Easter greetings and Spring Quakers

So the weather isn't quite what we'd hoped for(lots of rain), but Easter weekend has arrived and the temperatures are definitely feeling more like spring. Easter Sunday promises to be a glorious day. I want to take this opportunity to wish all my stitching and blogging friends a very blessed Easter . For those of you who are not Christian, I wish you a beautiful spring long weekend spent with family and friends. Here at our home, my DH and I will be joined by my two younger sons, and some friends from my husband's choir. BBQ leg of lamb is on the menu so we sure hope that weather turns sunny as predicted.

I haven't felt like stitching on anything other than Spring Quakers this week. The colours are so rich and inviting and once I'd picked it up I didn't want to put it down.

I'll let the pictures speak for the results of my efforts.

When it comes to my progress on the Wedding Sampler, I've decided to change my colour on the floss since it just didn't suit the design. I'm now waiting for some floss I have on order in several different shades for a floss toss to see which will look better. I'll post pictures on my choice once it arrives and I've made up my mind. In the meantime I haven't touched anything else. I do have another start in mind but I think I should finish off Sweet Berries first. What's the new start you ask? It's called Live, Laugh, Love by Primitive Bettys. The pattern includes a recipe on how to hand dye your own linen. I'm thinking I just might give it a try!

Now I've got to get moving on cleaning up this place and start putting together some of my meal for tomorrow. Enjoy your weekend, take some time for yourself and keep on stitching!

Blogaversary giveaway!

Not mine this time but a wonderful giveaway by my fellow stitching friend Angela of Hooked On Stitches. I don't usually post a link to giveaways but Angela's will be well worth your visit. She is a phenomenal finisher and I can attest to that personally. I was the winner of one of her previous giveaways. I won the pillow on the top right in this picture. Take yourself over there for a visit. You know you want to!

Spring Quaker resurfaces

Isn't it great? It's 7:30pm, the sun hasn't set yet and I'm sitting here listening to the cardinals call to one another. I love it! Today I was out looking at a new gazebo for the garden where I can soon sit and stitch while I enjoy these evenings.

After completing Cast All Your Cares for my friend I felt I could once more spend some time with Spring Quakers. Saturday I packed up my stitching and spent a good portion of the day stitching with some friends. I wanted to give my full attention to SQ but my fingers seemed to be as tired as the rest of my body and my progress was minimal. The frogs also found it necessary to make my life miserable after I found a counting error which didn't help matters much. The result is only 2 more motifs completed after several hours of stitching. I intend to concentrate on this one for the next few evenings after work.

Sweet Little Berries is coming along as well. Most of the work on this one was completed last week. It's such a darling little piece and I like to take it to work with me to pass the time during lunch and breaks. Reminds me of all those sweet berries that will be ripe for the picking in a couple of months.

My fatigue level has been pretty high lately which is why I didn't spend much time stitching or blogging last week. There were several evenings when I didn't go anywhere near the computer. When I finally did I couldn't believe all the blog posts waiting to be read. There are not enough hours in the day to catch up and comment on everything so if I failed to comment on any of your recent posts please forgive me. I am reading them but when I get so far behind I don't leave too many comments lest I have no time for stitching. No stitching means one miserable woman here! After all stitching is my means of releasing stress and trust me, you don't want to see me when I'm too wound up!

One thing that did brighten up my week was the arrival of my giveaway winnings from Alisa's generous giveaway. I met Alisa through another blogging friend Judy and was thrilled to learn that Alisa also resided in Ontario here in Canada and quite possibly we will get a chance to meet in person during several SALs that take place in our neck of the woods.

I jumped at the chance to enter into her wonderful giveaway and was thrilled to find out I'd won.

Here's a couple pics of my winnings including the fabulous stitched card that accompanied everything.

Isn't that hummingbird adorable? The package of buttons on the far left of the group picture is full of all kinds of tiny bug buttons.... dragonflies, bees, ladybugs, etc. They'll be perfect to adorn summer stitches. It's hard to tell from this picture but that fabric is a lovely piece of cashel linen that will come in very handy for numerous samplers. Thank you so much Alisa for your generous gifts!! I promise I will put everything to good use.

I've given myself until the weekend to stitch on SQ and then I have to put some time in on my Wedding Sampler. I started this last week and as I mentioned on a previous post, I decided to stitch this in the colour of the bridesmaid's dresses. The chosen colour was tangerine and although it's a lovely colour for the dresses it hasn't suited this particular design. The colour is more of a neon shade when seen in real life. After getting a few second opinions, I've spoken to the bride's mom (also know as my cousin, Sheryl) and have decided to start over with another colour choice. Which one that is remains to be seen. I'll do a floss toss next week and make a decision. Any suggestions would be gratefully accepted. I was thinking of an overdye floss. The original design was done all in metallics and that would not be my first choice! I can go with another shade of fabric if necessary. I'm using a 32ct Lambswool.

That's it for now from my village hideaway. I hope Spring is paying a visit to your doorstep and you are soaking up some of that fresh air!

New moon rising

So April's new moon is rising and it's time to post my TUSAL for the past month. As you can see I've some orts in both my little jars. One is kept upstairs and one is kept in the family room downstairs. That way I have something handy to drop orts into at any time. Here is what they amounted to when their contents were added to my main jar.

There's definitely more colour showing up thanks to my Spring Quakers. Tonight will be the beginning of a new start which I hope to have pictures of shortly. It's a wedding gift for my cousin's daughter so I have to get moving on it.

I made sure that before I started the wedding piece I completed the other stitching which a friend had requested. If you remember, she requested something stitched by me to hang in her new home.

Cast All Your Cares is designed by My Big Toe Designs and is stitched on 32ct Lambswool Jobelan. The floss used was Weeks Dyes Works as was charted. I made sure to use a big enough piece of material so that she could use mats with the frame if she wants.

My new start is simply called Wedding Sampler designed by Lisa Cowell. I'm using another piece of Lambswool, this time 28 ct and I'm not using the gold leaf floss suggested. Instead I'm using the colour of the bridesmaids dresses which is tangerine. I had originally decided to go with a Silk 'N Colors floss called Orange Grove but I really think this one is more orange than tangerine so instead I'm using an overdye by Six Strand Sweets called Apricot. This one also has more variation in the floss.

I'll also be continuing with Sweet Little Berries this coming week. I should also have some pictures later in the week of my recent newly framed stitches which include Jardin Prive's Noel

Now I'm off to settle into my comfy stitching chair and watch The Tourist while I stitch. A little Johnny Depp can fire up anybody's night, right?