April Smalls SAL

Seems I spent more time on my larger projects this month than I did the smalls. That egg ornament I started last month is still sitting here waiting for me to finish it. I just seem to have totally lost interest in it. The only recent small finish which I have had is a Primitive Hare design and I'm thrilled with how it has turned out.

There are only 3 DMC floss used for this stitch and I substituted one of them with an overdye. I'm still trying to decide how I want to finish this one off. I'm paying a visit to my local fabric shop today to see if I can find anything that works with this.

I also started another small by Blackbird Designs but didn't have time to get it completed by the end of the month. This stitch is totally appropriate for the season. It's called Spring Tulips.

Lots of pretty pastel overdyes in this one. My own tulips haven't bloomed yet but are popping up all over in my garden now. They're one of my favourite flowers and I can hardly wait to see them in full bloom.

Other than the above stitching I have been doing some finishing work. I pulled a few stitching finishes out from early this year and last. I had them all ready to display over Easter. I'm sure several of you have seen them on my previous posts but here they are again.

 I'm not sure yet just what I'll tackle next month. I have a few ideas in mind. Any stitching will have to be completed before the 26th of the month because I'm having hip replacement surgery on that date. After that I'll be out of commission but only for a very short time. The next week is bringing lots of rain here. Perfect stitching weather! See you soon!

April Stitching From Stash

A little bit more spending this month than usual. I ended up ordering floss that I ran short of to complete one piece and I ordered two online charts as a pdf from The Primitive Hare and Primitive Stitchin'. As an international customer I prefer to order pdfs because this saves me considerably on shipping costs. All told the breakdown is as follows: 

Floss: $7.96
Charts:  $12.75
Total:  $20.71

Phew! Still within the monthly budget!

Over the month I made significant progress on two patterns from my stash and ended up finishing both just in time for Easter. The first is very appropriate for the season - With Thy Needle and Thread Three Tulips. This is the one on which I ran short of floss. When I started the piece I didn't figure in the fact that I was using 2 strands over 32 ct rather than one over 36 ct. and that urn took a lot of floss.

I'm so glad that I finally got around to stitching this one. I love it!

The second finish was one of my final purchases in 2013 - Plum Street Samplers Love Thy Neighbor. Paulette was kind enough to design an alternate chart with the Canadian and UK spelling of neighbour.

It was the rich colours and the funky cats that attracted me to this piece. 

In addition to these stash patterns I have a two new starts, a freebie for Easter which I just didn't manage to get done in time for the holiday. It's offered by Bonny Woomer of The Nebby Needle and is called Hoppy Easter. I'm stitching it over one so it's taking me a little longer.

The second start is a Blackbird Design from my stash called Spring Tulips. I just started this one two days ago so I haven't got very far on it yet. I love tulips and there are lots of pretty pastels in this one. A perfect spring stitch! Fortunately I had all the overdyed floss in my stash.

That about sums things up for this month. I hope everyone enjoyed a lovely Easter holiday weekend. Although my family was unable to join us, we had the company of many friends for our Easter meal.
We are so blessed!

Easter Greetings

A very happy and blessed Easter to all my family and friends!

April WIPocalypse

Not a lot to report this month. I've nearly completed Three Tulips which has been at a standstill the past week until today. I've been awaiting the arrival of floss to complete the urn and then it's truly done. The floss arrived today so I should be back on track and have it completed by this weekend. In the meantime I started a small Easter freebie by The Nebby Needle. If you haven't already seen these on my previous post you can find them here.

The only other significant stitching I've done has been Love Thy Neighbour. When I ran out of floss on Three Tulips I picked this one up again and gave it some quality time. Here's where it is at this point:

I'm really loving the colours in this piece. I was running short on the Walnut to be used on the larger house so I substituted with Old Covered Bridge. I think it was actually a much better colour for this fabric. 

The rest of my time has been taken up with choir preparation for Holy Week, some spring decorating at the house and income tax preparations. 

As you can see, the spring decor has been a welcome change and the weather was also starting to reflect this until today. Yesterday it was 26C (79 F), humid and I was in shorts as I cleaned the gazebo windows. Today it's 2 C (36 F) and snowing again!!! Good thing it was the inside windows that I cleaned and not the outside ones. We are expecting temps below freezing overnight as well as some possible ice rain or more snow. The poor birds are confused as are the rest of us! Fortunately this is short lived and we should return to more seasonal temps by the weekend.

The second offering in the Colonial Gatherings club arrived in my mail this week and I can't wait to get started at it.

Love the large strawberries! This comes as a complete kit. As much as I want to get started at it now I think I should finish up my current large projects before I start anything else. I have lots of ideas for small finishes this month. It must be spring fever or perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I joined the Primitive Stitching Society on Facebook. If you're a primitive fan, go ahead and check them out and then join in the fun. You won't regret it!

Up and running again

My camera cable issue has been fixed and I'm up and running once more. The cable was defunct and since it is camera specific I couldn't just replace it with a generic one. Naturally Sony wanted an arm and a leg for the cable so I opted for a cheaper option. I now have a device that will simply upload the pics from the SD card directly to the computer. So here we go! I can now show you some pics of where my stitching has been taking me.

First up, remember the Torah stitch? Well a few of the ladies in my Tuesday stitching group got on board for the project and we joined for a group photo of our accomplishments last week. Two others were unable to join us and are missing from the photo.

From left: Louise, Sally, Lynn and Sylvia

I've got a few closeups of the stitching. Louise's verses were based on Noah and the Ark and she has stitched the most wonderful ark with some animals on hers. Sally has the beginning of a chapter of verses which is why she has the border at the top of her piece. Mine was a Celtic border since the verses didn't really lend to stitching anything in particular. Sylvia stitched the most adorable little bee and honeycomb on hers!

The pieces will now be mailed back to Toronto where they will eventually be assembled into a scroll.

My Three Tulips has progressed very well and I am merely waiting on the arrival of more floss before I can proceed to finish off the urn. That is all that remains of this piece with the exception of the bunny's whiskers and some line stitching for the feet of one of the birds.

So with any luck this piece will in fact actually make the Easter deadline that I set for it.

I received two RAKs this past week, both of which were totally unexpected and served to brighten up my day. First from Cath, two of the sweetest little needleminders. Both are snowy owls which are meant to serve as a reminder of all my snowy owl ventures this past winter. I know that Cath and her children really enjoyed the pics that I snapped of these wonderful birds.  

The needle minders are resting on my latest start, a small freebie by Bonny Woomer of The Nebby Needle called Hoppy Easter. I have chosen to stitch this one over one for a smaller finish.

The second RAK came from my dear stitching friend, Vonna. Vonna had generously offered to supply me with some wool for trying my first pillow with a wool finish. I was expecting the wool but what I didn't expect was this!

A pretty and bright project bag meant to bring a little spring our way. Thank you so much Vonna and Cath for your sweet gifts. I've been feeling a little down lately and these really cheered me up.

Most of you will know that I have been suffering from significant pain in my right hip. The pain gets to me over time and having spent most of the winter indoors hasn't helped. Finally there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I have been scheduled for a hip replacement at the end of May. I was originally told March but OR dates for the surgeons are few and far between so May it is. This means I won't be driving for about 8 weeks post-op and we will more than likely be cancelling our annual trip to Muskoka. Recovery from this surgery is anywhere from 3-6 months and I'm just afraid about how well I'll be able to get into and out of the boat. The cottage is on an island so there's no getting around the boat issue plus I would have to deal with uneven terrain at a point when I'm still using a cane. Better to be safe than sorry! 

I'll be back next week with a WIPocalypse report and an update pic of Love Thy Neighbour. In the meantime I'm off to check out possible new starts.

A Glitch

I know I haven't posted in a few weeks and was all set to do so yesterday but I have a minor glitch that prevents me from posting my photos. It appears that the USB cable for my camera has given up the ghost. The computer ports are all fine so that's not the issue. I'm heading into the city today and I'm hoping that a new cable will solve all my problems. If not, I'm really afraid that there might be an issue with the camera itself. Please keep your fingers crossed that all goes well!

In the meantime I can show you a couple of pictures of recent stitching finishes that I managed to upload before the cable died. The first is a sweet Blackbird Designs piece called Breath of Spring which I completed the stitching on a couple of years ago. I've been wanting to try a finish involving lace with this one but I'm sewing challenged so I've been putting it off for some time. Finally I got up the nerve and gave it a try. Here are the results.

Not bad for a first go if I do say so myself!

The second finish is Deer Pinkeep by Cottage Garden Samplings.

Besides these two, I continue to stitch on Three Tulips. This is actually completed except for the very bottom of the urn that the rabbit sits on. I wasn't figuring in the fact that I used two strands of floss on the 32 ct rather than one on 36ct so consequently I ran short on floss. I'm just waiting for an order which should arrive any day now and this can be finished up fairly quickly. 
For now I'm catching up with Love Thy Neighbour and weighing my options for my next start. I have several things I want to get to all at the same time in addition to a piece I promised to stitch for a friend this year. There are just not enough hours in the day!

I hope to be back very shortly with pics of the above two projects. I also received some very sweet RAKs this week (Thanks Cath and Vonna!) that I would like to share pics of with you. So until that time, I hope spring has landed your way and you are enjoying some milder weather. I'll leave you with some recent spring visitors to our yard!