Ornaments finished

Hello Stitchy Friends!

I have spent time doing some finishing. Finally. I do put it off longer than I should. I always feel I should do better than I do... I do save pictures of finish ideas I like for inspiration. I was down to the wire tho, as our cross stitch group Christmas party is coming up on Monday.
















I fell back to using my tried and true method for most of the ornaments.



Then after taking a break I did the flat fold finish.



I was pretty happy with this one. I should add a bow or something, perhaps.

I should have taken a picture of the fabrics I used on the back of each one. I also need to try making cording from floss.... I watched it being done at the retreat I went to this summer, but haven't tried it myself yet. We will see how much time I get over next few days to see if I get some made.

I do have two more ornaments that need some personalization and then finishing.

It is going to be a cold upcoming several days. Lows are projected to be below zero a couple of nights.

Hopefully I will have a couple more finishes to share with you soon.

Happy stitching friends!



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Happy Thanksgiving

Hello Stitching Friends!

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you!  The turkey is in the oven.  The husband is still asleep, and the kids haven't arrived yet, but it promises to be a good day here.  The sun is shining with a bright blue sky on a chilly November day. 

I have been busy shopping and  making lists for this big cooking day.  The menu hasn't varied much over the last nearly thirty years...  (wow, that seems like a long time!)  There will be six of us for dinner today.  Our son recently proposed to his girlfriend...and she said yes!  They will be here, as well as our daughter and her boyfriend.  We are blessed, in so many ways.

I don't know that much stitching will get done today.  I will probably be too busy in the kitchen, and then after that too tired to do much but relax with everyone.  Mike has today off from work, as well as the rest of the week, so I'm happy for that!  He usually works all holidays, unless they happen to fall on a regular day off.  So, it will be nice not having to hurry through the meal and see him leave for work, missing out on the rest of the family time.  He will get to enjoy leftovers and some football later. 

I have hopes of finding time later this week to do some ornament finishes.  I have a few stitched up ready for a final finish.  I have started the Prairie Schooler Christmas sampler from this year, so I have something to pick up.  I may still do an ornament or two as well.  This time of year gets so busy! 

I hope all of you will be enjoying your holiday today and spending it with those you love.

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

November Stitching

Hello Stitchy Friends.

I will try this again. I had my post all ready but one final picture to add and lost the whole thing! Very frustrating.

I wanted to share a picture of my finishes for November.




They are all Prairie Schooler designs. I should stitch a couple more small turkeys to round it out. But I doubt that I get to that this month.

It sure feels like November today. When I took Harry out this morning he didn't waste any time doing what was necessary before heading back into our warm house.

I stitched on the snow birds ornament last night and would have had it done, but ran out of white DMC. I didn't want to substitute a different white. I will have to pick some up when I'm out shopping. The nearby quilt store carries DMC, or I can get it when I go to the bigger city about an hour away.

I'm not sure what we are doing today. At least the sun is shining, and the sky is a beautiful blue.

Hope all of you are enjoying a lovely weekend and finding some time for stitching!

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Another ornament

Hello Stitchy Friends!

I am making progress on another ornament. It is from this year's ornament issue. It's called Snow Birds by Country Cottage Needleworks.


I found some light blue linen in my stash. It is working up well. Again, I will have to post another picture later when I sit down to do final finish work on these. I have a few more I would like to get done.

My sister in Minnesota posted pictures on Facebook of snow they received there this week. I am not ready for that yet!

It has been a busy week at the library. I am ready for the weekend. The only bad thing is tomorrow is my Saturday to work...so no early start to the weekend. I can't believe its November already! I still have to get the Halloween decorations put away...

Hope all of you are finding time to enjoy your stitching!

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Ch..ch..changes...

Hello Stitchy Friends.

I have been doing some blog reading on and off this afternoon, in between chores.  I was pleased to see Lee posting again on Lake Stitcher.  She posted some thought provoking comments about her lack of blogging of late.

I know sometimes it's hard to know how much personal news to share as opposed to just keeping it about stitching.  I guess I look at my blog as kind of a journal, and write it for my amusement as well as hopefully keeping some of you entertained....

I have been stitching away, however I had to take a forced week off due to an injury to my thumb.  Somehow it became infected under my thumbnail.  So, I've been on antibiotics for about 10 days with a new round to start tomorrow.  It is much better now, but it was rather nasty.  The doctor thought it became infected through a tear in my cuticle, with bacteria getting in there.  Not fun, rather painful too.  I won't gross you out with a picture.

I have chosen some ornaments that I would like to get stitched up soon.  I would like to do 'Season of Love' by LHN for our son and his girlfriend; as well as do one for our daughter and her boyfriend.  Relationships seem to becoming serious for both of them.  It is going to be an interesting few months ahead I think.  We like both of their partners in the relationships, which is a bonus!

I plan on stitching their names and "Christmas 2013" on the back of each ornament.  I am close to being done with the first one.  I have other ornaments I would like to stitch as well, hopefully I will get time to do a few more. 

Well, hopefully I will find time to post a little more often.  I know I won't be able to keep up with the daily blogging challenge some of you have taken on for November...! 

Happy Stitching!


 

Halloween

Hello stitchy friends!




- Just wanted to wish you all a Happy Halloween!






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It's been awhile...

Hello Stitchy Friends!

It's been awhile since I've posted. The days seem to race by, and I don't find time to blog. I have been pushing hard to stitch something though.

A fellow blogger generously loaned me a chart I was looking for. I feel lucky to be a part of this community of stitchers! I wanted to stitch this for Mike, due to his passion for photographing bald eagles every winter.




Forgive the wrinkles please. I pushed hard to get it done quickly. I will post another picture after it's properly finished.




I completed an ornament finish from this years ornament magazine. This one is of course from Little House Needleworks. I have picked a few others I want to stitch from this years issue as well.




Mike and I found ourselves alone on Saturday night. He had a three day weekend, and we decided to make lasagne. It turned out great. We watched a couple of recent DVD releases after dinner. So it was a very nice night.




A couple of weekends ago we took a weekend trip to Branson, Missouri with my sister and brother-in-law. One day we went to Silver Dollar City. My favorite thing of the day was when I found the Midwest Living Culinary Institute. It was such a pretty place. Mike and I attended a cooking demonstration. It was fun. Isn't the chandelier something? It was huge! It had to be incredibly heavy all blown glass. The quilts hanging over the railing were really pretty too.







It was a fun experience. We saw a couple of shows, and visited Cecila's Samplers. What a nice cross stitch shop! I have been there before on a previous trip, but it's a fun shop to visit.

I thought I had a couple of pictures from the shop visit, but I don't know what happened to them.

Well I have made this post long enough. Next time I will share a picture of a couple of projects I just picked up from the framer.

Happy Stitching!
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Questioning my organizing

Hello Stitchy Friends!

I have just a question for all of you stitchers out there at the moment.

I am seriously questioning my organizational method of arranging my Crosstitch patterns.

I currently put charts in plastic sleeves and then in three ring binders. I have them organized by type, such as I have fall charts together, Spring charts together, patriotic, Christmas and so forth.

The last two evenings I have spent some time searching for a chart my niece wants to borrow with no luck so far. I'm rather frustrated. How do you organize your charts? Do you group them by designer? Or??

I welcome your suggestions. You see, I'm a librarian and organization is big with me.

I promise a better post soon, with pictures of current stitching progress and projects!

Thank you!


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Pumpkins for Cathey!

Hello Cathey!

Happy Blogoversary today! We are all thinking of you!

Last Day of Vacation...

Hello Stitchy Friends!

Well, all good things must end.  Today is the last day of our string of vacation days for now. 
It's back to work tomorrow.  I have not gone into the library once over the time I was off.  Unusual for me.  I usually end up going up at least once or twice to pick something up, or check on something.  Mike stopped up today to do some computer work, and warned me that my office was not a pretty site.  Lots of piles to sort thru and boxes to unpack.  So, I already know what tomorrow will be like....

All in all I spent time stitching, reading and doing some jobs around home that needed to be done.  I cleaned some cupboards out, and we made a couple trips to Goodwill with some surplus things.  We took a few day trips, and just generally enjoyed hanging out together.  When Mike and I are both working, we don't see a lot of each other through the week.  I work first shift hours and he works second shift about an hour's drive from home.  So, when we are off work together we enjoy hanging out. 

We found this covered bridge on one of our drives. 

We also took a day trip to New Salem.  This was an early settlement north of Springfield, where Abraham Lincoln lived in some of his early years.  Nice old log houses, stores and wonderful split rail fences.  A very peaceful State Park. 

I am close to a finish on "Needleworker".  I will post a picture when I'm finished.  I took some time today to put out some more Fall decorations and added Halloween things in as well. 

I will share pictures of that on my next post, since I don't have any of those photos uploaded to the desktop computer.  It's easier to do those posts from my iPad where I can take a picture with it and upload it to my blog.  You will notice the pictures above are much higher in quality than those I take...  Mike took both of these with his camera.  :)

Well, hope you are enjoying some beautiful Fall weather in your neck of the woods.  We are here.

Happy Stitching!



 

Vacation Week!

Hello dear stitchy friends.

I am pleased to share our first day of vacation with you. Mike and I are off all week. We don't have any big trip planned, but intend to take some smaller day trips this week. We started the week off with one of my picks ;). Spring Green, Wisconsin and The Country Sampler!


I hadn't been to this beautiful shop for a long time...! It is about 3.5 hours north of our house. What a treat to visit again. Even tho I am not 'into' quilting I do enjoy beautiful quilts. They have lots of them here! I did pick up just a couple of charts tho,




I saw this Star chart somewhere online awhile back and really like it. I found it as a kit. It's by Summer House stitche works. The other chart is
Liberty House by With Thy Needle and Thread. You can see my Autumn piece stitched in the background.

I decided to stitch Needleworker after my last finish. Here is my progress




It is going fairly quickly and has been fun to work on.

Before we left for Spring Green today, I had to get up early...I had made a 7 am grooming appointment for Harry... I don't know what I was thinking when I did this! But I was having second thoughts about my sanity when on first day of vacation my alarm went off at 6 am! Mike just groaned and rolled over. I got up and showered and off we went. I have to admit we got it out of the way early! But, Harry looked so handsome after he was done!




I had to share a picture of my two handsome guys!

Well it will be interesting to see what the rest of the week brings. But today was a great start, plus the beautiful Fall weather I've been waiting for has finally arrived. I hope it's here to stay for awhile.

Happy stitching friends!

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Finished!

Hello Stitching friends!

I just have a stitching finish this afternoon! The Sunday NFL start allowed me the chance to finish this piece.




Flag Day by With Thy Needle and Thread. I'm not sure how I will finish this. I should probably frame it, since it would fit in well with my other patriotic themed pieces in our computer room. Some of my friends at stitch group were bothered by the fact that the woman has no eye.... But it's folk art... I think it will be fine the way she is.

Now, I can think about what I want to start next.... I have a few choices ;) I will have fun pulling out some charts and seeing what I need to be ready to start.

I finished a great book last night in the early morning hours.... How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny. I gave it 5 stars on goodreads. I think she is one of my favorite authors. If you haven't started these yet, I would start with her first one in the series, Still life. They are mysteries set in Canada.

It's funny how often a cross stitch finish happen on the same day.... A new start for both reading and stitching. How fun is that?!

I will have to organize a new start before Monday night since I'm hosting our stitching group at our house..

Happy Stitching!


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Stitching updates

Hello Stitching Friends!

I don't know where the time gets to between posts! I have been busy stitching among other things.

I'm very pleased to say I finished my retreat piece!





With the speciality stitches it was a bit fussy for me. I don't stitch them that often, but I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. I don't seem to be able to get the picture to rotate, sorry!

Then I have been working on the patriotic woman with the sheep.




She is coming along. I've been enjoying working on her.

I also was able to pick up a recently framed finish from my LNS.




I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.




The frame is really pretty.







Harry keeps us entertained. I've been trying to get out several times with him to the park for a walk. It's good for both of us. He is my perfect walking partner with his short legs and slow gait... :).

Hope all of you are finding some quality stitching time my friends.

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Friday tea

Hello Stitchy Friends!

I just have to share this beautiful tea party with you.

I was invited to a good friend's house for tea after work today.










What a lovely start to the weekend!

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Monday updates

Hello Stitching Friends!

I haven't posted in awhile again. The time seems to get by me at a quick pace. I have been stitching tho. So many projects are waiting for my attention. I am usually a one project at a time girl. I guess my fear of having too many things going at once is that I won't get back to them and finish them.

But with the retreat last month and starting the Halloween Cricket piece, I felt like I needed to stay with it awhile. Here's where I am currently




I have been diligently following instructions. There are speciality stitches that we were instructed to leave until last. That is why the witch has no mouth and eyes are not finished. I started on the diamonds at the bottom last night. Can you believe it was my first time with working with silk threads? Some of the diamonds are stitched with two different variegated silks. What smooth stitching! I may have to splurge and use silks once in awhile!




You may remember this was the project that was in my hoop before the retreat. She is going to be kind of largish but wasn't up to stitching over 1 on 35 count. The eyes are getting older and find that much over 1 stitching to be a big challenge! Especially in the evenings.

There are so many pretty designs out there, and I've seen more that are due to be released at St. Charles. But I have to keep telling myself I have more than enough in my stash to last through a few lifetimes! If we lived long enough to stitch what's in our stash, we wouldn't die for many many years!!!

Well the washing machine needs reloading and dryer needs to be emptied so I best take care of that.

Here's hoping for a good week ahead for all of you, and Happy Stitching!

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Tulsa!!

Hello Stitchy Friends!

I am back home after spending the last 5 days away. I went to the Silver Needle Retreat in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was the first time for me to attend a retreat. We had a great time! My sister, Karen and her daughter, Amy travelled from Minnesota, and met my niece, Barb and myself there.




It was Hot in Tulsa! But we had a great time!

Vickie Hastings from the Cross-Eyed Cricket presented the cross stitch portion of the retreat. She has been designing charts for 31 years! It was interesting to hear her story. She had a Halloween project designed for us to work on.




This photo is of the stitched model.

I had to get a picture of Vickie with one of my favorite designs




A Walk in the Woods. I have stitched this one, as well as my sister. One of my stitching friends in our stitch group has done this one three times, as gifts for family and friends.... Vickie shared her design process from idea and inspiration stage to finished chart.




She was very friendly and gracious. I had to purchase a chart for an autograph!

We also took finishing classes by the famous Mona. I learned some new techniques







We also were treated to a day of fun with the girls from Just Another Button Company. I will never look at another one of their buttons and not appreciate the work and effort that goes into creating it!!!

We spent a whole day learning of the button making process and made some of our own.




We worked as teams, these were the results of our group. We created yellow flower buttons.




We also had time to create random designs.




These were made by some of the other groups. We were able to take home an assortment of buttons made by each group.




These ropes of clay are waiting to be sliced into buttons and baked.

It was a wonderful retreat, Lindy of the Silver Needle and her staff made sure everyone had a great experience. Between the classes and the shopping, we had a great time!!

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We have progress

Hello Stitchy friends!

I just wanted to share a quick picture...we no longer have a headless woman here!




I was hot here today, so I found some time to spend in my stitching chair. So, I have to share the progress!

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Summer is flying by...

Hello Stitchy Friends!

I can't believe it's been so long since my last post... I apologize. Things have been flying by at a fast speed it seems.

Today is bittersweet, our daughter Holly, has moved out from home into her first apartment. We will miss her being here. But, she was very excited to make this big step. She recently got a job also, which she was thrilled about. However, I should say she is staying in our home town, so it's not like we won't see her often.

Our son asked me what I was going to do with the empty room..without hesitation I said craft room! Lol. He laughed and said you've been thinking about that for awhile...

Mike and I will be adjusting to our 'empty nest'. Of course not so empty with four cats and Harry....

The times they are a changing.

Things have quieted down here late this afternoon, so thought I would have time to share some stitching updates with you.

The Melicent sampler is finished!


I just finished giving it a press so it would be photo worthy.

I of course had to find something new to start...




This has been in my stash for awhile. I didn't want to stitch it on 35 count linen over 1 as the pattern suggested.... That's just too small for me to stitch comfortably.

So I found some linen in my stash....




And I have a start. It has been fun so far. Sorry for wrinkles and hoop marks but you can see my progress.

I have other Americana themed pieces, so this will fit in nicely with those.

I took something to my LNS in Clinton for framing, so I will share a picture when I get it back.

I am getting quite excited because you see, on Wednesday this coming week I am leaving for my very first stitching retreat! Months ago, my sister proposed the idea when she saw The cross eyed cricket would be featured at a retreat at the Silver Needle in Tulsa, OK! So, we talked it over and decided this would be doable. Our niece from California is joining us and my niece from Minnesota. So, the four of us will be Oklahoma bound soon. I will share pictures and news from the retreat on our return.

Harry got a visit to the groomer last week, so he's sporting a shorter look for summer.


We also made it up to Michigan for a short weekend trip before the Fourth of July.




Mike enjoyed himself getting some pictures.

Happy stitching!

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