Wine Tasting

Keeping with the same theme as my Toasted Head enjoyment, I attended an annual wine tasting last night and thought I’d share some wonderful wine suggestions with you. My first love for wine is chardonnay and, in the absence of chardonnays last night, I concentrated on reds and found some wonderful new wines.

Salice Salentino 2006 ($15.99), an incredible value from Apulia, made from 80% Negro Amaro and 20% Malvasia Nera. This will become a new staple red in my house.

Another wonderful, yet pricier wine, is Massolino Barbera d Alba Serralunga d Alba 2007 ($24.99). Treat yourself with this one!

Villa Puccini Toscana 2004 ($15.49) was another delicious dry red wine and I also recommend this one.

Our hostess has hosted many of these over the years and she always surprises us with her finds and her pairing of just the right cheeses with each bottle of wine. It is a wonderful evening and raises money for a local crew (my daughter rowed for in high school).

I hope you have an opportunity to try my suggestions – Cheers!

It is such a beautiful spring day today - how appropriate that I finished my Bluebirds cross-stitch.
The forecast for the weekend does not sound very promising so I'm making the most of today - time for a nice long walk!

P.S. Everyone loved my earrings last night. Maybe I should wear them tomorrow night to the wine and cheese tasting we're going to!

Cheers - Toast to These Earrings!

I've blogged about my creative friends group and our next get together is tonight. Our latest project is animal related and I was having trouble coming up with any ideas till I bought wine last week and realized my wine choice was my solution. I like Toasted Head, and what's on the label but a bear! I just happened to buy 4 bottles and had just the right amount of labels to create my earrings (double-sided). I laminated, added some cool gunmetal chain and earring wires, and added a few glass "diamonds" to jazz them up! Kind of cool to wear for a fun night with my creative friends.
Cheers friends!

Blogging Works!

I just can’t seem to wrap myself around blogging. I don’t know, the concept just seems so foreign to me – I either can’t seem to remember to blog or when I do I think I don’t have anything worth blogging about.
Yesterday, however, I was very encouraged. Someone convo’d me on Etsy and said she found me via my friend Lorelei’s blog! (Thanks Kitkat) How cool is that?!
Anyway, I guess I need to make a more conscience effort to try to get into the swing of blogging.

As I mentioned in my last blog, my cross stitch is drawing more interest than my rug hooking. That’s OK – at least my work is appreciated. I have been busy cross stitching and just listed the Victorian framed Bee Skep. I just love the frame.

Happy St. Patty's Day

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I’ve been listing cross stitch in my shop recently. It seems to draw more interest than my rug hooking does. Oh no, is that a subtle message? I sure hope not cause I really enjoying hooking so much more. Anyway, I was cleaning out a blanket chest on Sunday and found this piece that I stitched many years ago. It really is a lovely piece and I hate that it was wrapped up for so long, so I just listed it in my Etsy shop hoping someone will love it and enjoy it. I always have kind of a personal attachment to many of the things I make however it’s bothersome to think of a creation being hidden away and not appreciated as it should be.

I’m going on a rug hooking expedition tomorrow with 2 of my rug hooking friends. One is going through a round of chemo at the moment so I’m glad we can get her out, and the other teaches hooking in a shop. We’re going to go out to the shop to drool over the wool and get our fiber fix, and I know we’ll share some ideas, have a few laughs and have a nice lunch too. It is supposed to be a lovely sunny and warm spring day - a perfect day for an outing.

I'm off to watch one of my favorite movies, The Quiet Man.
Can you tell me how to get to Innisfree? Cheers Friends.

More Hooking

I just posted a new hooked pillow in my shop. It's a sunny yellow birdhouse pillow - kind of different cause I inserted it in ultra suede.
I also started a new bunny pillow today - a cute white bunny. It is similar to the one I blogged about last week however instead of flowers I'm adding vegetables!
I'll be "working" the rest of the week in my friend's shop I also blogged about last week. I'm looking forward to the diversion.
Happy Monday!

My Week

Besides updating the look of my blog, not much else exciting has happened this week. If you read about me to the right you noticed I am currently out of work (very recently after many years). I’m still trying to get used to this fact, AND trying to correct it. I feel like I spend so much time in front of the computer researching and networking, however I feel like I’m not accomplishing anything. I also go to career placement (that my former employer is paying for) and one counselor tells me one thing and another something else. It is frustrating to say the least. I should not be so concerned about it however this is just so not me!
I do have some upside to report. Next week I’ll be “working” for fun. A friend has a shop and she is going to Mexico next week and asked me if I would run the shop in her absence. It is a lovely shop (http://www.bittersweetfarmpa.com/index.htm) and it will be a fun diversion for me. I spent a couple of hours there today to make sure I’m comfortable and ready for next week. She also sells some of my rug hooking too (an upside). My cute bunny pillow just sold…..I should try to do one more before Easter.
Also on the upside I just listed some reproduction samplers on my Etsy site and one was purchased immediately.
Cheers friends!

My New Look

I am so happy with my new look (my background) thanks to www.backgroundfairy.com - how nice to share!
What do you think?
I had a little trouble getting it set up right, even though the directions are very simple - thankfully there is a great HELP section which solved my problem. (I'm still getting used to this whole blog scene but I'm learning.) After a few minor adjustments to font colors I have an entirely new look which I'm really happy with.
Thank you Background Fairy!

Creative Girlfriend Weekend – Report After

What a weekend – why did it have to end?
We were in Eagles Mere, PA which is upstate PA in the Allegheny Mountains. It is a little (very little) Victorian town around a beautiful mountain lake. Besides the beauty of it all, it was so much fun - so lazy, and so creative, with huge amounts of good food and drinks, not to mention, my face hurts from laughing!

A couple of the girls have wonderful stashes of items for crafting and they arrived prepared with lots to share. For us fiber-artists, it was like being a kid in a candy store. There were wonderful stashes of sweaters which has been washed and washed until they were beautifully felted, roving, jars of buttons, and beads and most of us spent our time with the wools. I found a vest which I could not bring myself to cut up and I left the weekend with an awesome new vest. I’m not quite finished adding to it, but you get the general idea. Don’t you just love those vintage buttons? If you have any ideas about adding more to my vest I’d love to hear.

We also helped the hostess make a memorable shower curtain for the mountain/lake house we were staying in. She cleverly found old postcards of the area, scanned them and printed them on fabric which we hap-hazardly placed on denim for the curtain.
(Excuse me for being new at this and not automatically thinking I need to take my camera to photograph things or events I might be blogging about, but I guess that will become second nature after a while.) I hope I’ll be able to report next year about our 2nd weekend getaway, and do a better job with pictures.