December WIPocalypse

Since I was ill during most of December I only managed to stitch during the first week and now, during the last week. Even so I completed Foxes Few for my granddaughter and completed the final finishing on it as well as the Tired Trio.

I originally had planned on giving these to the girls for their birthdays but changed my mind and gifted to them at Christmas. Each was finished with a lovely backing of velvet from Dames of the Needle and I attached a small charm to the back of each. One was a fox and one a small sloth.The girls loved their stitches!

 

I started a couple of new pieces at the beginning of the month which I'm just getting back to now. The first is called For You by Plum Street Samplers and I have too few stitches to show you yet.
However I've much more progress done on Stacy Nash Merry Christmas Pinkeep.

I only have the remaining first half of the alphabet and then the border to complete. I'm not sure it will be done by year's end but that's ok. Sorry about the lighting in this pic. It's extremely overcast here today as we are being hammered with a winter storm of freezing rain.

I also picked up a finish at the framer this month. This was my first finish of 2019, The Good Shepherd by Prairie Moon.

On review of my WIPocalypse list I had set out I found that I completed the 3 pieces carried over from 2018 and in addition I completed 22 other works for a grand total of 25 completed stitches. I'm happy with that number. As in the past I really only completed a few of the choices from my original list and added many others that struck my fancy throughout the year. That's usually the case for me. I can never stick to the original plan. My stitching is based on my mood which seems to change rapidly, lol! You can always see my completed finishes on the separate page of 2019 finishes.

Now it's time for me to pick out a few finishes that will make up my list for WIPocalypse 2020. Over the next few days I'll browse through my charts and compile a small list. Hope to see you and your lovely stitches once again in the coming year. 
Happy New Year all!

September Smalls

I'm a little late in posting this month. Following my hip replacement surgery I found it difficult to sit for long periods of time. Things are coming along slowly but surely and as of this weekend I am a bit more comfortable and able to devote more time to my computer and stitching.

This month's small is a fall design by Stacy Nash  called The House on Pumpkin Hill pinkeep. It was a sweet little stitch which I quite enjoyed. The original called for fabric was Charcoal Gray linen which almost looked like it had a bluish tinge in the photo. I didn't have anything similar but upon delving through my fabric I found a Picture This Plus linen that I thought would work. Here's a pic of The House on Pumpkin Hill stitched on Picture This Plus Barnwood with the called for Gentle Art floss.

This will indeed be finished as a pinkeep once I'm able to sit at my sewing machine again.

My recovery from my surgery is going well. This is my second hip replacement so I knew what to expect. However the muscles in this hip are much weaker so I'm having to exercise it quite a bit more. When they got me into the OR they discovered that the hip was much worse than the xrays showed and had actually fused so that there was no rotation left in the hip. No wonder I was having such a difficult time moving it!!
 I had the surgery done on a Thursday and was back home again by the next evening. Very little pain this time and I rested for only a couple of days before I got moving again. Once again my trusty little sidekick stayed by my side and kept me company during my recuperation. After looking at this pic I realized just how much swelling I had in the legs. Things are better now.

Now that I've picked up my needle again I'm working on three different stitches and I still haven't picked out a small to do for next month. Of course it will probably be a Halloween stitch. I love putting out various pinkeep displays throughout the house. 

The signs of fall are all around us now and I'm trying to get out and enjoy the emerging colour. 

Now I'm off to enjoy my pumpkin spice coffee. See you soon!

June WIPocalypse

I spent the better part of June getting immersed into something that I haven't done for awhile....reading a book! Consequently my stitching suffered somewhat but I'd temporarily lost my mojo so I didn't mind. After completing 3 novels I'm now back on track and my stitching has resumed. 

Mary Ann Farmer has progressed a little farther than I expected from last month. Here's my progress up until now.

It's coming along, slowly but surely. I don't feel much like starting or working on anything else at the moment although the Autumn Quaker I started in May is calling to me on occasion. For now I'll continue with this as I search for another small to stitch for July.

Our hardwood floors are almost complete. We had wanted to do all three bedrooms, using our income tax refund. Well Canada Revenue had other ideas and our refund wasn't quite as large as I was expecting. So the decision was made to only do the two largest bedrooms. In the meantime I did a little digging and checked things out only to discover that Canada Revenue had made an error. Turns out that they forgot to include the income tax that my hubby had paid on his self employment income. When that was corrected we were owed a considerable amount. So bedroom number 3 will be done albeit a little later than the others. Here are some pics of the finished rooms. We managed to find the same hardwood as used in the main living areas which had been installed ten years ago!

Here's a pic of the original flooring installed 10 years ago.

 It's all the same flooring. It just appears a different colour at times due to the lighting in the rooms. We are thrilled with the results and look forward to completing the final room.

I wanted to share this little sewing kit that my son Jeff picked up for me at a local flea market.

I thought it was darling! He also gifted me with an oval antique frame with the bubble glass. It currently houses the picture that it came with. Someday I hope it frames a piece of my stitching!

Finally I'll leave you with a picture of my recent framed piece that I picked up. I think I finished the stitching on it about 18 months ago.
This is Stacy Nash Tribute to Summer.

Today is our Canada Day holiday and we're off to a BBQ with some of the neighbours later this afternoon. Should be fun! I've offered holiday greetings in an earlier post to my Canadian friends but I'd like to take the time to offer wishes for a Happy Fourth of July to my American family and friends. Enjoy!

October WIPocalypse

October has been a very busy month at our house but fortunately most of my stitching took place in the first week. It really is a relaxing therapy when one is stressed, lol! 

I finished up my Stacy Nash Tribute to Summer. I took her idea and used my maternal grandparents' initials on it. 

Following that I worked a bit on With Thy Needle & Thread Acorn Gathering Sewing Roll. Love those squirrels!

Then my stitching took a back seat to my son's wedding. I picked up my gift for them from the framer and was thrilled with the lovely job they had done on it. Chris and Violet loved it and displayed it with their guest book at the reception.

I'll post some wedding pics later this week.

Now that everything has somewhat calmed down I was free to make a new start. I chose The Primitive Needle Annie Hyssop's Harvest Moon. I've waited a long time to start work on this sweet stitch! Since Lisa's patterns are now out of print, it was difficult to find this one at a reasonable price. I'm stitching it on 32ct Weeks Dye Works Tin Roof using the called for floss.

It won't be long before I put this down and get started on some Christmas stitching. I've already started in on a small project for Violet for Christmas. See you soon!

September WIPocalypse

This month has been the hottest September on record! This is the summer we didn't get and now that fall has arrived summer is reluctant to let go. We are still in the throes of the heatwave (at its hottest 99 F and 90 F today) although thundershowers are forecast for tomorrow along with a drop in temperatures. Normally I'd be spending my mornings out in the gazebo stitching away with my coffee but it's been far too hot to spend any length of time outdoors.
Wedding preparations, doctor and dental appts. and a return to a post summer routine has taken up a good portion of my time. Nevertheless I've managed to squeeze in about an hour of solid stitching most days. 
Here is my progress on Tribute to Summer.

The flower border is time consuming but I'm getting there. The flowers were charted to be stitched using Gentle Art Lambswool which seemed to be too pale. Then I tried stitching them with a white which was far too bright. So I settled for alternating the colour using Lambswool for some and alternating with Straw Bonnet for the others. I would love to have this finished before the wedding but time is running out and my days have been busy.

Other than a Halloween small which I will be posting this Friday, I have done no other stitching than this. I hope to get back to the other two new starts later in October. Happy Fall!

August WIPocalypse

I feel like I never had enough time to stitch this past month but when I look back at my pics of my progress I realize that I accomplished more than I thought. 
Towards the end of the month I started two new projects. Both are on 40ct linen so the going will be a little slower than usual for me. I prefer the outdoor light when working on 40ct so there will be no evening stitching on these projects. I have a daylight lamp but I still prefer the real thing. The first pic is Quaker Friends by Threadwork Primitives. I love that motif! It's a monochromatic so it will go a little faster than the other. The second pic is of my meager start on Acorn Gathering Sewing Roll by With Thy Needle & Thread. I'm stitching this on a lovely, mottled piece of Picture This Plus Legacy.

I'll continue to plug away at these two over the next month. In addition I made significant progress on Stacy Nash Tribute to Summer. 

I stopped working on this a couple of weeks ago because I wasn't sure what colours I was using for the flower border. The called for Chamomile for the leaves was a brown colour which looked nothing like I was expecting. The centre of the flower is stitched in Chamomile. Apparently the dye lots for Chamomile used to incorporate a lot more green than they do now. So I've been playing around with different colours. That first flower in the border has two different shades of green for the leaves right now as I try to decide which I like better. One is GA Piney Woods and the other is GA Green Tea Leaves. I toyed around with the idea of changing the colour of the flower which uses the called for Lambswool but have decided to leave it as is. 

Wedding preparations continue to take up a lot more of my time lately as I take the boys for suit fittings and search for a dress and shoes for myself. As of last week I've been successful in finding a dress but I'm still on the hunt for shoes.
 Our weather has been quite a bit cooler lately but I hope we can squeeze out a bit more warmth before fall officially takes place!

WIPocalypse 2017

I'm a little late to the party but here's my first post for WIPocalypse 2017. Before starting my list for this year's stitches I had a look at last year's progress. I managed to complete all 4 of my WIP that I wanted done and out of my list of 15 hopefuls I completed a third of them. In addition I stitched another 16 projects. I'd say that was a pretty good amount of stitching done! 
Anyone who has seen my lists and completions over the past WIPocalypse years knows that I tend to veer off course of my list and stitch whatever strikes my mood or fancy and that's okay. My list of hopefuls is only a guidance as far as I'm concerned. I usually don't have that many projects left to complete from the previous year so the new year is wide open for choice.

So far I've already managed to complete one of the WIP on my 2017 list that I wanted to complete. Here is Stacy Nash Blackwater Hollow.

This design is an interpretation of Stacy Nash's visit to Lori Brechlin's farm, Notforgotten Farm. I made my first visit to this farm in 2015 for Lori's fall open house so I stitched this year into the design. In addition I my initials along with the initials of some dear stitching friends who accompanied me on that first visit...... Nan Lewis, Theresa Meloon and Pat Simon. They are very dear friends and this piece brings a smile along with the memories of the fun we shared there that day. I chose to leave off the Blackwater Hollow stitched at the bottom of the piece.

My list of hopefuls for this year is rather ambitious and more than likely it will be tweaked her and there but I look forward to a year of most enjoyable stitching either way! You can see my list by following the link just below my header.  Looking forward to seeing all your plans and finishes.

 

December WIPocalyse and Smalls SAL

December.... a busy month at the best of times and not enough time for me to post twice this month. Consequently you get a combined WIPocalypse and Smalls SAL post. 

 Blackwater Hollow had very little attention paid to it this month. I suddenly realized how little time I had left for Christmas stitching and put this one aside. Sadly I don't expect to have it complete by year's end as I had hoped, not unless I have a stitching marathon which is highly unlikely. Our family have not had their Christmas gift exchange and dinner yet. My sons and families are only arriving on New Year's Day for our celebrations.

I did manage to get three small finishes completed in time for the Christmas season. Only two of them received final finishing as they are gifts for my granddaughters.
First up is A Festive Noel by Tina Woltman of Early Workings.

This is the third small involving a fruit basket which I finished this year. I have since purchased a couple more which I hope to complete in the next month or two. I love this design and can't wait to see it finished up as a small pinkeep.

The next two designs are by Prairie Schooler from their Evergreen leaflet. My granddaughters each picked out the design of their choice. Summer wanted the reindeer and Oceanne picked out the Peace design.

I found the backing fabric for these in my village fabric shop just last week. I love it and thought it was perfect to finish off these small stitches. I know the girls are going to love them!

I also started a larger work on a Christmas theme. I took a fancy to one of the new releases by Plum Street Sampler called Pomegranate Santa. As you can see, I haven't gotten very far on it yet.

Since our family wasn't joining us for Christmas dinner, we were invited to the neighbour's home for dinner with their family. All in all we were 14 and enjoyed a lovely turkey buffet dinner. I just had to show you a pic of the dessert we all enjoyed. It's a chocolate mousse cake! Yup, those are Kit Kat bars all around the outside!

Christmas Eve between church services, Bob and I took a drive up to Parliament Hill in Ottawa to see the Canadian Heritage light show. It was the perfect evening to see this as it was fairly mild. The show had been running since early December and would finish on Christmas Day so we definitely made it a point to get there to see it.

The light show was fantastic and pictured the adventures of a snowman, fox, and grizzly bear. It started with a countdown on a clock and ended with a tribute to Canada's upcoming 150th birthday in 2017. In anticipation of that event there will be a huge fireworks display on the hill on New Year's Eve. I wish I could be there but I don't think I'll make it since I'm picking up my granddaughters that day out of town.

I'll leave you with a pic of sweet Clarisse, enjoying my little twig tree on which I display all my stitched ornaments. She loves hanging out by the tree whether it's this one or the larger one downstairs. Happy New Year everyone and I'll see you then!

November WIPocalypse

Late to the party again but at least I arrived! I switched gears this month and decided I had better get some of my Christmas stitching done. Consequently I never got my Blackwater Hollow piece finished off as I'd hoped to. Here's where I am at this point.

There isn't a lot left to do on this piece but I'm still working on Christmas so it may be some time before I get back to it.

As part of a SAL group on F/B I stitched up this lovely piece by Nan Lewis of Threadwork Primitives. It is called Christmas Fruit Basket and I plan on finishing it off as a pinkeep. 

I have several Christmas pinkeep patterns all of which have a fruit basket of some sort in them. I decided I would stitch up a few of these and display them in my antique dough bowl along with some sprigs of pine and berries. I have finished stitching 2 more with a third yet to follow. I will then finish them all together. You can see pictures of the other two finishes on my Smalls post towards the end of this month. 

As well as the fruit basket designs I am at work stitching up a couple of Prairie Schooler ornaments for my granddaughters. I don't have enough progress to post a pic on these yet.

I also picked up two framed pieces of my stitching this month. The first one is framed in an antique frame with convex (bubble) glass which I found while antique hunting in Muskoka this past summer. This piece was already stretched and it was just slightly small for the frame. My framer said he could work with it and would add a mat. It turned out beautifully! I have already had so many compliments on this one.

 Plum Street Samplers Fruit of the Spirit

The second frame is an early Christmas gift from my husband. Usually I go and pick the frame but don't see the final piece until Christmas day. This time however I wanted this one on the walls to display leading up to the holiday. I stitched this in late 2014 and finished it in early 2015. 

With Thy Needle & Thread Heaven & Nature Sing

Stitching aside now,I made a weekend visit to celebrate my granddaughter Summer's birthday. She is the younger of the two and has now reached double digits! Here are a few pics from the time I spent with them. I miss them both terribly already!

 It was a lovely weekend for the drive up there and I'm so glad that I went when I did. Here is what we woke up to this morning.

 It has snowed all day and there is now more than what appears in these pics. It was a rude awakening but we had been told to expect it. From what I hear it will be a long, snowy winter!

Now back to my Christmas stitching! See you soon.