Trying to catch up...

It's not like I was gone on vacation for over a week, it's more like I was gone for 4 days and then the rest of the week just slipped on by. I apologize and will attempt to make it up by posting about a few things to get caught up.

First...I managed to not only finish my sock for the Hogwarts Sock Swap, but I even mailed it out. I'm not positive my pal has received it, even though I sent it by Priority Owl on Tues. so I'm reluctant to put a picture up. However, I'm going to anyway.... You can see a glimpse of the socks, with of course the dpn's and in that tiny silver box reside some stitch markers. I decided to try my hand at making them. Hopefully they turned out ok. I liked them. I think I'd try something different though, if I made more. As you can see I included a couple of other goodies, some tea and a shortbread cookie, some chocolate and some "magical bath salts". I also included a bookmark that I'd made, but it didn't make it into the picture.

Second...I got my package from the lovely JennieferW.
This is what it looked like before I opened all the pretty packages tied up in Gryffindor colors.
I would show you what it looked like all opened up, but for some reason I can't seem to upload that picture. So, I'll try to tell you instead...

1 pair of beautiful socks in the best colors in the world!
1 set of fantastic and beautiful stitch markers
1 set of Crystal Palace bamboo dpn's
1 box of Bertie Botts All Flavored beans
pattern and materials to make a HP book scarf. (I hadn't seen this before and it's very cute. Will have to start on it soon.)
a great HP bookmark (which I used while reading this weekend)

All in all, a great package. The socks fit wonderfully. Can't wait for a cool day to wear them, it's been a little to hot around here lately, with heat indexes in and around the 100's for several days last week.

As you may recall when I last posted I was headed to hot-Lanta to visit with friends, stitch, attend a HP movie party and generally have a good time. Let me say that I managed to do all that and more. I arrived without too much delay, although I had started to worry about my luggage, made my way on MARTA to my friend Jill's house and had a great evening catching up with her and our friend Ann who'd driven that evening as well. We did some prep. cooking, since we had to provide lunch on Sat. that evening and Fri. morning. Also Fri. morning we met up with Jean, Judy and Judy's good friend Joan (who was braving our get-together for the first time) at The Whole Nine Yarns. My goal was to purchase yarn for Mystery Stole 3, I purchased some, but ended up letting Jill buy it from me since it wasn't exactly what I wanted and was having buyers remorse. Then it was on to Vicky's for food and stitching. I did manage to stitch, oh and eat, and finished stitching the Pear Ornament which was a kit from last year's exchange and so was in the 2005 JCS Ornament issue.

Jill & I left a little early so we could go back to her place, relax and change before going to Heather & Michael's for the HP movie party. As usual the party was fun and had great food and ended with a trip to see the movie. This year they had it in their soon-to-be loft. No furniture, but we managed. The best part was getting to see the whole place by following clues. Too hard to explain here without pictures and for some reason I didn't take pictures of all that. I did manage to capture pictures of some of the goodies we had to eat that evening...

That's the great chef & friend Andy washing up after putting out some fantastic crumpets with Stilton cheese and other crunch goodness and "devils on thestral back" (which were prunes stuffed with chutney wrapped in bacon and cooked then served on pumpernickel bread...oh wow!) There were other goodies, and as usual we all enjoyed the food. We did manage to play a game, which I was miserable at I might add, which resembled charades but instead of movies or books or other more mundane things we had to act out the side effects from eating one of the Weasley brother's concoctions. Let me just say, it's not easy to act out having a giant squid on your head! (I'm not bitter, but my team lost and we would have won if I could have done a better imitation of said squid on said head.)

Sat. brought morning, or what passed for it and more food, stitching and general hilarity at Vicky's. We also managed a trip to a frame shop to get some great deals on frames and then to Abecedarius (hey, it was just across the street and Ann needed some Mill Hill beads and well it was there...) Yes, I found a couple of things that I couldn't do without and yes, most had a bunny on them. That evening we did our exchange of kits for last year's ornament issue. As Heather said on her blog "It's Christmas in July." Having made up my share of kits to give out, I received quite a few myself. I didn't take a picture, I was too busy looking at the magazine to remind myself which one's I was getting. Very happy with them all. Vicky had put up a small tree in her living room and we put the ornaments we managed to stitch on the tree. As you can see some are "finished" and some are "FINISHED", but no matter, they were all beautiful. I couldn't wait to start on another ornament, so I started the "Pear Tree" which I received from Jean. I'm almost finished with it, so I'll post a picture soon. I think everyone enjoys getting them, although I'm not sure how many of us actually stitch them up. For me, it's stash that's easy to go to. In fact, I've had them in the cutest box, but with this year's haul I had to move them to a new, larger box. No complaints though.

Sunday was a lot more lazy day kind of thing, but still there was stitching and eating. We tried to eat up the left-overs, but didn't manage to finish all of them. There are some really great cooks in this group and we had some fantastic food that weekend.

My flight home was uneventful, but it did take me well over an hour to get through security at Hartsfield Int'l Airport. That's the longest line I've ever seen outside of Disney!

Other then work, some stitching and a bit of not feeling all that wonderful, the rest of last week passed along quickly and finally it was time for the final HP book. I didn't go stand in line for mine on Friday night, didn't feel up to it, but managed to get it around 11 Sat. morning and read it all. Finished around 1 AM Sun. morning. Since I don't want to spoil the fun for anyone who hasn't read it, I won't say anything except that I enjoyed it and I'm kind of sad we won't be hearing more from our wizarding friends.

And on that note....until next time...