A Work in Progress

I'm chugging along on Susan Rambo and still enjoying the colors and variety of motifs.  There will be a complete squirrel on the right by the end of today and I'm hoping to add a few more border flowers by the end of the week. Quick life update:  We celebrated our 40th (!) wedding anniversary a week and a half ago.  All three of our children and one DIL-to-be were with us for the weekend.  Their visit prompted a flurry of cleaning and straightening and soring items for them to take to their homes, but things settled down pretty quickly after they left.  My quilting projects are gifts and I don't want to show them until they have been given.  I'm currently listening to The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah and would recommend it to those who like historical fiction.  Thanks to all those who encouraged me to keep blogging.  For now, I'll try to keep up with a WIP post every two weeks or so and see how things go from there.

I'm dipping my toe back into blogland with this picture of my progress on Susan Rambo on 36 count with NPI silks.   My fabric is much darker, and I love the way the colors pop. Rest assured that although I have been silent for a few months, all has been well.  I've been having an internal debate about whether to continue with my blog especially since so many people have migrated to social media.  For now, I'm going to try to keep up with WIP Wednesdays and will see how it goes from there.

      According to the thermometer, it's 1 degree here today.  The wind chill factor makes it feel like -15.  I need to go out this morning to my quilt guild meeting, but then I'm going to spend the afternoon in front of the fire thinking warm thoughts and stitching.  Remembering this beach on the island of Hawaii should help. Today's Friday finish will keep those warm thoughts going as well.  It's one of three shell canvases I  purchased on our trip to Sanibel after Christmas in 2011.  The plan was to do one for each of the kids and give them as presents the following Christmas.  Yes, well...I now have two of them done.        Stay warm, everyone!

Looking at my last post, I realized I had every intention of posting twice a week for Wednesday WIPs and Friday Finishes/  Then winter hibernation and a post-holiday haze set in, and my blog went silent.  I don't even have the excuse of being busy as my husband and I have been hanging around the house.  I've cleaned out a closet or two and read a lot.  We made a weekend trip to Charleston to watch our son run a marathon and I went to a weekend stitching retreat, but other than that it seems we have barely left our house.  That seems to be changing as I went out for coffee and breakfast with two different friends last week and I'm headed to lunch with another friend today.  My husband and I have subscriptions to local theaters and we attended two performances last week.  Perhaps these are signs that spring is on the way.  I'm not taking any chances that means my posts will be more frequent so I'll give you both  a Wednesday WIP and a Friday finish today.   Co

The last few months have been especially busy.  I posted about our brief trip in the middle of October to see our daughter in western Massachusetts right after the retreat in Ocean City.  Two weeks after the trip to the Berkshires, my husband and I went to Hawaii for twelve days.  We spent three and a half days on Oahu where the highlights were seeing Pearl Harbor, Shangrila (Doris Duke's house) and spending an evening with our daughter's college roommate and her family.  The rest of the trip was spent on the big island, Hawaii, which was fascinating.  We learned that it has eleven microclimates and were surprised to see cacti as well as pastures full of cows.  There was active lava flow when we were there, but it was at least 100 miles away from us.  We both enjoyed seeing Volcano National Park as well as touring a coffee plantation.  It felt as if we had barely recovered from the long flights when we took off again for Baton Rouge to see our younger son present his master&#

The last few hours of 2014 were spent in reverse stitching on two projects.     I made an error when stitching the border of the March house in the Blackbird Designs Anniversaries of the Heart* series.  I decided I couldn't fudge it so I had to rip out part of the house and start again.   Then I got out this ornament to stitch while we watched television last night.  I had started it earlier in the year using Impressions for the white.  The Impressions wasn't covering well and looked more like cream.  So that came out and I put in a few new stitches with DMC perle cotton.  I'm going to like this much better!  This will be a travel project.  All of that reverse stitching led to a very full ort jar.  These threads will go out for the birds today.   2015 will be welcomed with a new project.  I'm going to be starting Susan Rambo* which was published in Fine Lines many, many years ago.  It has since been released as a chart and my eye has been drawn to