a gift, sort of ....

It's always a struggle to find something appropriate to give my 80 something aunt.  She doesn't want stuff - she's trying to get rid of stuff and I can relate to this.  Keeping this in mind I came up with these covered hangers and lavender sachets - I'm sure she'll use the hangers and the sachets will keep her drawers/closets fresh.  Next time we visit we won't go empty handed.

These are easily crocheted and I used cotton yarn - make a chain as long as necessary to reach around the hanger then single crochet (sc) as many rows as needed for the strip to wrap around the hanger then sew or crochet it closed.   I have crocheted around the question mark part of the hanger but it tends to pick up some grunge so it wasn't a good idea.  I embellish them by making a crocheted chain that I tie in a bow and these ones have a crocheted mini butterfly on them - more about the butterflies in another post. 

can we talk

Can we talk - Joan Rivers used to say that and we always knew we were in for a laugh. 

 Can we talk .... we all live busy lives - some are busier than others, some think they are busier than others.  I want you to know that if you read my blog do not feel obligated to leave a comment - if you want to leave one go for it!  Sometimes it's difficult to know what to say about a blog post - I understand.  It seems the trend just lately is 'if you leave a comment on my blog I'll leave one on yours' - I don't agree with that; one should leave a comment because one wants to and for no other reason.  I'm content to see that I've had viewers.

We've just had a week of summer-like weather with lots of sunshine then it turned cool/cold due to an Arctic blast.  Some folks had rain and/or snow yesterday - we didn't.  We could use a bit of rain to clean things up but with the river still in flood stage we don't need any more moisture just now.  Actually a dry spring/summer/fall might be ideal and would lower the water table.

I cleaned the oven this morning - I don't know which I dislike the most .... cleaning the oven or the mini blinds.  I used to enjoy cleaning, silly me.

This is something I'm working on - Lesley Teare's floral alphabet - each letter has a flower that starts with that letter ... so far I've stitched the A - only 25 more to go.  ^^   This one is for a DIL.

Do you remember this - now it looks like this - I changed my mind ....

Meet Abby .....

Allow me to introduce you to our Abby aka Little Dog.  I added a crystal seed bead to each eye for the  glint of mischief sparkle in her eyes.  Abby is going on 12 and still mischievous - she is the love of our life. ^^

And here she is waking up from a nap .......

another block

This is another quilt block I had to try even though it was made from very tiny (tiny for me)  pieces.  It was too pretty to tuck away so I turned it into a mug rug/coaster. 

You'll find it here.

spring is sprung ....

 Spring is sprung

the grass is riz

wonder where the birdies is 

Here they are - I couldn't wait for the hummingbirds to return so I made one of my own - it's the ruby throat hummingbird, which is the one that visits yearly in our neck of the woods.  And to keep it company there's a chickadee who is with us year round.  ^^   The patterns are available here .... I made mine the same on both sides - does that mean they are 3D?.  

Mother Nature surprised us yesterday afternoon with a few inches (it was ankle deep) of fresh snow - there's more snow this morning than there was a month ago; however, with double digit temps forecast for the rest of the week it will soon be a bad memory.  Here's a pic of Little Dog surveying her yard and possibly wondering just what happened.