The Cat's In The Bag

May I present my latest finish, the cat with an attitude, Olga!

Plum Street Samplers Olga
stitched on 32ct Zweigart Silvery Moon
using CC, GAST & WDW floss

I thoroughly enjoyed stitching this little beauty. I'm pleased with the colours changes I made to the design. Following my WIPocalypse post, I ended up frogging out the large pumpkin. I wasn't happy with its colour scheme and replaced that minty green with a GAST Limited Edition floss. I also decided not to add the vines on the pumpkins. I did actually stitch them on the small one but they really couldn't be seen so I pulled them out.


As I mentioned in my last post, my new start is With Thy Needle & Thread Birds of a Feather. I actually started this one in the fall but I hadn't got very far before I discovered that I'd turned the fabric in the wrong direction when I started and was going to run out of room. So last night I frogged out what little I had stitched and restarted. There's not enough to post yet but hopefully I'll have something to show you next time.


In addition I made a new start on another small, iStitch Designs Sew A Brown Bunny. I had an overdye pink floss that I thought would work but I didn't like the effect once I got started with it so I stuck with just a plain pink. I'm liking this much better.

Carol has designed some really lovely little stitches so if you haven't given any of hers a try before, go and check them out. They're quick stitches and reasonably priced. She'll send you the pdf which I just love because then you can get started on things right away.


The mailman has brought me some new stash additions this week. What a great way to start a week! First up is my giveaway win from Pickle Barrel Designs. Another blogger introduced me to her designs and I'm so glad that they did. Nancy had a giveaway in February to celebrate the release of her new design, Love Letters. Isn't it cute! She sent me the kit which also contains the necessary Sullivan floss. This will be the first time I give these floss a try. Thank you so much Nancy for this wonderful gift! 


From Theresa at Shakespeare's Peddler came some more goodies which were actually bought with some of my Christmas cash. During the month of January, she offered a kit special for Blackbird Designs Christmas Garden with the fabric and silks. I also received a kit for A Wassailing. This kit was specially designed for the Williamsburg, VA retreat. Theresa had a few left over and offered them on a first come, first serve basis. I spotted this offer early, put in my request and was lucky enough to receive one.

I also received some charts last week from one of my favourite designers, Midsummer Night Designs. I've only stitched one of her designs, Forget Me Not but there were several others that I wanted to stitch in the future but just hadn't gotten around to ordering. When I went to order one recently I discovered that they're very hard to come by all of a sudden. It looks like she might have quit designing and a lot of her charts are just not out there now. Does anyone know what happened with this designer?
When I managed to find a few I snapped them up right away. 

I think Peace Inside will be my first choice to stitch.


Not much else going on. Hubby is sick with a cold and has stayed home today which is almost unheard of so I know he must be feeling pretty miserable. So far I've managed to escape the bug. It's another glorious, sunny day and I'll be heading in to join my stitching group later this afternoon. I hope you're all getting a taste of this wonderful spring weather!

Halloween's over, Bring on Christmas stitching!

I know that many of you start to bring out your Christmas garland once Halloween has past. Although we don't decorate here quite that early it doesn't mean that I can't start thinking about Christmas! Becky's Christmas Ornament Challenge starts today and I'm kitted up and ready to go. I'll put my first stitches in after I finish this post. I have so many ornaments designs that I've dug out to stitch. I'll be happy if I can finish even a couple of these. I know I won the Pumpkin Challenge last year but too many other activities start to take place in the next few weeks and I won't have a hope of completing as many projects as I did then.

However I have been stitching away on my Jenny Bean Christmas Sampler and really enjoying it! I'll put this aside now for a few days while I get started on my ornaments.

No, I haven't forgotten about Gobble. I've put a few more stitches into it as well and will have another progress pic soon. Yesterday's mail brought the charts from the rest of the series.

Gather, Give and Ghoul all look like such fun stitches. They won't get done in the near future but I certainly hope to start on at least one of them in the coming year. Eventually it would be nice to have them all hung in a group.

Another PSS design which was a recent ebay win also showed up yesterday. It's called A Handwork's Pace. I love the verse on this one. Click on the pic to read it.

My youngest arrived home on the weekend for a very short visit. He wanted to see his girlfriend and attend some of the Halloween festivities in the area. We caught up with them on Sunday for lunch. He showed me some great pics taken of the two of them in costume. He was supposed to email them to me but they haven't shown up yet. In the meantime I snapped a pic of them during our visit.

Chris always loved watching me carve our Halloween pumpkins. He asked if I was  still doing them. I sure am! Below is a pic of this year's carvings. Sorry it's a bit grainy. I didn't bother setting up the tripod to take it and should have with the low light setting.

Time to get to those ornaments! Hope you have a good start to your week and I'll catch up with you soon!


Edited: Okay so right after I posted this, the pics from Chris showed up. You saw the pic above, now see them dressed for two different events.

 

The first pic they donned makeup for a walking tour at Screamers in Toronto and the second photo is of Chris dressed as Chucky. and Steph dressed as Tiff, Chucky's bride. Love the makeup! Can you tell that my son is a horror film buff, lol? Seems his girlfriend has similar interests!

I've also included a pic that he sent me from this year's Festival of Fear in Toronto. Believe it or not, this is Doug Bradley who played Hellraiser from the movie of the same name. Chris also got to meet Robert Englund who played Freddy Kruger.

SAL Saturday

Last weekend I spent most of my time feeling sorry for myself. I was home alone, trying to rest my back and hip and bored out of my mind. Everyone seemed to have something to do except for me. So this weekend I decided to do something about it and organized an impromptu Saturday SAL. I sent the message out to my Tuesday night group, distributed directions and got busy planning. The result was one fun filled day with 9 stitchers, doing what they do best...... stitching, eating, talking and laughing. I know it was the boost that I needed and I think it lifted the spirits of everyone present. One of the highlights was checking out my stash with much ooohing, aaaahing and fondling of fabric. Then there was the food. Although we were 9, we had enough food I'm sure to feed 9 x 9! Well ,maybe not quite that much but you get the picture.

There were some newbies joining us this time. Karen is one of my coworkers and is never able to come stitching on Tuesdays because of commitments with her children. It was great to have her join us and she's going to try her darndest to free up an occasional Tuesday in the future.

Mike joined our Tuesday night group this past fall and took the opportunity today to bring along one of his coworkers. Nancy has been considering joining the Tuesday night group and this was a chance for her to meet a few of us and see if the fit was right for her. I think she'll be out on Tuesdays in the future!

Sally and Diane are both regulars in our Tuesday group but had never been out to my little village to stitch with us. It was absolutely wonderful that so many were able to come and I hope that once I'm finished work we can do this more often. Here's a few more photos from our afternoon.

Lori & Nancy followed by Leslie & Diane

Sally (lt) and Roseanne (rt)

Clarisse enjoyed the day too. So much so that I had to put her away in my bedroom for a short while. She insisted on climbing into everyone's bags and at one point she took off running with one of Karen's skeins of DMC in her mouth.
Any for anyone who parked themselves on the seat where she normally takes up residence they were subjected to having their hair sniffed. A regular nuisance she was!

Being the hostess, I didn't really get a heck of a lot of stitching done. I tried spending some quality time with Spring Quakers but just couldn't concentrate enough so I switched to my Maison No 4.

Here's where I'm at with the 2 designs over the past week.

I have a few things I'd love to order that were released at the Nashville Needlework Market but they will have to wait until
next month. My budget for February has been blown!

Here's why...... Rose Quaker by Stickideen von der Wiehenburg and a new release by Jardin Prive ... Sampler au bouquet I.

I also managed to find an interesting design on Ebay. I've been looking for an Adam & Eve designs to stitch and came across this one quite by accident. It's by A Mon Ami Pierre and is called Paradis Perdu.

Thank you to each and every one of you who took the time to drop by and tell me how much you love my new framed stitch, Spring Lace. It's occupying prime space in my entrance and is receiving soooo many compliments from my visitors. I've grown rather fond of it myself!

I hope everyone is enjoying their own time to stitch this weekend. Spring is just around the corner!