A Finish!

Just a quick post to show off my first "real" finish. It is by Notforgotten Farm. I am pretty sure I used 32 ct. opalescent raw Linen and it is all standard DMC floss. It was lovely to work on but I had to switch around some of the colors that were charted because they faded in to the linen I chose. It has a unique color palette, heavy on the orange and copper tones. Finished size was about 9 inches square and I actually made a pillow! I bought a little sewing machine but ended up not using it because I could not figure out how to thread it and gave up and did it by hand. Someday I will have to get someone to teach me to thread my darn machine. Also how to so the little bit of the pillow you leave open to stuff it. I ended up doing kind of a primitive whipstitch along the bottom because I could not figure out how to do it.

This was my piece for the 12 days of Christmas exchange and I sent it off to my recipient, Emily in NC. She really likes it, I'm so glad. Not everybody likes "primitive" designs. I don't know why, I think they're lovely ( and easy for a novice like myself to stitch). Different Strokes, I guess.

Happy Holidays to All!

Thank you Debra

I'm the luckiest girl in the world, look at what I got!!! My secret Santa turned out to be Debra from Atlanta and she stitched me the loveliest Alphabet Block Christmas Sampler. It is amazingly beautiful and BIG! The colors are also muted enough that I will most definitely leave this up all year. Thank you so much to Debra for all the wonderful gifts, thank you to ILCS board for being such a source of inspiration and stash enabling, and thank you to Colin for putting this wonderful exchange together!!!

Ho Ho Ho...

It's a busy time of year for everyone but I also have the added busy-ness of both my children's and my husband's birthdays from the end of November til the first week of January. It is so nice then that I participated in a number of stitching exchanges this season. It is lovely to get a little package for myself in the mail.

First up was a Christmas ornament exchange. My partner was Andrea and she stitched this fabulous ornament for me. I love it and am very impressed because she had such a short time to do it in. Thank you Andrea ;)


Next is the 12 Days of Christmas Exchange. One gift to open from December 1 on with the final gift a stitched piece from your partner. My Santa sent me a large parcel that instantly brought me back to my childhood and getting presents sent from my Grandparents that lived thousands of miles away. Of course Christmas is not "about presents" but that does not mean we cannot find joy in the gifts we do receive. And it was so joyful to crack up open that box and start digging through the peanuts. Above is a picture of everything with my 3 year old's hand in the bottom right. Poor thing just had her birthday and was not quite getting that other people get presents besides her.

Below are my Day 1 and Day 2 gifts. Day 1 was a tube of Lotion. It has a very mild, clean scent that I love and it will be a valuable soldier in my winter war against my dry hands. Day 2 was Needles, Oodles of Needles!! You really can never have too many. Especially since I have a few projects going and I tend to stash packages of needles with each project and then I tend to lose or leave behind needles if I am stitching on the go. (Eeep sorry for the long run-on sentence). Thank you so much to my Secret Stitching Santa. And thank you to Colin, one of the moderators of the I love cross stitch yahoo group, for putting together this exchage.