August WIPocalypse

Warning: Picture intensive!

August has been a very productive month for stitching and finishing. On my post this coming Friday you will see the smalls which I finished and stitched for the month.  I spent the remainder of the time concentrating on Mary Ann Farmer in the hopes of nearing a completion. I'm happy to report that the end is in sight! Here's a pic of my progress after returning from my vacation 2 weeks ago.

As you can see, I had the remaining mirror image to complete. Since that time the weather has cooled down and the temps are much more conducive to some gazebo stitching. I've been out here just about every morning since we returned for a couple hours. The result is that I'm very close to completing the remainder of this beautiful piece!

Stitching was involved in a good portion of my vacation. We started off with a trip to Toronto, Ontario to visit the Tapestry of the Spirit exhibit. This is the Torah project which I became a part of 6 years ago. A group of ladies from the Jewish community, with an idea by Temma Gentles, decided to stitch the Torah which is the first 5 books of the Old Testament. The project was too large for them to tackle on their own so they put out a call for more stitcher's. There have been over 1500 stitchers of all faiths from over 28 countries who have participated. I was fortunate to have been one of the first 100 who answered the call. It has been a long process which you can read about if you follow the link here but the first 2 1/2 books are completed, assembled and displayed for this exhibit. The remainder are nearly complete and the entire project should be assembled by 2020. In addition, a portion of  the scriptures in Greek and the Qur'an in Arabic on the theme of creation were stitched and on display. My friend Kathryn who is an Anglican priest served as an advisor on the Greek text.

I am so thrilled to have been a part of such an amazing project! It is hoped that they will be able to take the entire project on tour in the future. Donations and sales of their book will be used for this purpose.

After Toronto we visited with family and close friends in Windsor and along the route there and back.

with my Mom

with my cousin Sheryl

 with my sister Laurie

 my BIL Marty and my sis Lana

 with our highschool friends!

 with my highschool boyfriend Peter & his family 

who brought some bricks from my family 

home which was torn done

at my nephew Patrick's new home

On the way back we took a side trip to Sudbury where my hubby left me for a few days to hang out with some very dear stitching friends at the home of Cathy. While we stitched and gabbed he drove on to Sault St Marie to visit with a number of friends he made during the 17 years he spent working there. 

I had an awesome visit with my friends! We visited a quilt shop, stitched, visited Pam's home on Manitoulin Island, toured about 1/2 of the island, stitched some more and enjoyed many meals together.  It's always wonderful to share your passion with like minded friends. There was a lot of laughter and a lot of fun. My hubby shared two nights with us and enjoyed the company of Cathy and Nan's husbands. Next year I'm hoping to open my home for our visit and share some fun times in Ottawa with them! Here are some pics from our visit.

Jo and Tee 

 Jo and Tee's mom, Bev

 Pam

 Our host Cathy

 Tee

 Nan

 Shelly

 Donna

 The view from Pam's home on Manitoulin

The gang, all in our Canada gear!

The whole group minus my hubby

It was just a little windy, lol!

I also received some amazing stash and finished items from my friends, some of which were delayed birthday gifts. Nan brought with her a little design for all of us to stitch. I'll have a picture of those on my smalls post this Friday.

All in all it was a pretty amazing month! I hope the fun times and this wonderful weather we're having continue. Next month I'm scheduled for another hip replacement on the 19th. Thank goodness I'll have my stitching to occupy my time as I recuperate.

July WIPocalypse

Summer is here and the living is easy! Would you believe I didn't touch any of my cross stitch until mid month? Even then I only worked on small projects until this last week. My small finish can be seen on my previous post. The weather this spring was so lousy that as soon as better weather arrived we took advantage of it. However now the sticky humidity has arrived which forced us indoors and out came my stitching.

I've been concentrating on The Scarlett House Mary Ann Farmer this past week. I made significant progress from my last post.

Before: 

After:

The lettering on the centre portion is stitched over one and stitched up very quickly. I actually enjoy over one stitching and I had just finished working on a name tree which used the over one.

I almost forgot to show you the finish I had right at the beginning of July. It wasn't finished in time for Canada Day this year but I'll have it ready to go for next year. As you'll see it was designed for Canada's 150th birthday celebration two years ago so I'm a little late to the party, lol! Better late than never! This is Canada 150, designed by Jeannette Douglas.

That's it for this month. I hope you're not melting the way we have the past few days. More reasonable temperatures are called for later in the week. Lots of visits for us this coming month including a stitching get together. I can't wait!

July Smalls

Just one quick little Small finish to post for this month. This will be a Christmas ornament for a friend whose moving to Hawaii! Shhh! It's a surprise! This is the Aloha Tree by Nouveau Encore Designs.

This is stitched on a 32ct Silkweaver Solo opalescent Lugana using Silk 'N Color Turquoise Fields.

I took this finish along with the name tree from last month's finish and got everything ready to do my final finishing yesterday. I was annoyed as heck when I discovered that I had misplaced my sheet of mat board to use in the ornament finishing. It was residing with all my other craft materials, that is, until we emptied the room for the new hardwood floor. The craft room was the third and final bedroom to have new floors installed and since everything has been placed back in the room the mat board has gone missing in action. I had just purchased it recently and it was a fairly large piece too so it can't hide just anywhere. I have one last place to look and if it's not found then it looks like I will be making a trip to Michael's tomorrow. I want these ornaments finished before I go on holidays in August. Of course you know I'll find that mat board after I've bought a new one, lol! See you next month with a pic of both finishes and a new small as well.

P.S. Someone has taken over my stitching chair in the gazebo!!!

June WIPocalypse

I spent the better part of June getting immersed into something that I haven't done for awhile....reading a book! Consequently my stitching suffered somewhat but I'd temporarily lost my mojo so I didn't mind. After completing 3 novels I'm now back on track and my stitching has resumed. 

Mary Ann Farmer has progressed a little farther than I expected from last month. Here's my progress up until now.

It's coming along, slowly but surely. I don't feel much like starting or working on anything else at the moment although the Autumn Quaker I started in May is calling to me on occasion. For now I'll continue with this as I search for another small to stitch for July.

Our hardwood floors are almost complete. We had wanted to do all three bedrooms, using our income tax refund. Well Canada Revenue had other ideas and our refund wasn't quite as large as I was expecting. So the decision was made to only do the two largest bedrooms. In the meantime I did a little digging and checked things out only to discover that Canada Revenue had made an error. Turns out that they forgot to include the income tax that my hubby had paid on his self employment income. When that was corrected we were owed a considerable amount. So bedroom number 3 will be done albeit a little later than the others. Here are some pics of the finished rooms. We managed to find the same hardwood as used in the main living areas which had been installed ten years ago!

Here's a pic of the original flooring installed 10 years ago.

 It's all the same flooring. It just appears a different colour at times due to the lighting in the rooms. We are thrilled with the results and look forward to completing the final room.

I wanted to share this little sewing kit that my son Jeff picked up for me at a local flea market.

I thought it was darling! He also gifted me with an oval antique frame with the bubble glass. It currently houses the picture that it came with. Someday I hope it frames a piece of my stitching!

Finally I'll leave you with a picture of my recent framed piece that I picked up. I think I finished the stitching on it about 18 months ago.
This is Stacy Nash Tribute to Summer.

Today is our Canada Day holiday and we're off to a BBQ with some of the neighbours later this afternoon. Should be fun! I've offered holiday greetings in an earlier post to my Canadian friends but I'd like to take the time to offer wishes for a Happy Fourth of July to my American family and friends. Enjoy!

Happy Canada Day!!

Happy Canada Day wishes going out to all my family and friends, far and near!! Enjoy your day and stay safe!!

June Smalls

I lost my stitching mojo for the first part of June. By the time I felt like stitching again there wasn't much time left in the month for the start of a new project. Instead I dug out a Christmas ornament that I had started late last year but never finished.

This is an M Designs tree that I've stitched for a friend.

When I'm stitching one of these trees on an opalescent fabric I don't see the need to add the beads. The fabric itself lends that extra bling. However this fabric had no opalescence so I chose to add them. I guess I wasn't looking at the pattern all that closely and I didn't realize just how many beads there were until I got started. I think it could have done without quite as many but I was already halfway through the beading when I clued in! Finding just the right colour was challenging too because I wanted a contrast to the floss.

The final finishing of the ornament will take place next week. Rain is forecast which will keep me indoors and this will be the perfect project to pass some time. 

Summer here has been delayed because of our cool, wet spring. The heat arrived last week and everything is blooming all at once. I snapped a few pics of the garden flowers while I was out watering the other night.

This is the latest that my irises and peonies have ever bloomed. Our annual visitors, the waxwings, also haven't arrived yet because the berries on our neighbour's tree haven't ripened yet. Most years the tree is already picked clean of the berries and the waxwings are on their way. For awhile there this spring I honestly thought we might not see the warm weather. When it did arrive the humidity and storms arrived right alongside it.

I'll leave you with a pic of Clarisse and me enjoying some time together in the gazebo. She likes to be as close to me as possible, lol!

Mary Ann Farmer - May WIPocalypse

As promised I now have an updated photo of my Mary Ann Farmer sampler. I finally took her off the frame this morning to move the fabric so I grabbed a couple of photos at that time. 

The lighting is terrible here today. Once again it's overcast and I can't get a decent picture of the actual fabric colour. It looks too washed out in these pictures. The picture below is closer to the actual colour. 

I'm using a Silkweaver Solo 36 ct linen. I used to have a lot of these fabrics in my collection but I ended up selling a lot of them because my tastes in stitching changed and I was using more neutral fabrics. I'm thinking that perhaps I'll try ordering a few more from them. It's such lovely fabric to work on.

On a side note, I have a question for you regarding what type of iron you are using to press your linens. I find mine just isn't getting hot enough, even with the steam setting, to remove a lot of the wrinkles from the linen. I had this problem a few years ago and so I purchased a new iron. Perhaps it's just the fact that as the iron ages, the heat isn't as hot. I'm just curious as to which type other stitchers are using.

I won't have any Smalls stitching to share this month. With our renovations it was too difficult to try and get to my stitching supplies and dig out the necessary chart, floss, etc. They are coming to install the new floors this Friday so it won't be long before my house is back in order once again. Yippee!
See you next month!