In listing everything I had in my garage from the shop closing down I totally forgot to mention that I have 8 boxes of Rainbow Gallery threads as well. So consider it mentioned now!

I checked out the online needlework show today, pretty amazing stuff  on there. Some great designers are posted there so if you are familiar with it, go check it out. It’s available to view till the 22 of this month.

I spoke to Heather from the Independant Needlework News today, very nice lady. We had a great talk about her cats, my dogs, stitching in general and just stuff. Nice to actually talk to someone whose blog I have been reading for awhile. If you want the scoop on whats going on in the needlework area, check her site out. It’s very informative. She is much better at keeping up with her blog than I am.

Well I guess I will go feed the dogs and get to doing something other than sitting here on the computer and checking out needlework sites.

Here it is, the first real post since the shop closed. I have sort of come to terms with the closing and I think I’m going to live. I have done a bit of designing, nothing major. I have decided to work on that snowflake design first since I will be selling it as a total kit. (Thank Deb and Donna for that one).

So all things being equal, so to speak I have a garage full of stuff. All the merchandise from the shop is sitting in one half of my garage.  Thank goodness I work at Einstein’s because we have GREAT bagel boxes and that’s what everything is in right now. We actually did a great inventory while we were packing the shop up. So everything is in envelopes in these boxes. I wish I had thought to put on the sides what was in each box, but no I had it all written on the top of the box. So if there is something I need to look for I have to go read the tops of all the boxes.

If anyone out there wants something at a huge discount, let me know because it will make me go through the boxes and I can get them marked on the sides that way.

The lists of fibers that are left are as follows:

DMC floss, perle cotton -5, 8 and 12 also the metallic’s light effects and the variegated flosses.

Anchor flossCaron, Watercolours, Wildflowers over dyes and solids, Waterlilies, some Rachel, Snow, Impressions to include the over dyes and Soie Crystal.

Needle Necessities floss, some Charleston

Sampler ThreadsWeeks Dye Works

Thread Gatherer Silk N’ Colors

Six Strand Sweets

Some Gloriana, Crescent Colors, Olde Willow and Dinky Dyes Silk

I have fabric as well, not sure of what is there. We actually did not inventory that since I was in a hurry to get that piece of furniture out of the shop, but I do have 28 count and 32 count as well as several other odd counts.

I have the Jobelan and Lugana, 18 count Linen and 10 count Linen as well.

Not sure about what Aida is in the boxes.

As for the books, your guess is as good as mine, as soon as I find the inventory that my mom wrote down I’ll have a good idea of what’s in there.

I still have mill hill beads, buttons

Just Another Button Company buttons

By Jupiter Charms

So that’s it, oh I forgot to mention that I also have some blank 18 count needlepoint canvas. Right now I’m playing with pieces of that since I want to paint some canvas and see how that works. I was thinking of painting my Santa’s on canvas to see how they would look needlepointed.

On another note, I was supposed to be going to a Dog Show in Rapid City SD this weekend, but I’m staying home. I did not get the dogs all the way brushed out, not to mention that I have 8 stress fractures in my right foot and it’s a bit of a pain to drive. I can’t wear the boot cast while driving and that distance would about wipe me out. So I’m once again not going to a dog show. I talked to my handler and she is totally bummed because she wants to get Dickens in the ring. He‘s Awesome!!!!!  I’ll hold off now till the Denver show in February. Well unless something happens and we deicide to go to Amarillo in December. I am getting time to brush the Sheepies however, now that the shop has closed. Skye loves being on the table and it is hard to get her off when I have had enough brushing. Dickens is a special case, he has never really been table trained so getting him to stay there for long periods of time is difficult. On the plus side, he is getting used to it. I drag the table out and he actually will jump up on it. He knows I will work on him first so he saves me time by getting up there right away. The first day it was 30 minuets, we are up to 1.5 hours now, so when he falls asleep on the table I know he’s good to go. I figure that in about 2-3 weeks time he will be totally sleeping on the table.

My big plans for tomorrow are to clean my kitchen cabinets and sanitize the floor, just because it’s been awhile since I have done that and to give Aspen a bath. If my husband goes to the office I’ll get him to show me how to put a photo on this site. That way I can post a photo of the snowflake design to date.

Well I guess I’ll log off for now, if there is anyone out there that wants some of my fibers let me know.

The shop is closed! Came quite suddenly so I guess I’m not a shop owner any longer. Not real sure how I feel about this, but I think I am alright with it. It was going to happen, my folks health problems really had everything to do with it and that was a good reason to close the doors.

I will still be designing from home and thats great because I will get to spend more time with my dogs and take care of all that fur.

I will be posting here to let people know when I will be ordering so that they can place their orders with me.

Right now I’m just pulling my hair out.

More later

Totally off the subject of needlework today, my husband and I have several Old English Sheepdogs.  There are some facts of life in having OES around the house. First off it really helps if you like hair since they are covered with a lot of it. Second you have to get used to the fact that if they get “Sick” cleaning up after them is a process in itself. Did you ever wonder why a dog has a tail? Well if you have an OES you know what it’s like to have a dog with no tail and what that entails (no pun intended here) when they get “poopie butt”. I have come to the conclusion that a tail is the dog world’s version of toilet paper. If the dog has no tail, they are with out that build in necessity.

So here we are! Rocky and Dickens are entered in a dog show this weekend up in Eagle Colorado. It’s not a real hot spot, but it is nestled in the mountains just a short jump to Aspen and Vail and other glamour spots here in Colorado. It’s really a pretty place, hot for the mountains this time of year but they built a new facility that’s inside and air conditioned so that dogs and people will not suffer too badly from, the heat. The other perk of Eagle is the diner there. They have the all time best Chicken Fried Steak breakfast and I look forward to that every year. This year I am not going to be able to go up there even thought we are entered; I have several sheepies that are not feeling well. Four of them in fact, all the one’s in coat. Three of them seem to be better this morning, but the fourth is still not feeling well. UGH!

This is when I wish we had sheepies with tails. I just feel really bad that I am responsible for this malady they are suffering from.  We have changed their food from one brand to another brand. All of them have been on this brand before so it should not be that big of a deal. WRONG! Even though I have been weaning them off the old brand for about 2.5 weeks and they are totally on the new brand I did not expect the problem as bad as we have it.

So in order to keep everyone calm this weekend while we got on top of this problem, we are not going to the dog show.  Note to self here. Do not change their food right before a show, and if you are going to do something like that, do not give 3 dogs in coat a full body bath beforehand. The one that’s still suffering, Rocky is gong to need another body bath this weekend. I might have to wait till Wednesday to make sure he is fully recovered before I subject myself and the dog to this activity.

Dickens I might add looks really pretty. He has that total deer in the headlights look because he can not see through all that head fur. He’s not really long enough to go in the ring and win it all, but he’s getting there. We have to get him some points first, get him Championed and then we can do the real winning thing.

Now as for needlework, it’s been a weird month. First off my mom has had really bad nose bleeds and has not been able to be in the shop. This makes it really hard for me to get anything done in the way of ordering. Then on top of the nose thing, she still is not seeing well from the cataract surgery she had earlier this year.  She went in on Tuesday to get some more surgery done, but still is not seeing that well. I guess it’s because she has macular degeneration in both eyes. This is not a good thing. So I am hoping that they can help her out a bit and that eventually we can get back to the business at hand.  If not I’m afraid we might have to close the business down because I am not sure I could do it by myself.

Well, well, well apparently this worked so I’m writing from home now. I’m not sure I like this new format that the “boys” have cooked up for me here. I know that things on the web change, but good grief, I get sort of used to one thing and they upgrade me to something else and I’m confused.

Well now on to things that matter.

First off it has been a very long time since I posted on here. Not because I did not want to, but I think work has been kicking my buns real hard. I have had no energy from working at Einstein’s 5 days a week, so I gave up a day to Justin the new guy that will at some point be taking my place there.  The real issue here has been our phone situation at the shop.

For some reason, we got switched over to some weird company. They called my mom at the shop and told her that Qwest had given them our shops account. My mother being the “innocent’ she is said “ok” and that was all she wrote. So we got changed over before we knew it. She did tell them we had a web site, which we do, and that we had our own server which hosted our website, which we do but they choose not to listen to her. So we ended up being down hard for about a month. Just about the time I figure out how to use the new blog stuff we are down and I forget everything. So my B&C eventually gets it fixed, with many phone calls to tech support at this new place and we get our web site back up and running. The strange problems then began to plague us. Our internet connections were awful at best, and even on good days we could never count on being able to stay online. My dad’s machine had no end of problems staying online.  We were being dropped all the time. Then all of a sudden, his machine would not stay on at all, and if he was networked into the mail server no one could get online. I called their tech support and he wanted me to get into the system and re-configure some numbers. Now I am not some computer expert and I hated the thought of having to do something like that so I called the hubster and wanted him to do it. (not a happy camper for that one)

Then there were the phone issues. The phone has answering machine capabilities, well we could not access any messages left on the phone. So once again after several days with support people they decided to fax us a paper telling us how to actually retrieve our messages. Well, that was fine, but they had our fax number wrong. Lucky us. So they fixed that for us and faxes started coming in again. We could also get our new messages, but funny thing, any that were on the phone prior to them taking over our account were still in the Qwest mail box. No way to access that anymore. Then there was the whole thing about the phone itself. We could sit there all day that the darn thing would never ring. (for us that’s very weird)  Customers would call us and get a message to please call us at 719-265-6567, which was the number they had dialed. Eventually several of them would get so annoyed that they would actually drive down to the shop to see what was going on. My dad did this several times and I can tell you none of these people were real happy with us. We had no idea that this was going on.

Then one day this really nice lady (Gwen) came into the shop looking for a few good fibers. She was listening to me grump at Jo about the phone issue thing and she said we should change back. She gave us several reasons that we wanted to be with Qwest again, in case they had actually sold our account to someone else. Gwen had gone to school to be a lawyer, but decided not to take the bar here in Colorado so she was doing research for various attorneys here in town instead. Her input was very helpful and we called Qwest that day and changed back over. They had never sold our account and were happy to have us back, we also told them about the internet problems and such. The change back to them was very smooth, instead of being down on the web site for several weeks; we were down about an hour. Andy had us reconfigured and surfing the web in no time. Since the change back we have had no problems at all. Just goes to show that you need to be careful of what you agree to over the phone and if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

As for other shop stuff we have had some new stuff in, but most of it leaves as soon as we get it in.

There are going to be some new classes in August after my mom gets her eyes fixed again and I get a new Meg design completed.

I really AM going to figure out how to post photos on here so that you can see what the classes look like. Especially as the one I am designing is canvas work. I will sell the design to customers that would like to do it online.  I’m assuming that someone really does read this besides me. Guess I’ll find out soon.

Now for dog information for those of you that know about our sheepdogs. Bailey will be 10 in December; he has been shaved down and seems to be moving better now that he can see where he is going. Shaddo will be 7 in July and he is still intact. I want to breed him to Skye so I can get Shaddo babies. He is also shaved down since he is retired from the show ring. Aspen will be 6 in October; it’s hard to believe we have had her that long. She will not be having any more puppies so she is retired from the show ring and the puppy making business. Aspen has also been shaved down, but needs to have it done again so she can be comfortable. Rocky, from her first litter is doing well, he is in a dog show next month and when I am done here I will go brush him out. I just wish he would grow some head hair. His brother, Montana lives in Virginia and is doing rally. I guess he is doing very well from what I hear. The puppies from the second litter are also doing well. Copperfield, as we named him lives in Texas and is growing in from having all his puppy fur shaved off. He also has a new name, but will always be Copperfield to us. I just saw some pictures of him and he is a cutie. Skye, the girl from that litter is growing in as well; we shaved her down in December. She is a diva no doubt about it. Dickens the baby of that litter is huge! He’s as big as Shaddo and is absolutely beautiful. He is entered in the dog show as well and I hope he does well. Since I have both the boys that are entered any points I get is a good thing. The last litter Aspen had there was only one puppy, Misiu (mee sue), he already has some points and is only 8 months old. He lives in Florida and is so cute I could eat him up so to speak.

So what am I stitching on you ask? Uhmmmmm the same stuff that I was working on before I went missing on here, I’m closer to being done with Alpine Garden and plan on getting that done before winter. Then I will complete Mystery 9 since that is the other Martina that I am close to the end on. After that, it will be a toss up as to completing PIG or starting Mystery 10 or White Nights. I also have several Meg designs I need to get completed. If only I could get photos taken of the ones that are ready top be published I might actually get something out this year.

More next week as I get thing organized to order.