My new start

I'll admit, it took me long enough but I have finally decided on my next BAP. Not much to it yet but may I present This is the Day.

Yup, it's another house! Actually there's a lot more to it than that but this was my center start point so a house it is. I'm stitching this on a 36ct Silkweaver Solo with one strand of floss. The pattern comes from the Jan/Feb 2009 issue of Just CrossStitch magazine. Here's a look at what the final piece will look like.

It's a Hands To Work design which I have loved since the first moment I set eyes on it. It's based on Psalm 118 and our choir has sung an anthem version of it. 
My Tuesday night stitchers have labelled the sheep as levitating sheep since they seem to be standing in mid air however one of the group said that perhaps they were lambs. After all, lambs jump and spring about! I've already made a change in colour to the design. The side panel of the house called for GAST Tomato. Unfortunately the dye lot which I have appeared to be a garish orange colour and certainly didn't look right next to the Old Brick colour of the main portion of the house. I dug through my stash and came up with a substitute. From the little I have stitched so far it looks to be a better combo. All of the pomegranates on the border are also stitched with this colour. I'll reserve judgement on them until I have more of the design completed. I think I'll be changing the dog to a cat as well.

The other new start I had this week is Plum Street Samplers Sunday Mystery SAL, Mary's Sampler. I'm doing version II of the sampler although I didn't have any of the Dark Forest linen that Paulette is using. Instead I used the Vintage Examplar which she suggested for version I. I'm using a 32ct rather than 36 to avoid another purchase.
I've also substituted a few of the colours I didn't have for ones in my current stash. Mary's Sampler is based on the gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke. Paulette has the verses listed on her site.

Pumpkin Blossom Sewing Box is my latest finish.

Love it!

I'll be searching for Christmas designs to stitch soon. I can't believe they already have Christmas decor for sale in some of the stores.
This season I want my BBD 'Tis The Season hanging in my entryway so I paid a visit to the framer last Friday with my friend Pam to drop it off. They give a volume discount so we each took a couple of completed designs and left them. My hubby is paying for the framing of the BBD as a Christmas gift. I'll post a pic when it returns!

September was an absolutely gorgeous month weather wise here. I hope that October continues in the same manner if only for a little while. So far, so good! I'll leave you with a pic that I snapped on a drive through the back roads after my visit to the orchard last week.

Spring Finish, Fall Start

I'm still not sure how I'm going to handle the border on my Torah stitch so this week I just decided to put it aside and pull out some other projects. It wasn't long before I had a finish on BBD Song of Spring. I just love the use of the 4 sided stitch on the alphabet. It sort of gives it a lacy effect.

As I mentioned on an earlier post, this sampler was stitched in memory of my Aunt Bev. It is meant to be finished as a pillow but that will come at a later date.

For my newest start I pulled another Blackbird Design. This one is a companion piece to the Pumpkin Blossom pincushion and is meant to be finished on a sewing box. 

It won't be long before the stitching on this one is finished too. It's small enough that it might actually work on top of a tin rather than a box. As you can see, this one can be personalized with the stitcher's initials, one on each top corner. 

I also have a fabulous new wall hanging which shows off one of my previous finishes, Plum Street Samplers Turkey Love. I changed the date on this one to reflect the celebration of the first Thanksgiving on Canadian soil.

My dear friend Thea, who loves to quilt, offered to once again beautify one of my finishes. She had a bit of a hard time with this one because the linen was a bit stretchy and tended to move as she sewed around it. She actually had to rip out her first attempt. For all her troubles I'm going to stitch her a sampler. 

The mail this week also brought me the most wonderful gift. I was the lucky winner of a Facebook giveaway by Handmade by Nina in celebration of 2000 likes. She was giving away 3 different hand dyed linens, as well as hand dyed ric rac trim to match. When the parcel arrived this past week, I was thrilled to find that it also included 4 of her overdyed floss.

 The linens are cocoa, wildberry and marble in 36ct, 32ct and 40ct respectively. The trim is called Cherry Cola of which I have the matching floss already. The floss are Nutmeg, Pearl, Red Grape and Heather and they look fabulous against the linen! Thank you so much Nina! They're truly lovely!

The weather here has been just lovely this past week. Our temperatures are above normal for this time of year and the days have been sunny with cooler nights. I took the opportunity to get out and visit our local orchard to pick up some apples and cider. 

As you can see, Cannamore Orchard is home to The Spooky Wagon Ride. I don't know how it is operated now but when my boys were in high school they volunteered at the orchard as characters in the wagon ride. The orchard would give a portion of the monies taken in to their school band. This was one of the band's major fundraisers each year. I remember that Jeff played the role of a warlock on one of the wagons, telling tales as they followed the ride. I think Chris was one of the costumed characters who jumped out of the cornfield at the visitors. They worked the ride each weekend in October leading up to Halloween and there were times when it was a cold, rainy night and they thought they'd freeze. Not once would they opt out though. They were committed to that band!

During my visit inside the orchard store I spotted this apple sampler.

One of the owners told me they found the sampler in an antique shop. When they removed the backing to repair it they spotted a date from the late 1800s. She couldn't remember the exact date.

Besides apples, the orchard also has a bountiful supply of pumpkins.

Gourds too!

In addition to the spooky evening ride there are also activities for the younger children including a small maze. I'm thinking of taking my grandchildren here when they come at Thanksgiving. The Canadian Thanksgiving takes place the second Sunday in October so it won't be long now.
Our other option is to take in the new attraction at Upper Canada Village in Morrisburg called Pumpkin Inferno. There is nothing scary about this attraction which boasts close to 6000 pumpkins carved by local artists. I'm leaving it up to my son as to which attraction he thinks is best. 

Now I'm off to stitch Plum Street Samplers Mystery stitch, Mary's Sampler. Anyone care to join me?

Pumpkins for Cathey

I'm dedicating this post today to a dear blogging friend, Cathey (aka Pumpkin). Today is Cathey's Blogoversary and we wanted to do something very special to celebrate it. Cathey has been fighting a difficult battle against cancer and there are many of us who wanted to let her know just how much we care about her and are supporting her. If you want to see just how many friends are participating, check it out at Daffycat's blog.

Whether near or far, we're in your corner Cathey and these pumpkins are for you. Happy Blogoversary!!

JBW Pumpkin

Prairie Schooler Pumpkins minicard

Pumpkins, pumpkins, large and small, sending hugs from one and all!

September Ornament SAL

Welcome Fall! My favourite time of year and my preferred stitching. So in honour of the start of the fall season I stitched up this sweet little ornament for the Ornament SAL.

This was a freebie offered by Brittercup Designs. I don't think it's available any longer. 
In keeping with the fall theme I also stitched a Blackbird Design called Pumpkin Blossom Pinkeep which could be used as an ornament if you so wished. Some of you may have already seen this on my last post.

No doubt next month's ornament will be on a Halloween theme. How can it not, lol!

September WIPocalypse

My all time favourite season officially starts tomorrow and I'm thrilled. I love autumn and anything that pertains to it. It's back!..... along with crisp bright days, cooler nights, changing leaves, colourful mums, apple picking, pumpkin pies, pumpkin chai lattes, and tons of fall stitching projects that I want to start all at once. There are not enough hours in the day to get them all completed before Christmas stitching calls to me. I'm just going to have to limit myself and that's the main problem, lol!

I started off the month by getting my ornament stitched up for the ornament SAL at Stitching Lotus. Of course it had to be a fall theme! Unfortunately I can't show a pic until the last Wednesday of this month so you'll just have to check back for that.

Next up, my Blackbird Designs Pumpkin Blossom pincushion.

I love how this has turned out and I'm hunting now for fabric for the backing. I can't wait until it joins the others on display in my dough bowl. I want to stitch the companion piece to this one too.

I finished this and went straight back to my other BBD,  Song of Spring. Don't you just love the colours?

I've decided that this is being stitched in memory of my dear Aunt Beverly who passed away a year ago this past spring. Aunt Bev was always so supportive of me and I miss her dearly. We had both worked as healthcare professionals, she as a nurse and myself as a lab technologist, so she understood the stresses I faced in my workplace. We actually both did our training at the same hospital. She was also very supportive of my needlework and as a retirement gift she had one of my stitching finishes framed for me. 

I've also been diligently working away at my Torah stitch.

I now have only half a line of text to complete and then I can start work on my borders. The borders are left up to the individual to choose although they have limited us as to which colours we can use. I've picked my border for the sides which has to be very narrow since there are only 5 spaces allotted for it. I have a little more leeway with my bottom border. I've got it narrowed down to 2 choices at this point and will decide once I'm done the main stitching.

Besides my stitching, I did a little finishing on some autumn stitches I completed last year. I finished up two little pincushions to add to my decor.

Plum Street Samplers Give Thanks freebie

Gentle Art Fall For Squirrels

That's about it for this month. I've picked out a couple of more ornaments I'd like to stitch but beyond that I haven't decided on a larger project yet.

Although the joint in my hip is killing me lately I'm still trying to do a little bit of walking as it will allow. During one of my evening walks last week I spotted this in my neighbour's tree.

I don't know if she's spotted it yet but it would sure account for the large increase in the number of wasps I've seen around lately!

Thank you for each and every comment that you leave here. I do love reading them so much.
Enjoy your weekend and fall's arrival everyone!

TUSAL and Stitchy Updates

I'm afraid I'm a couple of days late with my TUSAL post. Time just got away on me and if I hadn't read of it on some of your blogs I just might have forgot it completely. 

Not a lot of orts produced over the last month but we had a very busy August and at times stitching took a backseat. Lots of black orts from my Torah stitch. I stuck my little ort jar next to a BBD called Sunflower house which I finished up right around this time 2 yrs ago. I thought it fitting with all the gorgeous sunflowers I've spied around the countryside out my way.

I'm more than halfway through my Torah stitch at this point. A friend gave me a book of Celtic stitch patterns and there are some lovely borders in it that might work well for this piece. Here's a progress pic.

I love the look of the Hebrew. Hebrew is written right to left but as you can see I'm stitching it my usual way of left to right. I just find it goes more quickly that way. 

Besides the Torah I picked up my Song of Spring and put in a little time with it.

I am loving the colours on this one as well as that sweet bunny. The printed pic on the chart actually makes things look as though the design is stitched in shades of blue and rose with soft pink. It's not at all what I was expecting but I'm loving it.

I was getting itchy to start something with an Autumn theme so last night I picked out BBD Pumpkin Blossom Pinkeep from the Autumn leaflet. This should be a fast stitch and will make an adorable pinkeep.

The weather this past week let slip that my favourite season is almost upon us... cooler days and even cooler evenings. In fact there was a frost warning Thursday night! It's sure putting me in the mood and I'm already pulling out some Autumn decor. Date squares are in the oven and we've already gone through one pumpkin loaf (with the help of friends!).  The house smells wonderful! Hope you're enjoying a fabulous weekend.

Bells on Lake Muskoka

Several people have requested that I post the bell concert which my husband and our friend Steve gave last weekend on Lake Muskoka at Bannockburn church. It's not the best video since it was my first time trying out my new phone so I hope you are able to view it. It's best not to enlarge it full screen since it seems somewhat distorted.