I received the most wonderful mug rug in our swap!

I am so lucky! I received the most beautiful, involved, detailed mug rug from my friend Angela, Tweedledee Designs, the other day! Not only did she send me an outstanding mug rug, she also sent a stack of beautiful Hawaiian fabrics, 2 drink recipe cards trimmed with cute lime ribbon (I love limes, how did she know?) and a very sweet note. The girl has wonderful handwriting too, something no one will ever accuse me of. lol

Looks great, doesn't it? BUT WAIT, there's more to show you! See the orange striped towel on the left side? It has a secret! I love secrets!

There's a person in shorts, laying half under a multi-colored umbrella, with flip flops and abook, on a cute towel. Star fish and frothy bubbles at the beautiful waters edge. Another umbrella to his right and then one to his left. If you lift up the towel.....

...you'll see NOSEY PARKER!!!!! She would LOOOOOVE the beach! Biggest litter box in the whole world, if you asked her! Easy to dig in, pirate treasure to be exposed and brought home to Mommy, etc.... Seriously cute, isn't it?

And here it is with my new coffee mug- it says SUNSHINE all over it! How perfect is that for the beach? Angela did such a good job on this. Not just in the construction of it, but in the "what would she like, really like, that says I took the time to find out about you and then went that extra mile to make it for you so that you would feel really special?" THAT is what Angela did! And by so doing, she touched my heart and I'll never forget it! Thank you, sweetie, for making this first mug rug swap a HUGE success for me!

Adding my cat to it- sheer genius, if you ask me! I've gotten 3 things now that have NP included or featured and I will treasure them all forEVER!

I can't get over what nice friends I have. I am so lucky.

Pincushion Swap- what I made and sent....

Here is the whole package that I sent to my friend Ruth in the Scrappy Pincushion Swap. I was so lucky to get her as my partner to make for because as soon I saw that I got her, I knew I was going to make something that had a Wizard of Oz theme to it. She is a big fan of Wizard of Oz and that made it so easy for me! The problem was in the sneak peeks- I could only show small bits of the house, I couldn't show the yellow brick road, or the legs or the witch's hat pin (it's on the back) or any of that dead-giveaway stuff! If Ruth had seen any of that, she's have KNOWN it was for her, as it was she seemed very confidant that she was getting it. (Of course, Ruth sparted darn near every quilt in the DQS9 round, too, so maybe she just likes everything!) LOL

Because I wanted to show it off a bit and also because it is so much fun teasing certain people, I enlisted the help of her "twin", QuiltinKimmie in a prank. Kimmie is a huge Oz fan, too, so this could work! I pretended to send the pincushion to Kimmie and I emailed her photos to post to her Flickrstream as if she had gotten it in the mail. Because Ruthie was a swap mama in that swap, I knew that she had access to info that would show that Kimmie and I shouldn't have been partnered up, so we had to get 2 of the swap mamas involved in our cover up and a few friends were in on the prank, too.

(Ruth took the following outstanding photos, after she actually got it.)


Ruthie fell for it- hook, line and sinker! Yay! While she didn't get as crabby as I had hoped, Kimmie assured me that that is just because Ruth is a fine, kind lady, not a big crybaby like me. lol




You can make out the top of the hat pin in this one....



Kimmie posted photos like this bad one below- decoy photos to make Ruth think that she wasn't getting this pincushion and we hoped that she would be jealous and pouty. :) I even wrote a card to Kimmie, so it would look really authentic and on the up-and-up. *snork* The black and red fabrics weren't actually part of the swap, they just look like something Kimmie would have gotten from a real partner. So, on Saturday Kimmie posted that she rec'd all this. On Monday, it actually showed up at Ruth's house, 2 days before her birthday, she was 29. Again. :) So Ruth really only "suffered" for 48 hours.


The pincushion sits in a green oatmeal glass custard cup and all the felt is wool. The yellow brick road is embroidered and everything is handstitched. I made the witch's legs by taking skinny chenille stems and wrapping them with embroidery floss, red for the shoes and black/white for the stockings. Then I dipped the shoes in white glue and red glitter, let that dry and then varnished them so the glitter wouldn't ever come off. By indenting the base of the pincushion with a needle and thread in the middle, it made the perfect place for the legs to nestle in. The pins were made with plastic beads and I thought they added a bit of Munchkinland weirdness to it. The little bushes are unraveled perle cotton and fray check, on a pin. For a size reference, the posts holding up the porch are toothpicks, cut way down.

I also made her a Dorothy faerie and sent her a pink chair pincushion that I had made a long time ago. Ruth was making something similar and I wanted her to see this style, too.

This was a fun pincushion to make because I knew my partner would appreciate it and love it, it's just so HER. And big thanks to Kimmie for all her help in pranking Ruth, she sold the story like a professional actress!

Cats, dogs, pincushion swap- fun and games at the zoo!

The cats and kitten are settling in. Nosey Parker is enjoying playing with Gravey, mostly in the morning and then right before bedtime. They get pretty wound up! The baby is putting on weight and seems very happy here. She gets to go outside for about an hour every afternoon and I follow her around to keep tabs on her. She needs to learn where she lives, how to get in, how to climb a tree, etc. I hate this part, but there's no way to keep a cat in all the time here, with us opening the doors a thousand times a day for the dogs. So she needs to wise up, as much as I hate it.

Yesterday, she and NP chased a green walnut around on the driveway until they were both exhausted.

After playtime is over- a nap is a must. And it's usually right where I need to be at the time, too.

Somebody figured out that the safety net is great for playing and napping in. She feels so funny, all waffled up like that.

Beeswax would just like to pretend that this is all a bad dream. lol He doesn't like his routine altered at all. But he fits great in the rolly-ball toy!

Quigley, the puppy, is driving me insane. She has no manners and Jim has had company for several days and she's acting out. I had to take her down to the floor yesterday to calm her, she was shrieking and leaping about like an insane dog and was just out of control. She spends a lot of time on her 2 back legs, standing up and leaping on people, I hate that. I did that Alpha dog thing on her and it helped for a bit, may need to do it a few more times, though. She has the attention span of a gnat, unless there's food involved and then she's very determined and obnoxious.

I'm hoping that Jim can drum some manners into her during the next week, I'm heading to TX to visit a friend and he will be in total charge of the zoo.

Swap-wise- I received a lovely pincushion with a bonus mug rug and fabric and thread and Chenille It from my friend, Nannette/Nanotchka over at Flickr. What a great swap! She made me a mug rug kind of by accident, lol, and then decided to make me the pincushion to match. I just love all of it, the fish pincushion has a 3D fin that is actually a needle case! VERY COOL! Thank you so much, Nannette! I love it all and really appreciate it. She also made me a card with a bird on it, this is such a keeper of a card!

Next post I'll show you what I sent my pincushion partner. :) She's already gotten it and seems to like it.

More madness, how much more can we stand? lol

So 2 weeks ago he brings home Quigley, the yellow lab pup. One week later she was spayed and 2 shotgun pellets were removed. While we were at the vet's picking Q back up, I spotted a calico kitten in a pen, needing a home. Well, 8 years ago, nearly to the day, we had our calico, Tess, put to sleep. We loved that cranky girl! This little girl was so sweet and affectionate and darling, I fell in love with her, too. Mr. Meany said "NO, no way, no how, we don't need a 5th cat!" Oh, fine. He can find and bring home big ass dogs, but I can't have a puny little kitten that was abandoned and found in a cemetery? No fair! I groused about it all weekend but then I got over it and resigned myself to dealing with the current chaos.

Quigley's stitches didn't look so great on Tuedsay morning, so he took her in while I took a nap, I'd been up since 3 AM because of HIS new dog and her licking and carrying on. Grrr. I slept from 7 until nearly 10, got up, had some cold coffee and then he got home. When I asked him what they said at the vet he said they had said congratulations. HUH? For what? And he turned around and opened his jacket. "Congrats, you're a new mom!" lol

Holy cow, that's the last thing I expected! I was stunned. This is his MO, though, I should learn it. Last year I wanted Nosey Parker and he said no until he spent some time in the waiting room with her a few days later. Boom, we had a little white kitten! Same thing this time- he said no and then relented. What a nice man I'm married to!

Isn't she precious? Since she was found in a cemetery, we named her Gravey. lol A friend of mine thought that up, she who shall be called "Auntie Jodi" from here on out.

Looking out the window, it's a big scary world out there! I love the little chubby phase she's in right now.

Playing in the busted basket. What a flirt!

"Lady? You're not gonna make me wear that collar thing are ya?" (She doesn't really know me as Mom, yet.)

It's like "Where's Waldo?" only different- in her cat bed.

We're having lots of fun with her. Nosey Parker is actually handling this a lot better than I thought she would, they play together upstairs and you would think there was a herd of wild buffalo up there, the way they run and crash and make all sorts of noise! The other 3 cats, all boys, are withholding judgement for now, but I think one will come around and the other 2 will disregard her entirely.

So, it's officially nuts around here, but we're getting lots of laughs out of it. :) And Quigley is healing nicely now and learning the ways of our schedules and settling in. Still a little too crazy and exuberant, though, but what can I expect, she's a pup. A big 40 pound pup. lol

The new kid on the block.....

Here she is- the still unnamed new dog- we thought we had one picked out but more I thought about it, I didn't like it. I'm usually the namer in this house, but since he thinks she'll be his buddy and ride in his truck whereever he goes, I was going to let him pick it. Changed my mind about that after he picked "Bristol". I just don't like it, it's too hard sounding of a word, not pretty or fun and I don't know what else we could call her for short. I'm lobbying for "Quigley". I'd settle for Chutney. lol Calypso and Cornelia and Fiona are also in the running.

"Lady? You want for me to stick my nose on that shiny bit for you? It's clean, I just licked it!"

She weighed 35 pounds at the vet's office.

She does know how to sit. She just doesn't always DO it when you want her to. Kids. Hmmmph.

This is my favorite photo of her, she's asleep, thank goodness. This morning she was so overly excited, she was going berserk! Gates don't even slow her down, she jumps better than Carl Lewis and Bruce Jenner put together. I had to shove her outside to chill. (It WAS chilly, too, yay, we finally got some rain and a cool front, hallelujah!)

I went to town today, it was good to get away from the bedlam. The other dogs were bummed about her, Shanzie wasn't even worried about the big storm last night. She had bigger fish to fry. lol

The Scrappy Mug Rug Swap, on Flickr

This is the little darlin' that started it all-

My new friend, Monika, who lives in Germany, posted a photo of this on the doll quilt swap group and started a firestorm! It was decided that a swap was in order and I was enlisted to run it. We had people from all over the world signing up to take part and we've closed the sign-ups now and have 127 people swapping mug rugs. They'll all get their partner info on Saturday. It's been very time-consuming and that's why I'm not blogging much, or visiting other blogs. Plus, I'm a swap mama in 2 other big swaps, one is winding down and the other is just starting, so there's a lot of initial stuff to do. Plus I have orders to fill AND Jim just came home with an abandoned dog, who needed a bath desperately and it looks like we're keeping her, dangit.

I don't need another dog, this will put us back up to 3 big dogs. God, I hate people who dump their animals. She's maybe 7 months old, part yellow lab and was covered with seed ticks, covered! And one flea. Grrrr. She's very sweet though, for a new girl. Acts submissive to the other dogs, which is smart. Gosh darn it. Just when we were getting used to having just the 2 big dogs, now these 2 are all crazed and acting like morons. The cats will freak out once they see her, we haven't let her in it because of all the ticks. They're dying though and falling off and being combed off, like crazy. She has a vet appt this afternoon for shots and a heartworm test, please let it be negative! And she needs a name. Photos later.

I did find time to make a practice mug rug for Jim, he likes it and so do I.

She's so corny!

As I said earlier, I'm doing another mini-quilt swap with a book theme. My partner, Rachel, picked Harry Potter or the Narnia books for me to work from. After much deliberation, I decided on Harry Potter and the Flying Ford Anglia. The Whomping Willow is an integral part of the scene, too. It was fun to make and Rachel and her kids like it.

The label on the back is a lightning bolt, to go with the scar on Harry's forehead that he got as an infant. The scar that burns when Voldemort is nearby!

This is Nosey Parker being corny- cuddling up with my ear of corn pincushion, a gift from a friend. I had given her a book I no longer wanted, a book of fancy pincushions and I knew I'd never make any of them. This one was in the book and it was my favorite. She made me this as a thank you for the book! I love it. Apparently, so does NP! lol Makes a great little pillow.

Oh, and the doll quilt I made, the blue spiderweb? It made its way to Australia and is now living with its new owner, Kate, from One Flew Over...

Now I have to wait to see what I receive from a different partner! I kind of love the wait, it stretches the fun out longer. There are some beautiful things being made and shown every day and it's so exciting to see who gets what!