Maybe I Can BeDazzle My Orthopedic Shoes

Well, I missed mentioning another holiday on this blog. I was going to post a picture of my St. Patrick's Day troll too. I hope you all had a nice St. Paddy's Day!

Every so often, usually when I'm eating bacon, I will think about Laura and Mary Ingalls playing with a pig bladder. And, I'm not even on medication. So, I really enjoyed this article.

I forget how I found it but check out the blog for the Hungarian Sampler SAL. If I can find a large enough piece of material before they post any more of the chart, I'd like to join this one.

Some of my freebie links have disappeared from my list on AOL so I was happy to come across a link to Cherished Time (or Kiyo's Cross Stitch Page) again. There's a huge list of free charts there [link via Taking one stitch at a time]. I don't think it's been updated since April 2006 but I'm sure many of the links still work.

I also wanted to mention the x-stitch freebies at LUMIERE403. One night I was trying to find a pattern with sheep for the Christmas Ornament SAL and I ended up there (I think it was linked on LaGattaC).

There's a new free chart called Acorns and Owls at Blue Ribbon Designs. And, click the link to read the March newsletter to see how you can win a chart.

Barbara over at Oodles and oodles has posted the pattern that's on her ready to be embroidered aprons. The same ones she was giving away that I did not win. Not that I'm bitter. Ok, I am but I'll get over it as soon as the next apron giveaway comes along. (Please let me know if you hear about any so I can get happy sooner. Thanks!) (And, thank you for sharing the pattern, Barbara.)

Speaking of getting happy, I had a little bit of bad news last week. I got an official diagnosis on my swollen-since-November-and-now-deformed-foot (I am not exaggerating): I have something called Charcot Foot, yet another fun side effect of diabetes. Apparently, the nerve damage in my feet is so severe, I can no longer feel any pain and didn't know I had fractured several bones. And yes, I was shocked to hear that. Fortunately, this can be treated but that involves wearing a cast and staying off my foot for three months, and then having surgery. (Then I'll probably have to wear special shoes, which you know will be ugly. Can I Bedazzle leather?) I can deal with that -- I went through the same thing last Fall with my broken knee and became a whiz at using a walker -- but it's going to be awhile since I can go back to work and that depresses the hell out of me. So, I'm trying to be positive and look at my recovery as lots and lots and lots of time to cross stitch or embroider or finally try some other projects that I've always wanted to do but didn't because I was too busy reading craft blogs into the wee hours of the night, she typed at 2:53 AM.

As seen on Google: "The BeDazzler is back again and it’s the fashion craze of the season." Har!