January Ornament SAL

This year I decided to join in on the Ornament SAL over at Stitching Lotus site. The ornament can be for any holiday so I decided that with Valentine's Day approaching that I'd stitch up a little freebie to add to my Valentine decor.
Here is The Stitcherhood Love freebie. The fabric is actually a little darker pink than it appears in the picture.

I'd hoped to have it finished into a pillow ornament by now but I got carried away with some of my other stitching. I usually like to have a finishing day where I finish off a number of ornaments all at once.
Next month's ornament will be a Christmas one. I think I just needed a break from Christmas stitching for a bit since I had completed several ornaments in the month leading up to the holiday. Easter is coming early this year so I'm also looking at stitching up some Easter/Spring ornaments in the next month.

Now I'm off to check in on the others' progress!

Kearnel's First WIPocalypse post of 2013

Driving home late last night (actually early this morning!) I noticed the full moon. It was a gentle reminder. Oh yeah, it's time for my first WIPocalypse post of the year!

I'm really pleased with all that I've accomplished so far this month.
I completed all the stitching on AAN Maple Leaf and am just awaiting the arrival of some beads to complete this project.

  
I finished off two of the items which I started at the tail end of 2012 - Heartstring Samplery Let Every Heart and LHN Bringing Home The Tree.

I've also completed a Valentine ornament which I'll be posting a pic of on Jan. 30 for my commitment to the ornament SAL which I joined this year. I might even have the finishing done on this one by then.
In addition, I've done up a couple of smalls, BBD Bluebird and Patty C Designs Heartfelt Stitches, the latter for my Grow Your Own Blog giveaway.

Finally, I have 2 more starts..... Threadwork Primitives Endless Hearts and BBD Awake The Dawning Day.

The lighting was really poor for some of these pics, plus I'm just getting used to all the settings on my new camera.

All in all, a very productive month and indicative of the frigid temperatures which have kept me indoors stitching! 

I had hoped to pay a visit to the many blogs which signed up for the Grow Your Own Blog party this month but I haven't been feeling the greatest over the past week. The week ended with a trip to the emergency department of one of our area hospitals last night which is why I arrived home so early (4:00am) this morning. Poor Bob, he only had about 3 hours of sleep before he had to drive back in for work. At least I've had the luxury of lazing away at home. Plus we missed out on supper altogether since we'd been on our way to a friend's place for dinner when we had to make the side trip. Fortunately it wasn't too serious and I've got some answers for some of my problems of late. 
I hope you've all had a very productive month too and I look forward to checking on your progress.

Stitching smalls

Although I put in my first few stitches on my next large project, it was the smalls I was drawn to this weekend. I decided to have a giveaway for the Grow Your Own Blog party which left me only until Feb. 1st to get something stitched up. I chose one of Patty C designs latest patterns, Heartfelt Stitches. Although I haven't finished it into a pinpillow yet, the stitching is already completed. So for those of you who stopped by the party and entered your name into the draw, here's what the giveaway looks like.

I'm hoping to have all the finishing on this completed by next weekend. This stitched up quickly and I was still in the mood to do smalls so next I pulled out BBD Bluebird. It too is stitching up quickly. I just started it this morning and I figure I might have it completed by the end of the evening.

I also joined the blog Random Acts of Stitching Kindness this year so I need to get busy on stitching RAKs for  some of the participants.
It's bitterly cold here and I've chosen to stitch at home this evening rather than brave the cold temps. I just took this pic of the thermostat outside my bedroom window. 

It's in Celsius so the conversion from -20C  is -4F and the sun is just starting to go down. The predicted low is -27C or -17F.  Too cold for me to be stitching in a draughty church hall when I could be doing it in front of my fire at home.
Since Bob is working, Clarisse will keep me company. As you can see, she's already settled in.

Grow Your Blog Party Time

A case of the winter blues was just starting to take hold when I learned of Vicki's "Grow Your Blog" party. What a fun idea!  You join the party and get a chance to meet some new blogging friends. I jumped at the opportunity. Thank you for hosting this Vicki. 

Let me tell you a little about myself. My name is Lynn and I've been married for 11 yrs to my wonderful husband, Bob who works as a church organist and choir director. We live in a small village in eastern Ontario, Canada which is very close to the country's capital city of Ottawa.

 I have been blessed with 3 sons, none of whom live at home any longer, and 2 granddaughters.

 I worked for 34 years as a medical lab technologist in a nearby hospital and have been retired now for almost 2 years. I'm an avid cross stitcher and have been stitching for over 30 years although I do have other hobbies which include reading, singing in choirs, photography and boating. I'm also a big time cat lover and we share our home with a sweet Ragdoll named Clarisse. 

It was stitching that brought me to blogging. I connected online with some other women in my neck of the woods who liked to get together every few months to stitch and gab. Two of the ladies, Dani and Rebecca, convinced me to try blogging and were instrumental in helping me set up my blog. They told me it would open up a whole new world for me where I could meet others who enjoyed cross stitching and where I could obtain info and help with my passion. It has been an amazing journey!! I've been blogging now since 2007 and have met an incredible group of women worldwide who share my passion.

We've shared so much more than stitching though. We've shared

books, recipes, our families, hopes and dreams. 

My blog is a chance for me to share photos of my stitching and share ideas and finishes with friends although there are plenty of vacation and family photos as well. To show you exactly what my stitching is all about I'm offering a giveaway of a stitched item done by me. This giveaway is open to all. You need not be a follower and  anyone can enter, regardless of where they live. The giveaway winner will be drawn on Feb. 1st and all you have to do is leave a comment on this post. Make sure you leave your email or a link to your blog so that I have a way to contact you if you win.

 I thank you for taking the time to drop by and hope you find something of interest here. Thank you again Vicki for hosting the party. I look forward to visiting many of you who have chosen to participate and hopefully making many more new friends. 

So Close

I came so close to finishing my Maple Leaf on Wednesday when I realized that the beads I had planned on using were just too big for the design. Since I finished my design over 1, it looks like I'm going to need petite beads to finish this and I have none of the right colour in my stash. The beads are on order and here's my completed Maple Leaf minus beading.

I hope it doesn't take long for the order to arrive because I'm anxious to finish this one off.

LHN Bringing Home The Tree
stitched on 30ct WDW Cocoa Linen
using DMC and CC floss

  I have a third finish which is a Valentine ornament but I won't be posting a pic until later in the month as part of the ornament SAL I joined. If you click on the pic on my sidebar you'll find out what the SAL is all about.

I'm in the process of getting ready to start on Blackbird Designs Awake The Dawning Day. My friend Pam picked out the pattern and I'm stitching this one as a housewarming gift for her new home.
I'm afraid I haven't got a link to a picture of this one. It's been OOP for some time now although if you Google the pattern you should be able to see it on some of the blogs where they've stitched it previously. 

Enjoy your weekend!

First Finish and TUSAL of 2013

So here it is already, the first TUSAL of 2013. The month is moving along quite quickly. 

There are a lot of reds in that jar. It almost looks like it could be from a Valentine stitch. The reds are from my current stitch, Maple Leaf by AAN. Here's my progress on it.

The remainder of the orts are from my first finish of 2013. This one was started in Dec. 2012 and I had hoped it would be finished by year's end which is why the date stitched reflects that. It's called Let Every Heart and is from Heartstring Samplery Joy to the World.

The box containing the date was supposed to be stitched in Ecru but it wouldn't have shown up on the piece so I swapped it out for DMC 842.  I might try tea dying this piece this weekend. I'm a little nervous about it since it's the first time I've tried anything like this.
Then I'm hoping that perhaps it will be finished into a wall hanging or perhaps a larger pillow.

My little snowman in my ort photo states Let it Snow but I think we've already had enough in our region. Around a metre of snow (3 ft) has already fallen since mid December. Our temps are starting to warm up some and it's slowly melting but our winter is far from over.  I'll leave you with some photos of my family taking advantage of all that snow on two outings, one is toboganning and the second one is snow tubing. Looks like fun!

First new start for 2013

I can't believe it but 2013 is here and with it a new stitching start which is just the first of many, I'm hoping.
My first start is one that I'm doing as a SAL with my Eastern Ontario Travelling Stitcherhood buddies who include Dani, Kathy, Rebecca, Beatrice, Christin and Bonnie. There are others in the group who are participating but I don't believe they have blogs. We've all started our AAN Maple Leaf. It's going to be so much fun. Already there are so many different colour choices and fabric choices which make each one unique. I've chosen to stitch my maple leaf over one. I started out over two but really wanted my piece to be a little smaller so I frogged my beginning and started over again over one. Here's my progress so far.

I'm stitching this on a white evenweave and using the traditional red of the maple leaf found in the Canadian flag. It's moving along fairly quickly but I already know that I will have to order more floss for this project. I'm hoping this will end up as a larger pillow or a wall hanging.

Besides my new start I've worked a few stitches into my LHN ornie, Bringing Home The Tree.

I spent a bit of time on Monday getting together my list of stitching I'd like to complete for WIPocalypse 2013. You can find the list by clicking on the page link just below my header.
I will probably make BBD Awake The Dawning Day my next start. This one is going to be a housewarming gift for my friend Pam and her hubby who have just moved into their newly built home.
Pam chose this particular design and I'm just waiting for a couple more floss to arrive before I get started.

I hope everyone had an enjoyable and relaxing holiday season.  Ours was fairly quiet, particularily because my DH came down with the flu just before the new year. He is on the mend now and will head back to work tomorrow. I'll leave you with a few pics from our Christmas festivities.