Grow Your Blog Party

Today, I'm participating in the 3rd annual Grow Your Blog Party hosted by Vicki at  2 Bags Full where you will find a long list of participating blogs. Perhaps you'll find some new friends and some interesting reading. It is a very large undertaking that she does once a year and I'd like to thank her.

My name is Holly McLean and I live in a very small city in northern New Brunswick, Canada. I started blogging about 6 years ago when, after having read blogs for a while, I thought it might be a way for me to journal about my own journey and to connect with like minded bloggers. I left work almost 5 years ago due to illness and since then my art and my blog have become real lifesavers for me. I have not only found new and wonderful blog friends, but I've also been published in Quilting Arts magazine, something very exciting for me.

You never know what you might read about on any given day with me. I like to post about recipes I find or create, my knitting and craft endeavors, the garden, my drawings, birds at my feeders or on my walks, photographs of my walks, my fiber art and sometimes some traditional quilting or sewing.

I've been working on a piece based on a photo of a rocky hillside a few minutes from my home. It is one of the most complicated pieces I've done. Yesterday, after my errands and household jobs, I finally backed the painted sky with some stabilizer and sat down to free motion stitch some background trees. I was so tired by then that I had to quit but at least now I can sit down to it at any time.

One of the chores I was doing yesterday, was organizing some of my thread so I can better see what I have. Most of the greys and a lot of the greens are missing as they are in a tray next to my machine for my current project.

I've also chosen a matching batik for a little (4 !/2" by 6 !/2") piece that I'm doing of some local fish shanties.I may use it as a binding. I don't think it will need anything more.

On the trail yesterday with my husband, we gathered a few more branches for my feeder area on my deck. At Christmas I made two sprays for opposite posts on the deck. I view these from our kitchen and dining room windows and liked them so much, I wanted to add a 3rd one in the middle. We put another suet cage there as well. The chickadees, woodpeckers and nuthatches love them.

One other creative thing I'm up to is to embellish a light that I recently had my husband put up in a corner of the living room. I loved the style but the clear glass allows too much of a glare even when we bought a soft light. I picked up a package of stick on plastic flowers form the Dollar Store that I planned to use for something else when the idea struck me to try them out on the lamp. I think I like it and plan to cover the whole thing. Perhaps, I've seen some similar ones in design magazines.

I hope you enjoy the reading you'll find on the blog party and that you make some new connections and new friends.  I intend to check it out myself  later today.