its all kathy's fault

Like all of us out here in blog land, I have my favorite blogs that I constantly check in with. One of those is Kathy Nida's.

She is an extraordinary artist and she has given me a new found respect for how hard teachers have to work. (Seriously, if you know a teacher, give them a huge hug, they totally deserve it.)

But I have a bone to pick with her and I'm gonna do it right here in public. Oh yes, yes I am...

I knit to relieve stress and my brain can't wrap itself around a project that involves a massive amount of thought on my part. Sometimes I just want to be told what to do so creating something off a pattern is just the ticket. Kathy isn't a knitter. Instead, she does cross stitch. A while back she did this post which featured the Sanctuary pattern from Drawn Threads. I bookmarked the site and kept going back to it so I could drool over that pattern so I decided to poke around the rest of the site.

And this came in the mail today:



That there is The Good Neighbor pattern. (Yes, I know that is Babette #1 in the background. I'm still working on it, I swear.) I did some cross stitch when I was in college but never finished it. I sort of struggled with it because (I now realize) it exceeded my cutesiness threshold. Now I realize that I simply hadn't found the right pattern.

I love all things antique. Its because of that that I got into fiber arts, I started crazy quilting. I've taken a keen liking to these historic samplers.

And its entirely Kathy's fault. (She had the nerve to post these wonderful things on her blog. I would have continued to be ignorant of their existence had she never done this. *sigh* Oh fine, one more hobby isn't that big of a deal...)

I ordered the fabric from another site and am still waiting for it to arrive. Its probably a good thing too because if it was in my hot little hands, I'd forsake all my other projects just to get this one started.

The Plymouth Art Fair begins tomorrow and mom and I go every year on the first day. It gets really hot and really crowded really quick (I mean, really, it does) so we like to go early and try to avoid the crowds and heat.

I swear Dooley understands the words "vacation day." When I got home from work he was bouncing around me like I'd been gone for a week. I bent down to pet him and told him I would be home with him tomorrow and this is what he looked like:



Its seriously impossible not to feel happy when he's so excited to have me around. He even brought me his stuffed Dracula toy - as seen to the left of him in the photo above. (That's one of his favorites. It has a voice box and when he pushes on it just right, I get to hear "I vant to suck your blood!" over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and...well, you get the point. I think he likes that it talks to him.)

I'm glad my week is over, its been a rough one. I'm going to do my best to enjoy this weekend because I don't get any time off again until the Fabrications Retreat at the end of August/beginning of September. Which is going to rock in every way humanly possible so I'm really looking forward to that. Until then, maybe I'll just cross stitch...