It's been a long time...

I have finished a number of things recently but I have been lazy about taking the pictures...finally got around to it! First up is "Percy Pig", a Mill Hill kit designed by Jim Shore. I did this for my mom, who loves all things Piggy. It does not show up in the picture but the piece is heavily beaded. It was a lot of fun and pretty easy to do. Until I got to the beading I could take it along and work on it on the bus or at Tae Kwon Do. The problems began once the stitching and beading was complete. First, I had booched the centering so I ended up having to trim it (it should have fit perfect in the frame also made by Mill Hill). Then I decided to
kind of "mat" it on a small piece of Weeks Dye Wool that I had. Hey, did you know that you shouldn't use glue on perforated paper? Yeah? Well I was completely dopey and did and well, it wasn't good. LUCKILY, the lovely Debra Hall had sent me a little bucket of buttons in the Christmas exchange so I used a couple heart buttons to cover up the worst spots.

I also framed the Mets piece finally but will probably have to re-do it. I am not 100% pleased with the frame. We shall see.



Next up is Medieval Angel Stocking #1 by Mary Beale. When I ordered the chart I already knew I would not make it into a stocking. I just thought it was too pretty to store away most of the year. The Lugana fabric is a one-of-a-kind from Enchanted Fabrics and I did away with the background color that had been charted to highlight the fabric a bit. I also had to extend the castle walls on the right side down a bit so it was less of an obvious boot shape. And finally to give a little more balance I decided to add some text to the left hand side. I chose the word, Caritas, Latin for Charity. Here is a picture from Mary Beale's web site of the original design:


And last but certainly not least, I finished Mansfield Park by The Sampler Girl. It has actually been quite some time since I finished it but then I stored it away for safe-keeping and kept forgetting to take pics! I am really glad I went with the blue fabric, which is brighter than the gray-ish it appears in the pictures. It is such a lovely lovely design...I cannot wait until I frame this and put it up. I may first attempt to make a wall hanging with it. I have bought a couple pretty fabrics that complement it and I am really looking for an excuse to get a sewing machine!

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.

Kit Exchange & Mansfield Progress

Giant smile on my face! I received a wonderful package from my exchange partner Mary on Saturday. The exchange was for the ILCS group and was called "Kit in a Container". Mary was ever so lovely and generous and sent me two gorgeous projects to work on: a BEAUTIFUL Mill Hill Autumn Wreath kit and lovely JBW kit as well. Also in the package were some wonderful goodies: A cute pumpkin basket and some Autumn potpourri, a piece of linen, some needles (Petites! I've been dying to try these-I know someone who uses these exclusively), a prefinished bag with an Aida insert to stitch on, and a Star De-Tailor. She must have been reading my mind with that one! I have been wanting one of these forever but every time I order stash I always forget ;) So I absolutely love everything and will definitely get to stitching at least one of these ASAP. So Thank you Mary, it was lovely being your partner!

Also I have been making some progress on the Mansfield Park Sampler and I also found a great frame for it at a bargain store. Only problem is that the frame already has a kind of generic kitchen print and I take it one is not really supposed to take it out. In other words the backing is kind of bracketed in. Oh, and I broke the glass on the way home but I had planned on taking it out anyway so no biggie. Worst case scenario, the thing cost me maybe seven dollars.

I am gonna get all ambitious and say I will finish this week but I have been helping my husband put up some of his baseball cards to sell on ebay so that is making me extra busy these days. Have a wonderful week everyone!

Ornament Exchange & Mansfield SAL

So we did a Christmas ornament exchange on the ILCS group. I was proud of myself-I did not completely procrastinate and started in on a lovely Mill Hill Santa kit. A couple of days in, I realized I had made a small yet crucial counting error. I literally threw the thing across the room. It would have required the most extensive frogging to date for me and I was sad and mad!!! I gave up, oh well, I guess I don't have to do every exchange. Meh, a couple of days later I set to work on another ornament. When I finished I rushed to the post office, sent it priority just to be safe but YAY postal service took forever to deliver it. So I missed the cut off date to have the ornaments in by. Lucky for me there was another ornament inching its way to its destination. So I was able to participate in the exchange after all! Above is the ornament I received, stitched by Leslie from the ILCS board. I do not have a picture of the ornament I stitched, gah and I just realized I packed up the box with the stuff for another exchange without taking a picture. And wouldn't you know, I come from a family with a notorious penchant for putting way too much tape on packages and gifts. Ah well.

Here is my progress on Mansfield Park. Three weeks in, I did not get as much done as I would have liked this week. I am still really enjoying this stitch although I am debating ripping out a couple of the letters at the top where the floss blends in too much with the fabric. It is not as bad in person so I don't know, maybe I'll just leave it.

Also, last week I started reading a "sequel" to Mansfield Park, "Edmund Bertram's Diary" by Amanda Grange. Really though, it is not a sequel but an homage or a retelling of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park from the point of view of Edmund Bertram. A fairly light read, a few of the scenes are lifted somewhat verbatim from the original. And included in its entirety is the text featured on this sampler: " To sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure, is the most perfect refreshment". So far I like this homage better than the last Jane Austen "sequel" that I read, "Mr. Darcy's Daughters" (forgive me I don't have the author's name handy). Actually I enjoyed that book but at the end of the day I thought the author modernized too much by including too much "saucy talk". I am sooooo not a prude but I hardly think Jane Austen would ever discuss an aristocratic gentleman running off to Italy with one of his footmen.

Goodbye Shea Stadium! We will miss your amazingly bad views but awesome atmosphere.

Fabulous Freebie & SAL=Awesome

Another finish! This one is a freebie by Tanya Marie Anderson aka The Sampler Girl. She designed two freebies related to the Presidential election (one for each side). Many lovely folks are stitching up both but I am partisan enough to just do the one. It is stitched on 14 ct opalescent Aida in Raindrop Flair from Enchanted Fabrics. I used some variegated colors from DMC and added a bit to Tanya's design in order to use up more of my fabric. I repeated her star in a field of blue on the left and whipped up some stripes on the opposite side. The day I finished stitching it I happened upon a Polo by Ralph Lauren canvas hobo bag on clearance and decided it would make a perfect home for this piece. The zipper pull and side of the bag are both adorned with small American flag type designs. This will be my main pocketbook until the end of the election at least.

I fell in love with Tanya's designs originally for her series related to Jane Austen. Even before I had ordered any of the patterns I joined a wonderful yahoo group related to the Jane Austen stitching. This week we started a SAL (StitchAlong) featuring her Mansfield Park design. I am loving working on this piece. It is just so wonderfully pretty and fun to do. I am also working finally with some Vicki Clayton Hand Dyed silk fibers. These.Are.AWESOME. Here is my progress after the first week: