Easter greetings and Spring Quakers

So the weather isn't quite what we'd hoped for(lots of rain), but Easter weekend has arrived and the temperatures are definitely feeling more like spring. Easter Sunday promises to be a glorious day. I want to take this opportunity to wish all my stitching and blogging friends a very blessed Easter . For those of you who are not Christian, I wish you a beautiful spring long weekend spent with family and friends. Here at our home, my DH and I will be joined by my two younger sons, and some friends from my husband's choir. BBQ leg of lamb is on the menu so we sure hope that weather turns sunny as predicted.

I haven't felt like stitching on anything other than Spring Quakers this week. The colours are so rich and inviting and once I'd picked it up I didn't want to put it down.

I'll let the pictures speak for the results of my efforts.

When it comes to my progress on the Wedding Sampler, I've decided to change my colour on the floss since it just didn't suit the design. I'm now waiting for some floss I have on order in several different shades for a floss toss to see which will look better. I'll post pictures on my choice once it arrives and I've made up my mind. In the meantime I haven't touched anything else. I do have another start in mind but I think I should finish off Sweet Berries first. What's the new start you ask? It's called Live, Laugh, Love by Primitive Bettys. The pattern includes a recipe on how to hand dye your own linen. I'm thinking I just might give it a try!

Now I've got to get moving on cleaning up this place and start putting together some of my meal for tomorrow. Enjoy your weekend, take some time for yourself and keep on stitching!

Blogaversary giveaway!

Not mine this time but a wonderful giveaway by my fellow stitching friend Angela of Hooked On Stitches. I don't usually post a link to giveaways but Angela's will be well worth your visit. She is a phenomenal finisher and I can attest to that personally. I was the winner of one of her previous giveaways. I won the pillow on the top right in this picture. Take yourself over there for a visit. You know you want to!

Spring Quaker resurfaces

Isn't it great? It's 7:30pm, the sun hasn't set yet and I'm sitting here listening to the cardinals call to one another. I love it! Today I was out looking at a new gazebo for the garden where I can soon sit and stitch while I enjoy these evenings.

After completing Cast All Your Cares for my friend I felt I could once more spend some time with Spring Quakers. Saturday I packed up my stitching and spent a good portion of the day stitching with some friends. I wanted to give my full attention to SQ but my fingers seemed to be as tired as the rest of my body and my progress was minimal. The frogs also found it necessary to make my life miserable after I found a counting error which didn't help matters much. The result is only 2 more motifs completed after several hours of stitching. I intend to concentrate on this one for the next few evenings after work.

Sweet Little Berries is coming along as well. Most of the work on this one was completed last week. It's such a darling little piece and I like to take it to work with me to pass the time during lunch and breaks. Reminds me of all those sweet berries that will be ripe for the picking in a couple of months.

My fatigue level has been pretty high lately which is why I didn't spend much time stitching or blogging last week. There were several evenings when I didn't go anywhere near the computer. When I finally did I couldn't believe all the blog posts waiting to be read. There are not enough hours in the day to catch up and comment on everything so if I failed to comment on any of your recent posts please forgive me. I am reading them but when I get so far behind I don't leave too many comments lest I have no time for stitching. No stitching means one miserable woman here! After all stitching is my means of releasing stress and trust me, you don't want to see me when I'm too wound up!

One thing that did brighten up my week was the arrival of my giveaway winnings from Alisa's generous giveaway. I met Alisa through another blogging friend Judy and was thrilled to learn that Alisa also resided in Ontario here in Canada and quite possibly we will get a chance to meet in person during several SALs that take place in our neck of the woods.

I jumped at the chance to enter into her wonderful giveaway and was thrilled to find out I'd won.

Here's a couple pics of my winnings including the fabulous stitched card that accompanied everything.

Isn't that hummingbird adorable? The package of buttons on the far left of the group picture is full of all kinds of tiny bug buttons.... dragonflies, bees, ladybugs, etc. They'll be perfect to adorn summer stitches. It's hard to tell from this picture but that fabric is a lovely piece of cashel linen that will come in very handy for numerous samplers. Thank you so much Alisa for your generous gifts!! I promise I will put everything to good use.

I've given myself until the weekend to stitch on SQ and then I have to put some time in on my Wedding Sampler. I started this last week and as I mentioned on a previous post, I decided to stitch this in the colour of the bridesmaid's dresses. The chosen colour was tangerine and although it's a lovely colour for the dresses it hasn't suited this particular design. The colour is more of a neon shade when seen in real life. After getting a few second opinions, I've spoken to the bride's mom (also know as my cousin, Sheryl) and have decided to start over with another colour choice. Which one that is remains to be seen. I'll do a floss toss next week and make a decision. Any suggestions would be gratefully accepted. I was thinking of an overdye floss. The original design was done all in metallics and that would not be my first choice! I can go with another shade of fabric if necessary. I'm using a 32ct Lambswool.

That's it for now from my village hideaway. I hope Spring is paying a visit to your doorstep and you are soaking up some of that fresh air!

New moon rising

So April's new moon is rising and it's time to post my TUSAL for the past month. As you can see I've some orts in both my little jars. One is kept upstairs and one is kept in the family room downstairs. That way I have something handy to drop orts into at any time. Here is what they amounted to when their contents were added to my main jar.

There's definitely more colour showing up thanks to my Spring Quakers. Tonight will be the beginning of a new start which I hope to have pictures of shortly. It's a wedding gift for my cousin's daughter so I have to get moving on it.

I made sure that before I started the wedding piece I completed the other stitching which a friend had requested. If you remember, she requested something stitched by me to hang in her new home.

Cast All Your Cares is designed by My Big Toe Designs and is stitched on 32ct Lambswool Jobelan. The floss used was Weeks Dyes Works as was charted. I made sure to use a big enough piece of material so that she could use mats with the frame if she wants.

My new start is simply called Wedding Sampler designed by Lisa Cowell. I'm using another piece of Lambswool, this time 28 ct and I'm not using the gold leaf floss suggested. Instead I'm using the colour of the bridesmaids dresses which is tangerine. I had originally decided to go with a Silk 'N Colors floss called Orange Grove but I really think this one is more orange than tangerine so instead I'm using an overdye by Six Strand Sweets called Apricot. This one also has more variation in the floss.

I'll also be continuing with Sweet Little Berries this coming week. I should also have some pictures later in the week of my recent newly framed stitches which include Jardin Prive's Noel

Now I'm off to settle into my comfy stitching chair and watch The Tourist while I stitch. A little Johnny Depp can fire up anybody's night, right?

Dare I?

Remove my winter tires, that is. I'm afraid that as soon as I head off to have them removed we'll get dumped on once more. The temperatures have been quite cold here this week and we see the odd flake drop from the sky but my garden tells me that spring is definitely here and warmth won't be far behind.

My tulips are popping up all through the garden despite all that dry, cracked earth. Bring on some of those April showers and it won't be long before all those pretty flowers will be blowing in the breeze. Spring fever seemed to take hold of me this week and prompted me to start a new stitch.

Sweet Little Berries by Little House Needleworks is a kit which has been sitting in my stash for several months now. It came complete with fabric and floss but I've substituted a Silkweaver solo Jazlyn from my stash for the designated linen. I had a hard time finding a picture of this one online. I believe that this was a complimentary chart given out at retail shops if you purchased the required Crescent Colours floss. It's a fun design to stitch and I'm really enjoying it. My photo looks a little washed out though. Why is is so hard to get decent photos?

Sticking with the fruit theme, I finished Tra La La's Maison No. 4 today with it's lovely cherries.

The floss I needed to finish this one up was waiting for me in my mail yesterday so I didn't waste any time and started stitching that border. Here are the results.

This appears to be a series of some sort since there are several more of les Maisons available. Judy was asking me if I thought I'd do some of the others. Perhaps, at some point, but right now I have too many other things I want to get started at or finish. One of those includes Cast All Your Cares which is moving along quite nicely. I'll have a picture of that one for you on the next post.

As I sit here at my keyboard I can hear barking coming from my neighbour's dog across the street. He has spotted Clarisse sitting in the front window and I think he desperatly wants to meet her.

Nick is actually tied up in his back yard and has pretty well come to the end of his leash. He peers across the street from between the two houses and watches our front window for any sign of Clarisse. I cropped this picture so you could him a bit better so it's a little fuzzy but I was taking it from the dining room chair in my home across the street so I don't think it turned out all that badly. He's a real cutie! Thank you to all of you for taking part in my TOGA giveaway. It was a lot of fun and it won't be the last one. Thanks also for all of your wonderful comments on my stitching. I love hearing from each and every one of you. Hope your week is going exactly as you'd hoped it would.

TOGA winner

So the time has finally arrived for me to announce the winner of my TOGA giveaway. I think I'm as excited as some of you are! Although there were 31 comments on my post, there were only 30 individuals in the draw. I numbered you in order of your comments from first to last and used the lucky random number generator and have a look at the picture below to see which number it picked.

The winner is commentor number 6 also known as Carol from Stitching Dreams!!

I'm very excited for you Carol. Please email me with your snail mail address so that I can get this package of goodies off to you as soon as possible. I had so much fun with this that I'll be doing another one of these in the future for sure.

I have more updates of my stitching for you but I'll have to post them later. I've got too much on the go at the moment and I wanted to get this post out there for all of you.

Chat with you later.

A finish for my giveaway

I finished stitching my little chicks on Monday and today I spent the morning getting them all finished up. For those of you who guessed Prairie Schooler, you would be correct. They're from book 107, Just Hatched. I thought I had some 32 ct fabric for stitching this but alas there was nothing but 28 ct so the egg is a little larger than I'd planned. As for the egg shape, my finishing skills leave a lot to be desired. What I lack in finishing I make up for with enthusiasm. I'm thrilled to be sharing something I stitched with one of you. If I could I'd make an egg for each and every one of you. You have all blessed me with your friendship, insight and skills. Thank you all so much!

BTW, I have no intention of sharing just how long it took me to complete this today. Can someone please tell me how to finish off the ends on this kind of trim!? Just suffice it to say that during the process there were several words that need not be spoken here that passed through my lips, lol!

In any case I'm learning as I go and hope that whoever wins my little chicks will be forgiving.

In addition to my own giveaway I've got together some items for the TUSAL giveaway over at Daffycat's blog. I picked a few more fabrics as well as finishing off a small pinkeep. It's from a freebie offered by Donna at By The Bay Needleart.

Now I just have to get everything into an envelope and mailed. This promises to be a very exciting draw at the end of the year to which so many people have donated items, both handmade and otherwise.

I've managed to finish off Maison No 4 this week with the exception of the outside border on 2 sides. I didn't calculate very well and consequently ran out of floss before I'd finished stitching. So now it sits on hold until another skein arrives which I purchased online. I'll post a final pic when that happens. I've spent a couple of evening stitching on Cast All Your Cares but a good portion of that was spent frogging so I won't have an updated picture of that until later this weekend.

I know several of you have commented on the snow you received on the weekend after such a promising leadup to spring with all the milder temperatures. Our snow had pretty well disappeared until that time as well. The first days of spring brought some pretty heavy snow which fortunately has now disappeared. Here are a few pics I took from the window during one of the snowfalls.

I love how the little sparrows have huddled under the boughs of the tree next door.

Gotta feel sorry for all those little critters who are once more out and about and then get whammied again!

Hope everyone is having a good week. Happy Stitching!