projects

      When I was a young teen a friend of my mom's taught me to cross stitch. This new occupation came at a good time. Rather I should say it came at a good time during a bad time. In Grade 9 I had chronic fatigue. I dropped out of school for some time due to extended periods of great and unexplainable exhaustion. So I cross stitched. And wrote massive letters to friends in distant places. And cross stitched. There was one particular pattern that caught my eye when I was sixteen. I began it and somewhere in the middle of stitches energy returned to me and I returned to school and the project was laid aside. When I got married I wanted to cross stitch again but thought I should finish my project before I moved on. Of course now the picture wasn't something I wanted for myself but I thought it would be sweet for a little girl. And that's the way it seems to be with cross stitching. I can't possibly stitch everything for myself so I end up giving away most of it.

      This is the project I began when I was sixteen and completed ten years later.

      My bare windows have been talking at me for some time - PLEASE put something on us. It's cold and we feel so EXPOSED! My friend Kelli taught me this year (thank you!) how to make these little window toppers for my kitchen and living room. I love them! Just a little something makes all the difference. All I have left to do is my living room window and that is the one I'm most excited about.

      My friend Jenna showed me how to make this quilted table runner. AND she let me use her own material to practice with! As well as her beautiful sewing machine. And her thread, too. Basically I descended upon all her things and used them shamelessly. Now that I know how straight forward it is maybe I'll try a quilt someday not so far away. Hmmm. I wonder if she has enough thread and material for a king-sized ....

      And now I'm making these little Christmas ornaments. Yeah, you heard me. I know it's May. But the snow only just melted last week and there still is a frozen chunk of the stuff in my yard in the shade and today it was a mere 3°C (37°F). But most importantly, in my defense of holiday merriment in spring, is that my side of zee family has started a tradition of having Christmas in June since it seems to be an easier time to get the whole gang together. So that's who and what the ornaments are for. So leave me alone.

      However, not to be outdone by me and the thredz, Mark has taken it entirely to the next level and has begun the all-consuming and awe-inspiring task of making a cedar strip canoe from scratch. I know.

      First he made molds that are in the shape of the canoe for the strips of cedar to be wrapped around.

      He took 2x4s and other cedar planks of sizes unbeknownst to me and widdled them down with widdling machines into hundreds of strips and then put grooves into each strip that run the entire length of them all. Here are just a few of them. I know.

      And this is, more or less, where he is at presently - beginning the painstaking progress of gluing the strips together around the molds. He has put in 200 hours on this already and is not quite a third of the way done. And he's already talking about making another one as well as a kayak.
      I'm going to have to stitch myself silly to even come close to this accomplishment. That or a vacation. Yeah, I'm going to sew us a trip to Mexico.
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