Crafts to see and crafts to receive...

Since my lovely Celebrate swap partner Mary has no blog (though I think she should start one - hint, hint!), she asked me to post a picture for y'all. Quite frankly, I was pretty thrilled with how it turned out, since it was semi-monumental in embroidery size for me, and the first thing I'd really machine pieced & semi-quilted. Most such endeavors have to go to my mother, who is required to love them & praise them.

Anyway, for those of you who might care, I embroidered the words, added the buttons, pieced the front, added the embroidery with a decorative stitch (thank you, Singer!), added the backing, lined it, and added a few rows of quilting. Not too difficult, except that anytime you use that much fabric, things can get a little tricky.

My second knitting class was this morning, and it definitely was a step backward. At the first lesson, it appeared I was a continental knitter (this has to do with where you hold the yarn while you knit), and that was working for me, but then today, we had to purl, and things fell apart. I couldn't even BEGIN to purl, and it also became evident that I couldn't maintain any kind of tension. SO. Now I am becoming an English knitter, and hopefully I'll be able to knit AND to purl, which should be a good thing. I'm afraid I might have to sign up for Knitting 101 AGAIN, which is bad because: a) I have to pay to take the same class twice; b) I'm not sure I can find 3 Saturdays in a row again; and c) I am way too grade-obsessed to even contemplate viewing this as me failing, which it pretty much is. However, if this English-knitting thing works for me, I can erase what I just said.

Dinner tonight was here, where the food was yummy, the decor was beyond mid-century atomic cute, and they apparently serve sliced of cake that cover an entire dinner plate. We didn't have dessert, but I do think one slice would feed 10 people, no joke. We'll have to explore that as an option the next time folks are in town. ;)

And, in some serious excitement, it's the one year anniversary of the fabulous blog written by my dear friend Monkey. Head on over for her nifty giveaway. Crafting is awesome at the Monkeybean Mansion, so you don't want to miss this one.

Happy weekend!