Many, many more

Its been probably a month since I last posted, and man, I've been busy! This is going to be a long post, with lots of pictures, so go grab a Pepsi, or a cup of tea/coffee, and get comfy in your chair. Maybe a pillow for your stitch butt? (thanks Siobhan for that delicious and oh, so, perfectly true phrase!) I hope you enjoy what I've been up to for most of March and a bit of April.


I've not just been stitching, although a lot of that has been going on. This past week, I've worked on framing some pieces that have been lanquishing in the tub, praying that a frame would bring them to be hung on the wall. So, some of these you have already seen before, a few are new finishes.


First, my finish and framing of LHN's Sea to Shining Sea. This has been temporarily framed. Temporary because I absolutely HATE the frame and have plans to make another one as soon as I can get my hands on different molding. But, at least, you can see what it looks like completed. And thanks to all of you that encouraged me to NOT frog. It doesn't look too bad, in my opinion.





Next up is Val's Stuff, "Home is where your cats are". I stitched this for my son Chad. I changed the colors a bit--the black cat was supposed to have green eyes while the gray cat had gold eyes. Well, our black cat has gold eyes and the gray one has green so that was one change. Neither cat has a pink nose so that was also changed. I think I also changed out the color on the house because I didn't have the charted color--but it was a close match.




My last NEW finish came after I had made up frames, so it got left out. Here is Wishing Sheep, by Shepherd's Bush. Isn't he cute, with his birthday cake?



The rest are just frame jobs, in no particular order:


Fright by Shepherd's Bush



Jingle by Shepherd's Bush



Come by Shepherd's Bush



My Garden by Shepherd's Bush



My Heart's Garden by Shepherd's Bush



Snow by the Trilogy



Halloween by Drawn Thread (also for Chad--loves Halloween. It was his idea to put the silver spider on this piece instead of the 4th black button)




And while I was waiting for varnish to dry, and the framing to be completed, I started a new LHN piece called the Needleworker. I am really enjoying this piece and already have plans on framing and where to hang it. Should only take a few more days to get this done. I'm stitching it on Vintage Examplar 32 count, with the recommended Crescent Colour overdyed cottons.




If you have lasted this long, and waited for all the pictures to load, I thank you. Happy stitching, everyone and thank you so much for visiting and all the lovely comments you leave. I hope the sun is shining in your windows today.

OMG, do I need to frog?

HELP!!!

I just noticed that I'm off one stitch on my first block on Sea to Shining Sea. Can you believe that? I checked the instructions, and it says "There are two spaces (stitches) between the individual charts and the white line border." The chart has one blank stitch on each side and two blank stitches on top and bottom. If I go by what she said, then I should have three blank spaces on each side, or should ignore the blank space on each side on the chart. Darn! I thought I had spaced it out perfectly, but I went over 24 stitches to start the middle tree instead of 25--so the right side has three blank spaces and the left has one. Darn again! Now what do I do? I have the house nearly done, the tops of all three trees done--how bad does it look? Does anyone think I should frog it all out? (I am NOT doing that border again, so that means no starting over.) I could add a few extra stitches to the right side tree, make it even up a bit more. I am so bummed out.

On a lighter note, I wanted to show this picture I took of our cat Shadow. For some reason, she loves Wal Mart bags. Grocery store bags. All kinds of bags. She's waiting at the door when I come home from the grocery store and can't wait for me to empty those bags and throw them on the floor. For the last few days, all I have to do is shake out this bag, and put it on the floor, and she crawls into it, curls up and goes to sleep. Spooky used to do this also, until she got her head caught in one of the handles and got "spooked", lol. She tore through the house, trying to get that dratted bag off and since then, when a bag lands on the floor, she's in the other room. Instantly.

Perhaps I'll make a start on 'Home is where your cats are', until I get enough comments for me to make a decision, to frog or not to frog. How does it look? Is it real obvious that there was miscounting going on? Does it look really off center?

Stitch on, dear friends. Spring is a-coming!

Traveling Stitcher

Instead of working on LHN's Sea to Shining Sea, I decided to put it aside (I was so tired of that blasted border) until I had the last installment--oh, who am I kidding? When I saw Traveling Stitcher, I couldn't resist starting it. It is a gorgeous piece from market. I had to wait a few days to be able to afford the finish kit and nearly had the larger piece done before it arrived.

This came as a chart pack with the Crescent Colours necessary for completing it. It is stitched on 32 count Lambswool linen, one of my favorite linens. I enjoyed every minute working this piece. After getting the needlebook done, and both pieces sewn onto the finish kit, I decided that the "set" really needed a scissor fob.

For the fob, I took the letters for "scissors" off the larger piece (the capital 'S' from the personalization alphabet included) and charted all the letters on graph paper. I used the border from the needlebook making it smaller across and longer lengthwise. Inside, I graphed the left side house and the stitcher, along with some grass for the house to sit on. The back side (not shown) simply has the same border and the blackbird from the fence.

This is a great design and it was a lot of fun to stitch. Miss Diane once again has a winner. (of course, lol).

Side note, if any of you reader/stitchers sews at all, you'd do best to make your own finish kit. As pretty as the fabric is, the work put into the finish kit was not worth the money I paid. It could be that as I've been machine sewing since I was five (5) that I've become more of a perfectionist than normal. I was not impressed with the workmanship in the finish kit I received. The needlebook wasn't even "even" front to back. The envelope was simply two pieces of fabric with quilt batting sandwiched between, top stitched to form a 'pocket'--the needlebook was the same except that it folds in half and the top stitching catches a piece of felt for needles.

I'm sorry if I'm hurting anyone's feelings or offending anyone but I think that us stitchers need to stick together. In this day and age, where chart prices are rising, and hand-dyed linen is almost too expensive to use, we should be able to expect to get our money's worth. The price of the Little House Needlework chart pack with thread was very fair, simply the cost of her average chart and the cost of the threads. More than worth the cost to have all the threads right there to use.

Okay, off my soapbox now. It's been a terribly gloomy day here for all that it was warmer than normal. Rain instead of snow--woohoo! Back to working on my Sea To Shining Sea, as the last installment is due in my mailbox early next week--and I have so little of the border left to complete.

On a parting note, let me share a picture I took of our sweet kitties, the ones that share my lap with my needlework most nights. It took several months for them to make friends. For the first few months, if Shadow was sleeping in my lap, Spooky would jump up and lay right on top of her. Now they share lap space, lol. Spooky is the black cat and Shadow is the grey ring tailed cat. This picture shows them sitting on the back of my chair, watching the early birds.

Until next time, keep those needles flying.

SNOW by the Trilogy

Okay, okay, I'm on a roll with small projects. This is SNOW by the Trilogy. The picture came up a bit crooked on the scanner, but I'm not going to photograph it until its framed. The picture frame is done, just needs to be painted--blue to match, hopefully, the blue of the border. I had plans of pulling out something larger to stitch, but as I was looking through my stash of kits (I didn't want to dig out floss and fabric) outside it was very cold, and this little snowman appealed to me. I did change one item--the snowflakes around the snowman were regular cross stitches, which I changed to smyrna stitches. Makes them stand out a bit more. This was stitched with Weeks Dye Works and GAST overdyes.

On to a bigger project. Once SNOW was finished, I pulled out LHN's From Sea to Shining Sea. I was inspired by Nicole and her work on her's. She's nearly done and I'm still working on the border chart. I started this piece when it first came out, but the border overwhelmed me. It seemed to go on forever. I am working on it now, and am getting close to being able to work on the interesting parts, the individual houses.

That's all for now, I'm going back to my stitching. Our weather has turned fairly warm so I'm thinking of washing my car tomorrow. Hubby is off, back on the road, thank heavens. There is only so much mud I want to clean up every hour! But, he works hard, so if you pray, pray for him to be safe. He's headed towards Dallas, TX. Stitch on, dear friends, and thank you so much for all the lovely comments you leave me. They are very much appreciated.