Ladybugs and Dragonflies

Lookie, lookie! I won a blog contest from Jennifer at CraftyLilly! She was celebrating her third blogiversiary and I correctly guessed that cross stitch embroidery was the craft she's done the longest. It was sort of an educated guess - My mom taught me to embroidery when I was about 4 or 5, and I took off into all sorts of other crafts from there. I think a lot of girls of my generation were introduced to embroidery first. I'm sorry to say this thank you post is way overdue - Monkeyboy turned 5 last week, plus Sweetpea started serious potty training, so I was heavily distracted with party preparations and every-20-minute potty breaks!

Anyway, Jennifer gave me a choice of sock yarn or a stitch marker bookmark as my prize. Since I've been on a bit of a sock yarn binge* since the beginning of the year, I chose the stitch marker bookmark. Isn't it the cutest? I didn't really give her a very good idea of my favorite color, since I usually bounce around from red to blue to purple to green to chocolate... Anyway, she couldn't have made a more appropriate bookmark for me! BTW, she sells her creations on Etsy, if you are interested!

Years ago when I was prego with Monkeyboy, but didn't know what he was, I started a quilt with pink flowers and red ladybugs all over it. I know it sounds like a horrible clash, but trust me, it's cute. Anyway I started getting the feeling he was a boy, so it got sidelined. (Still not finished.) I knew the ladybugs could fly (no pun intended) for a boy, but not pink flowers. In the meantime, BHE painted a mural all around the nursery with ladybugs, dragonflies, bumblebees, a great big tree in one corner and a big happy sun on another wall. Suddenly we had ladybugs cropping up all over the place. I had already been partial to dragonflies, so I had a few of those already. We have a ladybug suitcase, backpack, ink stamps, board books, etc. So, very appropriate. Thanks Jennifer!

Next, check out what my friend Rori gave me - a dragonfly stitch marker! It fits right in with the buggy theme, and I love it! I have a few dragonfly stitch markers and row markers I've made, but none as pretty as this one. Thank you Rori!!

*You all think I knit fast? Let me tell you, I can shop way faster than I can knit.