Another finish! I was gazing around my stitching area looking for a new start and lo & behold, my eyes fell upon this all ready to go. So I started it Christmas Eve & have just now added the ribbon. I'm in love with this little beauty!
Yep, I know.....a finish at Christmas! I've been stitching this since September and realised about Monday last week that I didn't have much to go. So I got stuck in so it could be finished before Christmas. Not that it's really finished but the stitching is finished. Into the framing/finishing pile it goes. I'm very happy. Now I can start something new!
Merry Christmas everyone!
Today I got my HOE Christmas ornament in the mail. This was a 'no goodies' exchange so all we had to do was stitch, finish & post. Easy! Here's what I got:
I haven't had that much to show and say lately. All I have to show you is my finished Christmas ornaments for this year. I have another one but can't find it....it's the one I stitched way back in January. No idea where that bugger is! Then I forgot about my recent finish, Peace so it's not done either. What a bummer.
I'm also feeling a bit sad at the moment cos my DD has decided not to have her photo taken with Santa anymore. My little girl is obviously growing up and I'm wondering where the time went. Maybe this is all reflected in my stitching. I'm still doing some but it's very slow going, hence the lack of posts here. So what am I working on? At the moment I'm still doing the Lizzie Kate Double Christmas flip its. I also started a breast cancer fund raiser from Elegant Stitch, Blue Ribbon Designs' With All Your Heart. I'm stitching it in memory of my friend June who died last year. It would've been finished, but I made a mistake on it & have put it aside for the moment.
Just finished up these 2 ornies this week. The SB one took a little time - it sure had a lot of different threads in it! The Blackbird one, OTOH took me a day & a half. They're both from the 2009 JCS ornament edition.
I know it's been a while since I posted but I actually have been stitching! Yes, a miracle. The convention was fabulous and then I stayed with my friend Janine in Perth for a couple of days. We had a stitchy GTG while I was there too and it was great to catch up with the Perth girls. Haven't seen them for...hmmm...18 months? So I have lots of pics to share here with you all.
If you want to read a review of the convention, try my sewing blog at nosilasews.blogspot.com. There are pics & everything LOL!
First up, a pic of the gals & me in Perth.
I'm back from my trip to Perth and completely exhausted. I stitched a bit on the plane both ways and am really looking forward to getting back into it today & tomorrow. The annual Bathurst V8 supercar race is on tomorrow so I might get Earth Gatherers out for a look in while I watch. It's been 6 years since I've seen the race live so it should be great.
I've also had a finish this week. It's the 2009 SB fob and I just adore the colour of the linen. It's really "me" if you know what I mean. I was a little disappointed with the amount of thread in the kit though. Usually SB give you enough to stitch things twice so to find single strands of each colour for this one was a bit unusual. Not only did I only get 1 strand of each colour, but each strand was only about 14" long. I found some leftovers from another kit & the strands in that one were 26" long so you can see how different it is. I don't usually bother getting extra from SB as I can usually use my stash if I run out but this kit had a new WDW in it, Guacamole, which I didn't have so had to buy one specially because of course, I ran out of that colour (it's used in the hill). Anyway, enough of that rant. Here are the pics (I just noticed when I took them that I had forgotten to put the button on).
Hello dear readers...you're probably wondering where I've been (or maybe you're not?) for the past month or so. Well, I've been stressing and slumping. An interesting combination I think.
I'll tell you about the slumping first. There I was stitching merrily along on Angel of Winter when I got to the bit that has Wisper in it. Don't know about you, but I'm not a huge fan although I do love the end result. Well this baby is a blend of Wisper and DMC so it's double trouble if you get my drift. So the result is that I've chucked it into a corner and have not picked up a needle for more than a week! Shock horror. I'm now thinking that I may need to start that Lizzie*Kate christmas number to get myself out of it. Yeah, any reason to start that I hear you say!
The stressing bit has nothing to do with cross-stitch at all. I've been sewing. There...I've said it. Because I've lost 15kg (that's 33lbs for you imperial gals) at WW I have absolutely no clothes to wear that fit me. I'm going to the Australian Sewing Guild convention in 2 weeks and need clothes (I'm in Sydney and it's in Perth so for you yanks, that's the equivalent of New York to LA)! So I've been stressing about what size to make, whether it will fit, how it will look...you know the sort of thing. So amongst all of that, a friend asked me to make her an outfit for her 50th birthday party which is Saturday night. So I've been labouring over that as well and stressing myself out cos sewing for someone else is such a totally different kettle of fish! Anyway, it's done and I've delivered the outfit and she loves it thank goodness. Part of it is on my sewing blog at nosilasews.blogspot.com. The rest will be there after the party when I take some pics.
So...what else? Oh yeah...I also got me a new laptop. We all know how time consuming changing your puter is. Well this is even worse cos it's an Apple Macbook! So I've had to completely learn a new system and I'm still attempting to do that. It's a huge learning curve and I haven't really been completely happy but I'm coming to terms with it now.
Then this morning, a friend offered me a job! Oh the irony! I had decided that I would apply for a night sorting job at the PO after I got back from the convention. It never rains but it pours. So now I've been offered this other job. Ergh..decisions!
So that's my month. Now I shall take a big deep breath & go start that Lizzie*Kate! LOL.
No..not from me but my good friend Mel from The Daily Mel is having a fabulous & very generous giveaway on her blog.
As much as I don't want anyone else to enter, if I mention this here I get another entry. LOL. So head on over if you're interested...it's a great prize.
After finishing Finch Song, Snow scissor fob and an ornament, I really really wanted to start Lizzie Kate's Christmas Double Flips from last year. I've resisted so far (but I wanna!! Waaa!) so instead I got Earth Gatherers out for a little while. I wanted to finish the girl pudgie before I posted a pic so here is how it's looking right now, before it gets put away for (probably) another year!
I finished this fob while I was away at the weekend, stitching & drinking. It only needed the back-stitch on the back and I did the proper finishing this morning.
I got a parcel from SB yesterday! Wahoo!! It was my reward for losing 10% of my weight at WW (10.5kgs). It came really quickly and when I opened it, a shower of tiny black beads fell out. I couldn't work out how or why that happened as none of the kits appeared to have those beads. Well, they do. The black beads came out of the Glad Tidings fob. The little ziplock bag had a hole punched in it & they had managed to fall out of there & then fall out of the packaging where it was tied with a ribbon!
Here's what I got: Purple Snowman, Happy Pumpkin fob, Glad Tidings fob and 2009 Scissor fob. Sorry for the dark pic..there was no sun out (of course, there is now!) and I couldn't use a flash.
I received my HOE Christmas in July exchange yesterday from Diana in NC. I love it all. She sent me some gorgeous pink Gloriana thread, some ribbon trims, a pair of pastel pink scissors and a Sweetheart Tree chart with charm. Oh & the stitched ornament. It's lovely. Beautifully stitched and finished.
The whole shebang.
I've been away for the past 5 days doing some family history research. I found some interesting things but other bits just about do my head in! Anyway, so while I was away I managed to finish one ornament and the other was done before I left. I'm really behind with my ornament stitching this year and need to catch up.
The ornament I sent for the HOE Christmas in July exchange has been received so now I can show you a pic. It's a Prairie Schooler from the Santas & Snowmen leaflet. This one was for Edgar in San Francisco. I love stitching these! I've done 2 from this chart so far and neither one has been for me...I must fix that!
Yee haaaaa! Finch Song is finished! Just in time for its real release into the stitching world. I'm very happy with it and now it can join about 9 other pieces in the framing pile. This now means that I have finished everything I did at the 2008 retreat. That's an amazing thing!.JPG)
I was reading Jude's blog the other day where she mentioned sewing in schools. It really brought back memories of what I sewed in primary school (year 3 to be precise) and I remembered that I still have something from that era. So I thought I'd post a pic of it here for you all to be amused. :)
It's a pinwheel. I think that one was supposed to keep one's pins in the sides, somewhat like a pinkeep. Please excuse the dirty marks on it - it's been hanging around for 40 years LOL.
I always thank people from long ago who date photos etc. My teacher was obviously a cluey woman cos she dated my pinwheel. I would have no idea when I sewed it otherwise. Boy, I can't even remember her name! But I do remember that she was old. Probably only in her 50s though. ROFLOL
And no, I still haven't finished Finch Song!
Yesterday I went to the Quilt & Craft Fair here in Sydney with my cross-stitch friends Anne, Row, Karen & Amanda. I got a bit of stash for both myself and my mother. Mother is on a roll at the moment. She is in love with LHN charts & has stitched quite a few. So my mission was to buy anything I saw that I thought she would like. I love spending someone else's money LOL. Here's a pic of the stash.
Amanda's chocolate brownie.
Last but not least, my cake which was called Celebration of Chocolate. Milk choc mousse layered between dark chocolate cake with dark chocolate icing. Yum! I almost couldn't eat it all. :) I didn't have any dinner when I got home either.I'm up to the pathway on my mantelpiece but I got a bit bored with it. So I had an urge to stitch on Finch Song so got it out and have been stitching away. I don't think there's that much to go until a finish so I've decided I will keep going until I either get sick of it or finish it. Here's a pic of the WIP.
I found a mistake on the chart or pic (not sure which). The basket that is just above the pink heart at the bottom is charted in green, same colour as the border vine. However, the pic on the front of the chart shows it in what looks like Black Crow. Anyway, I stitched it as charted cos I thought the black would be too dark.
I really don't know where the time has gone. I've been trying to upload some pics of my Mantelpiece here for the past 2 days but Blogger is not co-operating. Phooey to blogger I say!
I finally got back to this piece after being side-tracked by my SB phase. I got quite a bit done over the Easter break so here are the latest pics.
I've been struggling to finish this little ornament. I'm not sure why...maybe it was due to the expanse of white. But anyway, here it is. It was meant to be finished in March but obviously it's a little late. No matter...there's no stitching police out there.
