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!!