Mother's Day, A finish and giveaways galore!

I hope that all of the mothers out there in blogland had a most enjoyable Mother's Day. Our day turned out to be absolutely glorious with sunny skies and warm temps. My youngest son, Chris, returned home unexpectedly for a job interview so he treated me to a lovely lunch on Sunday at my favourite bagel & deli haunt. Chris' girlfriend and my son Daniel also joined Bob and me. Only Jeff was unable to join us, having visited two weeks ago.

We had a great time catching up. It looks like Chris will have a job waiting for him when he returns to the area on June 1st. It may be only part time for the summer but they expect to have a full time position for him by September. Following our afternoon, Daniel accompanied us back home and spent the day on Monday helping me weed the gardens and lay mulch. Thanks so much Dan! It was a fantastic Mother's Day gift since my hip is not cooperating these days and I wasn't sure just how I was going to get things done.


The lovely weather continues and I was able to plant my containers on the patio. However, prior to my gardening, I had another stitching finish. Early this morning I put in the final stitches on Peace Inside. 

The design called for my initials but there was a gap just above the left side of the house that I filled in with the year of completion as well. This was a delight to work on and only reinforced my love of Midsummer Night Designs. This won't be my last one by any means!

Luck has been running with me in the past couple of weeks since I've been the winner of three separate giveaways! One of my winnings has arrived (BBD Friends booklet) which was a giveaway from Melissa . However I've also been fortunate enough to win two of Donna's latest chart releases. One of these is the start of a whole new series called Birds of a Funky Feather. Love them! Click on Donna's link to drop by at By The Bay Needleart and have a peek. Then this week Edgar emailed me to let me know I'd won a set of Musicals DVDs. How lucky can a girl get? Thank you so much to all my generous blogging friends for hosting these giveaways. Since I just finished celebrating my birthday last Friday, it has been almost like a continuation of the celebration! I'll post pics when all the items have arrived. 


Speaking of my birthday, my DH surprised me with a Brother sewing machine especially for novices. Let the fun begin!! I've only seen pictures because it's on order and we've asked them to hold off shipment until we return from a trip home for our high school reunion. During my absence I won't have a lot of time for blogging. As it is, I need to apologize for my lack of comments lately. Spring cleaning, family matters and getting the yards cleaned up has been taking up a good portion of my time. I've still been checking in to read blogs but I haven't had the time to leave comments. I'm hoping things will settle down mid June. I'll be celebrating 6 yrs of blogging then and I think it's time for me to have a giveaway. Six years of blogging, nearly 300 posts and almost 200 followers! Wow! Time to start planning!  

WIPocalypse update

I was so close to a finish on the full moon that I decided to delay my WIPocalypse update until I'd completed the stitching. 

Feather Your Nest
by With Thy Needle & Thread
stitched on 32ct LL Magnolia
using DMC

Feather Your Nest was a delight to stitch! It's pouring rain here today and as I look at my latest finish I'm reminded of a children's song by Raffi. I can't remember the title but I remember some of the words. "Robin in the rain, what a saucy fellow. Robin in the rain, mind your socks of yellow." What a saucy robin indeed!

With the arrival of my floss order, I spent some quality time with Peace Inside. This design has such pretty colours and I was sailing right along until I discovered an error. When I started stitches the small motif of vines at the top of the house they weren't matching up as expected. I still haven't found out where my mistake is. I've patched things for now but I'll stay away from this area until I can figure things out. I was just too tired last night to spend anymore time with it.

My next big project is for a friend. I'm sure many of you will remember With Thy Needle & Thread Mystery SAL, Birds of a Feather. Do I sense a theme here, lol?  I'm stitching this one for my friend Trish . She has been so generous with her time in helping me sew my stitches into pillows. I asked if there was anything I could stitch for her and this was her request. This will be the first time I stitch on anything higher than a 32ct though. The charted fabric is 35ct so I will really need the use of my magnifier for this one. I figure it might be a little slower going at first too until I'm used to the count.

This one won't be travelling with me so I'm off to check out my stash for something that I can take to my Tuesday group, in the car, etc.

I 'll leave you with a short video of a saucy little fellow who stopped by to clean himself up and dry out his feathers at the tree outside my front window. Enjoy!!

Back to Stitching

Life has been especially busy around our household as of late but this week things seem to be settling down some and once more I'm able to pick up needle and thread. Until yesterday I've worked on nothing except MND Peace Within. It's coming along quite nicely and I'm finding it a fun design to stitch on. I'm working around the areas where I've run out of the required floss for now. Here's where I left it Tuesday afternoon.

I love the different birds in this one, all sitting on their perches. Maybe that's why the cat is hanging around, lol! I'm not totally thrilled with the face on the young girl though. She looks like a bit of a sourpuss! I've yet to get a good picture of the fabric on this piece. It's actually more of a soft creamy yellow colour. In fact it's called Lemon Zest.
Last night I put this one aside to concentrate on Feather Your Nest again. I've finished up the bottom half of the chart and now I'm moving up to start stitching the large robin and tulip on the top half. There are a couple of similar leaves on that tulip and I ended up frogging the one. I was stitching a bottom leaf but was looking at an upper leaf as I stitched it so of course it didn't quite match up where it should in the pattern. That's what I get for trying to stitch while I watched NCIS! Tuesday night is normally my group stitching night but with the exception of one day, I've commuted into Ottawa or Cornwall every day now for the past 10 days. The last thing I felt like doing was getting into a car again so I plunked myself in my stitching chair in front of the TV and settled in.


The mail today brought me an order of charts which I'd forgotten all about. When I placed this order from Anita's Little Stitches, she was away and so the order wasn't mailed right away. It was a pleasant surprise when it showed up and I'm anxious to stitch one of these newbie charts. Take a peek, they're from two of my favourite designers, Shakespeare's Peddler and With Thy Needle & Thread. I'm sure you'll recognize them.

Having had a house guest this past weekend, we did a bit of sight seeing in Ottawa and I finally had a chance to visit The Canadian War Museum. It's amazing how much more interested you become in history the more you age! Although we didn't take any pictures on this visit, I do have one picture of my MIL that Bob took shortly after the museum opened in 2007. My MIL served in the Canadian Women Army Corps during WWII and this pic was taken in front of a display of the uniform worn by these women. My MIL is an amazing woman and was just short of her 90th birthday when this picture was taken. She no longer makes her annual visits to our home but is still in fairly good health. We'll be making a visit back home to check in on her and my mother next month.

I'm so glad I finally had the opportunity to make this visit to the museum too. So many times we live in an area with these wonderful attractions but as locals we don't always take advantage of what's in our own neighbourhoods.


Time to get my butt in gear. It's almost time to meet with my Wednesday afternoon group. I haven't joined them for 3 weeks now so it will be fun to catch up with everyone and see what they're working on now. Enjoy your day!!

A Fresh Start

Here's a pic of my new start, Peace Inside. It's designed by Midsummer Night Designs and it's such a fun stitch! Lots of colour which is just what I needed to brighten up my days. I ended up using three strands of floss for the blue in the house and the red in the roof. The coverage was just a little too thin with only the two strands. Consequently I've already run out of the CC Razzleberry . I didn't have a whole lot of this one left in my stash so I've just placed an order for another skein.  Any change in dye lot should be fine since the remainder is being used as an outline for the garden flowers. I think I'll stick with stitching this one on the weekend and then maybe return to Feather Your Nest next week.


Thank you all for your many well wishes. Since my medication has taken effect I'm feeling much better. I can now get a full night's sleep without interruption which has made all the difference in the world! I imagine I'll find out my test results in a week or so and I'll deal with it at that time. 
It's a beautiful spring day here and I've opened up all the windows to let in the fresh air. Love it! So does Clarisse whose been sitting by the window all day, watching the birds and squirrels.

I hope you all enjoy your weekend doing what you love best. Perhaps a little stitching?