November WIPocalypse

Late to the party again but at least I arrived! I switched gears this month and decided I had better get some of my Christmas stitching done. Consequently I never got my Blackwater Hollow piece finished off as I'd hoped to. Here's where I am at this point.

There isn't a lot left to do on this piece but I'm still working on Christmas so it may be some time before I get back to it.

As part of a SAL group on F/B I stitched up this lovely piece by Nan Lewis of Threadwork Primitives. It is called Christmas Fruit Basket and I plan on finishing it off as a pinkeep. 

I have several Christmas pinkeep patterns all of which have a fruit basket of some sort in them. I decided I would stitch up a few of these and display them in my antique dough bowl along with some sprigs of pine and berries. I have finished stitching 2 more with a third yet to follow. I will then finish them all together. You can see pictures of the other two finishes on my Smalls post towards the end of this month. 

As well as the fruit basket designs I am at work stitching up a couple of Prairie Schooler ornaments for my granddaughters. I don't have enough progress to post a pic on these yet.

I also picked up two framed pieces of my stitching this month. The first one is framed in an antique frame with convex (bubble) glass which I found while antique hunting in Muskoka this past summer. This piece was already stretched and it was just slightly small for the frame. My framer said he could work with it and would add a mat. It turned out beautifully! I have already had so many compliments on this one.

 Plum Street Samplers Fruit of the Spirit

The second frame is an early Christmas gift from my husband. Usually I go and pick the frame but don't see the final piece until Christmas day. This time however I wanted this one on the walls to display leading up to the holiday. I stitched this in late 2014 and finished it in early 2015. 

With Thy Needle & Thread Heaven & Nature Sing

Stitching aside now,I made a weekend visit to celebrate my granddaughter Summer's birthday. She is the younger of the two and has now reached double digits! Here are a few pics from the time I spent with them. I miss them both terribly already!

 It was a lovely weekend for the drive up there and I'm so glad that I went when I did. Here is what we woke up to this morning.

 It has snowed all day and there is now more than what appears in these pics. It was a rude awakening but we had been told to expect it. From what I hear it will be a long, snowy winter!

Now back to my Christmas stitching! See you soon.

November Small SAL and WIPocalypse

The full moon (WIPocalypse) and Smalls SAL both fall on the same date this month for reporting so this will be a combined report. I'll start off with the smalls.

It's been a few years since I have stitched any ornaments for my granddaughters so I decided that I should get back to that this year.
They're getting older and are more interested in my stitching now. I decided to do 2 ornaments taken from the Prairie Schooler Evergreen leaflet.

The girls were here this past weekend for a visit so I gave them to them to take home so they could put them on their tree before Christmas rather than wait until they saw me during the Christmas holiday. They loved them and have already picked out which ornies they want me to stitch next year!

My next small finish was a new design by Lori Ripley of Homespun Prims. It's called A White Christmas and I plan on making it into a pin pillow.

In addition to stitching the above designs, I finished off two designs that I had stitched sometime during the past 2 years. I found these sweet little tins in my friend's gift shop. They actually had chalkboards in the center for writing a message but as soon as I saw them I knew they would work for a cross stitch finish.

This is Little Women Christmas by The Sampler Girl. I finished this for a birthday gift for a stitching friend. Unfortunately I don't think these designs are available any longer.

 
 This is So This Is Christmas, designed by Jenny Hoffman of Country Rustic Primitives.

When I saw how easily these finishes came together, I headed back to my friend's shop and bought the remainder of her tins. I plan on doing several more of these.

For WIPocalypse this month I have concentrated on two designs......Plum Street Samplers Autumn Fraktur and Kathy Barrick And Heaven and Nature Sing. Here are some updated progress pics.

 

And Heaven and Nature Sing is part of a SAL which I'm doing with some of the stitchers from the Facebook group Prim Stitchers Society. This piece is done in Needlepoint Silks. I chose to use up some Vikki Clayton silks that I had in my stash. It didn't take me long to figure out that I was going to run out of the dark brown silk. So what I have done is to stitch in one direction with a slightly lighter brown silk and then go back over it with the darker brown. It's working out pretty well so far and I should have just enough silk to finish this off but it will be close! I will be using red beads instead of stitches for some of the area within the wreath around the deer's neck.

That's pretty much it as far as stitching is concerned for this month. As the holiday season creeps nearer and nearer there will be less time for stitching. I will probably just work on some more small finishes until the new year.

We were treated to a rare sight this past week. Our area is on the flight path for the migration of the Snow Goose so we often see them flying over or at a distance in a farmer's field. This year though they decided to settle in a pond at a gravel pit just up the highway from us. They were there several days in a row so I managed to get some great pics.

It was a real treat to get so close to these beautiful birds as they make their way south for the winter. I look forward to seeing them on the return trip again in the spring.

Last weekend my son and granddaughters dropped by so that we could celebrate the youngest's birthday. Summer will be 9 on the 27th. I was supposed to drive to their home (a 3 hr drive) but as some of you may know I have been ill off and on since late September. A cold and sinus infection lowered my immunity and then things progressed into viral pneumonia and bronchitis. I'm slowly recovering but I'm trying to avoid crowds right now so I don't pick up anything else. So Jeff and the girls landed in Saturday night and we had a very short but sweet visit.

 

I will take this time to wish all of my friends and family in the U.S. a very Happy Thanksgiving!! We Canadians celebrated ours in October but I know I always looked forward to watching the Macy's Thanksgiving parade on T.V. I know there were several times when we played sick as kids so that we could stay home from school and watch it!  Enjoy your day my friends!!

Stitching and summer visits

Our household has been very busy this past week and filled with the sounds of laughter and children. Stitching managed to make an appearance here and there and I'll start by showing my latest progress update.

My Birds of a Feather Mystery Sampler continues to move forward, slowly but surely. I finished up the alphabet and have moved on to the lower portion of the graph. One thing I did notice was the lack of a letter I in this alphabet. Does anyone know the significance of this?


My stitching time was limited because of a family visit. Both my sister and her family arrived in town as well as my oldest son with his girlfriend and their children. The house was full! My sister's  family haven't seen Jeff since my wedding to Bob eleven years ago so there was a lot of catching up to do. My second oldest son Daniel was also able to join us during this time. My youngest son Chris now lives in the vicinity and he and his girlfriend were able to join some of us one evening in Ottawa for dinner. The weather cooperated and we had a wonderful two days together. Then my sister and family headed on to Quebec City for a vacation and Jeff and his family continued on their vacation with a visit to a water park near their home. I'm missing them all already!

Eating in Ottawa's Little Italy. Mmmm!

My granddaughters are on the left and in the centre.
The other children belong to Jeff's girlfriend, Pascale.

Daniel, Jeff and Pascale

The kids all got a kick out of this visitor to our bird feeder. 

I know that squirrels are often a nuisance at the feeders but this was a first for us. His antics kept the kids occupied for some time.
Notice our lovely brown grass in our front yard? We are still without any significant rainfall in our area and haven't mowed our lawn now for at least three weeks!


Once everyone had left, we started getting ready for our own holidays. We're planning to visit friends in Sault St. Marie, Ontario and from there head down through Michigan to visit my other sister and then on to Windsor for a family 40th anniversary celebration.
When we've returned home again we only have three days to wash clothes and get ready for our annual trek to Muskoka and the cottage. It's then that I'm likely to have a bit more stitching time.


My friend Pam called me early this week and asked if I was interested in joining her for a visit to The Morrisburg Antique Show in our area this weekend. Having never been, I jumped at the opportunity. The show takes place in a park on the shores of the St. Lawrence River. I had planned on bringing my camera but naturally, I forgot and left it at home. This is a small show but nevertheless, there was much to see. I came home with three small purchases. The first was a small iron which I'm hoping to use to display a piece of needlework on the surface.

Next I found some lovely buttons which will do nicely on some needlework finishes. Do I sense a theme here?

However my favourite purchase was this needlework stickpin.

I have no idea what count fabric this is stitched on but that stitching is really tiny. I didn't get a good look at it until after this picture was taken. I can't wait to use this on one of my finishes!

I apologize for my continued lack of comments on your blogs of late. The summer is just flying by and I don't want to spend it all indoors on my computer. I quite often read the postings in the evenings but I just don't have the time right now to comment on everything. I'm sure I'll get back into the swing of things once the cooler weather is back. After all this extreme heat I'm sure there are more than a few of us who are looking forward to fall!