September WIPocalypse

September has just flown by and my needle seems to be flying too. I have 3 small finishes and 2 larger finishes to show as well as a new start and some work on an older WIP!
If you're a regular visitor to my blog you will have seen some of these already.

First up are the smalls:  Threadwork Primitives Enchanted Crow and The Gentle Art Fall For Squirrels followed by my latest finish, PSS Give Thanks.

I'm working at getting all three of these finished off into pincushions.

Next up are my two larger finishes, PSS Turkey Love and With Thy Needle & Thread Birds of a Feather Mystery Sampler.

My latest new start is PSS Ghoul. Think I'm on a bit of kick with all the Plum Street designs, lol!

I've run out of the black silk for this now and I'm awaiting the arrival of more skeins before I can continue with this one.
In the meantime I dug out a WIP which hasn't been seen since the end of January! It's Paradis Perdu, designed by A Mon Ami Pierre. I've done a silk conversion on this and I got sidetracked when a couple of the silks just weren't the right colour. I re-ordered them and when they arrived I put them away. Problem was, when I went to retrieve them and continue on, I couldn't find the darn things! Would you believe, I only just found them while searching for something else within my stash. Finally I'm able to move on again!

Here's a before photo:

And after:

I'd forgot just how much I enjoy this one!
That wraps it up for now.

 I'm very glad to have my computer back after several trying weeks with it. Goodness but I felt lost without it!!
The computer slowed down to a crawl and then started freezing on me constantly. On rebooting it wanted numerous check disks done and my worst fears were confirmed....the hard drive was finished. My laptop is not quite 4 years old and although I really would have liked to replace it since it operates with Windows Vista, I just couldn't afford the extra expense right now. It was far cheaper to just replace the hard drive, especially since they were on sale. 
So if I haven't responded to your emails I apologize and hope you'll understand. Some of the mail just wasn't getting through and in many cases I wasn't able to reply to it.

The spooky month is upon us now and so I'm off to get started on some Halloween smalls. Have a great day!

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!