Needles and a Pen » Knitting, Sewing, and Nursing School

Masthead header
Needles and a Pen bio picture
  • Welcome to my blog!

    Hi! I'm Traci. I'm a Registered Nurse who loves quilting, knitting, cross stitch, and the great outdoors. In my pre-scrubs life, I owned Real Photography, and you can still see my old wedding and portrait photography site here .

    I've created a map that shows links to our camping/hiking/general family fun review posts that you can find here. It's pretty much the coolest thing on this site. Thanks, Google!

    I great big puffy heart *love* comments, so please let me know you visited! I try to always reply!

Ellie is the fairest one of all.

Will, to the world.  Overheard by Nic and me while they were playing.

Uck. Ucky.

Ellie, on seeing the snow outside this morning.  It was like the world was covered in some kind of yuck.

She’s so good. She’s always so good. And when another kid cries she always looks so concerned and comes over to help. She’s the perfect child.

One of the girls at VillaKids when I picked up Ellie today.  Oh how Ellie loves her babies—every time we pull into the parking lot she shouts “BABIES!!!  PLAY!!!” and is so excited to run inside.  Rumor on the street is that she’ll be moving up to the 2/3s section soon.  She’s gonna be so sad!  She loves those babies!

heather ross dress

I love this horse print from Heather Ross and got 3/4 of a yard to make Ellie another dress from the border print dress tutorial for next summer.

I haven’t been good about photos of the bee blocks I’ve made for the Front Range Modern Quilt Guild bee, but here’s my latest.  Lynn requested pinks, white/creams, and lime greens in this strip pattern with some lace accents.

Audrey - Love that dress! You just reminded me that I have to pick up some of that fabric before it is gone. It is my favorite, favorite print by her!

Lyn - Lovely block! It is now snuggled into my basket, joining the others. These are my daughter’s favorite colors, since she was the size of your dancing girl. I always had to make pink and green things for her. Luckily there was a Care Bear who was a lovely shade of pink with green trim. The cake for Katie McCarty’s First Birthday Bash was just this bear. So, as a mom of a darling daughter, you will appreciate that this quilt will be for my darling daughter who is now 27 years old.

that’s not it, i like it, uh huh uh huh.

Will singing That’s The Way I Like It over and over again today.  (Closely related to his singing last week of “sweet home aroma,” which, sadly, has been replaced by the correct Sweet Home Alabama lyrics.)

Will is off on his first big boy playdate.

He’s off to the zoo with a friend.  It took so much courage to allow this!  I’m imagining every major calamity, from Will’s abduction to his not saying ‘thank you.’  This ‘letting go’ that is required in greater and greater degrees just might kill me.