Progress Report

I have big news! I finished the top third of my 100 sampler!

It only took me two months, which means I'm barely going to finish this baby in time for her August release.

Maybe I should start greasing my needle and thread to make them move faster.

Or devote more time to sitting and stitching and watching Netflix.

Yeah... I'm voting for that last option too.

PS. Look who just showed up bottom center...

Kids Were Here

Lately

Not much new around here these days. The season continues to swell with flowers and downpours. But the sun always manages to make an appearance or two each day, and I have to keep the woodstove at a low simmer or we get cooked out of the house.

We are all counting down school days until Summer vacation starts - 31 including today (can I hear a loud Hallelujah from the crowd!). I'm working extra hard with the kids I tutor at the school on sight words and counting money and working pages of subtraction... we're trying so very hard to get up to level before they move on to the next grade. But even if they don't quite make it this year, I know I'll get to jump back in and continue the journey next year.

Our Easter weekend celebrations were meaningful and happy, adding memories to our family album that will be cherished.

I now have at least 5 individual hummingbirds that visit my kitchen window feeder; I'm thinking of giving them names.

And that's about it. What's going on in your world?

Rainy Window :: Chocolate Buttercream :: Romeos :: Hidden :: Braided :: Flowering Currant and Kerria Japonica :: Orchard View :: Tire Swing :: Unmade Wishes :: Cream Cloud :: Laundry Day :: Water Pump :: The Old Birdbath :: Flowering Cherry :: Mrs. Rufous :: Drippy :: Easter Finery

Free Chart... The Earth Laughs in Flowers

In honor of Earth Day, I've created a little free cross stitch chart for you, with a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The earth laughs in flowers".

The chart calls for DMC, but please substitute your favorite threads if you so desire, choose your favorite count of linen to work it onto, finish it as a pin cushion or needle book, whatever your heart desires... and be sure to send me a photo when you’re done! I’d love to share it on my finish blog.

As always, I would be very grateful if you gave credit to me if you post photos or links anywhere online, or offer your finished goods up for sale.

Click here to be taken directly to the downloadable pdf file.

P.S. if it bothers you that my specialty font was lost in the conversion to pdf process, you can always contact me to ask for an emailed copy. I've tried and tried to fix this bug, but somehow can't figure out how it is being lost. My pdf file looks perfect on my end, but when it is uploaded, POOF! gone. The chart itself is unaffected, so this is merely an aesthetic issue.

On Good Friday

God, who needs nothing, loves into existence

wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them.

He creates the universe, already foreseeing

– or should we say “seeing”? there are no tenses in God –

the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross,

the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake,

the nails driven through the mesial nerves,

the repeated incipient suffocation as the body droops,

the repeated torture of back and arms as it is time after time,

for breath’s sake, hitched up.

If I may dare the biological image,

God is a “host” who deliberately creates His own parasites;

causes us to be that we may exploit and “take advantage of” Him.

Herein is love.

This is the diagram of Love Himself, the inventor of all loves.

-C.S. Lewis

Today we mark and remember the bleakest moment in the Gospel story. Those of us familiar with the story of the Bible have the benefit of knowing that this catastrophe is leading up to the triumph of the Resurrection. But imagine how the Jesus followers of the time must have felt. The world as they knew it, along with their new found faith, was being torn, quite literally, apart. 

I'm glad that I was spared those terrifying moments and days, but how great would it have been to be there come Sunday morning!

Lately

It has been a long, busy week. Lots of special moments captured, but no time taken to write here. It has all been -good- busy. Volunteering at school (I do this four afternoons a week now), housework and errands, music practice, church fellowship group (taco night every Wednesday!), yardwork, business planning, those two kids of mine both getting a Student of the Month award on the same day.

Oh, and doing taxes, there was that too.

And a certain Farmboy had a birthday yesterday which we celebrated with Cod and Roasted Broccoli and a "Party Rainbow Chip" cake, because no one in town had is favorite "Cherry Chip".

Life is full of blessings, and for that I am daily grateful.

Eyelets :: Flowering Currant :: Feathery :: Leafing Out :: Princess Play :: Mr. Robin Redbreast :: Breakfast Out :: Homegrown Asparagus :: First Firepit :: Playdate with Chocolate and Sprinkles :: Belgian Waffle with Strawberries, Ricotta, and Honey :: Doing Taxes :: All Boy :: My Sewing Basket :: Budding Lilac :: Alfresco :: Flowering Cherry :: Cuddling Furballs :: Lady's Mantle :: Mr. Rofous :: Kerria Japonica :: Flowering Plum Bush :: Self-Portrait with Rubber Boots, Tilled Garden, and Magnolia