Last Post of the year!!!!!

I truly did try to get a post in earlier but things have been busy this holiday season. With family, baking, gift making and all the things that December is know for I just never found the time. I think we are back to normal......whatever normal is, now. 😁

Beings it is the end of the year I wanted to look back and see what kind of progress I made this year. I felt I had not really completed much stitching until I went to my files and looked. Thank goodness I take pictures of all my finishes.
The List:
8 Mug Rugs with matching napkin (sewing)
4 Wallets (sewing)
7 Purses (sewing)
10 Thread Catcher w/ pin cushion (sewing)
1 Crocheted Blanket and a second one has been started about 1/3 finished
1 Counted Canvas"Joy" Embroidery
Autumn Ala Round (cross stitch)
Playing Cards (cross stitch)
Owls w/ Quote (cross stitch)
Lighthouse (cross stitch)
Poof w/shoes (cross stitch)
Snowman Banner (cross stitch)
10 JBW Designs (cross stitch)
4 other Miscellaneous Mini's (cross stitch)
2 Bags Reindeer and Skull (cross stitch)
1 Wreath (crafting)
2 Fall Wall Hangings (crafting)
5 Fall Jar Decorations (crafting)
7 Christmas Jar Decorations (crafting)
Along with working on HAED Christmas Cottage. Death By Cross Stitch, Spring Village, Army Emblem, Pumpkin Splendor Table Topper, and Christmas Tree 2004 Counted Canvas .
I wanted to do a few collages of the list but my collage maker is on the fritz. 🙁Oh well I will work on it and see if I can get it working and try again later.

Do you make a New Years List/Resolution list of your stitching plans? I do what I cal a soft list. I try to know what I would like to do but if I do not get to it no big deal it just gets moved to the following year. So how did I do I wanted 4 WIPS to be finished only got 3 finished. I did not start my Pixie as I had hoped and only got 1 square for my son started. But I did start and finish 14 projects that are all for me. And my Etsy shop is up but the selling was not as much as I had hoped. All in all it was a good year. Next post I will put my list for 2018. 

We had our annual Stitching Group Christmas party. We do a gift exchange. We pick #'s and then choose from the bags in the order of the numbers. I was # 3.

Then for Christmas a friend stitched me a table topper.  They are oh so adorable. These were my stitching gifts this year.

As mentioned earlier it has been a busy month and not much time for stitching. I only made progress on my HAED Christmas Cottage. And then I had a quick finish with this little reindeer bag. It was a kit with 2 gnomes in red and this deer.

The mug rugs are gifts for friends for sets of 2. Husband and wives Each rug has a pocket that holds a napkin I made that matches to match and I found some really cool gold spoons so I added those in.
A cook and a card player
A pilot and his wife

Dog lovers

A hunter and baseball fan

This is just so you can see how well my snowman card holder worked. 

And finally I was at Michael's to get some picker holders and to check out the after Christmas specials. I got a few things for next year 70% off. And got a rope of flowers, I had a sting of those lights that are battery operated and also bought some white sparkled leaves and made a decoration for January. Blue, white, and copper. 

I wish you all a happy, safe, healthy New Year and hope to see you in the next year.

A month of Thankfulness

I had meant to make this post last week but unfortunately we had a bit of an issue. The Monday after we turned our clocks back my poor puppy was attacked. The animals do not understand the time change, they are used to getting up and going out. We have a system where I go out and check the front yard because of the darkness for critters, mainly skunks as we do not want a situation first thing in the morning. I did this and then I let the boys out they go around the front of the house water all the bushes and then go to an area to poop. I stay on the front porch check the hummingbird feeders and just wait for them to return so we can go in and have breakfast. My boy did not have his collar on this day, as he had a bath the night before and I had not got it back on. This is important because the tags on his collar jingle when he moves so you know where he is. I can only assume, as I did not see the incident but he must have startled the coyote that morning, it was dark, he was silent moving around and they just came upon each other. He never cried out, he never barked, no noise to alert me there was a problem. I went to see what was holding him up and as I came around the corner he was coming back and I could see blood on his neck. I grabbed him up and got him in the house checked the damage and called my vet. Oh course at 10 to 7 they were not open and the closest emergency vet was a 2 hour drive away. My vet would open in 1 hour, so I called the emergency and they walked me through some triage for him and agreed that is was okay to wait for the closer location to open. He has done well with the recovery but of course there were set backs swelling, some infection, no appetite, and stitches not holding. I am happy to say we are past the worst of it and he is no worse for wear but it was a bad week of nursing him and worry. 

I did get some stitching done and it helped me calm down during a trying time. So lets have an update with the WIP's In the last post I mentioned going to my LNS and having a fun time well I did not post pictures of what I worked on that day. I pulled out the counted canvas piece that I was gifted. I have not worked this on some time so it was nice to get it out and put some stitches in. I will show a before and after set since it has been so long since this one was a focus.

I also put time on HAED Christmas Cottage by Dona Gelsinger. This is about 1/3 of the page done. There is a load of confetti in those trees and lights as you can well imagine.

I also pulled out Death by Cross Stitch from Long Dog Sampler Finished up the boarder along the bottom of the Lion and then found a boarder for the right side of him, the stars and diamonds seem to work well with this. I got it out of the book Cross Stitch Silhouettes by Adele Welsby. And then a bit of a start on the next section. This is fun figuring out the best place for the colors I am working with.

I FFO'd the lighthouse for my daughter. Got material from Joann's that I think really set off the finished stitching, added the charms found some twine in my stash that looked like rope and I looked on the internet for some sailor knots and tied a few to add as embellishments. They may not be correctly done but they work for this situation. I will wrap it up and Christmas present is done.

Finally some Thread Porn. When I was in Virginia for our latest visit I came across some thread that was just gorgeous. A lady at one of the shops was stitching with it. She bought it off of Etsy from a couple in Australia, she gave me the shop name and I could just not resist. I came is a very short amount of time even from Oz and it is beautiful.

Happy stitching to you all. With the cooler weather I hope that you are finding a bit more stitching time. Hope to see you back with my next post.

September Heat

It has been an unbelievable beginning to September. This weekend we had 121 0n Friday, 134 on Saturday, 107 on Sunday and 96 on Monday. It has not been fun in anyway, the poor puppies were  not happy. I took them in 3 times and sprayed them with water to cool them down and make things easier Saturday, Friday and Sunday and Monday they got sprayed once in the morning and again in the early evening. We do not have air conditioning in the house and until this weekend I did not care. So as you can probably imagine I did not get any stitching in, it was too hot to even attempt it. That means this will be a pretty short update.

The weekend before last I had a BBQ for friends to celebrate the end of summer. It was fun except for the fact that I was having chest pains the whole time. I thought my hiatal hernia was flaring up, Sunday was similar so Monday I got in with my doctor and she thinks it might have been a heart condition. I do have a family history for heart attacks. I was then sent to a cardiologist and she is going to have me do a few test to see what is going on. Both doctors read me the riot act about not going to the hospital when I was feeling the chest pains.

Enough with the boo-hooing. I am going to be fine so on to the important stuff, Crafting. I have some FFO's and a couple of updates on my WIP's

I showed you the finished stitching last update and now I can share the FFO of those 4 smalls. 3 pillows and 1 wall hanging. I love the colors in these.

  

And I have some good progress on the Stoney Creek Spring Village pattern. I love these colors and the fun of the houses. 

That is it for stitching on this update with health and heat I have had limited ability to stitch and I really miss the joy that it gives me on a day to day basis.

I am doing a personal Stitch from Stash Challenge. I had signed up with a Facebook group. It was just going to be a fun thing to try to get me to look in my stash and do some of the patterns I have bought instead of buying new stuff. Well it got really discouraging. The way the moderator has set-up the rules people were getting more credit for finishing a Lizzie Kate pattern then a person who was stitching a full coverage page such as a HAED or a Atesy pattern. How is that even remotely fair. I questioned her in a private message and she said in her eyes it is a fair system. As I said it was just suppose to be a fun effort but it really struck me as crazy to say a full coverage was not as challenging as a more simple pattern such as Prairie Schooler or Lizzie Kate. I told her thanks for the chance to join but it was not my idea of fair so I left. I did not air any of my discontent on the open forum as I feel that is rude. I went in with my expectations and that was not how it came about. That is my bad, I should have researched the rules better. So I am still following the basic rules I have a budget of $25 each month for new threads, fabric or patterns and I get a credit for the amount of stitching I finish each month. It is not a scientific formula it is just a basic I stitched about this many stitches so that is about this much credit. I keep track of purchases and have a spread sheet. After 2 months of following this challenge I am at a + $21.68 I would have wished for a better result but the purchase of the Halloween table topper and fabric set me back. Plus I have bought several new over dye threads. At least I am still in the positive balance so hopefully I can stop spending and just stitch what I have. I am thinking of starting a Stitch from Stash Challenge the first of 2018 and maybe have a check in and prize give away. It could be fun but I would have to figure out how the check in would work.

All right folks that is about all there is this time. Enjoy the cooler weather, fall colors and stitching time you all can find time for!!!!!!!!!!

August Updates

Wow here it is August 2nd and I am just know making a post. July just flew by and I only made the 1 post. I sure hope I have a bit more luck in August and can make more then a single.

I will start out with my finishes, a couple months ago I showed you the blanket that I was working on. It is intended as a gift for a friend at Christmas. It took longer to finish then usually because the heat we are having makes it all but impossible to have that laying on my lap. But it finally cooled off enough for me to finish it up.

I also got 2 small stitches finished and FFO-ed (Fully Finished Object) One a few days after the 4th and the other a couple days after that.The Mini Block Stitches was a pattern with charms that was given to me by a fellow stitcher, she had it in her stash but decided she would never stitch it so passed it along. We do this alot in our stitch group. The cart is a JBW design called French Cart. I had hoped to complete them by the 4th but did not. Oh well no worries, next year they will be ready.

My MPP's (multi-page projects) also have some finishes. The HEAD I have finished page 25. The DBCS (Death by Cross Stitch) I finished about 1 and 1/3 pages. I did this to complete the motif. And finally the Army Emblem I have about a page and 1/2 finished. I am working all 4 pages together so I do not have a single completed page but counting the grid you come up with my 1 1/2 page finish.

Those are all of my finishes. I have a new start. I am working Spring Village from Stoney Creek Designs. I am working it on a poly/blend table runner that I bought at Joann's one time when they were having a sale. I am using waste canvas and all of the floss will be DMC.

 

 I am currently putting a new project into the mix I will start as soon as this update is complete. It is a Halloween design and I hope to have it complete for this years decorations. I will post pictures on my next update.

I had a bit of fun with some sales items I found at Michael's. I have been looking for a summer decoration that is not 4th of July themed and this fit the bill. Everything was 70% off and I must say I did a pretty nice job of setting it up.

Finally my baby turned 1 on July 31st. And what you may ask did I think was a good present for him.......well he got neutered. I would not have done it to him but the cat was getting a bit paranoid when he walked across he room. So he got the snip. They only had Monday open for the next 3 weeks and I just said well it needs done, birthday or not. He is just fine and happy as ever now but that day he was rather subdued 

Wow June....

Oh boy I did not know time was moving so fast, here it is already June and I only made 1 post last month. I had better intentions then that. Life has a way of screwing up good intentions doesn't it....  :-(

I have been busy stitching and having some fun with my stitching.

These 2 are the FFO's I talked about in my May post.
My friends husband was so happy when I gave him this, even if it was late.

Just like last month I have a few finishes, they are smalls. A pink elephant and a hot air balloon. First pictures of the stitching finish and then of the completed finish and backing fabric.

I have them in this cute little basket on my coffee table. I will be adding more smalls as I go long through out the year.

I also have a new start. Since I finished the snowmen I let myself add a new project. It is another square for my son's quilt. This one will have the Army Crest on it along with a nutcracker. I am working it on white cotton with waste canvas. The canvas is 14 count.

 

My rotation pieces are coming along Christmas Cottage by Dona Gelsinger charted by HAED, Autumn Ala Round by Glendon Place 

Here is my most recent progress on Death by Cross Stitch Sampler from Long Dog Designs. Just let me say I am not trying to disrespect the designer. I do not care to have the alphabets on my piece, it is the reason I do not normally stitch samplers. This one caught my attention and I wanted to work it, but right from the beginning I knew I would be subbing out the square with the letters. I think it has worked out really pretty. The border and R come from a book by Adele Welsby. The Peacock has been in my patterns for years it is only the pattern with no designer info. The rose was just a section of the wreath that surrounded the peacock. Not sure if I should add something more. At this point I like it as it is, maybe once the other portions are complete I will find something else to add. Or maybe not.