Hobby Lobby —- I Caved and Went — Glad I did but….

I have a love/hate relationship with Hobby Lobby.  I don’t like their politics.  But, they are the only craft store in town with any stock.  And they have a LOT of stock.  Which is another reason that I don’t like to go there.  They have it — all of it — and I want it — all of it — now.  And I could have it, theoretically except I took my husband so that sort of negates the having it all.  Who am I kidding, I couldn’t have it all — that place has so much to buy I would have to sell my firstborn, mortgage the house, rent out my husband and I still couldn’t get it all.

So, right inside the door sitting on a piece of barn wood/wrought iron furniture was a gnome cookie jar.  It was all spring like, in a bee sort of motif with a yellow and black striped hat (and bees are my “thing”) and a slight, delicate little “ooooohhhh” escaped from my mouth about the same time a “hmmmmm…..what would you do with it” escaped from my husbands.  So, I put it down, grabbed a basket and went on with the task at hand.

The task at hand was to acquire some much needed (debatable) cross stitch supplies.  My interest in the craft has been renewed so I decided I needed to purchase a few things — much more justifiable than the gnome cookie jar — especially since I am SUPPOSED to be getting rid of the cookies.  I digress.

So, anyway, here is my haul.

.

Yes, not cross stitch but I like to embroider kitchen towels too and — well — bees!

Mounting canvas

More mounting canvas

Apparently I plan on mounting a lot of stuff to these canvasses.

I didn’t show the fake geraniums I bought but that will be another post—my ten minutes of gardening on the front porch!

So, I went up stairs to sort through my cross stitch stuff and I reduced the patterns and kits to this

Two carts worth of charts and half-finished kits.  This does not include the 4” binder I have filled with patterns removed from magazines but I couldn’t show you that because, well, I have lost it.  How I lost a notebook heavy enough to be a small child is beyond me but I have a tendency to store things of import in notebooks in page protectors — I have several — and now I have lost this one.  I am sure it will turn up somewhere.  If not, it appears I have enough to keep me busy until whenever.  I am sure I will lose my mojo again at some point.

As I posted earlier, I finished my New Orleans piece and have started on my Ukrainian mitten pattern.

Somewhere in the middle of doing the New Orleans picture I decided that, due to the difficulty, I should have tried my hand at gridding.  Of course, it was too late for that piece but I promised myself I would do it for the next piece.  I have been wanting to start on the mitten pattern because it is really cute and I want to use it as my fb profile photo for awhile.  I figured it would go fast because it is not large so I thought it would be a good opportunity to try gridding.

I have some lovely hot pink sulky sliver thread to use for gridding but I decided to just go with the water soluble pen for this first attempt.  My next attempt I might go with the sulky sliver.  It depends.  On what you might ask?  If the stuff washes out!  I have made considerable progress on this little mitten and if I forego the vacuuming and just sit down and stitch I will have it done today but, no, I must vacuum first then I can stitch with a clear conscience.  Whatever — we all know that decision could go either way.

So, that is what is going on on the cross stitch front.  In books I am still reading “The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek”.  I am making better progress since I put it on my kindle.  My hands just won’t let me hold books, even paperbacks, for very long at all, the kindle is better.  And, my new bed is on an adjustable frame which props me up at the perfect reading angle which makes it all so much better.  I am like in a little reading cloud!  Ok, enough of that silliness.

Does anybody watch “Call the Midwife”?  Love it! Makes Sunday nights as an adult almost as great as Sunday nights with the Wonderful World of Disney! Opps, there I got, dating myself again.  Ha!

Have a wonderful Monday — off to vacuum!