Look What I Won Today!

This incredible lariat by Carol Dean Sharpe of Sand Fibers!










































Carol gave away this gorgeous Ndebele (herringbone) stitch lariat to celebrate - ready for this? - her 1,500th sale on Etsy! What a cool way to celebrate! I had entered the drawing by posting about the giveaway on Facebook and on my blog with links to Carol's blog. I never really expected to win, but I thought, what the heck, and gave it a shot. Sure enough, Carol's random number generator pulled up number 37 - and that was me!

Ironically, 37 was the street number of the house where I grew up as a kid. Weird, huh? Maybe I should go buy a lottery ticket...

I stumbled across Carol's Etsy shop, SandFibers, looking for beading patterns. She designs the most beautiful peyote stitch cuff bracelets - and finished jewelry, too! - and I have become completely addicted to her patterns. I love that most of them are in 2- or 3-drop peyote stitch, because they seem to work up much faster than just single drop peyote. And the designs - Carol definitely lets her sense of humor come through in some of them! When I'm feeling completely burnt out from my own designs, Carol's designs are beautiful and soothing to stitch. I'll wait for Colden to go down for his nap or to go to sleep for the night (or for a few hours after dinner, anyway!) and then I'll sit down with a pile of Delicas and one of Carol's patterns and I'll just go at it. Her patterns remind me of everything that made me fall in love with beadweaving ten years ago when I first discovered how relaxing and meditative it was to stitch those tiny little beads together...

So later this week, I'll have two packages from Carol waiting for me at the post office! Hooray! (Now, if I could just find my post office box keys to actually get into the post office box...)

And speaking of the post office... Carol and I are cooking up something fun in the next few weeks. I can't say what it is just yet - but you will definitely want to stay tuned to my blog and/or my Facebook page to find out just what it is and how you can be a part of it!

And that's all I'm sayin'...