Public Parklet

As I walked down a small street the other day I happened to see this "Public Parklet" which was placed between some cars in a regular parking place. Kind of surprising to come across this! It looks like an effort to bring more greenery into the city. And apparently these are appearing all over San Francisco.

The parklet includes some nice greenery, and a bench where people can sit. Another time when I saw it, the bench was full of people eating their lunch.

The red structure has wheels on it, so it is truly a portable park! I think this is a great idea. It's such a bright little spot added to the city environment.

Thick, lush greenery of large ferns and small flowers is very appealing. And even provides some shade.

Disneyland!

Last month MisterStitches and I went with our KidsStitches, their spouses, and BabyStitches to Disneyland. It was a wonderful, fun time. BabyStitches was so excited to see the characters, and to go on the rides at Disneyland. She is a very "Disney" girl, who loves Mickey and Minnie (last year she was Minnie Mouse for Halloween!), and knows her Disney movies very well.

In fact, we all had a great time at Disneyland! It really is the happiest place on earth. I remember my first visit to Disneyland when I was 25 and we had just moved to California. I almost cried when it was time to leave!

BabyStitches got a special treat this year. She went to the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique where she was dressed up in a real Snow White costume. They even did her hair up in a fancy bun (enough hairspray to hold it all day!), a small tiara, and lots of fairy dust (glitter). She looked so pretty, and enjoyed wearing her dress the whole day. By the end of the day we were all covered in her fairy dust, and it took a few shampoos to get it all out of her hair, but she enjoyed it all!

At one point in the day the other, bigger people went on a "scary" ride, and it was my turn to spend some alone time with BabyStitches. We were near FrontierLand and found a petting zoo with the cutest little goats. Even a princess loves to pet the nice animals!

Shameless Bragging

Somewhere Over The Rainbow

I entered this quilt into Art In The Redwoods, an art festival held in Gualala, California every August. And I just found out that it won second prize in the quilting category!!! Hooray!

Do you remember this quilt? I blogged about it here. I designed and sewed it and SisterStitches did the awesome machine quilting on it. It was for my guild's challenge show last May.

I know that a great deal of this quilt's beauty comes from SisterStitches's quilting, so I am very proud to share the award with her.

More details later when I come back down from my cloud, and find out more about the other winners.

Embroidery Progress

I've gotten quite a few squares finished for my embroidered flowers quilt. I talked about it in this post and this post. Here are several of the squares laid out together, and now I'll show you some close-ups.

In fact, I've completed 12 of the 14 squares, so am close to getting finished. After buying more green embroidery thread, I was able to finish up the blocks that were lacking their greenery.

Travel-Sized Button Garden for BabyStitches

I recently found a great idea on This Little Project for a button/unbutton toddler toy, so I decided to make one for BabyStitches. It was quite simple to make and fun, too!

I chose a neutral piece of flannel for the background, then cut several green stems of varying heights. I just freehand cut them, didn't worry too much about getting them exactly a uniform width. Then I cut a few leaves out of a couple different colors of green. I used a double strand of embroidery floss to sew the stems and leaves to the background, with a long straight stitch.

It was fun cutting the flowers freehand also. And easy to use a small embroidery scissors to cut a tiny slit in the center of each one.

Slightly above each stem, I sewed on a button, where the flower can be attached.

Note: It's a good idea to use all similar sized buttons, so that the flowers are all easily interchangeable. I didn't do that at first, and ended up replacing my small buttons with slightly larger ones.

On the back of the "flower picture" I attached a length of ribbon, with just a little box and "x" to secure it in about the middle of the ribbon length.

Here you see the ribbon lying behind the rectangle.

And here you can see why it's there! So the whole thing can be rolled up into a roll and tied with that ribbon, making it easily transportable. I thought BabyStitches might like this to play with in the car or on plane trips.

Pay It Forward 2011

"The first five people to comment on this post will receive a handmade gift by me. In return, you must write a blog post explaining Pay It Forward 2011 and send your first five responders a gift handmade by you. It is a great way to make new friends and spread some handmade love around in Blogville! No rush to send them out today or tomorrow, but do make sure you send them out."

A few weeks ago I read this on a friend's blog, and just had to respond, because it sounded like fun. What is more fun than receiving a present and giving some presents?!? The blogger in question is my friend Gail, and her blog is called Quilt, Knit, Run, Sew. Gail is a great quilter, and a great crazy quilter, too. She sent me some small sea shells that have a natural hole in them, so I can use them for embellishments, like on a crazy quilt or a landscape quilt.

I can't wait to use some of these pretty little shells.

Now it is my turn to "Pay It Forward." Five people contacting me will receive a little present from me. So comment on this post, or email me, and I'll be sending something your way.