What does Independence Day Mean to You?

To my thirteen year old son it means:

Our first 4th of July here we were astounded at the fireworks that were legal and abundant. In Arizona, at least in Phoenix, we couldn't even buy sparklers. Our third year here in Washington we discovered something even more exciting: fireworks at the Indian Reservation. Yikes! Everything a budding pyromanic could wish for and more. We made a trip up to the Chehalis Indian Reservation last night to buy this year's Hamill Family assortment. They sell illegal fireworks, which is not what we were after---they just have an IMPRESSIVE selection---think fleamarkets of fireworks--MULTIPLE fleamarkets of fireworks. See that rocket there in the middle? I think my son would have slept with it last night if we would have let him. (That is a 56 quart/53 liter container in the back!)

Stitch Marker Goodness

Alison was ahead of schedule in the Stitch Marker Swap. I received her package today at the same time as my Back-Tack goodies.

Sanrio's Little Twin Stars on the notepaper, and look at the attractive little package!

Alison is not only a talented crafter with a terrific blog, http://starlitnest.blogspot.com , she also owns her own yarn and fabric boutique, and boy, does it look like a wonderful place! http://luminousthreads.blogspot.com (She has Noro on sale through the end of July!) Her stitch markers came in her beautifully tasteful shop packaging:

It is hard to do stitch markers justice in photos, they are small, and as I mentioned before, if I have a macro setting on the Olympus I haven't found it yet. These are some beauties, they are simple and perfect. My favorite is the round agate, and there's also a lovely aqua glass drop, and a faceted pink/mauve swirly glass one. Thank you, Alison, they are beautiful!

Back-Tack III Received!!!

Guess who's here?

It's my Back-TackIII stuffie from the talented and fabulous Sarah of Hearts and Needles.

I got my package today. I have to tell you, I love getting a package in the mail!

And inside?

All sorts of goodies!

The charmingly girly Wee Bunny (with the abbreviated ears) who shall be known as "Foo-Foo." I was pushing for "Eloise," but I was outvoted by the kids. The heart appliqued on the front is pink satin, and it has the most beautiful pink button on it. I don't have my own button stash---but I may have to start.

Detail of the monogram, and the ruffled bean-bag thingy that helps Foo-Foo stand up and adds to her general feminine appearance. And there's the other 4 buttons!

One of Sarah's very cute finger puppets of her own design (just like in her blog bannner,) this was snapped up by Audrey and dubbed "Doo-Dah."

Sarah apparently has an impressive paper stash. I wish you could get a better look at these hand stamped tags and the wrapping on this package. I'm a paper junkie, and these are NICE. That package sure looked like a chocolate bar to me, but inside:

Better than chocolate, it's more papery goodness. It's these beatiful cottony notecards from Ikea with embroidered (embroidered!) envelopes. I love them. I feel so spoiled!

Sarah also shared this terrific vintage needlebook find, which I love. The outside advertises "Food Fair, America's Showplace of Food Values." There were also some beautiful little labels, and a darling little wooden spool loaded with red polka dot ribbon. Thank you! It was a package worth waiting for!

Beading

I started beading about a year ago. I started with simple single strand bracelets strung on wire, finished with crimp beads and toggles. Then I took a couple of beading classes at Bead Bugs, our terrific local bead store in Longview. One was a wiring class, which has resulted in things like this:

Wiring is a good skill to have. It lets a person make important things like stitch markers, which sell for exorbitant amounts in the local yarn shops but are simple to make. The pattern for Clapotis at Knitty calls for SIXTEEN stitch markers. If a person wanted to buy them, that could be $82 worth. Here are a few I made for the Stitch Marker Swap:

(Sorry for the fuzzy picture, if my new camera has a macro function, I haven't found it yet.) The other class I've taken is Peyote. I'm not sure why the technique is named Peyote, unless the person who did it the first time was a practicer of the substance. It's done with ridiculously small beads which are strung and sewn together with a thin flexible needle in a brick-like pattern (not to be confused with Brick Stitch beading.) Here's a bracelet I need to finish because it is very, very close to being completed, and has been for a several months. It is the Midnight in the Oasis pattern from beading.about.com :

But now I need to run off and take some pictures. My mail just came and in it is my Back-Tack III package from Sarah AND if I'm not mistaken some beaded stitch markers!!!!

Cat Toy Swap

I figured I should post some crafting content today. I haven't been idle in that respect, although I've been sticking to small quickie projects. I think it's the whole summer thing--the kids are home, the yard needs attention, there are places to go and people to see. I signed up for a cat toy swap at Swap-Bot, and wanted to post a picture of one of my catnip mice. They are crocheted out of Knit-Cro-Sheen and Crystal Palace "Fizz" and stuffed with poly-fill and "Meowie Wowie." Here is Bob getting in on the photo shoot. Actually, this is right before Bob ENDED the photo shoot by trying to make off with the subject.

Our House

This is a picture I took of our house earlier this spring (see how the maple branch on the right doesn't have leaves on it and the rhodies are blooming?) It is a circa 1927-1929 Tudor cottage allegedly built for the first mayor of our town. We aren't on Longview's Lake Sacajawea, but if you stand in the front yard you can see the north end of it. I fell in love with it's Tudor cuteness the first time I saw it on an internet real estate site before we ever visited Longview. It is not the most practical house for us, since the living space is about 1,100 square feet and we are all stuff people, but it is cute, and the location is terrific. Some of our neighbors call it "Snow White's Cottage," still more cuteness. For all it's charm and small size, I still get kind of overwhelmed knowing there are 5 gallon buckets of paint on the back porch waiting for "us" to paint it.

Another Birthday

My son turned thirteen on Summer Solstice. Thirteen. The concept boggles my mind. He's nearly as tall as I am. Two more years until he is old enough for a driving permit. He wants an overnight roadtrip with friends as his birthday party, like his sister had, though instead of the train ride he wants to go to the Woodland Park Zoo to see the armadillos. Yes, armadillos. My son has an armadillo obsession. This trip will have to wait though, until one of his friends gets back from a family trip to Europe, so we had a family birthday with just the four of us. His dad had a rare "non-clinic day" in which he didn't have patients in the hospital or mounds of delinquent paperwork, and we took a trip into Portland for the day. We bought a mound of computer games, had Mongolian BBQ for lunch, spent a great couple of hours in Powell's City of Books, walked around the Pearl District and found Finnegan's Toy Store. It was a good day. I came home and baked cake. It was done rather late. Being done rather late, as in a quarter til eleven, it was not fussed over. More of a "git 'er done" approach to cake making. Armadillo cake, of course.

Bird Tape Measure

This is a small, fun project I am working on. I have admired appliqued felt notions on other blogs, and decided to give it a whirl. The tape measure is finished, the needle book is in progress. I'm happy with the sassy little bird, which is a simple shape I snipped up freehand out of the receipt from the felt. As I was blanket-stitching around these, it occured to me that all the embroidery and sewing stitches I know now I had learned by the time I was in third grade.

AT LAST!!

MANY thanks to fellow Back-Tacker Ariana who left the tutorial on how to get the pictures from Flickr to blog! Yippee! Now I need to run out and take more pictures!

Jennifer posted the greatest pictures of Hoppy the Wee Bunny's arrival at his new home! I think I was smiling almost as big as her Baby Girl when I saw them.

Grrr....

Obviously the picture-posting thing still has me stymied. I will get it. I have gotten as far as successfully getting pictures posted on Flickr. If you go to Flicker and search (using the blue search button and an empty field) it will let you search People. If you enter azhamills it will let you see the handful of pictures I've put up, most of which are relevant to my posts. There is a picture of my finished Back-Tack III goodies before I packed them up, and one of my big-as-a-preschooler's-head Magic Yarn Ball. There are a couple of pictures of my styrofoam cake, and a couple of flowers from my garden.

I'm working on a couple of other things that I hope to have pictures posted of soon. One is "Finish What You Start" started by Vicki of the fabulous and widely read http://turkeyfeathers.typepad.com for which I hope to have time to work on an embroidered table/dresser runner I picked up in pathetic un-finished condition at an antique store. Another is an awesome homemade cat toy swap started by Marty who has a terrific baby-blog (baby as in newly started, not about babies) at http://scatchcraft.wordpress.com . (As a fellow new blogger I am very jealous that she has gorgeous pictures. . . sigh.) Sign-ups over at Swap-Bot don't end until the 20th. Making cat toys is big fun, except the part where my cat (Bob) pushes his way into my lap and tries to swipe my project. Cat toys are so small and quick they are almost instant gratification. Another quick, fun project I like (since I took a jewelry wiring class) is making stitch markers. There's a stitch marker swap going on, too. It was started by yet another talented blogger, Katie, of http://katiesknitknat.blogspot.com .

But now I have to stop playing on the computer and find the son's dress clothes for tonight's orchestra concert (James plays cello), purchase a birthday present for the daughter of a friend of mine whose party we are going to (before the orchestra concert), and volunteer at Field Day (please, please don't let me get stuck with the water-balloon toss again!)

Backtack 3

My Backtack 3 parcel went into the mail to Jennifer of Cafe Crafty. The Wee Bunny was both more involved and more fun than I had anticipated. I ended up lining all the pieces with a fusible woven interfacing to give it more structure. The monogram is a wooden magnet that attaches to one of the back panels thanks to magnetic strips held in place by the fusible interfacing. Both my kids think it is really, really cool. They want their own Wee Bunnies.

Plane tickets

Our friend Missy, from whom many good and fun things have come, moved to Maui a while back. She still owns her time share there and had banked several weeks, and has given two of those weeks to us. Isn't she terrific? She was in town over the weekend because of an unfortunate family event, and it was terrific to see Missy and her family no matter the cause. There was lots of talk at the table of all the things other people had seen and done on Maui, and things we needed to see and do. All very exciting stuff, although it is okay with me if we don't see Brittany and Kevin and if we skip the mongoose burgers. So I went home and checked the air prices, and it was $70 less each way than the last time I looked. Multiply that times both ways times a family of four and that is a savings worth waiting for. Whoo Hoo! We are going to Maui!

Saturday was a golden day. A morning and early afternoon of good youth soccer, and a late afternoon and evening at the Portland Rose Festival on the Willamette River. Good stuff.

Magic Yarnball!

I have signed up to be part of the swap Larissa at Stitchmarker started. It is a yarn ball with prizes and gifties in it. Apparently it was used in Victorian times as an incentive system for getting reluctant children to knit (knit a few yards get a prize, knit a few more yards, get a prize.) This totally would have worked for me, except I'm afraid I would have been disappearing into the closet with it, unwinding it to peek at the prizes, and winding it back up again. Then I dutifully would have done my knitting, but the thrill would have been gone (what can I say, as a child I was an awful peeker.)

I am having the BEST time doing up my yarnball for my swap-ee. The best. I already have a yarn ball the size of a child's head, and I still have about 20-25 yards of yarn left to wind. In fact, I would be out getting my last few inspired inclusions--if I could find my car keys. Sigh. Chronic problem. I'm a key loser. Anyway, my yarnball thus far includes:
Something to make
Something to use
Something I made
Something from eBay someone else started
Something to make art with
Something to to give away
Something thrifted that someone else made
And I think the yarn is pretty nifty.

My computer and Blogger were not getting along. Three posts disappeared into the ethernet. But now I have a NEW COMPUTER. Yippee! In fact, if my brand spanking new camera took ANY OTHER data card than the one it takes, I could just plug the card right into the computer and be good to go--but I had to have the one and only odd-ball card. Figures.

I plant flowers with the intention of cutting them to bring into the house, but then I never do because they last longer and look so nice outside (even if we only see them when we take out the trash,) so I never do. Last year I invested heavily in irises. Mmmm. Irises. I learned the hard way that irises turn into ugly, unsalvageable dishrags in the rain--so I cut all there were today and brought them in. They are lovely, and the vase next to the computer just gives me kind of a flower-high. I took a picture. It's on the computer-incompatible-Olympus-specific data card. I have to find the cord and spend some time figuring it out, I know. I know.

(Hee, hee. I have pictures, now!)