Stitching anniversaries

When I sat down to write this I realized that I had a number of  stitiching related anniversaries to celebrate this month. Today marks my 300th blog post and Thursday will mark 5 years of blogging! I'm so very close to 200 followers which I consider amazing since I don't find myself all that interesting, lol! Finally this Saturday marked the third time I've hosted my Tuesday night stitchers for an all day SAL. I reside in a small village located about an hour's drive from Ottawa so it's a bit of a trek for them to join me. The first year I only had a small number make the drive but this year there were 17 ladies who joined me over the course of the day!! All these anniversaries suggest a giveaway to celebrate, don't you agree? Details of the giveaway will be on my next post so keep an eye out for that in the coming week.
In the meantime, here's a sampling of all the fun we had this Saturday. The first few shots are of the Gazebo Gang. 

Barb, Diane and Sally

Sue

Jeannine, winding floss

Dani and Tracey

Pam trying out Lianne's stitching frame as Lianne and Karen look on

Mary

Karen with her Blueberry Homecoming
stitched over one!

Mary's Growth Chart

More of the Growth Chart

Lianne's BBD finish

BBD Honeysuckle Manor
personalized by Lianne

Clarisse also joined us for the day but I neglected to take any pictures of her. She spent a great deal of her time trying to climb into everyone's stitching bags!
As for my stitching, well it's pretty sad. As the hostess, I was too busy checking on everybody and chatting it up so there was very little progress. I worked on only Magic Garden Sampler. Here's where I am at this point.

 As for what was actually stitched on Saturday, it's only the worm, as seen in the pic below. Pathetic, eh?!!

During the course of the weekend I also pulled out Maisonnette aux Fraises and frogged all of the white flowers, replacing them with soft yellow ones instead.

The stitching group is always so generous and we had an abundance of food. There was enough for two meals on Saturday and Bob and I are still going through the leftovers! Quite a few brought gifts with them. Check out these salt and pepper shakers Jeannine brought for me! 

I hope these are the only frogs I encounter as I stitch!


Lianne also brought a surprise gift for myself and Dani. Lianne is a proliferative stitcher who does beautiful work however for some time she was not aware of any other stitchers in her area. Then she stumbled across my blog and Dani's blog at the same time. She was very shy. I say was because she's not shy now and is a delight to spend time with. However at that time she was shy and lurked in the shadows, reading our blogs for 8 months before she got up the nerve to contact us through email. We both encouraged her to join our group and the rest, as they say, is history! Lianne is a regular member of our Tuesday night group and has participated in stitching get togethers with us throughout eastern Ontario. Here's a pic of the three of us.

To celebrate the third anniversary of her contact with us, she brought each of us a small gift - a project bag, containing some felt for finishes, a tape measure, Carrie's creation overdyed floss and an antique scissor frog!

Look at this lovely frog a little closer!

I find the bottom is just as pretty as the top of this one. 
It was such a sweet thing to do Lianne. I'm very touched and I thank you soooo much!!


So that's the end to this spring's SAL. There might be another come fall if I can get things together. 
Many thanks go out, not just to my Tuesday group, but to all my blogging friends who have enriched my stitching journey over the past five years. I have the most amazing group of friends and the fact that I haven't even met some of you doesn't matter in the least. You've proven that you're the best! I do hope that I get a chance to meet more of you in the future and hope that at some point you might make a visit to our little spot here in Canada and join us for our SAL. Wouldn't that be fun?!


Stay tuned for my giveaway offer. There may be more than one!!

WIPocalypse catch-up

Between WIPocalypse and TUSAL posts the month just seems to fly by! If you check my WIPocalypse page you'll see that I've added items that strike my fancy as I go along. I never really seem to stick with a plan, lol! Two of these stitches are fairly new starts and I'm enjoying both of them a lot.

The first is Shakespeare's Peddler Magic Garden Sampler.

I'm lovin' this one so far and hated to put it down but I really needed to put some time in on the other start.
This one is called Maisonnette aux Fraises  and it too is plain fun to stitch.

I'm thinking of frogging out the white flowers on the right since they don't seem to show up all that well on the fabric. If I do, I'm going to replace it with the same soft yellow colour used in the windows. What do you think?


Since last month I've also completed Midsummer Night Designs Peace Inside. Loved the colours in this stitch!

That about sums up the past month. Along with the nicer weather comes lots of other activities to take up my stitching time. Rainy days are often welcome for that very reason.
This coming Saturday though is strictly a stitchy day since I'm hosting the Tuesday afternoon stitchers at my home for the day. Friends, food and stitching.... should be lots of fun!

My latest TUSAL

Here's a photo of my latest TUSAL. I'm a little late because I've been away visiting family the past week. There seem to be more orts than last month at this time. Lots of pretty spring colours too. Most of these are a result of my Peace Inside finish and my Birds of a Feather finish. I thought it was only fitting to take the picture with my bird of Hope since there are so many Cancer Society Relay for Life walks taking place here in Canada at this time. 


My trip this past week was a busy one and there was very little time for stitching. The only time I picked up a needle was in the car on our journey there and back. I have two new starts though that I can show you. The first is Maissonnette aux Fraises which is designed by Cathy Roy.

  
This is a really sweet design and just perfect for the upcoming strawberry season.


My second start was  Shakespeare's Peddler Magic Garden Sampler. When I got started on this one I discovered that my floss list was missing two symbols and their corresponding floss. A quick email to Theresa solved the issue. It seems that I have one of the early releases of the pattern which was later re-released with the corrections. I know that I'm really going to enjoy stitching this one!
Here's my progress so far.

One of the reasons for our trip home was to attend our highschool reunion. This is the 90th anniversary of the school and my DH and I really felt we should attend because there is talk that the school may be closed in the next couple of years. We had seen many of our friends last year at the band reunion but this time my sisters and Bob's brother were also involved which made it all the more fun.
Here's a photo of me with my younger sister Laurie, enjoying the Saturday night dance. I think she looks fantastic, having lost 80 lbs over the course of the past two years! Way to go Laurie!

I was disappointed that we didn't manage to get a picture of all three sisters together. Lana didn't attend the dinner dance and on the Friday evening her decade was partying in a different location.What the reunion committee did was to arrange the closure of one of the streets near our school where many of the local hangouts are located. Each pub was host to a different decade from pre 1950s to the 2000s and because the street was closed to traffic you could wander back and forth between locations if you wished. All the street lamps on the street had either red or white bulbs to reflect our school colours. 
On Saturday the school was open for touring along with various activities such as a basketball game against one of our rival schools who were also celebrating their anniversary. A dinner dance completed the day. 
During the tour of the school I discovered this picture of the Hockey Team from 1948. I was thrilled to spot my Dad in the picture, second from the right in the top row. I knew he had played basketball but I had no idea he had been on the hockey team! My Mom is also a graduate of the school but was not well enough to attend the reunion.

We had a fabulous time and I'm so glad we made the trip. The rest of our time was spent visiting family and friends before we headed home on Thursday. With any luck I'll be putting needle to fabric this evening after cleaning up here at home. We're hosting a potluck with one of my hubby's choirs here on Sunday so there's lots to get done. I hope everyone has a lovely weekend especially my American bloggers who are celebrating their Memorial Day weekend. Enjoy!!