Progress? What progress?

I was so going to finish Noah's coat for today's update. But then things started to go wrong, all roughly around the same time:

1. Pantoef thought it would be fun to play a game he likes to call chase the needle
2. Incredibly, I ran out of DMC 831, which is the colour I'm using for the coat. I say incredibly, because I thought I had at least two skeins of every DMC colour in the house. Damn.
3. Pelle woke up with a raging fever that hasn't abated yet, despite hours and hours of sleep and loads and loads of paracetamol. Something tells me there won't be a Halloween/birthday party on Saturday and another something tells me there won't be any yanking out of a certain little boy's tonsils on Tuesday.

Still, also quite incredibly, my progress on Noah is not bad at all, if I do say so myself.

I mean, sure, the other CHS Stocking Stitchers have all finished theirs and moved on to other projects, greener pastures etc., but this, to me, is good progress. Next time I sit down to work on this I will hopefully have a new supply of DMC and enough caffeine in the house to sustain me in this coat-stitching finale.

My other SAL for Thursday is, of course Summer Basket. Love the colours. Do not love the way the chart differs from the picture on the cover (piture looks better) and do not love the fact that I made a mistake in that third row of doodley stitches -- a mistake, mind you, that had nothing to do with either chart or picture on cover -- and that I now have to FROG because it looks all wrong. But here is a picture anyway. Summer Basket BF (Before Frogging):

Yours incredulously,
Annemarie.

Rejoice

Rejoice, my dear friends, for you are now witness to an occurrence that is so rare, that you might want to sit down and take a deep breath before you read on. For this is the day that I will be posting not one but TWO bloggy epistles. I had two things to write about and one is stitch-related and the other one isn't and I didn't see how I could mix the two in a satisfactory way. So if you're interested in my shameful weirdness on a personal level, feel free to skip to the next post and if you want to read about my stitching or my stitching-to-be, stick around and you won't be disappointed.

I. Got. Some. More. Stash. Of course, after this haul I really shouldn't buy any more stash until... Well, until I die, basically. Lo. And behold, if you feel so inclined.

The Goode Huswife Colonial Garden book. OMG. OMG. And yet again, OMG.
Hootzi Humbug will have to wait until next year to be finished, because there is no way I will be able to finish him before Saturday. There's also a sweet little sampler by LHN, for Pelle, who loves lions and sheep and will be very pleased when he sees two of these beasties in one samplerette.

But the main stitchy thing I wanted to share with you is the fact that I've decided to do another SAL. Yes, I know, I can hardly keep up with the CHS Stocking SAL and the Thursday BBD SAL, but I also have a Memento Mori wall to build and what better way to do that, than with the help of a new stitchy friend? Check out Nadia's blog and prepare to drool :o) Nadia started a tombie angel by CHS called Sarah Hook, and I'm going for the Christmas look with another angel chart by CHS called Rejoice.

Work is crazy at the moment so my start is small, some might say pitiful, but here it is:

I won't have time to work on this one -- or any of the other ones -- very much for the next couple of weeks, but I hope to add another stitch or two by the time next Monday rolls around.
There's another new post for your reading pleasure below.

Yours busily,
Annemarie

If you go down in the woods today...

...beware of the weird lady with the camera.

Last Friday, my brother called me weird. That's two people I love dearly calling me weird within one week. I don't know what that means, whether I really am weird or whether I just surround myself with really intolerant people. I think the latter, but by all means, judge for yourself.

My brother and I went for a walk in the woods. Since I actually live in the woods, technically, a twenty second walk would be a walk in the woods for me, but that's not the sort of walk I mean. We went for a long walk in the woods. My brother -- let's call him Alex (because that's his name) -- used to live in the cottage I now inhabit, until his lovely Belgian significant other whisked him away to her side of the border. Alex knows the woods quite well. Or so he makes it appear. I'm telling you, it was the longest freaking walk of my life, and it didn't help any that Alex told me every minute or so that he recognised every spot, he just didn't know where it was situated. Every time we came to a bend in the path he'd go, 'Hm. Funny... I wasn't expecting this...' 'I really thought we were closer to... Well I never.'

Seriously though, when we came to a spot that even I recognised he fessed up and admitted that he knew where we had been going all along. The little bastard.

We truly had a terrific time, and I'm so happy that he finally moved back into the neighbourhood. Also because it appears that life in this technological day and age is getting too much for me, and I may need him around to guide me. This was made painfully clear to me when I asked Alex to take a couple of nature pictures with my worthless piece of **** of a camera. Turns out the camera isn't so bad, but the photographer could use a lesson or two in basic photographology. You see, I thought that the '0.3M'/1.0M/2.0M/3.0M' on my little LCD screen referred to the distance between the camera and the object of my photographic desire (as in 0.3 meter/1 meter/2 meters/3 meters). And since I always photograph my stitchy things from up close (roughly 0.3 meters), that's the standard setting of my crappy camera.

'Hm,' said my clever brother once he understood the magnitude of my stupidity. And this is how he looked at me.

(Boy, am I glad I'm not one of his incompetent students!)

Turns out the M doesn't stand for Meter, Meters or even for Metre or Metres. No. M apparently stands for something called 'Megapixel'/some things called Megapixels (I don't know the lingo). Which in turn means I've been taking the crappiest of all possible crappy pictures for the last six years, because I never even used anything but the 0.3 M setting in my life.

So after Alex spent a full twenty minutes explaining the mysteries of the camera to his ageing sister, we took a couple of very nice shots during the rest of our walk in the woods and we had a wonderful time.

Yours ashamedly, but refreshedly,
Annemarie

Lots of words and only two pics

I had my weekly 'you're weird' talk with Harmien yesterday and it was all to do with my progress on Summer Basket:

As you can see, progress was slow and the reason for that is a bit pathetic, I will admit to that. You remember my early birthday gift, right? The lapstand? Well, the stand came with a small frame. Perfectly serviceable, but too small to contain Summer Basket, at least in an upright position. I was determined to use the frame because it was a birthday present and I'm that infantile it keeps the fabric nice and taut and I can use both hands whilst stitching. You know how obsessed I am with my stitches lying neat and flat and yet and at the same time plump and un-twisted and all that, right? Anyway, long story short, the only way to use the frame with Summer Basket was to turn it sideways. But then, when you stitch, all of a sudden all your stitches point in the wrong direction. Sooo, apart from the fact that I had to stitch sideways, I also had to stitch the other way around, which is, for me, the wrong way around. And what do you know? I did it without making too many mistakes and my stitches looked much neater in the end. This is the point in the conversation where Harmien said I was weird. Well, not in so many words this time, but she couldn't suppress a heartfelt 'Nou já!' Which translates, roughly, to 'do you really have nothing else to worry about and if not, what a wonderful life you do lead, you weird and silly woman.' Ah well.

SAL update day was supposed to have been yesterday, but I was too busy talking about my son to do any updating. Let me explain.

Pelle's been attending this medical daycare centre for nearly six months now, and it was time for the biannual talk about the progress he's made. You may remember that by the time he left his previous daycare centre, his developmental age was estimated at 13,5 months at the age of nearly five. The professionals there gave me to understand that there was little hope that Pelle would ever be able to attend school or make a whole lot of improvement overall, while I myself had always had the feeling that there was something that was holding him back, that was preventing him from coming into his own. Discouraged as I was to have any hopes, let alone high hopes, I watched his progress, all the while warning myself not to become too enthused about what I saw.
Now, nearly six months later, everybody is looking at this little boy with something I can only describe as wonderment, because not only is he much happier, he is also speeding ahead in his development, as if he's making up for lost time. His developmental age is now estimated at 27 months. Now I'm not a mathematician, but that's a lot. That's 13,5 months crammed into five months. This is fantastic news, of course, but the main thing is that Pelle is so freaking happy with it. He's finally learning to express himself, to share everything that he's been forced to keep to himself for so long. And being the chatterbox that he is, you can imagine his relief and glee :o) Nobody knows what the future will bring, of course, but just so you know: all of a sudden my future has become a heck of a lot sunnier.

There is a whole lot more I want to write about, but that will have to wait till my next post, which will be up on Monday. My brother and I went for a walk in the woods today and we took some pictures and had a very very good time. He called me weird too, but I will explain about that on Monday. And I have stitchy news and stitchy pics to share, so stay tuned.

Thanks for all of your kind and wonderful comments on my Sense and Sensibility finish and thank you, especially, for being around, for reading my blog, for leaving comments, and for sending good vibes our way every time I ask for them. As you can see, they really do help!!!

Yours gleefully,
Annemarie.

To frame or not to frame...

...that is the question I would like to ask you today. For I have a finish to share. After three years, I finally, finally finished The Sampler Girl's Sense and Sensibility. I'm ashamed it took me so long. Honestly, Tanya, it's not you -- it's me.


Sense and Sensibility by The Sampler Girl, stitched with DMC and Gentle Arts threads on 35 count Light Sand Edinburgh linen.

What do you think I should do with it now, though? Should I cart it off to my busy framer's -- I will be picking up a couple of pieces later this week, so that would be the perfect opportunity to leave Sense and Sensibility there -- or should I try and make it into a quiltette, with some lovely flowery fabric on the back? Mind that my sewing skills resemble my marathon-running skills (i.e. very poor, for those of you who don't know me very well).

Last Saturday, I dragged my darling mother off to the craft fair in Rotterdam. I thought that would be the best way to score the sort of birthday presents I really, really want. I succeeded. Not only did we have a wonderful time... My mother is such a dear. She was completely awe-struck by all the crafty loveliness she saw, asking me 'if you would have to make all of that yourself' whenever she saw something she liked. I love her to bits, you know... Anyway, we had a lovely time and I got me some fabulous birthday goodies as well. My birthday is in November, but needless to say nearly all of the goodies are already in use :o) Firstly:

A new lap stand, and a gorgeous one at that. Seriously, this EZ lap stand is the best idea since Otto Frederick Rohwedder said "I'm getting so freaking tired of cutting my loaves of bread with this stupid, blunt knife every day". Above, you see the lap stand in action.

And secondly, I got the BBD Joyeux Noel book, and all the silks needed to finish the sampler in the picture.

Oh my, honeybuns, this book is an absolute must-have. Before I start the red bird sampler, though, I'm going to stitch another wee sampler from this book, in honour of my Oma who died in 1985, from whom I inherited, among other things, the stitching bug, my looks, my fiery temper and my fascinating skin diseases. Her birthday was December 23rd, so this little cushion from the Christmas book will be for her.

Well darlings, I should really be working, but I needed share before I burst. Thursday is SAL update day, although with all of this finishing and WIP-stitching my progress on Noah and Summer Basket will probably be scant. I'll do my best and that's a promise :o)

Yours delightedly,
Annemarie.

Of snakes and specs and birds and ladies

Hurray, hurray, it's SAL update day and these days are even more fun when I actually have something to show you on the SAL front. Which, as you know, is not that often :o)

This week's progress on Noah:

Not only is the dreaded coat about 150 stitches closer to completion (which you couldn't tell from the picture because the coat is huuuuuuuuge and 150 stitches don't make an awful lot of difference), but the cat underneath Noah's feet now has whiskers and an eye and is accompanied by a snake. A spectacled snake, in case you were wondering what those brown lines on its face were supposed to be. You see, if I ever get the stocking finished it will be Pelle's and he is very much involved in the stitching process. He keeps track of every little stitch I add and he even urges me to 'borduren maken' ('make embroidering') when I am otherwise engaged. When I asked him if he wanted the snake to wear glasses he looked at me with one eyebrow raised, as if to say 'Well duh. How else is he supposed to read?' (in Dutch, a cobra is called a spectacled snake, a 'brilslang'.) So there you go. A snake wearing spectacles, as per Pelle's request.

And Summer Basket, for the Thursday SAL I'm doing with Cristina, Giovanna and Nadia:

I can't tell you how much I'm enjoying this one. The colours are so sweet. My one complaint is that GAST Clover, which I'm using for the flowers and some of the letters, looks so much like the fabric colour that some parts nearly fade into nothingness once stitched. But not enough to make me frog all of that pink and look for something a bit darker. Barbara confessed she didn't like this design and she said she was more of a Barb Adams stitcher than an Alma Allen stitcher (A.A. being the designer of this particular piece). I have two things to say about this. Firstly: don't you get confused with the bird-brained ladies' names? I always end up calling them Allen Barbson or Barb Almond or Alma Alda and Barb Allen -- oh, wait, that's actually correct... No, it isn't. What the --? Hang on... no, I looked it up, that wasn't correct. Still. You see what I mean. Secondly: with me, it's the other way around, I think: I'm very much an Alma Adams stitcher, more so than a Barb Allen stitcher.*

As if I didn't have enough projects in my WIP drawer/to-stitch pile, I got some more stash.

I love Susan Dunn, in the last picture on the right. She will be my next very very big start and if I ever finish her [insert hysterical laughter here], she will go straight to my pensive ladies' gallery (along the with The Blue Lady and Mrs. Pearson).

Yours slightly hysterically,
Annemarie.

*For those of you who noticed what I did there: I did it on purpose. I love them both!

WIPs in progress

As promised, today is all about framed stitchy goodness. Yay! Well, just two of my recent finishes have made their way framer-wards, but I think they're worth a blog post. What do you think?

Salem Remembered. Rememer? Finished and framed in record time. Sigh.

The Second Angel Sampler by Kathy Barrick-Dieter. Me likey.

These two pieces are not enough to start my Memento Mori wall (as I think I will call it henceforth. I mean, it sounds better than 'my Halloween-slash-Angel-slash-Tombstone wall'), so I hung them in different places, for now. At the rate I'm going through my WIP pile, though, there won't be any additions to my Memento Mori wall in the near future, since there's no Halloween/Angel/Tombstone piece in my WIP pile. You saw four of the WIPs in progress (that's Works In Progress in progress, I know, but that is exactly what I mean. If you saw the contents of my WIP drawer, you would understand, believe me) in my previous post. Here's one I've been working on off and on for quite some time without telling a living soul about it, because I was afraid I'd strand after the first six colours and everyone would keep hounding me about my progress (think big-ass Prairie Schooler Christmas Project sort of thing):

It's a DMC colour card. When Barbara got out her professional, ready made DMC colour card last week, I suddenly remembered my less flashy but equally useful, hand made exemplary and decided to spend some time with it. I did, and I enjoyed it. In fact, I'm going to enjoy it some more right now. Right after I've posted this pic of my feline foe's friend's current favourite hiding place.

Yours progressingly,
Annemarie.

Deeply WIPpy

I don't feel like blogging today -- simply because I'd rather be stitching. BUT I promised to announce the winner of My Favorite Kitten today, so that's exactly what I intend to do. Just so you know, since claiming I'd throw in the real life kitty with the stitched one, Pantoef has been nothing less than angelic, so I've given him until the end of October to mend his ways on a more permanent basis. If he succeeds in staying this...
...sweet and cuddlesome, I promised him that he could stay. If not, you can all look forward to a new blog contest in about 20 days' time.
Back to the stitched kitty though. My trusty name-drawer was otherwise engaged...

... so I asked Ransomizer.org to do the work for him, and the winner of My Favorite Kitten, as shown on the picture in my previous post, is none other than

Daffycat

Congratulations, Sharon! Be a dear and send your snail mail address to amcdevries AT gmail DOT com, will you, and I will make sure this wee darling gets to you ASAP.

As I said, I'd rather be stitching, and you will be very happy to know (I think) that I've been engaged in some heavy-duty WIP-stitching. No sign of startitis here! Actually, I could have named this post 'Deeply SAL-ly', because three of the four projects I've been working on are SALs. Firstly, of coursely, Noah:

Not a lot of progress there, but any progress on this one is good progress, as far as I'm concerned.

Secondly, Mary Wigham:
Don't ask me what possessed me to pick up this monster of a Quaker, but I did enjoy finishing that huge first motif.

Thirdly, my BBD Summer Basket, a Thursday SAL I'm doing with the lovely and talented Giovanna, Cristina and Nadia. Actually, I did a lot more work on this one, but I happened upon a couple of frogs along the way.

Fourthly, not a SAL, but definitely a long-time WIP, CHS's Mrs. Pearson. I'm stitching this one on 32 count linen, with one thread of Vikki Clayton silks over two. This, my dear friends, is not a good idea if you like a good bit of coverage. As I happen to do.

Love the design. Not the coverage. After discussing this with Barbara, who was kind enough to be brutally honest about it, I decided to start all over again, on 40 count linen this time. Now I don't only love this project, I actually luuuuuurve it. Think The Blue Lady kind of love.

Barbara suggested I make the first attempt into a little fragment piece, which is a brilliant idea, of course. Also, since this is merely a quirky fragment of a wacky design, I decided to leave that total whopper of a mistake I made and finish it as it is. I mean. You know. The number 836 means as much to me as the year 1836, i.e. nothing. Is it even a DMC colour? I don't think it is. No WAY am I going to frog something so as to change it into something I don't know the meaning of anyway.

Speaking of the good Barbara, I spent an absolutely lovely day in her company on Tuesday. We did some stitching, did a lot of chatting, had a gorgeous lunch. I got to see little Arden and his happy smile, and I got to talk to sweet Max. Also, Barbara made me this completely wonderful gift:

It's a sweet little autumnal pouch in which she hid some fabulous pumpkin buttons and a beautifully delicate Mermaid thread keep, made of shell, which is already in use. Thank you so much, Barbara, for the lovely day, and for your generosity and kindness :o)

Darn. I really shouldn't start my posts saying I'd rather be doing something else, because whenever I do that, I end up writing the most boring, long-winded blog posts you have ever had the misfortune to read. Sorry, my friends. Hopefully, in the next couple of days, I will have something to show you in the way of framed stitchy goodness. Yippie!!!

Yours long-windedly,
Annemarie.

The prize that nobody won

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the behaviour of a male -- either human or animal -- improves after the loss a certain part (or should I say two certain parts?) of their anatomy. They mellow. That's what they told me.

It is also a truth universally acknowledged that universal truths do not apply in the life of Annemarie de Vries. In my life, said males go stark-raving berserk and leave a trail of ruin and breakage. A heart (in the human male's case), and pottery, crockery, pretty little glass lamps, Jim Shore ornies and brand new sweaters in the animal's case, all within a week (well, not the heart). When I got home from my parents' this evening, this is what I encountered:

In my absence Pantoef must have searched the internet (the laptop showed the Wikipedia entry for Interrogation Practices. Thank goodness he didn't get as far as 'Chinese water torture' or what have you). I see a pattern developing, and it's not a pattern I like.

Now, cross stitch patterns I DO like, and what do you think I did? I just went ahead and ordered them. All of them. Including the new Goode Huswife Colonial Garden Book and the Just Nan Hootzi Humbug including the pin, because obviously, nobody could ever be happy again without it. Certainly not me.

I really must apologise for that silly competition I held last week. It was not a ploy to lure you to the comment section or anything, honestly. I really did think there would be one or two of you who would guess correctly. The thing is, I do really have a finished little something lying around doing nothing. Here it is:

My Favorite Kitten by Primitive Betty', stitched on 30 count Iced Cappuccino with the recommended DMC threads. I used the blue fabric you see in the background for the back and I did primitive-looking cross stitches in coffee-dyed DMC cotton thread all around the edge. The filling consists of birch shavings and the kitty smells heavenly of wood and coffee.

Don't you just luuuurve these primitive style finishes? They're a brilliant way to disguise the fact that you're a lousy sewer, although I must admit I found it quite difficult to go all primitive and not try to be as neat as possible (I'm a bit obsessively compulsively disordered of a perfectionist when it comes to my stitches).

Howsoever that may be, this little kitty is looking for a new home, and if you want to provide her with one the only thing you have to do this time is leave a comment to this post. I will announce the winner next Thursday (October 8th). Tell you what: if you win, I'll throw in the real life kitty, too. It's either that or the vivisectionist for him.

Yours torturedly,

Annemarie.

And the winner is...

Thank you for entering the -- was it a contest? I suppose it was. Thank you for entering, also to the newbies. The winner, ladies and gents, is...

...absolutely bloody no-one. Not a single one of you guessed the project I started as soon as I was done drooling over my new stash. This is both saddening and uplifting to me: saddening because, apparently, despite all of these years of blogging in which you would hope to build up a certain bond with your reading public, not a single reader (not even my supposed best friend, who has known me for close to twenty years) knows me well enough to know the mysterious ways in which my mind works. On the other hand, if you like the glass-half-full approach (which I happen to do), you could say that I'm not as predictable as I tend to think I am.
My new start, honeybuns, is this one:

The latest BBD Loose Feathers design, called Summer Basket. Check last post's pictures: it's there. You didn't see that one coming, did you? Well, obviously not. Would you like to know what my erstwhile best friend said when I disclosed the answer on the phone earlier this week?
'You're strange'. Which is what she tells me at least once a week anyway, so that's why I thought... Oh, never mind. At least I can keep all of my stitchy things for myself :o)

The reason for my change of heart (remember I told you I didn't like the new Loose Feathers design?) remains a mystery, even to me. All I know is that the same thing happened with Rites of Spring, and you can see what that led to in my side-bar :o) I suppose that, after all of that (very yummy) dark green of Salem Remembered and the almost sinful pleasure it gave me to work on it, I just felt like working with some pastel colours. Once I saw Summer Basket's pastel colours scattered on that Baby Breath linen and exchanged a very Pink Brandy from the kit for a very Brandy Brandy from my stash, I was hooked. The picture doesn't do the colours any justice at all, nor does the picture on the cover of the chart (see, Gio, I had already figured that out!)
There's also a gift in the making (though not for any of you, strangers that you are), but obviously, I can't show that one yet. Actually, it is for someone who visits this blog and who leaves comments, too, but she was wise enough to refrain from guessing :o)

In case you were wondering, Pantoef is doing fine. The information that he is now bollock-less hasn't reached his brains yet and he still terrorises the household with his wild and wicked ways, only now he has added climbing and simultaneously eating my plants to his repertoire and he takes even more delight in climbing my legs (either clothed or bare). I've given up on the no-cats-on-the-kitchen-counter rule, because I work from home and I can't afford to get up every two seconds to wield the plant spray only to be rewarded with a scornful look and something that I can only describe as a defiant grin.

In the almost words of the great Spinster Stitcher: Damn cat.

Yours unpredictably,
Annemarie.