Help Me Celebrate my 49th Birthday Today!!!

On the 24th I will send out a complimentary newsletter with links to our facebook group and more. So please join me in a new  year of writing, stitching, and so much more! 

I'm looking forward to sharing stories, and more with each one of you in the coming year!

Birthday Give Away!!!

Tomorrow marks my 49th Birthday!!!

So to celebrate my birthday, which happens to land on the first day of Fall this year, I am hosting a give away to my Almost Stitched Newsletter, that's right a one year subscription for free!

The give away will begin at midnight tonight CST.  

See you at Midnight!!! 

Bjorkboda Marsh

The rushing sound created by blades of grass rubbing together still lingers in my soul.
The wind, smelling strongly of country smells, an earthy tang of fresh manure.
I long to live in the country, with no impedance of houses, loud traffic, and the smells of town.

Sondra's Story

Sondra's Story in progress.

Pen and ink on cotton fabric backed with release paper, layered with Shiva Paintstiks.

Cookbooks and Stories

I recently checked out a bunch of cookbooks from the local library and the young man checking me out stated "you must really love cooking".

Well I do, but that's not why I checked out a huge stack of cookbooks, I was checking them out because cookbooks often contain stories within their pages, not just recipes or photos of food.  He seemed rather surprised when I told him this fact.

Not all cookbooks contain stories, but some of the better ones do.

My grandmother gifted me the book "White Trash Cooking" by Ernest Matthew Mickler cookbook sometime around 1993.  It was so fantastical that I thought the recipes weren't real.

They're real alright as are the stories about being so dirt poor that if company stopped by at dinner time one extended the meal by simply adding water.

It was the stories in the cookbooks that got me to wondering about my other "favorite" how-to books.  A'yup they're all annotated, by the author(s), with stories throughout the instructions.

Continuous Writing Exercise

Prompt: Continuous Writing Exercise
Challenge: Try writing your story without any breaks between the words, it becomes easier with practice.
Next: Continue with this exercise using my sewing machine and fabric or timtex.
Photos soon.

Self-Portraits

I've been working on a new series of self-portraits when I have down time from reduxing my studio space.

You can see more about the studio redux on my other blog kbaxterpackwood! I should be done with everything in a month, that is my self-imposed deadline, and things back to normal starting Labor Day weekend!