Still Stitching

I thought I would try to update this blog before the year ends. Here are some pictures of the some of my WIPS....at least the ones I have been working on most recently.

Prairie Schooler ornament from the 2008 Christmas Ornaments special issue of Just Cross Stitch magazine.

Here is my WIP of Prairie Schooler's November. This is not such a great picture. The colors are richer and the fabric darker. I'll try to get a better picture next time.

And then here is Lizzie Kate's Christmas Flip-Its. I have 2 blocks left, and I have ordered the pattern for them. I am just waiting for it to arrive to finish this one.

Well, that is all for now. Happy New Year everyone!

Summer Snapperland Finished

This morning I put in the last stitches on Summer Snapperland by Bent Creek, finishing that last block on the left. The crabs and the seahorses are my favorite parts of this design.

So here is a picture of the whole Snapperland at last. I made some color changes to fabric and threads. This is stitched on Zweigart 32 ct. natural linen and I exchanged GAST Blue Jay for the GAST Brethren Blue, and DMC 783 for the GAST Mustard Seed. I also made the little grassy bushes with GAST Dried Thyme instead of GAST Old Hickory because I wanted greener plants.

I have the patterns, including the free chart for the border design for the Autumn Snapperland, so I'll be getting to that one eventually.

I also finished the next section of the Lizzie Kate Christmas Double-Flip Its, so that makes 8 down and four more to go.

It is getting more and more difficult to get a good picture of the entire project, but here it is.

Happy stitching everyone!

Around the World

I spent a lot of time surfing stitching blogs last night, and there were so many beautiful projects out there, I decided that it was time for another Around the World post.

First stop is in Spain (I think?), region or town unknown, to El Blog de Estrella where you can see her stunningly beautiful finish of Plight of Fancy by Long Dog Samplers. It is quite a different thing to see a stitched finish of a Long Dog instead of the computerized images on their designs. The colors on this one are so vivid and bright, and the photography is superb as well.

Next we travel on to Italy and stop at il mercoledi to gaze at Mariangela's three lovely finishes. She has finished My Quaker Garden and When This You See, both by Blackbird Designs, and a red monochrome design by Dany. It always amazes me to see how popular Blackbird Designs are all over the world. They show up everywhere.

A short hop over the Alps into France and we'll dash to des fils defilent in Paris to look at Ktia's unique and gorgeous finish of the Mary Wigham Reproduction Sampler in blues and tans. I have seen many different SALS for this one...French, Spanish, German and even Russian. I really like this blue and tan version.

Now across the ocean sea we travel, to the city of Montreal in Canada to a blog in Russian called My Workbasket to look at a gorgeous tea cozy that Amaryllis (I think...awkwardly sounding out the Russian letters) made from the new Tea Party design by Victoria Sampler. She even changed the saying to Russian. I love it!

Well, that's it for now. I hope you enjoyed the short tour.

Summer Snapperland

I have not stitched much over the summer, which seems, sadly, to be a pattern for me. But anyway, I have fallen back into it now and I am nearing completion on the Bent Creek Summer Snapperland.

Here is a close-up of the right hand side which I recently completed

I am also stitching on Lizzie Kate's Christmas Double Flips. I have finished through the seventh block, and so I have 5 more to go.

Tomorrow I should get a good part of the next block on this piece done, as I will be stitching on it for the Saturday Night SAL on the Only One Ewe forum.

Stitch-A-Longs

I have debated whether or not to make this post now. My husband and daughter have gone on a trip and they have taken my camera. I am able to take pictures with my son's camera, but it is not nearly as good as the one that has gone overseas.

But I have some ongoing SALs and I really don't want to wait another week until they return to post updates, so I will just make do. Thus said, please forgive the dark, blurry photos.

A few months ago, I joined a French forum, Les Copines, so I could participate in some of their SALs. So far, I have signed up for 3: Lizzie Kate's Christmas Flip-Its, Bent Creek Summer Snappers, and Madame La Fee's Gingerbread Cookies. The first two are ongoing, and the last begins near the end of April. With these SALs, everyone agrees to stitch on the same part of the design on a schedule, usually an objective every two weeks. I have found these to be enjoyable so far, and I like having the discipline of a schedule.

Here is the March update of the Christmas Flip-It Bits (this picture was taken before my camera left the country)

And here is Summer Snappers after two objectives. There is a new objective every 2 weeks. I promise that I will have a better picture next time.

And then I have stitched some on Mon Beau Chalet, I have not quite caught up to my March objective as I got a little off-schedule while I was stitching only HAED designs for a month (uh...I claim temporary insanity).

I return now to my stitching, and wish everyone a wonderful week!

Finally an Update

At last, I have a little time in which to make a post. February and March are always extremely busy months around here, and when it gets like this I seem to choose to stitch rather than blog. But things seem to be slowing down some around here now, and next week it should get even better.

I have been stitching in this lost time, but it has been mostly on my HAED designs. I was motivated to get back to stitching on Santa's List, my Christmas HAED WIP, by an informal HAED SAL organized by Cindy F. Then I received a message from Denise on the HAED Forum that she was getting the Christmas SAL there restarted. I was already working on Santa's List, so I joined that one as well. Then I was delighted to find that Cindy and Wendy started a blog for HAED stitchers called Our Friends HAED SAL, which I also joined. When I finished my first page on Santa's List, I still wanted to stitch on a HAED, but I was ready to do something different. So I pulled Fairy Village out of the drawer, and then later retrieved May I Have This Dance as well. I have enjoyed getting back to stitching these designs. Progress is slow, but I enjoy watching the design emerge onto the fabric. Here are some updated pictures.

First is Santa's List by Ruth Sanderson. I have finished the first page.


Next is Fairy Village by Lisa Victoria. I have about 2 and 1/2 pages done.

And finally, here is May I Have This Dance, which I am still stitching away on as of yesterday. I have almost finished 4 pages, but only one of them was a full page. I have approximately 11,000 stitches completed.

I have stitched a little bit on some other things, keeping up with a couple other SALs, but I am going to save those for another post, or this one will become rather unwieldly.

happy stitching everyone!

The Blight Has Struck

Everyone here in the Bungalow has been sick in the last two weeks. It is the dreaded flu...and a very potent version of it as well. My daughter is the last to succumb, and she has had it the worst of all. After just three days, she has a "really nasty nasal infection" according to her physician. I so look forward to it being gone, gone, gone.

Let us get on now to more pleasant topics. I finished the February portion of the Lizzie Kate Christmas Double Flip-Its. I changed the pink color in the stocking to a gold one so that the finished picture will better match my Christmas decor. This continues to be an easy, enjoyable stitch, which is a good thing because I stitched it while still feeling quite under the weather.

I also started work on the next pattern in my LHN Dear Diary Sampler. This is the section for Emmaline Whitcomb in Santa Clara. I can't wait to stitch the house.

Well, everyone keep well. I would rather have a visit from the dreaded frog than this horrid little bug. If everyone keeps healthy, I should be back to the HAED SAL next Friday. I will also be getting back to checking up on everybody's blogs.

New Project

Last spring, in 2008, I posted about wanting to start Strawberry Fields Farm, a design by Victoria Sampler.

I decided to purchase the thread package from Vikki Clayton's Hand-Dyed Fibers website. Although I love her silk thread and it is a joy to stitch with, I was not happy with a few of the color conversions, and this had kept me from starting this design. It is hard for me to match colors from pictures on a website, so I finally decided to just replace the colors that I didn't like with threads from my stash. So, after a couple of missteps here and there, I have finally arrived at my own unique conversion for this design. It is mostly HDF silk, but with about 4 GAST threads as well.

So, here is my start on Strawberry Fields Farm. I stitched my first Queen Stitches on this section as well. They were not as hard as I had been led to believe, which leaves me with the uneasy feeling that perhaps I did not do them right.

Also, I also received this blog award from Lynn this week. Thank you so very much! I am supposed to list 5 different addictions, so here it goes:

1. Stitching

2. Coffee (McDonalds and Dunkin' Donuts being preferred)

3. 24 (the television show with Kiefer Sutherland)

4. Internet (stitching forums and blogs; news sites as well)

5. Baking (bread, cakes, cookies, muffins...)

I'll pass this award on to the following enjoyable blogs:

Kendra at the Stitching Hour
Stephanie at Stephanie's Stitching and Musings
Cathy at No Sampler Left Behind
Debby at The Stitching Wizard
Stephanie at In Stitches

It has been a long time since my last post, and the main reason behind this is we have been experiencing internet connection problems. It seems to be intermittent. Sometimes we can connect and be on 30 minutes or so before it disconnects and freezes, but other times we can't even get it to connect at all. My husband has been working at it, downloading updates and such, and it has improved, but it is still not as it should be. I am ready to get another service provider (being as this is an addiction and all). But anyway, it stayed up long enough for me to make this post :-)

Enjoy your stitching, one and all!

HAED SAL 2

Well this week I had a much more normal HAED stitching day, as I couldn't stitch all day and all evening. I went with my children on a field trip to the Bureau of Printing and Engraving in Fort Worth where they make all our money...well the paper kind anyway. It was a fascinating trip, and we learned all kinds of things about how they make the greenbacks. The employees who actually run the printing presses work in fenced-in locked areas, kind of like cages, and they can only be involved in one part of the process and can never go into any of the other "cages". The security precautions are amazing. The most interesting part to me was the area where they showed how they "reclaimed" damaged money...money damaged by fire, flood and even explosives. I was surprised to find out how many people are storing stacks of bills in their homes. Unfortunately no cameras at all are allowed inside the Bureau, so I have no pictures to share.

And, I was gone most of the day, so I was only able to stitch in the evening. I got about 400 stitches done last night, and then I got another 200 stitches done this morning before everybody woke up. I just love those early morning hours when everything is quiet and peaceful.

Here is a picture of my progress on Santa's List:

I also did some stitching this week on Mon Beau Chalet, a design I am working on from the De Fil en Aiguille magazine. I finished my January goal for this WIP.

Here is a closeup picture of the motif that I stitched.

I have also been working on my Engelbreit, but I don't think I'll post a picture on that one again until I have it finished.

Have a great weekend everyone!

New HAED SAL

Last week I read about a new HAED SAL on Cindy's blog. They were going to work on their HAED projects on Fridays. I have a couple of HAED WIPs which had not been worked on in a long, long time, so I decided that this might be a great opportunity to work on one of them. So I joined the SAL, and yesterday, Santa's List by Ruth Sanderson came out for some attention. I got a tremendous amount done for me, and there is a reason. My husband and son left on Friday morning for a campout, and so I just stitched and stitched and stitched. My daughter and I went out to eat at Chili's last night and then we watched National Treasure II and I stitched some more into the night. It was very enjoyable to work on a HAED again, and I will hopefully be back to it next Friday.

Click here if you want to see what the design will look like when completed.
Then here is my before-SAL picture:

And here is the after-SAL picture:

I also wanted to explain a little bit about the LHN Dear Diary sampler that I am working on as well, because there were some questions regarding it. The patterns are each sold separately and they are not really intended to go together into a large sampler, but I saw a picture of a Neighborhood Round Robin project that was using the Dear Diary charts in two straight columns of four. I thought that it was beautiful. (sorry, I couldn't locate this picture online) Then I read that an informal SAL was being begun by Cheryl and Vonna as they were inspired by this same Round Robin. I played around with the patterns until I decided upon a layout that I liked, and the rest is history. It will make a large project completed (243 x 317 stitches), but it doesn't seem overwhelming because I think of each separate little chart as a finish. I am stitching it on a full yard of 32 count Lakeside maple sugar linen.

And, finally, here are some stitching posts from around the web that inspired me this week. The stitching web is abundantly full of new starts in honor of the new year this week, but I found a few lovely finishes to highlight.

Penelope in Italy finished this adorable hornbook. I am not familiar with the design, but I like it very much.

Silvia in Barcelona, Spain has finished a beautiful redwork Bienvenue
heart with roses.

And Loreta has a gorgeous wintry finish of CCN's Forest Snowfall.

Until next time....

Lizzie Kate SAL

This is just a quick post to show my progress on a new SAL which I have joined for the new year. It is a French SAL organized on the Les Copines forum for the Lizzie Kate Christmas Double Flip-Its, and they are calling it the 12 mois de noel or 12 months of Christmas. I have completed the January portion as you can see below. I used the DMC threads rather than WDW, and I am not going to attach the charms until the end. I think this is going to be a fun, easy stitch.

Dear Diary Progress

I hope that everyone is having a wonderful stichy start to the New Year. For my part, I was glad to see the end of 2008. It was a difficult year, and I even had trouble getting into the holiday spirit in December. But now it is past, and we have a whole new twelve months to contemplate and make stitching plans for.

I have been stitching some. Not as much as I would prefer, but enough to finish the Mary Heaton section of the Dear Diary Sampler.

And here is a picture of the whole sampler to date.


Also, about a week ago, I purchased a skein of Crescent Colors Apple Fritter. I usually just buy the threads that a design calls for, but when I saw this one, it just called to me. I wanted to try it out on something small. Anyway, when I got home, I searched through some freebie patterns, and chose to stitch this Noel design by gazette94 . I love the color and I think that I am going to use it on a larger design that I have plans for later in the year.

Till next time....enjoy your stitching and families.