Progress report

Hello everyone. Just a brief update from Sherry and I. Jim has survived his stroke but it is severe. We will not know for an extended period of time how severe the damage is. Sherry and I wish to thank you all for your kind words and prayers. I will be staying with her children for several days while Sherry finishes up in Houston. They will be moving Jim to a rehabilitation hospital closer to home in the next couple of days and then the hard work will begin.
Will update further when I can.

Just a brief note. My BIL in South Texas has had a stroke and it is not looking real good. I am on my way there tomorrow. I do not know when I will be able to blog or visit your blogs. It may be a while. Keep stitching everyone and I will be thinking of you.
Kathy

This and that

Hunter's birthday was a success. Here is what he looked like after enjoying his birthday cake. 3 hours to decorate and 2 minutes to destroy. The party was a lot of fun but a little noisy - 10 children 2 1/2 and under and 20 adults.

Dani, her mom and I made a trip to old Montreal on Sunday. We browsed the old port and had a lovely lunch in an outdoor cafe. We went to a needlework show in the afternoon. We saw some very beautiful work. We saw a couple of pieces we would like to do but there were no designer names with the finished work. One piece was an armchair piece with a needlebook, a pin cushion and a pocket for your scissors. The second was a whitework peacock.

I did some needlework on the weekend. I finished the fortune teller for Mikaela. By the way, when I photographed it open I spelt niece wrong. Nobody caught it. My sister did though. I finished a couple of other small pieces but cannot show photos until sent and received by their owners. I did a small amount of work on the wreath. I will be picking it back up now and hopefully finishing it within the next two weeks. I will do my best to blog this week but it may be limited. We have brought our 2 1/2 year old grandson Jackson home with us for the week. After he went to bed last night I sat for a good hour like a zombie. He is a lot of fun but man, am I tired, when he finally sleeps.

Fortune Teller and a Cake

I may not be blogging too much these days

but my fingers have been busy. I have

finished stitching the fortune teller for my

neice who is just a year younger than my

granddaughter. I will fold it into it's shape

over the next day or so. I am working on a

mystery piece at the moment so cannot

share photos of it. The cake I made yester-

day and decorated today for my grandson

Hunter's first birthday. I made and decorated this same cake for his dad 32 years ago and his brother Jackson 2 years ago. I used to decorate a lot of cakes but now do them strictly for family. I find them harder to decorate now - my hands get stiff. Oh well, I am sure he will love it. It will be delivered to him tomorrow.

Babies, babies and more babies

We went to visit with some family this weekend. Our niece is visiting from Victoria. We took a couple of family shots. Here are the recipients of 5 of the 10 baby samplers I have done in the last 3 years.
May I introduce our niece, Nicole with her son Ben, our niece Michelle with her daughter and son, Maya and Kody and our DIL Cindy with our grandsons Jackson and Hunter. It was great fun to see them all together but noisy!!!
I have done some work on my fortuneteller. I am about 1/3 done. I am also working on a gift so cannot photo it yet. Hope everyone had a good weekend. The wreath is taking a short rest.

Progress on wreath

This has been a very quiet week. I needed the rest after Dani's visit. She is a slave driver as shown by all the completed ornaments. (Just kidding Dani). I have worked away on my wreath this week. It is coming along. I get nervous near the completion of something round. What if it does not meet when I get to the end! I have already warned the ladies from stitching - If they see a huge black cloud in the sky and hear a horrible scream it will be because it does not line up. I am, however, going to have to put the wreath down for a bit. I have a fortune teller to make for my niece in Texas. We will be visiting there before going to Arizona this winter. I want to have it stitched and finished before we close our house here around October 15th.

Finishes, progress and much laughter

I have a funny little story to share and then I will get on with the last few days. On Thursday, I was at Ann's and I was browsing the new Gift of Stitching magazine and then a past issue. I am drooling over the needlebook and a biscornu pattern. Beatrice is talking about a new biscornu exchange that Dani is organizing and I am considering joining. In walks Ann's husband and he hands me a fortune cookie. Well, when I open the fortune cookie it reads" As long as you don't join anything new, you will do fine". Well, that cracked us all up as I am known for wanting to be involved in everything.

On to the weekend. Dani cameto visit for the weekend. DH was off doing his male bonding stuff so we had the house to ourselves. Some of the Thursday stitchers joined us Saturday for stitching, visiting, much laughter, spaghetti, a bottle of wine, more stitching, more laughter and a great time. Sunday Dani and I started making our stitched pieces into ornaments. Dani taught me to do a cubit, a flat fold and a needleroll. We also made up several other ornaments. We worked from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m on Sunday. There was thread, fabric, ribbon, braid, cord, foamcore, orts - you name it - from one end of the house to the other. More of the Thursday gang joined us on Sunday and stitched while we worked. Here is my ornament progress for the weekend. Monday morning, Dani and I decided we really had to restore some kind of order to the place so, we finished off our ornaments and within an hour you would never have known we two hurricanes had been there. Beatrice came Monday and stitched with us until Dani headed for home.

I did manage to get some time in on my wreath and I am really pleased with my progress. I am now over on the second and final page of the stitching. Then, on to back stitching, adding the saying and a few other accessories. I discovered there are about 150 white French knots in this piece. I think they represent baby's breath. Somehow I neglected to see them. I think they will be 150 white beads instead. Here is the progress on my wreath.

Dani, thanks again for a wonderful weekend. You always make it fun. Thanks for teaching me all those new things. See, you can teach an old dog new tricks. And thanks, to all my stitching friends who came to visit. The weekend just flew by and I loved it!