Early Bird Night Owl Pillow

Are you an early bird or a night owl?

You know, of course, that the early bird gets the worm!

But the night owl loves to stay up late, and nights can be its most productive time.

Whichever you happen to be, I have a pillow for you! Look, it's an Early Bird (worm included) on one side...

... but if you flip it over, it's a Night Owl!

This is what I've been waiting to show you and what those of you who don't follow my Instagram account have been patiently waiting to see after I showed you the box of supplies. I tested the Early Bird Night Owl Pillow pattern that was designed and written by Larissa Holland of the mmmcrafts blog. Quite charming, isn't she (aren't they)?

When Larissa asked me if I would like to test her pattern, I was thrilled! I knew it would be a fun one, as well as well-written, because I've sewn a couple of her creations before. You can see my Tooth Fairy pillow here, made from a free tutorial, and my Wee Mouse Tin House here, made from a pattern I purchased from Larissa.

As expected, the pattern was excellent! You can see that there are many details to the pillow, and Larissa thought of everything in making the pattern work perfectly. The instructions were clear and easy to follow. It's recommended for intermediate sewers, because it's good to know your sewing terms and have some experience sewing curves and doing hand embroidery when making this pillow.

I had so much fun making this! I love doing applique, so I got plenty of that. Larissa sent most of the supplies, which I really appreciated. Another good thing is that she even marked which fabrics should go where. I was delighted to see that, because you who've followed me for a while know that I'm a slow decision-maker, and that saved me lots of time. I also got good practice threading my sewing machine, because I used at least a dozen different colors of thread. :)

The other testers and I gave our feedback and offered a couple suggestions for changes, which Larissa took into consideration to improve the pattern, and she herself made many prototypes, so this pattern is fantastic, and you can purchase it HERE . You can read Larissa's blog post about it HERE.

I decided to give the pillow to Courtney for Easter (because I just KNOW she needs more stuffed critters - ha!). Here's a shot of her holding it, to give you an idea of its size.

I highly recommend this or any of Larissa's patterns. You won't be disappointed!

Happy Easter!

Yes, those are the correct photos. I took them this morning. I think Mother Nature got a little confused as to which holiday it is. She must've been thinking Christmas... or April Fool's Day? ;-Þ

I did catch a shot of the Easter Bunny, too, after he finished making his rounds. He was very hungry after all that work, but he had to work some more to dig his breakfast out from under all the snow, poor thing.

The robins and all the rest of the birds have been having a hard time finding food, too.

"I think I hear a worm!"

"I know he's down there somewhere."

"Aw, shucks. I guess he was too cold to come up."

Enough already! At least it's melting, and it should go pretty fast in the next few days. The robins have had their tails snowed on three times now. Is this the end of it? Not according to the forecast. :(

Have a nice Easter, wherever you are! We have so much to be thankful for, including the reason for the holiday!

Something new

These were fun shots. We have killdeers around here every year, but I usually see them in the distance and moving too fast to get a photo of them. Yesterday there happened to be one right outside the house - and I was lucky enough to see it! It seemed to be out for a first-day-of-spring stroll and came nearly up to the garage. It hung around long enough for me to get some good pics through the glass in the door, and it was none the wiser. But I was very happy. 

There were a few juncos around, too.

My pattern test is complete, but I won't be blogging about it until the pattern is ready for purchase, which might be up to 2 weeks. Meanwhile, I'm working with this gorgeous fabric!

Spring is springing

We've had near 70° temps in the last week! The snow is all melted except for what were huge banks in groves and shaded areas, but they're shrinking fast. There are signs of spring appearing all over the place!

Remember the huge flocks of blackbirds I showed you last fall? They're back! Okay, I don't know if these are the same ones or not - probably not - but there sure were a lot of them on our lawn yesterday. And in the trees.

If you look closely below, you can see that most of them are redwing blackbirds.

In the full-size image, I could also see a few plain blackbirds and maybe a few starlings amongst them.

They made quite a black mass upon takeoff! A noisy one, also.

(No, that's not snow below them. It's milkweed seed puffs that have blown across the driveway.)

This shot below looks like some kind of weird painting, but with the wings spread, you can see lots of red throughout it.

I'm almost done with my sewing pattern test project. I'm not sure whether I'll be blogging it right away or if I'll wait until the pattern is ready to be released. But there will be pics on Instagram right away, if you're really anxious to see it. ;) Again, my ID is GRANDMA_G415. Now I'd better go finish it up.............

First sightings

What a glorious day it was today! Well, after the 30-40 mph winds went down, that is. But it got up to 62°, and by the time I went out to feed the cats a little while ago, it was perfectly calm out, and so QUIET! Then I heard a robin chirping, and sure enough I could see it, so of course I had to go in for the camera. Then I saw a second robin. They were both way up in the highest branches of the trees, so not the best photos ever, but they're my first for 2016!

In case you've been wondering what I've been up to, I've been busy working on this:

These supplies came in the mail last week, and they're for the pattern test I'm doing. That's a lot of stuff, right? It's gonna be so fun to get it all put together! Can't wait to show you more.....