Two other projects I was able to finish before packing up my sewing machine for the move were 2 more linen pleated purses… I even decided that one of the purses should be for me, since I wanted a new purse for the move. (Because everyone knows you need a new purse when moving right? ;) I love horses and riding, so when I first saw this West Hill fabric by Heather Ross I had to order it.

This fabric is even better in person too, since it is a really soft cotton and such lovely colors. The green really goes great with the neutral colored linen. Of course I added 2 pockets inside, the bigger pocket fits my i-pod with some room to spare and the smaller pocket fits my cellphone. So no more digging to the bottom of my purse when my phone goes off.

The other linen pleated purse that I made went to Capello… Can you tell that I have a bit of this Katie Jump Rope fabric in my stash? :)

I have almost used all the green colorway up though, so I just have the blue left. If there is any interest, I might make one or two out of the blue colorway and stick them in my shop. Although it will probably be at least a few weeks before I get around to that…

Thanks to Regina of Creative Kismet, Ashley of Handcrafted Happiness, and Niki of Knockout Niki for tagging me with the “You Make My Day Award.” I was supposed to list 10 bloggers that make my day, but honestly I can’t just list 10. Thanks to all of you who stop by my blog to hear my rambles and leave comments! How about I just give the award to all of you :)

Is it really Friday already? Here I meant to blog several times this week and almost the whole week has gone by with only 1 post! :) Well I guess I will just have to remedy that. Yesterday I had coffee with Anina of twiddletails. It was my second time meeting another craft blogger and it was so neat to get to meet Anina in person. Thanks Anina for making me feel welcomed to the area!

We also got the front passenger seat of our car back from the movers yesterday afternoon. Ben and I went out for dinner & laughed on the way to dinner about how it was nice to be able to sit next to each other in the car again! :) Now I just can’t wait to get all our other stuff back, but for now it is in storage until we get into our new place. Which will hopefully be early April! We found an apartment and I am so excited to finally get settled in. It has a second bedroom so I can have a studio space (and Ben can have his desk), and it is south facing so hopefully there will be lots of sunlight.

I do think I am going through a bit of sewing withdrawal. I have managed to convince myself to wait until we are in the new apartment to buy myself my new sewing machine, but just barely:) This is probably made all the more difficult by the fact that I went and sewed on some machines & decided exactly which sewing machine I am going to get! I guess in the meantime since I don’t have any current crafting to show, I can catch up and show what I made before we moved… The project up above and closeup shot below are of a scarf I was making when my machine decided to die right in the middle of the project.

Luckily I did get my machine back in working condition so I was able to finish up this project and a few other projects before moving. I didn’t really want to have to move a large w.i.p. pile, although there were still a couple things on the pile anyways:) The fabrics on that scarf probably look familiar since I also used a few of them for this blanket. I added 2 tones of blue linen to the scarf though to make it slightly different from the blanket and really like how it turned out. It was a tough scarf to part with since I really love the colored linen and the somewhat ornate flannel backing. It went to a good home though:)

Another project I finished up was this little zippered pouch to match this purse…

It was a request from my mom, so she can keep things a bit more organized in her new purse. It was supposed to have a matching little camera case since she got a new camera and is trying to carry it with her all the time, but the designs I tried just didn’t seem to work quite right. I might try again though when I get my new machine, since a lot of the problem was that my machine just didn’t want to sew through the layers.

Oh and I have to say thanks to Steph, because the other day she let me know that I had a blog feed that wasn’t working… A big thanks to Ben too, because after a day of computer stuff at work he came home and fixed it for me. Also, he pointed out that it would be easier for readers to subscribe if I created a little place on my sidebar with links to my blog feeds so I added that. If you are not sure what a blog feed is and you read a lot of blogs, check out google reader (my favorite) or bloglines (or any other feed reader out there) because it will make checking your favorite blogs so much quicker! :)

I hardly even know where to start… I have so much to write about & share, so many emails to read & write, and so many of your wonderful blogs to catch up on (I feel totally out of the crafting loop). First I should say thanks for all of your comments & emails about the move! If I haven’t already emailed you to say thanks, you can be sure that I plan on it. I also think posting might actually become a bit more frequent around here for awhile, since I have lots to share… (Totally off topic, but google reader says I average about 5.4 posts a week which is funny to me since I don’t feel like I post that frequently!) I have some sewing projects to share from before we moved, but I think I will probably share a bit about the move first and save the sewing stuff for another post(s).

Where to even start about the move… We had movers come in and pack up our stuff on Friday (the 14th). It was so wonderful because there is no way we could have packed that quickly & honestly they packed our stuff better than we would have! :) I think the movers thought I was crazy when I took my camera out to take a photo of our living room & then asked if I could take a photo of their truck. What can I say! I am a typical blogger, so I had to document it right :)

Our messy living room in the middle of being packed up…

Notice that dark thing to the right of the vacuum in front of the couch? That would be the front seat of our little Hyundai Accent. :) Our little car was packed pretty tightly, so we decided one of us would have to ride in the back seat so we could take the passenger side front seat out for a bit more room. The funny thing is that we only have 1 car & the movers have not yet delivered our stuff, so we are still driving around with only 1 front seat :)

There is no way all of our belongings would fill a truck this size, they are actually moving 2 other families stuff out to the west coast along with ours…

I do feel a bit bad that our stuff is traveling on a truck that is probably going to consume a ton of fuel, but I feel a bit better knowing that it was going to travel this direction even if our stuff wasn’t on it (and it isn’t like selling/getting rid of everything we own only to buy it again would really be all that better for the environment either).

The cats both did pretty good on the trip, even though Pounce did make it clear each morning that he would rather not get back in his carrier. It was lovely to see a bit of the country, I found myself wishing we could just stop and take photos all along the way but I just didn’t think that would be fair to Pounce & Axel. So mostly I just took photos from out my window while Ben was driving :)

I honestly have no idea where I took this one… maybe somewhere in Montana or Wyoming?

Really though the very best part about the trip was pulling into the Seattle area on Monday (the 17th)! It was lovely to finally get here & see the area we will be living in. It was in a lot of ways a big move for me, since I didn’t really know exactly what to expect. Ben had already been to the Seattle area before we decided to move, but I had never been to Washington before. Honestly it is even more beautiful than I imagined it could be! :)

This isn’t our “permanent” view, since we will hopefully be moving out of temp housing by the beginning of April, but our current view from our balcony is this…

I feel very lucky! (And as if all that wasn’t even enough, look what I got as a gift before we moved… a nice new ipod which definitely helped to pass the time on the road:)

Okay now I am off to try & catch up on emails and blogs! :) Poor google reader has stopped telling me exactly how many unread feeds I have & resorted to 1000+ unread. :)

Right now I am blogging from a hotel somewhere in South Dakota! We left Illinois yesterday & are making our way across the country to our new home. Of course I couldn’t go without blogging :) Although this is going to be a short post I think, since I don’t really have any photos… Once we get to the other end of our journey, I think I will have lots to post though. I did get my sewing machine back for a bit before the move, so I have several finished projects to share (Capello & Amanda can expect their 2nd blogiversary prizes in the mail hopefully soon :). I guess in the meantime enjoy the previous post from Pounce & hopefully I will have internet access for real soon :)

Pounce here… Mum said I could write a post, since she has been too busy with this “move thing” to post lately. All I know is that my humans have been very busy & lots of strange people have been over (I guess to look at renting our place & something about surveyors to figure out how much stuff we have to move). I don’t really like strangers, so I just hide under the bed when anyone is over.

Anyways, mum thought I needed a good toy to keep me distracted & happy. I really loved the owl that Laurie made her & I thought it should just be mine, but mum kept saying something about it being hers (if you ask me I think she’s crazy, since it clearly is a bird & everyone knows that birds are for cats!). Laurie was so sweet though & sent me some scraps from the fabric she used so that mum could make me some toys. So now I have my very own little handmade mouse to play with.

I kept bugging mum while she was stitching the mouse, so when she finished it and was about to take a photo of it I decided to just take off with it…

After all she did say it was mine! :)

I am also supposed to mention that mum got her sewing machine back from the repair shop & it apparently works. (Although she still sounds frustrated with it every time she sews…) So I think she might post a little bit about some things she has been working on if she has a spare moment… (I don’t know where she thinks that is going to come from though, since clearly any time not spent working on this move should be spent tossing my new mouse so I can fetch it!)

Well I hope everyone is having a great week so far! I am off to go catch a sunbeam or two…

I just wanted to say thank you all for your wonderful comments on our upcoming move. I plan to email each of you individually, but wanted to say thanks here too :) It is starting to sink in that we will be moving in less than 2 weeks & I feel like I should be doing more. I have packed a few things myself, but we are having movers come in and pack the rest so there isn’t much to do with that. Although there are still plenty of other things to get done (just not as much fun as packing in my opinion), so there is a lot of move prep stuff going on around here.

Besides preparing for the move there isn’t much else going on… my sewing machine actually decided to completely die on Tuesday night while I was in the middle of working on a project. So that meant I couldn’t give it to my sister as planned or finish the projects I had planned on working on this past week… Instead I did take it in to the sewing repair shop & should find out if it is fixable either today or tomorrow. I am still planning on a new machine after we move, but I had really hoped to finish some of the projects I had been working on before we moved. If it isn’t able to be fixed, I guess I will just have to wait though… Oh well! (Side note: I will never, ever buy anything brother brand again after the experience I had with this machine…. their customer support was terrible & I have had so many problems with this thing. End rant - sorry just had to express my frustration. :)

Project 365 is still going strong though & I made a new mosaic for the month of February. I did actually forget to take a photo one day (for the first time since I started the project), but I had taken several the day before so I used one from that day instead. So go ahead & take a look at some of my project 365 photos from February (links to each photo below the mosaic)…

1. :Rainboots in the snow: Day 18 of 365, 2. :Afternoon Tea: Day 19 of 365, 3. :Inside looking out: Day 20 of 365, 4. :Favorites: Day 21 of 365, 5. :Axel: Day 22 of 365, 6. :Reading: Day 23 of 365, 7. :Work in Progress: Day 24 of 365, 8. :Winter: Day 25 of 365, 9. :Prairie: Day 26 of 365, 10. :Inspiration: Day 27 of 365, 11. :Axel: Day 28 of 365, 12. :Lost: Day 29 of 365, 13. :Sunbeam: Day 30 of 365, 14. :Pounce & Me: Day 31 of 365, 15. :Mr Owl: Day 32 of 365, 16. :new shoes: Day 33 of 365, 17. :Whiskers: Day 34 of 365, 18. :Lazy day: Day 35 of 365, 19. :Linen Samples: Day 36 of 365, 20. :Blue Pleated Purse: Day 37 of 365, 21. :Night: Day 38 of 365, 22. :Owl Tote: Day 39 of 365, 23. :Self Portrait of a Mother & Daughter: Day 40 of 365, 24. :Nature in the Winter: Day 41 of 365, 25. :Shadows: Day 42 of 365, 26. :Broken: Day 43 of 365, 27. :Axel helping: Day 44 of 365, 28. :Climbing: Day 45a of 365, 29. :Tired Out: Day 45b of 365, 30. :Sitting at the computer: Day 46 of 365