HAED Christmas SAL

On the 24th and 25th of every month, I participate in a Christmas design SAL on the HAED Forum. There is also a themed monthly SAL planned usually on the 4th weekend of the month. This month the theme was Christmas and/or Mermaids, so I was able to do both of them. So here is how far I got on Santa's List by Ruth Sanderson. I enjoyed working on it, and it is a nice change from working on Fairy Village, my other HAED. You can't really see it in the picture, but the snow has sparklies in it created by blending filament.

I hope everyone has a good Wednesday.

Thankful

We spent Thanksgiving with family at their lovely home in East Texas. I so enjoyed walking around their land, and I took some pictures. Please forgive the blurriness...I didn't realize that there was a smudge on the lens until later.

Their meadows had been recently mowed for hay, so they were very picturesque.

We had the traditional Thanksgiving dinner with all the delicious trimmings and a good time was believed to be had by all. I am so very thankful for God's grace in our lives, my wonderful family, and our health and provision.



And when I got home, I had more to be thankful for as I had a couple of packages waiting for me in the mailbox. What a glorious time was had revelling in the new stash. First, I received four backissues of some French magazines. Did I tell you how much I love French designs? Roaming around French stitching blogs, I came across some great pictorial reviews of some French magazines, and I decided to try and purchase these four. They took 5 weeks to arrive, but here they are! Point de Croix #47, Point de Croix Thematique #31 (Torchons), Mains & Merveilles #58, and De Fil en Aiguille Hors-Serie Alpin.

And, I got another package, this one full of charts. They are Strawberry Fields Farm by Victoria Sampler, Button Up by Prairie Schooler, Back from the Brink by Crossed Wing Collection, Circles of the Sea by Cross My Heart, Gingerbread Cottage by Country Cottage Needleworks, Magie de L'hiver by Isabelle Vautier, Winter Whites and Snowflakes and Frappucino by Little House Needleworks.

Some Engelbreit and a Parakeet

I have been stitching away this week on my Mary Engelbreit WIP. I have now completed the upper half of the merry skier. Soon he should even have legs and skis. I have also inevitably added more yellow border and more blue sky. You can now see the bottom edge of where the moon will be. But now I am reluctantly putting it away so I can try to complete another month on my Petite Maisons, and to participate in the HAED Christmas project SAL. I have a barely begun HAED Christmas WIP called Santa's List by Ruth Sanderson.

The last couple of weeks, we have had an unusual visitor to our backyard birdfeeder. Our yard seems to have become an attractive refuge to someone's escaped parakeet. He is bright yellow and comes and goes with flock of sparrows.

He is less skittish than the sparrows, though, and will let us get quite close to him to take his picture. He also cocks his head as though listening to you when you talk to him. I hope he gets through the winter okay.

I wish all my fellow Americans a Happy Thanksgiving and a

wonderful stitchy week to everyone!

A Mitten Ornament

I have been so inspired by seeing many festive Christmas ornaments on other sites, that I decided to stitch one also. Here is a small mitten ornament that I made this week from a 1999 Cross Stitch & Needlework supplement to the Christmas issue. There are four different ones, and I hope to make them all some day. I really love small mitten ornaments.

I need to purchase some fleece and some backing material before I can complete the finishing, but I plan to get this done this weekend, so hopefully I will have another photo of a finished ornament up soon.

Also, I found in my wanderings around the web something I would really like to share. I ran across this adorable realisation of a cute Christmas pattern in the magazine Mains and Merveilles #63. The original pattern in the magazine is for an apron, but I really like this adaptation better. You can go and make a short tour of Les Chalet des Perelles to see more of this project and many others.

Petite Maisons - June

I am finally making some progress on Petite Maisons. Today I finished the June square. I modified the tiny bird on top of the apple tree a bit. The bird is composed of 415 and 840, and neither showed up well against the fabric, so I backstitched him with one strand of 435. I really like the house in this month and the little blue shed with the roses climbing up it, but the bushes under the apple tree are just a little...well...odd.

Here is a better picture (amazing what a little ironing can do) of the whole project so far. Six down and six to go. I hope to finish July this month also.

And here is how far I progressed on Fairy Village during this last weekend's SAL. Not a whole lot, partly because I had very little stitching time this weekend, and partly because this tree is extremely detailed and I am already tired of stitching it. When I get to the next column, it should go a little faster because there are fewer colors and a little fairy house which should make it more interesting to stitch.

Happy stitching everyone!

Audubon Birding Trip

On Saturday, Kevin and I went on a birding field trip to Lake Tewakoni with the local Audubon club. Kevin has been interested in birds and birding for a long time, but this was our first birding trip with knowledgeable enthusiasts. It was quite an experience for us both. Here is a picture of the lake in northeast Texas where we went. This park was in the news recently as it is the place where that gigantic mutant spiderweb covered nearly an acre of ground. They had sprayed the web so the spiders were dead, but most of the web was still there.

And here is Kevin in typical birdwatcher pose. I think he was looking at a warbler in this picture. Highlights of our trip were two bald eagles, a pileated woodpecker (it was way bigger than I expected), some crested caracaras, some loons, and a palm warbler which is apparently somewhat rare in our area. We saw many other birds as well...Kevin had a list of about 40 different kinds. Red-Headed Ducks, Shoveler Ducks, Widgeons, Pelicans, two kinds of cormorants, Anhingas, Red-Shouldered Hawk, Red_Tailed Hawk. It was a great birding experience.

And here is a picture of some of the birding experts we were with. They were simply amazing. They could identify so many songbirds by their call, and they could find birds so fast in the foliage and identify them in a second. See that long tubular thing hanging from the shoulder of the lady in the tan vest...that is a camera lens. I had never seen a camera lens that long before.

All that birding turned my mind toward some bird-themed cross stitch, but that is another post.

November HAED Challenge SAL

This weekend is the HAED Challenge SAL. This SAL has been going on all year, and the idea is that you stitch on the same HAED project the second weekend of every month all year. It doesn't matter how much you stitch, just that you stitch. I will participate, but unfortunately, I don't think I'll get much stitching time this weekend. Tomorrow I am going on a birding field trip with my son with the local Audubon Society. We should be gone all day. He is a Boy Scout and working on his Bird Study Merit Badge. I will hopefully have some pictures to post on Sunday, if not of birds, at least of some Texas woods. Here is the current picture of Fairy Village, my HAED Challenge SAL project.

Tiny Bit of Christmas

Yesterday, I finished stitching a little Mill Hill Beaded Gingerbread pin on perforated paper. Although this is supposed to be finished as a pin, I am going to make it into an ornament.

And then this morning, I cut it out and did the final finishing. This was fun and quick to do, and I have one more of these in my stash...a penguin. I hope I can get it done before Christmas also, but lots of other projects are beckoning as well.

I wish everyone a very peaceful Wednesday and a good week of stitching!

Petite Maisons de Campagne SAL

I am participating in a year-long French calendar SAL called Petite Maisons de Campagne (Small Houses in the Country). As you can see there is a nice design for every month. I am finding this SAL very enjoyable, but I am still terribly behind, just now stitching June when I should be up to October. Sigh. Every house and garden has been different and I love the colors. This is a free pattern series designed by Maryse at Les Grilles de Maryse. Her blog is in French but it is not difficult to access the patterns and print them out even if you do not know French.

Well, good stitching everyone!

Thunder

Most stitchers seem to have cats, and I have seen some adorable pictures of many of them as I wander around the worldwide web, but I am a dog kind of person. We have two dogs. The first one I am going to show here is Thunder. All we know about her is that she is half Labrador Retriever. We got her from the Humane Society when she was about 3 months old. We don’t know what her other ancestry is, but she is a very mellow, easy going girl…very fitting inhabitant of the Mellow Bungalow. She usually lies nearby when I stitch, wherever I stitch.

Some Mary Engelbreit

I have owned this Mary Engelbreit book for a couple years, and there are a couple of designs in here that I would really like to stitch. I finally decided to start my favorite one, called “To a Friend’s House the Road is Never Long”. I love the cute little cabin and the colorful, happy skier. The bright colors are a welcome change from my other WIPs.


The design that I am stitching is on the left page. There are several creative mini-projects shown for each design in this book. I love the little paperweight.

And finally, here is what I have gotten done so far. I am trying to do a little of the bright yellow border each time I stitch.


Have a good weekend!