Making my mom a hug. She is such a sweetie and worries about us all so much. I am working up a shawl for her. Then she can feel our hugs when we are not there to give her one. It is about 2/3's done now. Just a simple half dc pattern and my favorite H hook. Wanted something I could work on easily and not have to read a pattern. So basically this is my version of a reallllllllllllllly big dish cloth. LOL Except I am praying and thinking of my mom as I go. I have memory issues and have been trying to think really hard about memories of my childhood. Finding some forgotten ones.

Look at that face. He is a lil bit sad. And he was a bit cross with his Aunt Penny who he dearly LOVES for taking him to the vet. But she brought her nephew Toby a get well pressie of a fuzzy bone and all is forgiven. Actually I think he overdid himself yesterday and is paying the price today. He was hyper!@! Like he had been to doggie camp and came home hyped up on good boy treats. Not like he had had a lil snip snip, 2 baby teeth pulled and his nails trimmed. We could not keep him from jumping and bouncing around. BUT this morning he woke me up whimpering! Not his, gotta go potty mommy so hurry up, whimper. But a sad lil', I am hurt cry. He got his doggy drugs and then slept it off. Still has this sad face though. Look at those droopy ears :o(

Thank you everyone for the encouraging emails. I have been taking things hard lately. Having the high fevers hasn't helped. BUT I started on a new med Friday night for a week. Only had one high fever last night! Friday night I had 3. So today I am feeling better. We have our 2 day quilt show this coming week. Set up is on Thursday. My stuff is all packed from the last one and I am hoping to finish up a few small things I had started especially for this show.

I had a couple people ask about the snowmen lightbulbs in my past post. These are turned wooden bulbs. I used 18 gauge black wire for the hangers. Purchased them at Michael's.

The weather has turned from nippy here. Snowy sky. Snow flurries are expected. Autumn is officially over and winter is here.

And to end on a happyhappy note...I signed 7 contracts yesterday for 2009 with Create & Decorate. With more to come. So yayayaya!

Autoimmune Hepatitis. Does anyone have this or know someone who does? I have recently (Monday) been diagnosed with this and had never heard of it before. Since I already have lupus and sarcoid, it is all under the autoimmune disease umbrella. Just doing alot of reading right now while waiting for more tests to be scheduled. Thanks for any info anyone has.

And thanks for all the sweet emails about my booth. That show wasn't the best. We were totally shocked by all the cheaply priced, import stuff. It was massive! And in the current economy, cheap rocks over quality hand-did sometimes. sigh

My baby boy Toby is going in for his lil boy surgery tomorrow. I hate they have to keep him overnight! He will be sad and lonely for home. It will be soooo quiet without him here, but I will use the time to sleeeeeeeeeeeep and not go on his potty runs hopefully. :o)

Someone asked about Toby. What can I say? He is all boy! And likes his tire toy bunches. Weighs in at 19 pounds! I have been saying he is not a Yorkie-Poo but whether a Porkie. LOL

Isn't that hilarious? He looks totally possessed! Which somedays I think he is.


But then he gives me the sweet face and I think maybe we should keep him. :o)


I want to thank those that sent me personal emails about my posting I have anxiety disorder. The reason I did it was to maybe make someone else feel they are not alone out there. I have really been praying for my healing over this. If you let me know, I will pray for your healing too.

Still alive and kickin'. Just a working really hard for my three shows in November. And honestly, I have been feeling a bit anti-social. That is a huge admission for me to post. I suffer with anxiety disorder. There I said it. And at times, I just feel like it is best to keep to myself a bit. Except my poor family. I wear them out with my chatter. But they are my safety net. Always there for me. Bless their hearts! Anyways...

Here is a couple pics. Cause posts are boring without photographs :o) Two favorite projects I have for shows. The Hope box is painted a yummy robin's egg blue and lined with vintage paper from a 1913 sheet music book. (The book was in tatters.)

Adorned sewing tuffet. Cotton and wool tuffet attached to a fabric covered paper mache box. I handpainted a pip berry vine around the rim of the lid for an extra touch. Very heavily antiqued, with lots of buttons and vintage doo-dads.

The temps have cooled off considerably here in southern Indiana today. Drizzly rain over the night. Our trees didnt get to really change so far. Mostly just turning brown and falling off. We usually have such gorgeous autumn colors.

Someone had asked me where I was doing shows. I will be in Greenwood 11/1 (craft show), Bloomington 11/14-15 (quilt show) and Bedford 11/22 (craft show). Let me know if you would like the particulars.

Hope everyone is doing well and staying creative. Is it time to put a Christmas Countdown counter up??? :o))

Always behind and never caught up. Heard that before? Maybe even the lil voice in your own head? LOL I will not bore you with all the details, but I am feeling better now. My wool show went great. The crowd was good and the class I taught went fine. I have 3 more shows booked for October and November.

Thanks Deb.

Birthday pictures. Fun day.

(All the lil holes on the cake are where the candles where. If I had put a candle on for each person's age, there would have been 100 even.)

Baby Shayla meets Toby...crawwwwwwwwzy time!

I thought I was loosing my mind. Seriously. The poor lil pup loves kids. To pieces. Literally! And poor Shayla, well in her words "Can he go back to his first mommy?". The pup hit a super sonic whine and bark surely never heard by mortal ears. Penny said she had a bad feeling, and came up to help out. Thank God. I think I told her about 3 times I loved her! LOL Toby just needed to see Shayla and smell her and eat lick her. He was kissing her with his teeth I explained to her. I wrapped her in my bed pillow and let him see her that way. Finally I got her out of the house and on her lil bike for some alone time with me. Then Mark brought Toby out and we had him on his leash (always!) chasing her on the bike and "kissing" her bike tires. She told him he would be buying her a new everything if he tore up her tires. LOL It just went on and on. Then we wore him out chasing bubbles and more walks around the block. Heather and Ivan came over for a diversion. Thanks kids. It did help. Finally after her bath, we got to the picture point (sans the wet hair-do). Toby laid in the chair with her for about 3 minutes and then it was on again. But at least the barking is pretty much over. And poor Shayla, she came with a "headache in her ear". Has fought ear aches all week from swimming. One of her lines was, "Can you make that racket stop?". Poor kiddo. She is staying til late evening tomorrow. And tomorrow we have a multi-birthday party here. Heather is 21 on the 9th, Shayla is 5 on the 12th and our Daddy is 74 on the 16th. All those ages are hard for me to wrap my mind around. We are doing a make your own Mexican bar. Mr. Toby is going in his kennel out to my playhouse to listen to the television. No WAY can he stay inside with everyone including Baby Jaidyn who is on the move now. Too much crawwwwwwwwzy isnt a good thing! :o)

And a big thank you to everyone about my scope. I have replied to you all I think.

Sing a-long with me now...a colonoscopy we go, a colonoscopy we go, high-ho the merrier, a colonoscopy we go...

We will fore go photos. Yes you may thank me. LOL I had this scheduled for early August. Got sick with the flu/cold thing and now it is this week. As in tomorrow. Blech. Just want it to be a memory at this point. Am drinking tons of fluids, have found this is the best way to get through it. Especially since I was dehydrated 2 weeks ago. Honestly, I cannot imagine being a pooper doctor. Just can't. At least they don't see THAT on this test. Cause if they do, you are outta there and home for more roto reuter clean out! Ok. Enough about that. But since that is all I gots, see you lat'a. :o)

Big girl and teddy bears! Our Miss Jaidyn is getting so busy. Is almost walking! She is such a cutie.

Playing peek-a-boo with great-aunt Angie.

The bears are all made from wool. The large one is dressed in a very sweet, vintage baby dress. She is approximately 36-inches tall.

These goofy lil' ones have lavendar buds added to their stuffing. I dried it from my gardens. They smell yummy. I plan on adding collage tags to each of the 3 bears.

It rained for a full 5 minutes tonight! The first rain the whole month of August on my yard. At least it settled the dust a bit. I got all excited though thinking, this was it! Poor Toby did NOT want to go out to potty after all. LOL He was at the door to go then did a quick turn around. Honestly, he had probably forgotten what rain was it had been so long since he had been in it. We went anyways. Me all hunkered down with a big ole umbrella over us both. Chanting...go potty, go potty. Quite a site I am sure. :o)

Computer woes and candle making question...

Yep that is what has been happening at my house. Blogger wouldn't let me in. Actually I didnt receive any of the sweet congrat messages you all posted to me about the magazine. I found them when I went to make my next post. Thank you thank YOU! But blogger wouldn't play nice all week long. Then my pc got hit with some crazy virus/trojans. Still working on the spam I am receiving. But new day and here we are in blogland. So yayaya for that :o)

Thought I would show you a couple pics of recent completed projects. Just quick wooly ones. The small snowman on the last pic is actually a pincushion. It is filled with that crazy Lizard Litter (crushed walnut shells).

And this big boy of mine is getting some crazy hair on him. LOL It is so cute. It is coming in random tuffs all over his face and chest. The towel (an old bath towel cut in half), well there is usually a couple laying around. His blankies/chew toys at the moment. I just told Penny tonight when Toby got out of his chewing stage I was going to make him his own blankie. Her reply...5 years? Yes probably. He is the chewer still. But is he just 4 months old.

Penny has a question I am passing along to you all. Do any of you have any experience making soy candles??? This is my dilemma .... My four ounce candles, that are in jam jars, burn beautifully. The pint size candles, which are a pound of wax, do not burn nearly as well. I'm thinking I need to use two wick in these larger candles. What do you think? I plan to experiment with the double wicks before I offer the pint candles for sale or as gifts but thoughtI would ask for your opinions. Thanks for any suggestions.

I cannot believe it has been almost a week since I posted. 14 dishcloths later...LOL Yeah. That is how many I finally ended up with. I did have a couple ask for the pattern, so will post that this week for anyone interested. Very simple pattern. We had a mini yard sale here today. Heather is getting ready to move and wanted to clean out a bit and of course we always have a bit to add to the sale table. She was happy with what she did, so that was good. There were a ton of them going on about town, so we didnt do as well as we usually do. People were looking for school clothes. And people were having them to make money to buy school clothes. It still seems strange not to have a school age child. I miss the excitement of chatter about new clases, bookbags and making new friends. sigh She will be 21 in September. I need to get over it huh? LOL

Here is Toby showing off his baby teeeth. We are working sooooo hard on training him to be a sweet boy and not "mouthy" as the vet calls it. But giving kisses and not bities. The potty training is going great. He is going to the door alot now when he needs to go potty. And sometimes will even give a lil yip to get my attention he is there. Course there are still accidents, but they are fewer apart now and usually when he gets excited his daddy has came home!

When I am sick, I crochet. And that is another sickness, but we won't go there! LOL In the past 2 days/daze I have made 7 dish cloths. Just simple ones. But these will be pressies along the way. I have burnt everyone out on doilies. :o) And no Penny. I am not cutting into your business! LOL My sister is the reigning dish cloth queen. She always has one in her purse on the needles. If anyone wants a pattern for these just let me know and I will write it up. They go so quickly it is scary.

We are just taking it easy here. I have a cold/flu thingy that has laid me low this week. And the puppy is being really good. He loves the bed his granny and poppy bought him. Loves it to "pieces". He can only have it off the couch when he is sleepy. Otherwise he wants to devour it! But when he is sleepy he is sooo sweet.

Oh! And don't forget about the new yahoo group I started. Hand-Dids for hand-doers! :o) I have really worked on gathering tons of links for free patterns and tutorials.

Hope everyone is staying cool and healthy.

My new Yahoo group, Hand-Dids.

I had thought about starting this group for a long time. Like a couple of years actually. And now just seems to be the time. It is not limited to any one fibre technique since we girls like to do it all! :o) So come on over and play.