September WIPocalypse

My favourite season of the year is here and already the cooler days and nights have heralded its arrival. I've been anxious to start an autumn stitch but I intended to finish what I was working on first. I'm pleased to say that that finish has taken place.

 Heartstring Samplery A Stitcher's Resolution

I'm so pleased with the finish on this one. There was a minor mistake in counting which resulted in a slight alteration of the border but I can't tell so I figure no one else can either. I used 3 different lots of the same floss to finish up the flowers in the border to give things a bit of variation. This is pretty much all I worked on this past month besides my small for the upcoming Smalls post.

This past weekend I joined a group of stitchers who belong to Upper and Lower Canada Stitchers, a Facebook group. The group is comprised of stitchers from Ottawa to Toronto and everything in between. The SAL was organized by my friend Lianne and it was a huge success! The Brigadoon Restaurant in Oxford Mills was the site of our get together. Here are some pics from our fabulous day.

The Brigdoon Restaurant

 Our second floor stitching area

 The third floor stitching area where most of us gathered

 A former co-worker Karen and myself

Mike and our organizer Lianne

Mike's fabulous wool penny stitch

Some of the Tuesday night stitchers from Ottawa

You might recognize some fellow bloggers in the next two pics! 

 Dani and Bonnie

Beatrice and Ann

We are so fortunate to have such a large group of stitchers in our area. It was the first SAL for this group and we hope there are many more. The day passed by so quickly. We shared a delicious lunch buffet in addition to our passion for stitching. Ann brought linen, floss and charts to tempt us with from her stitching shop Knowledge and Needles.
There were also some fabulous door prizes including charts, needles, homemade vanilla, and soaps. Not one person went home empty handed!  Thank you so much Lianne for all your hard work in making this day so special. 

Next post I'll show pics of my trip to visit Lori Brechlin's open house at Notforgotten Farm. See you then! 

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!!

Out of sorts

Out of sorts is exactly how I was feeling most of the past weekend. I can't say that I felt ill. It's more like I don't have a lot of energy and can't seem to settle on any one thing. Unfortunately this is what I was experiencing on my weekend visit to Rebecca's. I was so glad to be able to join with some of my stitching friends but once there I'm afraid I didn't seem to get anywhere with my stitching. Perhaps it was the weather.... overcast, cold, rainy and really windy. Yeah, that sounds good, let's blame it on the weather even if I know better! In any case, I started out working on Gobble only to find out that my border wasn't lining up. Okay let's switch to BBD Tricks or Treats. We haven't seen that one for awhile and it looks like you won't see it anytime soon either! Despite the fact that I had a stitching lamp beside me, I just couldn't seem to see the linen well and progress was painstakingly slow.  I have decided that I definitely don't enjoy stitching on R & R linen and will stick to something else from now on.
That only left LHN Acorn Hill. I wasn't too enthused with this one either but it was that or nothing and a wasted day. So I stuck it out. My pitiful progress was actually only the grass in front of the house. It's stitched on the diagonal. The rest of the stitching I completed at home last night. This is the second time I've stitched the pumpkins and I'm still not happy with them.

I didn't use the called for Belle Soie silks but instead went with the conversions for the CC cottons. The pumpkins are to be done with CC Copper Penny. If you look at my previous pic below you'll see that they're more peach than pumpkin.

I didn't want to have to order the silk so I dug through my stash and found this orange silk by Silk n Colours. Okay so now they're the right colour however the picture doesn't show that it's more of a neon orange. Not the look that I wanted! I still have WDW Carrot and Pumpkin in my stash as well as some GAST Bittersweet. I'm going to give the carrot a try before I break down and order the original silk called for.

Then there's the issue of the leaves and the grass. The conversion to the cottons called for either CC Eve's Leaves or Weeping Willow. The leaves have been stitched with Eve's Leaves since I had already had some of that. However, that's when I found that the floss didn't have enough variation to stitch the grass. So I ordered the Weeping Willow and waited until it arrived before tackling the grass. It's a darker shade of green so now I'm thinking I should frog the leaves and restitch them using it as well. Any thoughts or suggestions? Oh yeah, gotta restitch those tiny little flowers also to match the pumpkins. Might as well have started from scratch!
I am not having a good time with this one! Might be Christmas before I get it finished.

Despite my stitching woes I did enjoy my time with the ladies. I only stayed the day because of commitments on Sunday but it's always good to see them and get peeks at what they're working on. Take a look!



Christin, hiding behind her PS Alphabet block



Rebecca, with her Sepia Baby



Tracey, giving evenweave a try



Tracey is a new member of our group. She is a coworker of Dani's and is just starting to get back into stitching. Before her go at evenweave, she was stitching on a lovely design of Labrador Retrievers.



Rebecca's Mom, Sylvia



I wish I'd thought to take a picture of Sylvia's stitching. She was working on the cutest baby sampler, a kit which she'd picked up for only 8 or 10 dollars, I can't remember which.



Bonnie, all comfy in her spot

Bonnie was working on the cutest scarecrow for her Mom. Follow the link to her blog and you'll see her finish.



Dani, stitching her PS Alphabet block



Both Dani and Christin were working on PS Alphabet blocks to be used in their friend Nan's quilt. They too had finishes on their blocks as did Rebecca with her baby stitch.

Earlier in the day Beth had joined us and Trista was there on the Friday evening and was expected to return on the Sunday. Both Kathy and Beatrice had previous commitments so we were unable to catch up with them.

Thank you so much Rebecca for opening your home to us! The company as well as the food (who can forget the food!) were wonderful.

I'm hoping my mood improves as the week unfolds and I can get back on track with some of my projects. In the meantime I have a few pillows to stuff and stitch closed from previous finishes.

Keep those xs crossed!

TUSAL and The Tangled Skeins SAL

Is it really TUSAL time again? Seems like it was just yesterday that I posted the last pic. Is it just me or did September just fly by? So my two little ort jars filled rather quickly this month as I had 4 finishes, 2 which I haven't been able to share with you yet. My exchange gift is in the mail and I haven't completed the finishing on my other gift. The jars hold lots of lovely golden colours from Sunflower House, some black & white from Quaker Halloween and of course red & white from my LHN Canada finish. Then there are a few glimpses of browns from my new start Gobble.

Now these orts will be ceremoniously dumped into the giant ort jar! What colours will they hold next month?

I enjoyed the most fantastic day this past Saturday as 10 ladies from the Tuesday night group made the trek out to my little village for a day of food, fun and flying fingers! The rain held off and several of the group were able to sit outdoors in the gazebo. As the hostess I'm afraid I didn't put in too many x's. I was too busy jumping up to check on food and to make sure everyone was comfortable and had everything they needed. I also grabbed some pictures of the ladies as they stitched away. First off is the gazebo gang who were thoroughly enjoying their surroundings.

Roseanne



Barb



Sally



Jeannine



Nancy

Do they look like maybe they're just having too much fun?!  This was the first  visit for both Jeannine and Barb and we're glad they could join us.

Now for the indoor crew.



Leslie with her Silvercreek Sampler stitch




Karen, who is stitching a chart she ordered of her home!



Lianne with her La D Da



Diane with her LHN Cherries



Dani with her Enchantment of Winter

It didn't seem to matter whether they were outdoors or inside ,either way there was a heck of a lot of stitching progress going on.
Here's a pic of my stitch, Gobble, most of which had been completed prior to the ladies' arrival.

Isn't he a fine looking fella? This is a really fun stitch and I plan on continuing with this one over the next couple of days. Apparently there are 3 others in the series, Give, Gather and Ghoul. I'd love to do them al eventually.

Jeannine and Leslie were so sweet and brought me a lovely gift both for hosting our day and as a retirement gift. Look at this fabulous Dolly Mamas stitch called Big Deal.

They said that as soon as they saw it, they thought of me and my blog! It's just too cute!! Thanks ladies!

In addition, Sally has started a newsletter for our group who call themselves The Tangled Skeins. Her first issue features my blog and my LHN Canada finish.



The Tangled Skeins newsletter, volume 1



Besides being a weekly reminder for stitching, the newsletter has upcoming events and links to ONS and will also feature stitching blogs. I think it's a fabulous idea Sally. I love it!

I want to thank each and every one of you that took the time to stop in and comment on my recent LHN Canada finish. Your comments just about had me bursting at the seams with pride! It was the first time I ever had a go at redesigning something like this and your favourable comments encouraged me to give this a try again sometime. Thank you all!!

That pretty well wraps up everything for now. I did receive a wonderful giveaway win in the mail today but I haven't had time to take pictures of it yet so I'll save it for my next post.

Keep those fingers flying!