La Belle et la Bête (and a prize)

(more about this needle book at the end of the post)


or, as we say in English....

The Beauty...


(Take one lovely design from the wonderful Blackbird Designs Joyeux Noel book)...



(add some delicious Belle Soie silk threads, and some hand dyed fabric, and you have a beauty of a sampler :-)




and The Beast...



(Where we've taken one hot water pipe leaking under the foundation and added one "highly recommended but turns out to be maybe fairly incompetent plumber" who thought it was alright to pile mud three feet high in our laundry room entry way without the benefit of LARGE plastic drop cloths, and not forgetting of course, the inches of concrete dust over every inch of the house, and you've got one big P.I.T.A)

So anyway, the pipe is fixed, the dirt is all back in the hole now, after sitting out for four days, now we're waiting on it to settle a little before he pours in the concrete and re-tiles the floor. All along with promises that he's going to make it all look "Brand New". And if you think I believe that one, well, I gotta bridge I want to sell ya ;-)

But, really? It's all OK. Because even with such a mess, I'm very aware of my blessings and have refused to get all flustered over the situation when there's such hurt and devastation in other parts of the world, and by that, I mean Haiti. I came across this blog last week, hearing that they were seeking donations of the crafty kind for these women in Haiti. HELLO?! Threads? Oh, you bet, got that! Here's the thing...you can clean out your stash, the items don't have to be brand new :-) They need lots of different things, not just thread, check out the list to see! The address you mail to is posted at the bottom of the list.

Please check out the links I've posted above and see if your heart is not touched by these beautiful women. And then please post about this on your blog too and help get the word out, let's show some stitchy love to Haiti, whatdayathink?

If you do help spread the word, via your blog, facebook or twitter, please post the link (to the post you made) here in the comments on this post and I will enter your name in a drawing for this little lovely:



A brand new needle book from The French General! You may have seen a little bit of mine in this post. It was a gift from a dear stitcher buddy. I liked it so much, I wanted to share one like it with one of you. But the catch is, you have to post about the Haiti by Hand blog somewhere to be entered to win!

Thanks so much :-) You have ONE WEEK to get it done and let me know about it, I'll draw a name on Wednesday, Feb. 10

PS. Um, you don't have to post about this to comment here, I really love hearing from you, even if you don't want to enter for the drawing :-)