Finally, the time has arrived!

I have been waiting for this impatiently since December 10th! I could hardly wait to get my tools out and get my hands dirty, and it just kept raining, and raining, and raining! Finally, this week, spring has decided to take up residence in the Pacific Northwest and I was able to do what I have been longing for since we bought this house! Transform the patio and flower beds from ugly and overgrown to beautiful and restful.

The picture of the patio before I began working!

I have always wanted to do a color coordinated flower garden, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. Friday afternoon I hit the garden departments of Home Depot and Lowe's and began making my choices! I was so excited to bring home a car load of pink, purple and white flowers!

Here is the result of my efforts...I love how it is looking, and in a few weeks when the plants have grown some it is going to be spectacular!

I am looking forward to spending many, many happy hours on the patio this summer!

Musings....

I get so wrapped up in Facebook. Addicted really. I find I use it as my primary means of communication, even with family. I rarely send emails anymore. Phone calls are even rarer. Personal messages on Facebook are so easy and no switching between programs!

I have found that I sometimes forget, totally, that I even have a blog. Until I run across something like this at the local Joannes store:
A beautiful (and expensive) 150 page "magazine" (I would call it a book actually) highlighting beautiful and artsy blogs. Of course, I snatched it up and brought it home...for inspiration I told myself. In actuality, it left me feeling woefully inadequate and un-artistic! Upon careful reading, it seems as if most of the featured bloggers don't do much with their lives except take beautiful pictures with expensive cameras and then write about them on their blogs. Yeah, I'm complaining, mainly because I am insanely jealous that I can't do the same.

What I need is a magazine that can inspire people who have an actual 8 to 5 job, plus are running their own small business, plus are raising children and managing a household. Now that is a magazine I would love to see! I love taking beautiful pictures, and I do have some really good ones. But I don't have the time to fiddle with Photoshop getting those pictures even better. Maybe in my next life called retirement???

Anyway, we have just returned from a long overdue vacation in paradise! We spent a week at our timeshare on Kahana beach on Maui...very soothing for my soul...here are a few of the best pictures from this trip. Hope you enjoy them. And I really have made a resolution to blog more! Promise!

Favorite Things

One of the things I enjoy most in starting a new design is pulling fabric, threads and beads in the palette I have envisioned. I did that yesterday for a my next adventure...aren't these threads gorgeous? Gloriana Threads has released a new line of silk threads using hand dyed Soie d'Alger that is called "Florimel". They don't have all the colors of their other silk threads yet, so I am using both in this design. This newest design is tentatively called "Beyond the Garden Gate" . I'm looking forward to some great stitching in the next few weeks!

Pictures and some grandma bragging!

We had pictures taken of the grand kids, just want to show them off a little.

Alana is 5, Gracie is 3 and Silas is 2.

This picture is Gracie wearing the heirloom dress that her mother, sisters and aunties also wore!

Whew, I think I am tired!

Oh my, what a whirlwind the last six weeks have been! Today I can finally sit down with my cup of peppermint cocoa and catch everyone up with my world! So here goes!

On December 9th we had a meeting at the Title Company, where we signed the closing documents on our house that we SOLD!! And immediately signed the closing documents on the house we BOUGHT!! What a huge relief and accomplishment to come to that point! We took possession of our new home the next day at 5 PM and immediately starting moving in! We were excited, can you tell? We needed to buy some things for the house, like window coverings, washer and dryer and new living room furniture. And with having to prepare for Christmas, it took us nearly 2 1/2 weeks to get everything moved over and another 2 weeks to finish unpacking! But last night, I hung the last picture and organized the last drawer, and I can finally rejoice in having my home finished! We love our home and new neighborhood and we are so thankful to be here!

Here is a quick little picture tour of our new home:

Our Master Bedroom

The living room and dining behind.

Dining Room

The Kitchen, with all new stainless steel appliances! There is full pantry next to the refrigerator.

Coming up the stairs to the second floor. Lizzie's room in the center, bathroom is on the right.
And, the room I am most excited about, a studio for Lacey Thread Designs!

A good sized work table to spread out on!
And plenty of room for storage AND display!
Storage in the closet in the studio!

I have been longing for studio for quite some time, so this is really a huge blessing and treat to be able to have the space just for designing and stitching!

I am working on a pattern for the Nordic Needle retreat this spring, and then plan on getting the companion piece to Blossoms and Lace charted and printed!

Alana, 5; Gracie, 3; Silas, 2

Christmas was fun this year, Silas was finally old enough to understand presents, and the grand-kids all had such a good time. I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season, and Happy New Year to you all!

Happy Thanksgiving!

The pies and salad are made, and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade is on the television. We are savoring our second cup of coffee and a helping of Apple Cobbler before we head over to my parents house to join most of the rest of the family (17 of us this year) for dinner about 1:00. We have much to be thankful for this year, and I am glad to be able to spend the day celebrating that fact!

We had a harrowing time with snow and ice this week. My office was closed Tuesday and Wednesday morning, and school was closed for the kids on Tuesday and Wednesday, so we were able to safely stay warm and cozy without having to worry about driving the treacherous streets. I spent most of my day off deep cleaning the apartment, like scouring the drip pans, and dusting every little corner. It feels good to have the house spotless for the long weekend, and I can just stitch and watch movies to my heart's content. It is still cold this morning, just one degree above freezing, but the weatherman is promising it will warm up and rain later today.

Granddaughters Alana and Gracie both had birthdays last week, so we had three different parties for them, one family dinner at their favorite restaurant on their respective birthday, and then a big party for all their friends at Chuck E Cheese. Lots of fun and laughter!

Alana, Grandson Silas and Gracie enjoying the rides at Chuck E Cheese.

I hope that all of you have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

New Design Released!

I am so pleased to announce the release of "Blossoms and Lace"! These delicate and lacey stitching accessories are stitched on Platinum Cashel Linen, and uses Gloriana silk floss, Delica beads and pearls, combining elegant hardanger with sweet flowers! When the needle pocket hardanger edges open, you will find a very precious and secret place to slip in your needles or thread. The leaflet has complete directions for stitching and constructing the needle pocket, biscornu and scissor fob. All pearls, beads and charms are included with each leaflet.

A Rare Weekend Away

John actually had a Saturday and Sunday off this weekend, so we took advantage of that and headed up to the cabin for the weekend. It was so nice to get away as a family, as it has been over a year since we have been able to do that. Saturday was a nice warm day, and at the Lizzie's request, we drove up to Blaine, WA, to visit the Peace Arch Park.

The gardens were so beautiful and the white arch was gorgeous against the blue sky.

Zoe and Lizzie were quite excited to be "IN" Canada, and sat for a long time on the Canadian side of the arch talking and texting to their friends back home.

Lizzie's phone actually went into the roaming mode, even though they were literally only 10 feet away from the border! We then drove down to Birch Bay State Park and spent some time on the beach.

I remembered on our back to Bellingham that there was a Sonic Drive In in Ferndale, so of course we had to stop and have lunch!

It was a great weekend, I even managed to get a little bit of work done on the newest leaflet, which will be called Blossoms and Lace. I hope I can get it wrapped up this week and off to the printer by next week.



So, it's back to the daily grind tomorrow. The girls are trying to settle into school, and only have one class together, French. I am hoping that having them both in French will be a good excuse for me to brush up my very rusty French as well!

(For those who don't know, we have a new Daughter-in-Love, Zoe, who will be living with us the next year or three, and attending school with Lizzie. It's been a change having two teens in the house, but it is going well!)

Gorgeous afternoon in Washington

We spent the afternoon in DuPont, looking again at houses. We keep coming back to the same one, especially now that the price has been reduced $15,000. It will be interesting to see if it is still available when we actually have the go ahead to make an offer. (We are still waiting on the buyer's loan for our old house to get to the point where we can safely assume it will close) It was such a beautiful afternoon, there was a historical gathering/demonstration at the old Ft Nisqually site..what a surprise it was to find a booth for the Embroiderer's Guild of America...I think I may get involved as there is a small subgroup that meets in Tacoma, and the regular meetings near Seattle are actually on Saturday mornings! They also told me that there is a group that specializes in hardanger embroidery! Then John and I hiked the 3 mile round trip down to the DuPont Beach...what an incredibly beautiful hike and it was fairly smooth and easy...it was so nice to have a day off with my hubby, the first one in about a month.

In Seattle you haven't had enough coffee until you can thread a sewing machine while it's running. ~Jeff Bezos (CEO of Amazon.com)

I found this quote while searching online for quotes about needlework...it made me chuckle!

It's been a busy summer. I've finished another design that I love, but I haven't started putting together the leaflet yet...I am more in a stitching mood than working on layout mood, so I went ahead and started another design...which I love too. The two designs will work well as companion pieces.

Hints of things to come.

I spend so much time on Facebook, that I often forget to update my blog. I read one blog lately where the author has the same problem, so she solved that by copying and pasting all her Facebook updates into her blog. For my own personal history, I am going to do that now too, and I will post some pictures as I go as illustrations...so here is my life in the last two months, according to Facebook:

Some teenage boys who wanted to hassle my daughter decided to egg our house yesterday afternoon. Sheesh. Trouble is, I don't live in a house, I live in a building with 19 other apartments! Most of the mess ended up trashing the upstairs neighbor's place! But we had a hilarious time getting to know the upstairs neighbors while cleaning up the mess (two very nice soldiers just returned from Iraq).We had no hoses, so one of the young men stood on the ladder we had and we threw bucket after bucket of water up on the siding! I haven't laughed so hard in ages! 2 hours ago

August 16th: Okay, I am done with the hot weather. I'm ready for cool and cozy, warm fires and hot chocolate, rain pattering on windows and my big fluffy bathrobe! Gee, I think I must be from Washington!

August 8: Well, the pie is done and the applesauce is cooling in the frig...not sure I can wait until John gets home at 8:30 to dig in!!

August 8: When we moved out of our house, I mourned the loss of our two apple trees, and all the wonderful applesauce and pies...and lo and behold, Dad brings over enough apples from his tree yesterday for a couple pies and a small batch of applesauce...so that's what I'm gonna do now...heading for the kitchen!!! Yippee!

July 24: John and I ventured out of town today on a very rare Saturday that we both have off! We drove up to the Bellevue Botanical Gardens...pretty, but whew! it was HOT driving home!

July 10: Working on my newest design tonight. Doing alot of "put three stitches in, take three stitches out"...having a hard time getting it to gel. Think I better put it away till tomorrow!

July 3: We had so much fun at Cirque Du Soliel this afternoon (before all the added excitement of fireworks and then a car nearly landing in our house, see earlier post). Thank you Alli and Chris for blessing us with a wonderful afternoon!


July 3: Our angels were doing their jobs protecting us tonight as a drunk driver jumped the curb and nearly drove into our apartment! I was in the kitchen and John was in the bedroom (the windows you see in the pictures) when it happened! Then both occupants of the car decided to run, John spent about 20 minutes chasing the driver and actually caught up with him. The passenger is still out there, but the driver is spending the night at the courthouse! Totally destroyed the beautiful chestnut tree outside our window! Whew! Too much excitement for one night!
Well, my blog anniversary came and went last month. I can hardly believe it's been 5 years that I have been blogging. And so, in honor of my blogaversary, I am posting, as per my tradition, pictures of daisies from my garden. This year, I had to go to our old house and bother the renters to get the pictures, so this will probably be the end of this tradition for me...I guess I will need to plant some daisies at our future home, or come up with some new tradition. Here's to ya!

Hearts and Flowers

Announcing the release of "Hearts and Flowers"! It is stitched on Olive Green Cashel Linen, and uses Gloriana silk floss and Delica beads, interweaving beautiful specialty stitches with hardanger! The box top is finished with a lovely gold heart with flowers charm and the bell pull is embellished with a gold inlaid Czech heart bead! Leaflets are available from Norden Crafts, Nordic Needle, my website at www.LaceyThread.com or my Etsy shop (see link at right).

It's June Already?

Well this year is certainly flying by...I have caught several friends joining me in saying, "is it really June??" I took three days off work this week and spent the week puttering around the house getting some projects done that I wanted to do. I cleaned out my stitching closets and drawers and pulled out all the things I knew I would never use. I set up an Etsy shop to offer them to other stitchers very reasonably priced (i.e., cheap!). For some reason, I hate to see these things to go to Goodwill, probably because I halfway think they would probably get tossed as unsellable! So I hope you will stop by Lacey Thread's Etsy and see if you find something that interests you. I still have about 20 more items sitting here on my table that I need to list, and I also plan on listing all my leaflets too.

I also finished up my newest design, got the models finished and photographed, and I am about 2/3 done with writing the leaflet! I hope to get it sent off to the printer this weekend, if life cooperates! I am very excited about Hearts and Flowers, it was very fun to stitch. Here's a peek of my photography set up yesterday.
So it's back to work tomorrow for one day, then I have the weekend to continue plugging away on these projects. I spent one evening completely rearranging my floss boxes...my DMC has been put into my boxes in numerical order for ease of pulling threads for designs by other designers. I realized this month that it was completely wrong for me now that I design, because when I want to choose a pink floss, I had to pull out all 4 boxes and open them all and make sure I looked at all the pinks. So I rearranged all the floss by color families, so when I want, say a pink floss, I pull out just one box and they are all there from dark to light. This would be a very tedious way to find floss numbers for anyone else, but I think it will work well for designing!


The last four weekends Lizzie and I, and sometimes John, have tried to get outside and take a "nature walk" every weekend. Nothing too strenuous or long, but we are just making an effort to get outside and enjoy the beauty of the Pacific Northwest. This last weekend we didn't make it to a true nature trail, but we did end up in downtown Tacoma, and walked around the outside of the Museum of Glass...the displays are very nice. On the bridge that goes over the freeway there are lots of displays, and one of them is in the ceiling...what a great view! Of course I had forgotten my camera, so these are taken only with my cell phone and are not as good as I would like, but I think you can get the idea of the man made beauty out for everyone to enjoy!


This one reminds me of coral, sea urchins, jelly fish and sea stars! One day soon I want to go back and take some really good pictures of this glass ceiling...it is so incredible in person!