Dental Floss

I couldn't resist today's title . . . I was stitching while waiting for my son at the dentist. Now that my children are not little, and needing constant supervision, I enjoy waiting time in dental and doctor offices. It gives me a chance to take a few stitches, knit a row, or read a chapter.

Today I worked on Drawn Thread's Spring, a piece that I think is out of print, because I checked on the Drawn Thread website and it isn't there. I was looking for corrections, because I had stitched the entire tree trunk in DMC 738, a very light tan, merrily stitching along and following what I thought the chart said. Then I realized that it looked nothing like any tree trunk I had ever seen, also there was one darker, brown color that hadn't been used, and whose symbol didn't seem to show up anywhere on the chart. So in the dentist's waiting room, after reading about what Brittany, Brooke, and Tom and his lady are up to, I unpicked out the light tan tree trunk. Then (no cavities for my son!), we drove to pick up my daughter from work. Being about ten minutes early, we put down the windows, listened to the birds, and my son played Sudoku on my iPaq while I started the new, brown tree trunk. It looks much better!



By the way, I started stitching on Spring in the springtime of 1996, when my now-10-year-old daughter was a newborn. I have more stitching time now than when she was a newborn! I've been pulling out UFO's and finishing them up, little by little. It feels good. I've toyed with the idea of putting all of my UFO's in one basket (if they would fit) instead of the way I now have them, which is with the other pieces of that same designer. Or making a (very long) list of them, so I can see progress by crossing them out on the list. I tend to be a little obsessive about lists, making lists of things to do, when just doing the thing might be faster than writing it all down. Listing my UFO's would take away from stitching time. However, it could also count as "playing" with my stash, which is a fun thing to do when my eyes might be too tired to stitch. We'll see.

Here is my most recent finish. I actually started and completed this in the same calendar year! I really enjoyed stitching it, and after I got used to working on the dark fabric, it wasn't hard.

Starting Out

Until recently, blogging has seemed to me to be something that other people do. I enjoy reading my friends' blogs, and love seeing their stitched pieces. It's fun to "meet" new friends through their blogs, and I always love to be inspired by all the creativity I see. But now I have a desire to write one as well, and hope that keeping a blog will help my writing and journaling skills, as well as encourage more stitching and knitting. If I'm reporting on what I'm stitching and knitting every day or so, I must have something to report, after all!

The title of my blog was suggested to me by my son, who teases me that when I have stitching friends over to share our favorite creative activity, we always have M&M's and ice water (with or without lemon!). In his eyes, it adds to the genteel and ladylike feeling of these gatherings to have these refreshments (he says it's "lovely" to have M&M's and ice water).

Stitching is my first creative love, with knitting a close (but more recent) second. I also do some scrapbooking, and I love to read. I'm a little obsessive when it comes to organizing closets and bags and such, and I sometimes find myself spending more time on arranging my projects than on actually stitching them. But hopefully I'll soon be merrily stitching away with lovely progress pictures to post every day or two.