “she loved Indian food. A lot.”
The main reason I went up wasn’t just for the babies to visit with their grandparents and cousins. But so that my friend Rosemary and I could go to Boston to meet two of our favorite actors from Sons of Anarchy!
That’s me looking excited, and failing at looking cool, with Mark Boone Junior who plays Bobby Elvis on the show. He is now officially my favorite because he spelled my name right without my having to help, it doesn’t take much…We also met Kim Coates who plays Tig. It was really fun – especially because Rosemary is so funny, I’m always afraid she’s going to make me pee my pants from laughing. I’d love if she wast neighbor, but I’d also be afraid at how we’d do nothing but laugh all day.
So, now we’re back home. The dogs have been all over me more that usual, which is a nice problem. Bea has been extra silly:
She likes to flip the play tent over and lay cradled in the top part. Weirdo. So, I don’t know if I mentioned but they’re talking a lot more now. Today when I was changing Bea, I said “love you Bea” she replied “love you pee pee.” ha ha.
Tags: silly Bea, sons of anarchy, Visit
This is where I yammer on about things I find interesting. You might agree, then again you might not.
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