Finishes

Greyhound by Brenda Franklin Designs
stitched on 28ct Guacamole Lugana by Silkweaver using DMC

This looks like my Millie who crossed Rainbow Bridge several years ago.

Bee Blossoms a Just Nan Class Project
stitched on 28 CT Zweigart Mulberry Cashel

I haven't decided how to finish this one. It was a challenge to stitch. I had lost the stitch diagrams and had to look up stitches on the internet and stitch them at my computer.

Joyful Summer by Country Cottage Needleworks
stitched on 28ct white Monaco with Crescent Colors & DMC

I stitched this one on white instead of the recomended blue because the blue Crescent Colors floss I received was so pale. That's one thing I don't like about having to place orders online instead of looking at things at a shop where you could possibly get a darker shade of the same hand dyed floss. Then I got allergy medicine on it and had to wash it. Guess what? Crescent Really Teally runs! I almost cried! Instead I soaked it in cold water for a few days and rescued it. I did the finishing this week for the SMO board challenge.

I have two projects I'm currently working on now that these are finished. Two years ago mom bought a big box of cross stitch items that went unsold at a church rummage sale. She had bought a few of the items earlier in the day and went back and made an offer on everything that didn't sell. They wanted to give her the box for $5 but she insisted on a donation of $25 dollars which she had to insist they accept. The fabric alone was worth much more than that. Included in that box was a bunch of JABC buttons , Mill Hill treasures and a little bag of Honeybee Creations buttons with the original $70 price tag for Stoney Creek's In Every Season which I had admired in the past. I tracked down an original pattern on Ebay (the newer one is for JABC buttons and a little different.) and have started stitching it. I've also started Love One Another by Little House Needleworks. The little lion and lamb are so sweet.

A Couple of Linen Flowers Finishes

Linen Flowers Tin Topper Freebie
stitched on 32 count white Jobelin
Carrie's Creations floss

I stitched this little tin topper for Lisa from the SanMan boards for our friendship train. Lisa had sent me the floss earlier in a floss exchange. I just love the bright colors.

Linen Flowers bookmark freebie
stitched on a premade aida bookmark
using DMC floss

I have had this bookmark in my UFO pile for ages. It was the first Linen Flowers design I saw and fell in love with. The bookmark I used was longer than the design so I have added two extra paw prints and left off the words.

3/27 SAT at Let's Stitch

This is my progress on Charming Cat, a Daydreams kit. When I started stitching on Friday night I had only completed the tail.

I have since finished her and will post an update photo soon.

Two More Finishes

Noah's Rainbow by Just Nan
stitched on white Jobelin with DMC

Strawberries by Little House Needleworks
stitched on bone Jazlyn with Crescent Colors floss

Woof!

Woof Block
by Lizzie Kate
unknown linen fabric
Weeks and Sampler Threads floss

Another Finish

Meow Block By Lizzie Kate
Unknown 28ct linen
Weeks and Sampler Threads

(There's a charm I still need to add but I'm waiting until I frame it.)

First Finish of 2009

Blue Mountain Bunny
by The Sweetheart Tree
Honeysuckle Pink Jobelin
Dinky Dyes Silk #77 Blue Moutain

A New Year

I decided not to set any stitching goals this year other than to enjoy myself when I stitch. Last year I tried a rotation and tweaked it a couple of times but it never seemed to work out. As we begin 2009 there are so many stressful things on my mind that I want something I don't have to worry about or try and get done by a certain time and that is my stitching.

At Christmas I worked on Make a Wish but the pictures I took were blurry. I'll have to take some new ones when I pull it back out again.

On New Year's Eve I started Blue Mountain Bunny and finished him early in the morning on January 2nd. As soon as I get the embellishments attached I'll take a picture. I've put that off because I stabbed my thumb with a needle and it's very sore and I'm finding it hard to thread a needle or do anything more than basic x's. It's amazing how much we rely on our thumbs. So many little tasks are so difficult if your thumb hurts or even just because you have a bandaid on it.

I stitched more on Sea to Shining Sea for the first SAT of 2009 for Let's Stitch. I finished the second house, the Southwestern one, and more of the border.

On Saturday I started something for the Lizzie Kate exchange at Hooked on Exchanging.

I need to find something new to read at work during lunch. I tried starting Sour Puss by Rita Mae Brown and it's terrible. I love the Mrs. Murphy series but this one reads like a wine growing textbook. I'll probably finish it at home but I need something I enjoy more for work. Reading at lunch is my way to unwind and forget about the rude customers. As the economy has gotten worse I hear more and more complaints about how terrible my workplace is because our prices have risen along with every other place in town. Some comments get very personal which is just plain mean. What I sell and my company sells is purely entertainment along with booze and junk food which are not necessities of life like medicine, electricity, gasoline or even groceries. But people speak to us as if they are entitled to have entertainment at discount prices that would put my workplace out of business. It's the attitude of entitlement that gets to me. While I hope things get better in 2009 I am not going to be surprised if it doesn't get worse before things start to improve. A lot of people are going to be needlessly miserable if they don't get rid of this sense of entitlement and start counting the blessings they already have.

Birds Are Finally Finished!

I never would have finished this without the encouragement from BeckySC's Let's Stitch blog and the Friday night Stitch-A-Thons.



Once the birds were finished I celebrated by stitching this cute mouse by Casey Buonaugurio from the December Just Cross Stitch.



The day our power was out I sat by the window and stitched this cutie from San Man.

Birds and Vampires Again

Here is the photo of the birds just before starting the backstitching. It's pink due to the lights in my house but the fabric is actually white.

I finally saw the end of Twilight on Monday. I'm glad I went ahead and read the book though because although I really enjoyed the movie I liked the book better. I'm having a "teen" week I suppose since I've rented Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 and plan to watch both it and the first one while stitching this afternoon.

Birds, Work, Christmas Decorations and Vampires

I have finished all the main stitching and the birds are hanging in my bathroom drying! Usually I wouldn't wash something at this point but it was so dirty that I decided it would be best to wash it before adding the beads. Tonight I can begin all the backstitching and beading. I set a goal of finishing this by next weekend and I'm right on target at this point. I'll take a picture and post it before I start.

Thanksgiving was nice and the calm before the storm at work. We pulled out all the Christmas stuff and I've started decorating but I haven't done much. I've wrapped most of the gifts, put up lights and assembled the tree. I have been so tired from work so I'm taking things slow. I won't talk about my work specifically but think of it this way. It is normally not too busy. The regular customers are usually older, well spoken, well read and educated. While a few can be snobs they generally know how to act in public. Now the holidays come and you have a lot of customers who don't care how they behave. They are loud (screaming), rude, shoplift, messy and bring children to places where it is not appropriate or the kids are just bored. Not only am I tired from the extra customers I am tired of cleaning up after them, keeping things from getting stolen and asking people to behave that should know better. I don't work in retail and I can only imagine how much worse it is for someone who does. It doesn't help that we are worried about what will happen to our jobs after the holidays. Last night I came home too exhausted to decorate the tree. Maybe tonight I can get started.

I finished reading Twilight and enjoyed it. I had avoided reading it because the description someone gave me sounded incredibly boring. I was happy that the book didn't seem anything like their description. I want New Moon for Christmas.

Friday Stitch-a-thon and a Nativity Sampler

Last night I finished the blue bird and half of the greenery he's sitting on. Now there's just one bird and more greenery left. I'm starting to get excited about finishing this one. I tried to find out how long it's been a UFO but the oldest mention of it I have from blogging is a UFO list from December 2004.


Yesterday I bought a copy of the UK Cross Stitcher Issue 206 and it has this beautiful nativity sampler in it by Gail Bussi. It's going on my "to be stitched someday" list.

Birds Again

I've finally made a little progress on the birds. I had great plans to stitch all day Wednesday but I had a killer sinus headache that ruined that idea. I finally stitched for a little bit Wednesday night. Last night I skipped my usual stitching on Castle Sampler during Survivor and stuck with the birds. Speaking of Survivor it was one of the best Tribal Councils ever. Crystal yelling her vote "Forget you go home!" to the camera so everyone could hear was a riot.

Ugh...

Last night I had plans to stitch diligently on my birds but it didn't happen. Mike's cat Nikki was feeling sick after getting his shots. He was shivering, favoring the areas where they injected him, and cried when we picked him up. I felt sorry for him so I brought him to my bed and turned on the heated mattress pad. I sat down to stitch and after 30 minutes had done only about 20 stitches when I decided to crawl into bed myself. My knees and ankle were hurting from the cold, arthritis and standing on my feet at work. I woke up around 11pm and both Nikki and I felt a lot better. In fact Nikki was back to his old self. He can't fool me into babying him more either. The ladies (Abby Tabby, Callie and Mama Gus) tolerate him being in my room when he's sick but this morning they were back to growling at him. The only male allowed in this bedroom is my DH according to the ladies LOL!

This morning the second house for From Sea To Shining Sea was in my mailbox. It's the southwestern house and it's so cute! I want to stitch it now! But I made a commitment to finish those birds so the house will have to be a reward incentive.

Houses and Birds

Saturday and Sunday I worked on Sea to Shining Sea by LHN. Before I started I was a little worried by talk on the internet that there might not be enough floss in the chartpacks to stitch with two strands on my 32 count Lugana. When I finished this first house I had a lot left over. I could have probably even used 28 count fabric. Since the rows were not long I did not stitch each X individually which takes more floss and the variegation still looks nice.



The current challenge at Let's Stitch is working on Christmas projects. That fits in great with my plans. I'm going to set other stitching aside and try like crazy to finish these birds in the next 2 or 3 weeks. There are two more birds with greenery left to go and then lots of backstitching.

Weekend Update

We had a nice Halloween. No trick or treaters showed up and we didn't even see any out on the street. We watched some zombie stuff Mike had and I worked on the incredibly boring border for Sea to Shining Sea. By incredibly boring border I mean the white/cream boxes around the areas for the houses. It's not exactly something everyone is excited to see a photo of so I will wait until I get some of the house done.


I've decided I want to finish this old UFO for Christmas this year. It's a Bucilla kit I bought years ago when I was just starting to do a lot of cross stitch. It was one of the first designs I saw that had beads and charms back when only a few designers were using them. I've been stitching on it for the past 4 or 5 Sunday nights but I feel like I'm not getting very far. I thought taking photos might help inspire me.

DH and I are doing our on personal NANOWRIMO writing project this month. We aren't joining the official one, just doing something ourselves. I've had an idea for a story kicking around in my head for a couple of years now and I want to see if I can actually get something down on paper. I got two pages written last night that are pretty awful but at least it's a start.

Finally I am so happy this election campaign is almost over. It has been so long and ugly and I am sick of it. I will say one thing that has been good was whether you like them or not it was great to see more women and and an African American in the race. We've come a long way in my short lifetime.

Happy Halloween

It's Halloween and I have the day off to stitch, bake and do things around the house. This morning I used the kitty kit mom sent me to make our pumpkin. It's really cute and I didn't have to scoop out any seeds you just poke the pieces into the pumpkin. I just finished baking apple crisp and the house smells wonderful. Later tonight we are going to have a Dark Shadows marathon and eat pizza. We decided not to give out candy this year. The only kids in our neighborhood don't deserve treats after all the trouble and vandalism they have caused this year.

I am happy to hear that the two exchanges I mailed have made it to their destinations. The pumpkins were for Karen, my partner in the SBEBB Pumpkin Patch exchange and the floss tag was for Margaret at Hooked on Exchanging.




I woke up aroune 3AM this morning after having the oddest dream that involved stitching. I can't remember ever dreaming about stitching before. In the dream a co-worker found a pattern we both wanted but there was only one copy. It had several designs for towels in it all on separate loose sheets of paper. She said she was going to give me one of them if I let her buy it but didn't so I was upset with her. The funny thing is that this co-worker doesn't stitch or do anything crafty in real life. In my dream she was making several different towels.

I can't decide what I want to work on today. The things in my basket are calling me to start something new today. We'll see...


I forgot I wanted to post this funny picture of Callie. The frame was in the dollar stuff at Target. The more I tried to get a cute picture of her the more she made this snotty face. DH loves it, she's his spoiled baby girl.

Hot off the Hoop - Bats!

For the past week I have been stitching on these bats and feeling like I was making hardly any progress. I lost count several times and did more frogging on this project than I have in a long time. Last night I thought I could seen the light at the end of the tunnel with only two wings left to go so I skipped working on the Christmas project I usually pull out on Sunday nights and continued working on the bats. This morning I got up early and put in the final stitches. The bats are from the My Aunt's Attic blog and the fabric is Pumpkin Mousse from Sassy's Fabrics.

Finally Finished

I've been finishing things all week and mailed out two exchanges. This afternoon I plan to finish my witch so I can display her before Halloween.


Cthulu with his very on Ia! Ia! biscornu.


Halloween ornaments!


Will's birthday present arrived and I went ahead and gave it to him now while he has a week off from work to play with it. It's one of the Mars Mission sets from Lego that was an incredible bargain on the Lego site. Proof you never outgrow Lego.

Pumpkin Patch Exchange From Michelle

I received the most wonderful exchange box from Michelle with not one but two stitched items and loads of other goodies. I feel very spoiled. Thank you so much Michelle I love everything.


Here is a photo of everything. The little gold bag holds some cording and tassels which I didn't unpack yet to keep the kitties away from them. It also held a package of fall leaf buttons. The JBW Designs pattern is one I have been tempted to buy for myself and stitch so I was thrilled to get it.


The design Michelle stitched is November Harvest Pumpkin from the Rainbow Gallery website. She finished it as a box and did a beautiful job with it. She even put buttons and cording inside the box that you can see below.


The tiny tin held two magnets that Michelle made herself. She and her mother made the fabric pumpkin. Thank you again Michelle everything is just beautiful.



My pumpkin exchange is stitched and about halfway through finishing. Yesterday I tore the house apart in a panic when I couldn't find the embellishment I bought for it but I finally found it and breathed a sigh of relief. I hope to get it in the mail Monday if all goes well.