Buttons Up The Nose and Pine Needles

I bet that subject line got your attention, didn't it?

My precious grandson has disappointed me. For months now, when he comes over for a visit, he likes to get out my little jar of old buttons to play with. Now, I know you're thinking, and I've mentioned this before in my blog, "letting little ones play with buttons isn't safe" And I realize that there is a safety issue, but he enjoys playing with them so much and I'm always with him when he is playing with them. I constantly remind him to not put buttons in his mouth with the threat that I would put the buttons up if he ever did.
He just loves those buttons. He sorts them, he stacks them, he tries them out in other containers, and he talks about the colors.
I wouldn't say that we get hours of fun out of those buttons. As active as he is, I'm happy to get a good solid 10 minutes of quiet time fun out of the buttons. Then we put the buttons away, because "the vacuum doesn't like buttons" (what I tell him)

So the other day, he was visiting and playing with his mom and the buttons. I'm not sure what happened but some voice inside my grandson's head told him to shove a button up his nose. Jen was able to get it out, easily, so it wasn't a problem. But the buttons have been put up and away.   Haha..not up his nose ... up on a shelf!
Now at this point, I have to really wonder, what kind of thoughts are racing around in that cute little head of his? What compels him to push a little white button up his nose? Wouldn't it be nice to be able to read his mind to understand what the heck he could possibly be thinking? Why? Is he storing it up there to play with later? Why?

He has put things up his nose before. His parents found a raisin up there a day after he had been given raisins. We think he put a mini m&m up there, but the "melt in your mouth, not in your hand" promise, musta worked because we saw no signs of it later. He's been told many many times why he shouldn't do it, but yet, he still did it.
So I'm disappointed that we can't play with buttons now. I really enjoyed doing that. It would look silly for me to sit by myself playing with them, sorting them, admiring their colors and dumping them from container to container ... my kids would probably carry out their threats to put me in a home if they saw me doing that. I'll just wait a few weeks before getting them out again. In the meantime I'll start lecturing him about noses and not listening to "that" voice inside his head.


Ok, on to the Stocking Candle Mat, which BTW, I am going to sell the pattern for this. I'm getting it all ready to send off to the printers ... all I need is to get a nice picture of the finished mat to use for the front of the pattern.

My pictures from the other day showed the stockings stitched onto the black background. Now it's time to do those pine branches. So the picture above shows the three stages of creating the pine branch. First, with a chalk pencil, I lightly draw in the branch lines. Then with some brown pearl cotton thread, I stem stitched along the lines. Once all the brown branches are stitched in above the stocking, then I work on the pine needles ... just making random straight stitches on either side of the brown branches.
This takes quite a bit of time to do. It's not difficult, just time consuming.
I have to admit, and I know this probably sounds odd, but I don't really like embroidery type stitching. As much hand sewing as I do, people might be surprised to learn that about me. It's not that I hate it, it's just that I prefer doing applique stitching and try to limit the embroidery as much as I can in my designs.
However, as you can see, this mat does require a lot of embroidery. So if you like embroidery stitching this is a good pattern for you.
If you like embroidery stitching but stink at doing it? This will be a good pattern for you too because the more crooked your stitches are when making those pine needles, the better the branches will look ......


And this becomes a problem for me too, because I tend to be a perfectionist when it comes to stitching. I have a LOT of difficulty making crooked straight stitch lines, so this took me more time to sew simply because those pine needles have to be crooked to be perfect.
But really, it's so easy to do and no matter how you stitch in those pine needles, you can't make it look bad.
Today, I'll work on filling those stockings with gingerbread men and adding on tassles with stars.
I'm hoping to finish it up tomorrow.
Keep watch for the upcoming pattern.

Happy Day everyone!