Stash Report and My Mail

There’s an auction happening here on the blog.  You can see what is available and bid here.

So I didn’t know if I should call today’s post an “In my Mail” post or a “Stash Report”…I guess it works either way.

At nap time this day I saw the UPS truck stop.  He was delivering a HUGE Amazon box.  I was sitting on the couch between Ruby and Carver trying to get Carver to go to sleep and keep Ruby from barking at the UPS man and waking everyone.  It was a task.  The box was set outside the door and I left it there hoping Carver would go to sleep.  While I sat rubbing his back I keep questioning myself….”what did I order from Amazon?”.  My goodness, certainly I would remember if I order something in that big of a box, wouldn’t I?

For the life of me I couldn’t figure it out.  About 20 minutes later I gave up on Carver sleeping and sent him to the kitchen while I grabbed the box off the porch.  He was excited for me to open it….

The outside of the box made it seem like maybe it wasn’t from Amazon and inside made me sure it wasn’t Amazon.  Good.  I wasn’t losing my mind.

Inside was a STUFFED kitchen sized garbage bag!!  I was a good girl and read the note first.  The note was from Kim.  It said, “….I noticed that you had lamented that while your found other goodies at auction, you didn’t find scraps.  Guess what?  I have scraps!”

WOW…Not only did she have scraps but she shared!!!

She said they were 10 years old…I think that means aged to perfection!  It’s time to pull these out and put them into a quilt.  Don’t you think???  Kim also mentioned that if I thought I wouldn’t use them I could pass them along.  NOPE.  I’ll pass on fabric MUCH sooner than I would ever-ever pass on scraps.  Honestly…this is Christmas to me!!

I didn’t dare dig through the bag and pull some out.  I’m afraid it’s so stuffed I’ll never get the scraps back in the bag and I’m not quite ready to use them yet.  WOW.  This is going to be fun.

My next package came from Karen.  There were cross stitch goodies and crochet goodies for Kayla…and goodies for the kiddos.  See?

The crochet leaflets were for Kayla.  I’m almost positive she’s going to LOVE the one that says, “Surprise Crochet:  Sweater for Babies”.  She often crochets sweaters for Lutheran World Relief and I think this pattern would be perfect for that.  She loves working with scrap yarn and that pattern looks exactly like something she’d make!

This pile is all cross stitch.  I’m so sad I haven’t been cross stitching much over the summer.  I picked it up last week and did enough to see that I had screwed something up and had to “un-stitch” a star.  It wasn’t very big but who ever likes un-stitching especially after it had been awhile since I stitched.  But…I’m hopefully back to stitching again.

These are all more of the primitive style samplers with the alphabet.  Kelli is in love with these.  She primarily stitches these types of samplers.  I’m sure she’ll want a couple.  I haven’t seen this designer before so that was fun to read all about them too.  They are based on antique samplers.  You know me and how I love history.  FUN!!

I keep thinking I’ll cross stitch more if I retire.  Then I get notes from some of you who say things like…”my arthritis won’t let me do this”, “my eye sight won’t let me do that”.  Then I think I better do it while my hands and eyes and let me.  Then I did through my cross stitch patterns and see this.

Isn’t that the truth!  I do need to cross stitch more.  LOTS MORE!!

My childcare girl that also loves quilting was loving on one of the cross stitch books in the bunch.  It was an alphabet book.

She would “ow and ah” on each page continually exclaiming, “Jo, that’s so cute.”  They were cute!!

Also in Karen’s package, the childcare kiddos got stickers and notepads.  I love the notepads for them.  The kids can randomly use the paper however they want and I never worry that they are wasting paper or that there are only ten scribbles on a page.  They love free paper too!!  …and stickers….they can NEVER get enough.  I always sort through and find ones we might be able to do a project with.  I give the rest to the kids.  Oh they can plaster stickers on paper like crazy!!  The smiley stickers I always take out and use for other things.

Karen…all of your goodies will be loved.  I so appreciate them.

The last goodie in the mail box came from a blog reader in Minnesota.  She sent a donation to go towards charity quilting.  Aw…that was so sweet.  Kelli and I float a lot of the costs and we don’t mind.  We don’t mind a bit.  It’s a mission for us as so many are helped by it.  When we see the faces of ladies who are gifted fabric to help in their mission there are always big smiles.  I think it validates their work and they can see others value it!  That’s wonderful!

Thanks so much to the annoymous reader in Minnesota.  We appreciate your support.  Your donation will help the stream of good things happening here in the charity quilt department.

Many thanks to everyone….and now that I finished writing this blog post, I’m taking that bag of scraps upstairs…I’m going to find a big laundry basket of something to put the scraps in and sew a string block or two.  I’m setting up on the Singer 15-91 so I can leave it out.  YAHOO…so much fun is going to be had.  I’ll report back how it’s going in a week or two.