Grainger County Tomato Festival

I am getting ready for a craft booth at the Grainger County Tomato Festival this weekend.  We will be in booth number 50, and I hope to see you all there.

 I was given the opportunity to be there at this festival kind of at the last minute with only 2 weeks to get ready for it so most of my items are going to be just doll kits this time.    Here are three of the dolls that will be available as kits.

Wow!  It has been almost a year since I posted anything here, and I know I got some explaining to do!

My only excuse is that my daughter went back to work and gave me her Sugar Glider Bonding Pouch business two years ago, and it just kind of took off this past year keeping me really busy taking care of it.

I have really missed working on my dolls though, and I think that maybe I might find time to work on dolls again now that my sister is helping me some with the bonding pouches.

I want to show you my next two projects.

I made 10 dress sets for each of these dolls about two years ago, and now I want to finish them by April 1st if possible.  I will post pictures here of my progress.

Ups and Downs and in and Outs of Embroidery

I have owned a Pfaff embroidery machine for many years now, and I have always loved this machine so after I started making primitive dolls I wanted to see if it was possible to machine embroider letters on a doll's apron in such a way that the letters would look hand embroidered since my hand embroidered letters did not look all that good to me.

My problem with my embroidery machine was in communication with the computer though!  My computer has the Windows 7 operating system, and the Pfaff  company stopped updating the 2170 embroidery machines after Windows XP so there was no way to get them to communicate with each other.  I finally found an old laptop with windows XP to use with it, but the mouse I bought to go with the laptop just works for a minute and quits, and the stylus thing on the laptop just drove me crazy trying to use it.

I finally found a font set in an outline stitch like I was looking for on the internet, and had already put several letters into the laptop when I got stuck on an O.  The stylus would not let me move the O where I needed it to go.  It would look fine until I tried to move it, but no matter where I tried to touch it to move it into place it got bigger then the other letters.  I finally gave up in disgust.

Wow. I have not checked out this blog for a while.

The biggest part of my pictures are now gone, and I don't know what happened to them.  I will do some investigating and see if I can get them back on here.

A lot has happened since I was on here last though.  My dear hubby passed away from 4th stage lung cancer complications, I gave our home back to the mortgage company, lived with my youngest daughter and her family for a few months, had a 2nd heart attack, and then got my own apartment a couple of blocks from my youngest daughter's house. 

My New Ad in Country Sampler

I submitted a doll to Country Sampler for their holiday showcase last October that did really well for me so when they asked me if I want to do it again this year I said sure. 

I can't really show a picture yet of the doll that I submitted to them, but I can show you a picture of the one that I submitted last year. 

I think that my Let It Snow Annie turned out looking really special, and I was fortunate enough to find some similar fabric to make some new ones for this year.

I met an old boyfriend today.

I took my dolls to the Art in Seargeant Park Show in Lafollette today with my sister Mildred and ran into an old boyfriend from my high school days named John LaMaire.

John has always been a talented artist, and he was now a member of the Campbell County Artists Association.

He and his young daughter were setup with his paintings there at the park there today.  I did not recognize him and would have walked on by without even saying hello if Mildred had not pointed him out to me.

I enjoyed meeting John and his teenage daughter today, and I hope that his daughter did not think anything strange by the hug that John and I exchanged when we parted.  There was no danger there since I have a thing for bad boys.  I searched until I found the baddest boy in town, and we have been sort of happily married for more then 35 years.   My hubby was so bad that I gave him the much deserved name of King Butthole early in our marriage, and he probably gave me the name of wicked witch or something to that sort.  Of course hubby and I have mellowed out considerably now so that the only thing we usually argue about is what's for dinner!  Unfortunately this argument usually happens once a day! LOL!

While I was at the park today I also got my Buzzard Nodder finished.  This buzzard was made to look like a cartoon buzzard that I found on the internet.  He turned out just as goofy looking, but I am still not quite satisfied with my pattern yet.  I want to give him sewn on eyelids instead of having them painted on like they are now, and maybe give him an orange beak before I call him finished... but .....here he is......Big Drum Roll Please!  Taa Daa!

Where has this year gone?

I was cleaning out my sewing room the other day and ran across some pictures that I taken of some strange looking little birds that I had wanted to use the pictures to create some new nodder patterns, but somehow six whole years came and went without me even getting started on them. I wanted to post just one of these pictures here so you can see what I liked about them.

Got to go now! I think I will tell everyone what I tell my grandkids when I drop them off at school! Try to be good today! Okay?