HOE Prairie Schooler exchange

Just look at what I received from Ina! What do you do when you open a big box and you see this? I can tell you - you are breathless!

Ina sent me a big wooden box with the PS stitched piece so nicely incorporated in the lid... Oh I love all sorts of boxes and tins and... Ina, you couldn't make me smile more. I was so surprised that I actually was breathless opening the package, I couldn't believe my eyes! Thank you so much!!
Of course, Ina didn't sent this beautiful box empty, it contained the printed text for "Mary had a little lamb..." (thank you for that, I was not familiar with it and though I knew it must come from something well known to English speakers, I never took the time to investigate), a card from the place she lives (what a great idea!), a memo pad, a pen and a super fun pair of scissors!

THANK YOU so much, Ina!! The box will be put to very good use and will always remind me of you :)

Happy days

My regular Internet connection is down since Friday so I have a few late updates to post. I've been complaining to H. recently about that mobile connection I have that I don't use (and pay a lot for monthly) but here it comes extremely useful. It made it possible for me to send and receive work and to keep touch with... blogging and all :) Otherwise, it is pretty slow and the amount of data I can send/receive is limited, so I can't use it a lot. The uncompetent repair men (sorry, I have experience with them! LOL) will only come on Wednesday and who knows if they will be able to repair on the spot. There is always a reason they can't ;-)

H. was here a few days and it's been a very lovely time, only that I had a big job coming in and we decided I should take it so I spent most of the time typing and H. relaxing, which means spending time with his laptop on his lap. Ah, men. I didn't even feel to bad about letting him spend time on himself, because he is into a crazy period at work and at home (still lots of painting work outside left to do) so he *really* enjoyed being able to sleep long, have relaxed a breakfast and do a lot of nothing generally. Me, I got up at 4-5 am each day to work and continued throughout the day. But it had good sides, we ate out at out fav' Chinese spot just round the corner every day and managed a longer evening at our favorite Mexican restaurant as well. Oh, happy hours... :)

H. brought both Happy and Toska back to Warsaw. I won't ask them if they are happy about the change after 5 months in pet wonderland (garden, big house, nature...), I know the answer. While Happy accomodated to the change as great as usual, Toska behaved as usual, she immediately returned to her difficult angry self. She soon reminded me of her teeth and claws, but what, I love her anyway and in a little over half a year, she'll return to Norway for the nice season. She's spending time on her own, bangs her paws at me whenever she can and the moments when she's sweet and cuddly are rare but they sweeten the whole experience. You can say I have one model of a characterial cat! :)

H. laughed but said "no pictures, please! i'm relaxing!" :)

I spoiled him as much as I could... (notice the heart, a fav' tea set I once bought in a small gallery in Lillehammer)

Toska relaxed... She's such a traveler! I was amazed when I saw them all at the airport. She didn't seem to care about all the fuss around... It was a busy environment despite the late hour and she was just rolled inside her carrier, both paws rolled under her head. But I know her. She was highly annoyed at all the noise and all and was just waiting for it all to stop, so she could get out. On a different topic, the ^$%^$#%$# luggage handling people delivered her... on the baggage belt!! She was turning with all the bags before a man put her down. H. was waiting for her at the special luggage place, where she should have been handed to him along with Happy. Normally a special man comes with them both. Where do they have their head??? She is a super easy cat to travel with but I can imagine cats who'd get sick and crazy right on! Other Norwegians told H. what happened. I already called the company in charge of handling luggage at our airport and (great thing for them! otherwise I'd have followed on this) the boss was very apologetic, asked for all the details (day, hour, flight etc.) and I believed she would react on that. She seemed very upset with her people.

Happy slept for a couple of days. Can't be an easy thing for a little dog, this plane-thing. I and H. laughed - our two tailed friends don't have a clue about country borders, customs, airspace, pilots, Norway or Poland... We believe they must think that a plane is just a big bus (how can they know it goes up in the air? LOL) that makes a lot of noise and moves in strange ways. I am sure the smells are different in either country and they must know it - Happy gets nuts as soon as we let him do his "things" somewhere in the nature before joining the highway leading to Oslo :)

More updates coming, watch this place :) and in the meantime, have a nice evening!

By the way, I sent my HOE PS exchange late but all I can say to one person reading this is that if you're waiting for this exchange to arrive, it might be from me but it's *on its way*!! Sorry for the delay... really, but I was soooo happy with the result, you will like it, I am sure :) Okay, almost sure!

HOE Needle roll exchange for Shelley

Here is a photo of the needle roll I made for Shelley who I hear hasn't been feeling fine lately, so I am writing this with warm thoughts for her... Hope things improve fast!


This all started with a freebie from the blog My aunt's attic HERE. I always looked at this pattern and wanted to stitch it, so this was a perfect opportunity. And because I made it at the end of my stay in Norway, I tried to give it a Scandinavian flair, just like with the Santa for Joke :). I choose white and red, which are omnipresent colors in Norway.

It is stitched on R&R fabric with WDW threads. The red is Turkish red, a favorite color of mine for Christmas stitching.

I sewed red and white beads on both extremities and wrapped Kreinik's gold filament around the endings.

I forgot to take pictures of the goodies for Shelley, or I can't find them, but these are really not important :)

HOE Needle roll exchange

A week ago, I received this gorgeous needle roll from Deanne in Canada:


... which Deanne tells me is from a kit by Silkweavers, and stitched on their Heritage linen with Stranded by the Sea Beach Paradise Floss. It is very soft, a real pleasure to keep in my happy hands :) The needleroll contains many different stitches which English names I won't be able to tell. Doesn't it bring thoughts of chocolate or coffee? So perfect to decorate the table when guests ask for a warm drink.

Deanne joined many lovely goodies: organic chocolate which I had never tried before, a super cute agenda already for 2009, a lemon-scented hand-cream (I keep smelling my hands!), a beautiful postcard from Newfoundland and Labrador, a roll of cute ribbon, a magnet... what a great package, thank you so much again, Deanne!

Addendum: H. and I enjoyed the chocolate! It had a very distinct taste I haven't tasted before. Deanne found it funny that I consider her living place exotic but well, some Canadian names of places automatically make me thing of Anne of Green Gables, a favorite childhood book for most little (and grown-up) girls in Poland and elsewhere as well, I think!

White, everything is white!

Thank you all for your nice comments on the previous post, and thank you to all the new visitors whose blogs I like to discover! :)

Answering to Jennifer/OH: I still haven't unpacked all the stash I had with me in Norway - because of the dirt around. But it was a piece of R&R fabrics, so I would guess it was 30ct; the difficulty about working over one on it was the dark color and the bad lighting....

I'm sitting here in a cloud of white dust that elevates from I don't know where. I've just finished washing the floors, but the dust settles again. Who created dust, heh?

Okay, so I'm home since last Sunday but everything around me evolves at high speed these times, so I don't have time to update much... Things should settle down in a couple of weeks :)

Visiting my family was a real treat, I so enjoyed being with them. You can't make everyone happy at all times, so my father wasn't happy I didn't visit him, and I have bad conscience, so I've promised myself that once again, I'll spend Christmas with him and his wife, and not choose the two other more pleasant options. Again that will mean that I and H. won't spend this special time together, because his mother is over 76 years old and neither I or him want her to be alone at Christmas... I'm a big girl, I will be a bit sad, but I'll cope. That's not a *big* problem.

While visiting my family, I also spent some nice time with both my cousins, their wives and kids. Now... One of the wives has had melanoma detected in April. She was operated and hopefully, she will be fine, though it was detected a bit late. She's just turned 39.
Two days after I returned home, my other cousin called me... his wife has a possibly bad tumor and will be operated next week. She's 36. Hey, what's the world becoming these days? For my delightful aunt, that means that both her DILs are in a dangerous situation simultaneously, at an early age... We worry.
Please, friends, think of yourselves.... do that check you've been postponing... a long wait is a big risk.

The works in my apartment are underway... The dust is overwhelming, the noise unbearable, but in some days it will all have been a bad dream. Till next year... another wave of works is planned... and the year after, another one. Noone has mercy on us, poor tenants :)

So here's where I'm writing from... mind you, this is after the workers leave in the evening. Till then, I'm sitting half crawled on my couch with the laptop. It wouldn't survive there ;-)


And here was my kitchen (note the past tense, LOL!):

Stitching? Yup, I am... one of this year's Blackbird Designs... I should be working on my HOE PS exchange, but inspiration has left me today.... needed something easy :)

H. arrives on Wednesday with cat and dog, I already feel sorry for them, the change from big house plus garden to tiny apartment in a big polluted town is nothing funny, especially for a cat. But H. tells me on the phone that with his long working hours and other obligations, days seem long for both of them... they're normally used to having me all day with them, since I work from home.

Thank you all for visiting, and have a relaxing week-end!

Prairie Schooler Small Santa exchange

Joke in Holland received my *small* Prairie Schooler Santa exchange... it wasn't bigger than a finger. I've had fun making it but with bad lighting in H's living-room, it was hard to work over one on high count R&R 18th Century Blackbird linen (was that the name? anyway, something like that, I don't have it here with me). The finishing is very unorthodox for a Prairie Schooler piece, too. I chose this Santa because it had reindeers on its robe and I wanted to give my exchange a Scandinavian flair. It is stitched with WDW and GAST - the red is Turkish red, a shade I like a lot. I'm so glad you like it, Joke!

You can see a few more picture on Joke's blog HERE.

Family time...

It was so warm outside yesterday, with a gorgeous sun. I I decided against returning to Warsaw (well, my cousin making an error getting me a ticket for one day later helped too... LOL!) so I'm sitting on my aunt's terrace, sipping a glass of ice-cold water and enjoying life... Real life (read: hell with the pipe works) will start on Monday then. I will survive :)
Both my cousins with respective wives and kids live nearby and have been visiting regularly, we're having a super good time together. After another summer in Norway in the big house with garden, I'm having a hard time adapting to the idea of living again some months in my (very, very) tiny apartment in downtown Warsaw, so it is nice to be able to postpone the return a bit.

One of my cousins loves picking mushroom and here's just a tiny part of what they brought today (exhibited by one of my cousins' wife):
The mushrooms, of course, were taken care of by the wonderful hands of my aunt...


During my stay here, I made 764 (see, I can be precise!) pierogis - with white cheese and potatoes (which are called ruskie), with cabbage and mushrooms, with meat and cabbage. When I chatted with Ela on Skype earlier this week, she asked whether we're aiming at the Asian market... major ROTFL!
I also made some Norwegian boller yesterday, yummy, yummy!


Cats and dogs are loved here... here's just a couple of them... (with my other cousin's wife)...

Oh, by the way, have you seen the new designs by Kathy Barrick? Click HERE if you haven't.

Back home...

... unfortunately :(

Right from the plane, I drove home, unpacked, packed and took the train to visit my family... I need to return to Warsaw as early as Friday to have my made-to-size kitchen unmounted (mind you, the only person I can ask to do, that was... seriously drunk!... this week-end so I really hope he is fit enough by the end of the week to do the work or else I'll be in trouble, because that has to be done before the destroying troops enter the apartment to do the pipe works lol!) and to pack half of my apartment in boxes, because the central heating pipes are in all the rooms... aaaaah, I seriously panicked seeing the size of the place and visualized all the furniture that need to be taken down, all the stuff that needs to be packed... and the dust that will cover all... Anyway... The works will take place from Sept 12th to 16th and H. will arrive for just a few days on the 17th, so I'll have *one* day to clean... I don't think the kitchen will be mounted again so we might have to camp indoors :) I didn't like the boss in charge of the works either, not a very polite person, to say the least, but what, I need to survive that and there are many neighbors in my house who are older and probably even less happy about it all. Hopefully the building administration won't plan any more works, it's just been 8 months since they did the water pipes. Cross your fingers for me!
Work is slow, so I'm enjoying time with my family... My grandma will (?) be 100 in January, but the closest neighbors decided to celebrate early... can't blame them for that! ;-) They brought 100 roses, champagne, cakes... a good time was had. I took the picture a few days after the event so the roses had faded a bit.
I'm feeling sorry for myself to be back home... won't extend on that. I terribly miss H. and I know that after his visit in two weeks we might have to wait 2 months or so before we see each other [...]. His autumn will be very busy with work and I have to earn some too :).
My 3,5 summer months in Norway were absolutely great, we got a lot done at home (I knew I could work hard, but I learned a lot more about my capacities, LOL!), traveled, saw friends, had a good time... even though the weather was just plain awful. Of course, when I was leaving Norway, it was so gorgeous... We biked several times in the woods with Happy... ooooh I'll miss my home there. H.'s mother was sorry to see me go as well... Hopefully she'll stay in good health for long, she's 76,5.

Here's a short update about our cross-stitch too...

I received the most lovely Prairie Schooler Small Santa exchange from Mylene... it's so soft and so beautifully finished... Mylene does splendid work and I knew I would receive something cute but this just fell so much in my tastes.... Thank you so much, Mylene!! (so sorry I forgot to take a picture of the bookmark from Texel... I love it! I didn't know you have seals there!)


See for yourself: (sorry for the bad quality of all pictures I post nowadays, my camera just won't cooperate)

My HOE Needleroll exchange is on its way as well....

My HOE Prairie Schooler exchange is being worked on... :)

My Prairie Schooler Small Santa exchange should reach Joke in Holland today or tomorrow... hopefully.

Oh, I was about to forget...! See the beautiful card Ela made for my namesday... using Tilda supplies... My favorite chocolate goodies from Lyon (the famous "coussin") *were* enclosed... they fast disappeared and, I'm ashamed to say, H. didn't even get *one* this time... Shame, shame on me! :)