mainely stitching

Lots of things to be thankful for … Sunshine is not necessarily one of them, but the weather remains out of my control.

Seriously, life seems to be in one of those phases where I just look around myself in amazement that this is really it. The nagging pessimist who lives behind locked doors is suspiciously wondering when someone will take it all away, but we ignore her most of the time. The kids are in great health, both Niek and I have good paying jobs despite massive reorganizations by our employer, our house is still standing despite the fact that it has not had a good cleaning in an embarrassingly long time, my family and friends are (mostly) doing well and in good health …. the list just goes on and on. Beauteous bounty, indeed!

Yesterday’s post brought me a fat package that really made some noise when the postman flopped it through the letter slot. Angela went all-out when selecting gifts for me. I won a giveaway at Flossmoms during the biscornu exchange (and I didn’t even know there was anything involved other than getting a cool biscornu!). As great as everything is (and that’s a huge cut of linen in the background that was included), I’m most excited about the JCS magazine because it has a memorial sampler by Deborah that I really, really wanted. Thank you, Angela!!!

Ideas for upcoming Etsy shop projects are just bubbling madly through my brain. In one of my recent dreams – I have repeating dreams, does anyone else? and this is one of my favorites, where I’m in a HUGE library looking stuff up and everything is actually where it should be, and I can always find exactly what I’m looking for – I actually dreamed I was looking up some stuff for my Etsy shop. Anyway, I’ll be restocking August 1st, and as you guessed, there will be some bunnies joining the birds. I also want to add things for the wee beasties among us, and got started with that last night. I must admit, I’m rather pleased with the result! (The design is my own.) I’ve also been in close contact with two Dutch wool artists, but the fruits of those contacts probably will not manifest themselves before the September 1st re-stock.

The wool stuff segues into the kids’ upcoming summer vacation from school. I’ve got a sort of homeschooling thing planned, based loosely on the Vrije school ideas, and of course this will include lots of crafting. I would like to do some felting with the kids, from wet felting right through to finished objects of their choice. I’ve done some online research and I think it would go over brilliantly with my Chaos Crew, but I would really like to hear any of your experiences with wool felting.

Speaking of kids, I was contacted today regarding surrogate parenting by a board I belong to. Turns out I live too far from the parents-to-be, but I’d also be interested in hearing if any one has had any experience with that. I thought I’d be too old, but apparently age is only critical for egg donation (for which I am too old).