Stitchy progress

Just a fly by post with some updates on my stitching progress of late. Thank you for all your wonderful comments on my framing of Gobble. He proudly adorns my wall now and is receiving just as much praise from neighbours and friends who drop by.
Ghoul is starting to take shape. For the black I'm using the recommended silk floss which I happened to have in my stash. However I just may have to order another skein to make sure I have enough since the bulk of this design is stitched in the black. I notice the instructions tell you a second skein may be needed if you're not too frugal.

Isn't that just the most demonic looking squirrel you've ever seen? Love it!

I also stitched up this Plum Street Sampler freebie, Give Thanks, during the past week. All that remains is the border which I've just got started on. I think I'm on a bit of a PSS kick lately!

The pumpkin on the far right was supposed to be just the brown and white but I substituted the white with the pumpkin shade to add more colour. I'm not sure though if I like the looks of the lineup now. I just might frog both it and the first one and interchange their colours to give more balance to the piece. Or am I going to too much trouble for such a small stitch? Guess that's the OCD  in me coming out, lol!

Then I spotted this lovely in the November issue of Cross-Stitch and Needlework.

  
The designer is Erik Shipley of Ships Manor who is featured in this month's issue. Love those trees! I also fell in love with the colours used in the design and I'm currently on the hunt in my stash for a fabric to stitch it on. It uses DMC floss which is perfect since I really don't feel like spending any more on stash at the moment. 

Canadian Thanksgiving is fast approaching and I'm trying to get answers from my sons on whether or not they'll be here for a meal. Hubby and I have been invited to join some friends this year and I don't want to accept if the boys are coming home. Why is it always so difficult to get an answer from them? I won't be offended if they can't make it. In fact it's sometimes nice to have a break from preparing the meal once in awhile. We'll see!

Not much else going on here. I was up at the crack of dawn this morning and  have managed to catch up on a good portion of my blog reading already. It's a gorgeous day and Clarisse and I are going to head out into the gazebo now to enjoy a bit of it. See you soon!

Totally unexpected!

My choice for a new start that is. After considering some of the choices I'd pulled I was all set to start This is the Day. That was until I picked up my latest framed work, Gobble, yesterday. After seeing how gorgeous it looked I was all gung ho to get started on one of the others in the series, Ghoul.

Here's the reason for all my excitement.

I am in love with this frame!! I knew it would look good when I picked it out but I didn't realize just how good until it was finished. I love how the gold in the frame picks up on the gold in the piece. Now I'm anxious to finish all four in this series (Give, Gather, Gobble, Ghoul). The frame also comes in black which will be perfect for Ghoul. I got started on it late this morning and here's where I am up to this point.

I'm stitching it on Picture This Plus Mello. Mello and Legacy are two of my all time favourite fabrics. I've used them both on numerous occasions and Gobble is stitched on Legacy.

Speaking of Picture This Plus, my order arrived from their Christmas in July sale. It might sound rather late for an order to arrive but this is such a huge sale and they often have to dye more fabric to meet the demand. It's worth the wait! This year I ordered a few new colours to try along with my standards.

I briefly considered the one in the middle for Ghoul but there is quite a bit of the gray in it and I thought it might be too much since the design is stitched with so much black.

The other addition to my stash this week is a new scissor/flower frog. My friend Pam has long admired my green rosebowl frog seen below.

I been trying to find one like it for her but without any luck. However, several weeks ago an auction popped up on ebay for not one but two frogs. They weren't green but they were gorgeous nonetheless. They were both rosebowl frogs and the bowls were clear with a silver overlay on them. After checking with Pam, we watched the items which had a couple of bids on them already. Then, during the final minutes of the auction, we swooped down with a higher bid and won. After splitting on the cost, my frog ended up costing me only $12.50! 

Pretty, isn't it? Now I've got Pam hooked and she's looking for more. Oh, but I do love enabling others!
That's about it for this week. My hubby and I have a very busy weekend ahead of us including a 10 course Chinese banquet which is a fundraiser for our church. Not a good weekend to look at cutting back on eating!

Three More Finishes!!

Woo hoo!! I find it hard to believe but so far this month, in addition to Turkey Love, I've had three more finishes. Halfway through the month and I've managed four finishes in total. Timing is everything since one of these finishes has been underway all summer. However, I've been spending much more of my time stitching and less time blogging.
The proof is in the pudding!

First up, Enchanted Crow.

Threadwork Primitives Enchanted Crow
stitched on 32 ct LL Sand linen using DMC

Next on the list is a really sweet little freebie chart from The Gentle Art that I found in my stash and had forgotten all about. It's called
Fall for Squirrels.

The Gentle Art Fall For Squirrels
stitched on 32 ct LL Sand linen using DMC

Both of these stitches will be finished off as pin pillows.

And finally, the third finish is the Birds of a Feather mystery stitch. This was stitched as a thank you for my friend Trish after all the times she helped me finish off my pin pillows with her sewing machine.

With Thy Needle & Thread Birds of a Feather
stitched on 35ct Weeks Confederate Gray linen
using WDW floss

After stitching this one, I've decided I rather like working on 35ct and so I have another project lined up on some 36ct linen.  Thank God for magnifying glasses!! 
As I mentioned earlier in this post, I think that one of the reasons my stitching has increased is because I'm spending far less time on the computer now. I can't keep up with all my blog commenting and was wasting a good portion of each day trying so now I'm merely reading posts and commenting on occasion. I do still enjoy reading all of your posts and seeing what you've been up to.

Today I pulled out another small stitch from my freebies stash. This one is by Plum Street Samplers and I should have enough stitched for a pic by the end of the week. I'm still deciding on my next big stitch.
PSS Halloweenies is up for consideration as well as BBD Christmas Garden and This is the Day by Tracy Riffle of Hands to Work. The latter is from the Just Cross Stitch Jan/Feb 2009 issue. Not one of these three is on my WIPocalypse list but I figure it won't hurt to add one or two more.

Clarisse has accompanied me each morning when I head into the gazebo with my coffee and my stitching. She loves to sit on the top of the bar fridge and watch the birds in the hedge. Here she is getting settled for the morning.

She's too funny. I've discovered that she equates the sound of the coffee maker with her jaunts outdoors. At the first sound of coffee being prepared she heads to the back door and cries at me to take her out. If for some reason I'm not heading out there that day, she sure lets me know about it and chastises me silly!

The fall season is in full swing now that everyone has returned from holidays and various groups get underway once more. My new applique group had met only once when I decided that applique was not the thing for me. I really was disliking all the sewing involved and resented the time away from my stitching. So I gave my supplies to one of the other ladies and promised that I would drop by once in awhile to check on their progress.  Guess I'm just a one craft girl!

Tomorrow I have a couple of my former coworkers joining me for lunch so I'm off to prepare a carrot soup. I spotted lots of carrots at the market on the weekend and thought that would be just the thing. It should be fun catching up with them. In the meantime enjoy this final week of summer while our friends on the other side of the globe prepare to usher in spring!

September TUSAL

It seems like September is just flying by. We're at the halfway point already and the new moon has risen. Guess that means it's time for a TUSAL pic once more.

Here's my ort jar, flagged by some fall friends who are just waiting in the wings for the season change.  If you look at the next pic you'll see all the orts from four different projects this month: Turkey Love, Enchanged Crow, Fall for Squirrels and Birds of a Feather.

That's right, I've had four finishes this month!  Very productive indeed! I should have a photo of all four of them on my next post. I know that ort jar doesn't look all that full but it's full by my standards. After all, I am a floss miser, lol! 
Now I'm off to sort through my stash for some new starts. The fall bug has bitten!

First Fall Finish

Although the season hasn't officially arrived yet, I had my first "Fall" finish this week. Turkey Love was a great stitch to kick off the season!

Plum Street Samplers Turkey Love
stitched on 32ct Vintage Sand
using DMC floss

The date of 1578 is the one on which Martin Frobisher celebrated the first Canadian Thanksgiving. He had been trying to find a northern passage to the Orient. Although he didn't succeed, he established a settlement in Northern America and on this date he celebrated the first Thanksgiving for a safe passage, in what is now known as Newfoundland. Other settlers carried on the tradition. In the year 1879, Canadian Parliament officially declared a national day of Thanksgiving "to thank almighty God for the bountiful harvest with which Canada had been blessed". The holiday is now celebrated on the second Monday in October.

Having finished up Turkey Love, I decided to get started on some small finishes for autumn and Halloween. The first one I pulled out of my stash I went with. I love this one and didn't have to look any further. It's Threadwork Primitives Enchanted Crow Pinkeep.

I'm very close to a finish on this one so it won't be long before I have my second finish for fall. I've pulled several other charts for another start including some freebies that I'd saved as well. Clarisse has been watching my progress all morning!

 I'm using Lakeside Linen Sand for Enchanted Crow and have enough remaining for another 3 or 4 small stitches so I'll go ahead and use this up. It's a great colour for fall stitches although in this picture it's a little washed out from the flash.

This week my youngest granddaughter, Summer, started school. She has been waiting for this for the past year and is more than ready. In Quebec the rules are different for the age at which you can start school. You must be 4 at the start of the school year instead of by the end of December which is the rule elsewhere. Since she was only 4 last November she had to wait another year to start whereas in Ontario she would have started last September. She loved it and is excited at all the new friends she's made! My son posted this pic on fb of her arrival at school the first day.

Now I'm off to grab a quick bite before heading to my first session in applique quilting. My friends Thea and Shirley are going to be running this every Friday afternoon. It should be a lot of fun!
Have a great weekend everyone.

August 31st WIPocalypse

I can't believe that August has come to a close and September's cooler weather has already arrived. The full moon made its appearance last night which tells me that it's time for a WIPocalypse update.

I've spent most of this month alternating between my current two stitches - Turkey Love and Birds of a Feather. Most of the stitching has only taken place in the last couple of weeks since the early part of the month was rather hectic.
Turkey Love is nearing a completion. Only the hill at the bottom remains to be stitched. Within the hill there is a box which contains the date that the Pilgrims held their first Thanksgiving celebration. We Canadians however held our first celebration on a different date. There are two dates that I could use. One is the date that was first recognized by Parliament in 1879. Another option is the date 1578 which is thought to be the celebration of the first Canadian Thanksgiving by the explorer Martin Frobisher in what is now Newfoundland. I'm leaning towards this particular date. Whichever date I choose remains to be charted for stitching. Here's my progress so far.

I've completed the centre portion of the stitching on Birds of a Feather and now I've moved on to the border. I'm loving the colours of these flowers. They have such a fall taste to them.

That's about it for this month. I'm planning on stitching some Halloween smalls in the near future and by next WIPocalypse I should have a new start. I hope everyone enjoys the long weekend and manages to squeeze in some stitching time.