Happy Easter!

     The Easter bunny came for a visit yesterday-- he ate my tulips, but left no candy! I am probably the only person in the world who will stand at the door watching a bunny destroy my garden, but PETER is so cute with his little cheeks stuffed with food!

     Earlier in the week, I did try to chase a turkey off our lawn-- they pull up Mr. SFO's grass by the roots-- but I only succeeded in chasing him further back into the property, and probably giving my neighbor a good laugh. Best not to interfere with nature.

     We are going to have a little cookout tomorrow-- I cannot face one more holiday in my stuffy dining room. My sister is bringing over steaks, and I have shrimp and scallops, for a little surf 'n turf meal. I pulled these out to inspire my baking daughter-- let's see what happens!

     Another week got away from me in the sewing room-- this week I tackled that bane of every small business person's existence-- TAXES. Yes, I know we have until May 17th, but I read that you still have to file your estimated tax on time-- since I need to finish 2020 to estimate my estimated, what is that extension good for? It's a grumpy time of year for me no matter what.

     My sister also went to Florida for a few days, and I was designated cat sitter. But I really did enjoy driving over each day to visit Muffin, Mimi, and Holly. It's only fifteen minutes and it was a nice break for me. Doesn't Muffy look so excited to see Aunt Carol? 

The Tablerunner of the Month is Fig Tree's "Mini Canned Pears." 

The operative word is MINI-- some of the pieces are 1" x 1." I don't shy away from itty bitty, but this is about my limit.

I have a layer cake of Joanna's "Chantilly" collection. I am making this for a friend who lives on Pear Street. That was one of my inspirations for Tablerunner of the Month this year-- to have some beautiful handmade gifts at Christmas. 

I'm going to go with a different configuration and am shooting for two rows of seven pears each-- I'd like a little bit larger, horizontal piece. It's really fun to make different colors of pears (what color IS a pear?) and mix in larger and smaller scale prints. These stitched up quickly, but they still have a stem and leaf, and then a checkered border, so I'm hoping to get through this by the end of the month.

WHILE I stitched my pears,

I was also stitching Once Upon A Time, Winter borders! 

The charm size piece is coming out beautifully.

     I should have instructions and designs ready for release early next week-- if you are a subscriber, it will magically appear in your mailbox. Thank you so much to all who paid for the twelve designs which were offered "free"-- now it's your turn to get a FREE finishing kit. It's getting well into spring now, but stitching out those late snowflakes-- some of us can still get a storm at this time of year-- well, the thought of it was making me smile.

     I was able to freemotion the brown strip on this project-- it came out so pretty. This is the first time with my longarm that I wished I had used contrasting thread!

   THE BAD NEWS-- right after I finished this, something happened while I was rethreading, and I just couldn't figure it out. The take up finger was up and the needle was down. Innova prides itself on 24/7 phone customer service, but I just wasn't interested to open up the back of the machine to adjust a belt. So I have a tech coming on Tuesday to fix it-- and to install a little bit of an upgrade while he's at it, hehe-- I'm super excited for this. Maybe I will have twelve 100% completed tablerunners on tables by the end of the year.

So that's my week in a nutshell-- now that I see what I accomplished, it wasn't such a bad week after all. Sometimes, I notice, instead of making TO DO lists, it's better to make a DONE list-- much more gratifying.

HAPPY EASTER!

xox

Carol