Karen and Eli went to a birthday party and came home to this note from Mark...

There's nothing like some fresh air to calm those babies down...

Is this sky exceptional? Trish would like to know.

I have had the pattern for Amy Butler's zinnia pillow for quite awhile now.  I originally thought that it would be a perfect gift for Emma but I was always a bit intimidated by the amount of work that it appeared to entail. This year, I finally faced my fear, bought some fabric at the Cloth Shop and started to work.

It actually came together pretty quickly - until I got to the part with the button. The petals all have interfacing which makes it pretty hard to get a needle through from front to back and back to front. My first attempt to attach the button resulted in the needle breaking into three pieces - inside the pillow. I didn't think that Emma would want a pillow with floating pieces of metal inside it so I unstitched the pillow cover and the pillow insert and fished out the bits. It then sat on my craft desk for a couple of weeks, taunting me. I finally got a replacement needle and managed to finish it up without anything breaking, though the end of the needle was definitely bent.

Will I ever make another one? Unlikely. But I must say that I am pretty happy with the end result...