Final Finish for 2005

This is my final project for 2005 and I'm finishing it just under the wire! Faith Hope and Love was designed by LHN. I'm planning to have this one framed.

Best wishes and happy stitching in 2006!

Winter Wonderland II

This is what our neighborhood looked like at 8:30am yesterday. It continued to snow through most of the morning and afternoon. Everything is white and clean and there's a certain "sereneness" about a fresh covering of snow!

I made it into work just fine; there wasn't much traffic at all. I'm sure many people were off for the holiday. We were released early, so by 4:30pm I was relaxing and stitching. Both kids were gone with friends and my DH was puttering in the garage. I watched, without interruption, the Sound of Music! This is one of my all time favorite movies and every now and then I pull it out and enjoy!

While watching the movie, I finished another Essy's Friends project (this one designed by Lilybet) and did the stitching on another (I'll work on finishing it today). I have two more to complete and then I will be caught up. The next design is by Shepherd's Bush.



I also worked on Faith, Hope, and Love but it's not quite finished. It's quite boring stitching the border! There will be more time for stitching today, so visit again for updates!

Von, thanks for the update regarding the Rose Parade. I didn't realize that they had moved it to Monday!

Happy New Year everyone!

It's Snowing Again!

Well, we had a nice break from winter over the Christmas holiday, but as of this evening, winter is back! We're expecting up to four inches between now and noon tomorrow. Oh how I wish I could crawl under a blanket and stay there! Unfortunately, it's a work day for me tomorrow (hopefully a short one) so I will need to get up in the morning and make the trek in. Hopefully other people are on vacation tomorrow so that the commute isn't too bad!

I did get a little bit of stitching in tonight. I worked on another one of the Essy's Friends kits. Hopefully I can finish it off tomorrow and then will post a picture. As I stitch these, I think of two dear friends each who recently had a masectomy. (Proceeds from these kits benefit breast cancer research.)

What's everyone doing for New Year's Eve? We typically stay home and enjoy being home! For supper, I think we're going to grill steaks (yes, we use our grill even when there's a foot of snow on the ground!) and will have baked potatoes with butter and sour cream. We usually watch movies that the whole family will enjoy. You can be sure that I'll be sitting in the corner of the couch stitching! On Sunday we will watch the Rose Parade and all of the football games.

Whatever your plans are - have a safe and happy New Year's Eve. Wishing you peace and lots of stitching time in 2006!

Faith, Hope, and Love

Well, I survived three days of chauffering. I don't even want to stop and figure out how many miles I put on the car in the past three days! Tomorrow I return to work - I'm glad there are only two work days left this week!

I did find time for some stitching tonight. I purchased this pattern and fabric through Elegant Stitch several weeks ago - it was a fundraiser for Katrina's Kids (proceeds used to purchase holiday gifts for kids who were impacted by Hurricane Katrina). The design is from Little House Needleworks. I have to stitch the heart at the top yet and there's a stitched border around the entire design. The stitching went quickly! It's called Faith, Hope, and Love...



I've been thinking about setting some stitching goals for 2006. I have a hard time planning too far out, so I may just set goals for the first three months of they year and then review and adjust every three months...I may post more on this tomorrow.

Well, off to blog reading. Have a good day!

Essy's Friends #1

I think I first saw this on Karen's blog a couple of months ago. It prompted me to find out what Essy's Friends was all about. Once I realized that proceeds were donated to benefit breast cancer, I immediately signed up. I now have the first five kits and have finished my first one.

This design is from Mosey 'n Me. It's stitched on 32ct Awareness Pink from R&R. I must say that the tin pin finishing was quite easy and very quick!

Pillow Addiction

WARNING...If you are trying to reduce your needlework stash (vs. adding to it), do not, and I repeat, DO NOT, read this post!

I may soon have to join needleworks anonymous - I'm completely addicted to these pillow designs from Little House Needleworks! Recently I purchased the pattern and the coordinating pillow for Season of Rest. I received it in the mail just before Christmas. Now, look at this adorable pillow from Country Cottage Needleworks - it's called Rose Cottage. I love the design and I love the fiber colors.

I may never dig out of this pile of stash I'm in. Sure am having fun though!

Last, but not Least

I have one last finish to share with you. Yesterday, Christmas Eve, my daughter and I made a quick shopping trip and then came home and made fudge and chocolate mint cookies. I had a couple final ornaments to finish and here's one that you haven't seen:

It's from the 2003 JCS Ornament issue; the design is by Glory Bee. It was a quickie to stitch!

We had a wonderful evening last night at my mom's. My entire family was there (I have four brothers!) It's rare for us all to be there at the same time on any holiday, so this was quite a special occasion. With four in-laws (actually, we call them the 'outlaws') and seven grandchildren, I guess you could say we had a full house!

My mother is a church organist, so growing up, I always went with her to midnight mass (in the days when the service was really at midnight!) Now, many churches have their evening service at 10 p.m. My mother still plays the organ at her church. I sang last night in the choir at my church. It was particularly nice to have my daughter there with me - she played the flute with the orchestra!

Today's events were much slower paced - we returned to my mom's for dinner - pork roast, beef roast, mashed potatoes, carrots, broccoli, etc., etc. It was a much smaller crowd today. We were joined by my 85 year-old aunt who always spends holidays with us. Then it was on to football! Both of our teams (Green Bay and Minnesota) lost today. :(

Tomorrow I play chauffeur to my son and daughter who have hockey and basketball camp respectively! At some point during the day, I plan to go through my stitching stash to figure out what my priorities are going to be for 2006!

Have a wonderful day after Christmas everyone!

Merry Christmas

Dear friends,

Wishing you the magic of Christmas and the gift of love...have a wonderful holiday!

I promise to be back in full force (stitching and blogging) after this weekend! My gifts are all wrapped, but I'm hoping to fit in some baking yet tomorrow. We'll see if that works out. Saturday and Sunday will be spent celebrating the holiday with family. Monday will be a day of rest!

Thank you for your friendship - it's been great sharing my love of stitching with all of you. I have appreciated your words of encouragement throughout the past few months. I've also enjoyed visiting your blogs - what a talented group you are!

Rest, relax and enjoy the next few days!

Peace,

Cathy

Ta Da...Ornaments!

Some of you may recall seeing one of these prior to being finished. I finally had time last night to turn them in to ornaments. It's just a simple pillow (my finishing experience is limited and I didn't have time to try something new). I thought the beads added a nice touch. The design is from Nordic Needle, 2003 JCS.

We've had nearly six inches of snow already in just seven hours time. We're expecting it to continue to snow all day. I'm heading out to work now - I fear that it is going to be a long commute!

Have a great day!

Reminiscing

Sorry friends, I've been doing a pretty good job of keeping up with reading everyone else's blogs. I haven't had much time though to post any new messages to mine. Once the holidays are past I will get back into a regular habit.

Thought I'd post a couple of pictures for you. We have two trees this year. This one is in our living room:



I put up a second tree in our family room this year. It's one of those alpine firs (very tall and skinny and scant branches). I decided to put all of my handmade ornaments on it. Some of them I made, some were made by others. A few were purchased at boutiques. These are some of my favorite ornaments.



Lastly, I want to show you some felt ornaments I made when I was about 13 years old. I made them from a kit (Does anyone remember Leewards?) They hung on my mother's tree for years, and now they hang on mine.



It's hard to believe that Christmas is just around the corner. I still have shopping to do. I rarely get any baking done, but I always think I'm going to (the kitchen isn't my favorite room in the house anyway!) Kids are looking forward to a break from school over the holidays and amidst all the chaos we're expecting a full blown snow storm on Wednesday that will last through the weekend! Oh well, somehow everything still gets done. Have a great week!

Great Mail Day

I was so happy to see that I had a package in the mail today from Elegant Stitch. I received the latest installment of Essy's Friends. The other night I started working on the October kit - I will get caught up on these soon and post pics.

What I was most excited about was the new Hillside Samplings Alphabet Notebook! Happy Birthday to me! This will be one of the first projects I work on in the New Year!

Have a great weekend all!

Happy Birthday!

Are you wondering who's birthday it is today? It's mine. I was born in St. Paul, Minnesota on November 30, 1961!

New Designs from LHN

The LHN website has been updated with information about some new designs coming out soon. The first one, is going to be a "must have" for me - it's called "Season of Rest" and Trail Creek Farm has a pillow that compliments the design beautifully.

The other thing that caught my eye is a series coming out in February entitled "Dear Diary". No pictures posted yet, but the description sure has sparked my curiosity!

I'm anxious to return to my "regular" stitching after the holidays - right now, I'm still working on ornaments and small gifts! Take care and happy stitching!

My Stitching Room

I had time today to "pick up" my stitching room, so here are the pictures. Trust me, it's never this neat and tidy! This used to be my son's bedroom (it's quite small in size). When we finished our lower level, he moved down to a larger room.

As you can see, I've got a comfortable wicker chair to sit in. Note the tablecloth on the table - this was stitched by a woman in Hungary. To the right is a china cabinet filled with Beatrix Potter figurines. When my kids were small, we were crazy about the Beatrix Potter stories. At that time, you could pick up these figurines quite inexpensively. We enjoyed looking at these figurines when we would read the stories!



To the right of the cabinet is our computer. In the corner is a chest of drawers which houses threads, fabric/linen, kitted patterns, stash, etc. The table is a great work surface; my sewing machine is always handy! On the table, there are cookie tins filled with balls of DMC #8 and #12. I've started hanging framed projects in this room where I can enjoy them!



The only thing not visible to you in these pictures is my stash of patterns - I have two "two-inch" three ring binders filled with patterns. They are all in plastic sleeves and organized by designer.

I hope you enjoyed this tour of my stitching room. Now you know where I am when I'm thinking about you!

Winter Wonderland

We received our first significant snowfall today, about three inches. More snow is in the forecast for Monday and Tuesday. These are great days to curl up on the couch with a hot chocolate and some good stitching!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Last night I attended the monthly meeting for my local chapter of EGA. It was my night to bring treats and my mom agreed to bake for me (she's a terrific baker!) We had lemon bars, pumpkin bars and date bars. They were all delicious!

I'm happy to report that our chapter made a whole shoebox full of bookmarks! I'll know the exact number next month, but there were lots of them! Many different techniques were used to create these bookmarks including, cross stitch, blackwork, hardanger, pattern darning, etc. It feels so good knowing that these bookmarks are going to make someone feel really good!

I've been stitching ornaments, but have no new pictures to post. Many of them you have seen before. Once I have them finished (completely finished!) I'll post a picture.

It's Thanksgiving week here in the U.S. We will celebrate the traditional way with turkey, stuffing, wild rice, sweet potatoes, cranberries and pumpkin pie. Since both Thursday and Friday are holidays for me, it makes for a nice long weekend! Unfortunately, most of it will be spent cleaning and decorating for Christmas, but that's okay.

Best wishes to everyone this week and "thanks" for visiting my blog!

Bookmarks, Bookmarks and More Bookmarks

I finished off the last of my bookmarks tonight. My regular readers may recall that I was stitching these (along with help from my daughter) for my local EGA chapter. They are going to be donated to an adult literacy group.

Last month, I turned in three bookmarks, two had been stitched by my daughter who is 13 years old; I had stitched the other one. I wanted to stitch a few more this month and will need to turn them in at our next meeting on Monday, Nov. 21.

Our chapter provided materials, but I was unhappy with the banding - it is a tad bit too wide for a bookmark and it has hearts bordering either side which limits color and design choices. So after stitching one on this banding, I went out and bought some banding inexpensively at my local Michaels.

All of these designs are using the technique of pattern darning which is quick and easy. I will have five additional bookmarks to turn in this Monday!




Here's the backside of the last three bookmarks - isn't pattern darning cool?

Weekend Stitching

Well, here it is, Sunday night and I don't have too much to show for myself. Limited stitching time again this weekend.

My daughter plays traveling basketball and this was the team's first weekend tournament. Her team took 4th place, not bad considering that the first game was a blow out (45-5). They then lost the next two games, one in overtime. They played well, so they should be proud!

I did work on bookmarks this week for my chapter's EGA service project. I'm not real pleased witht them so I'm not going to post any pictures. The chapter supplies the banding and the thread. The banding is too wide and it has red hearts going down either side - really limits the possibilities. I purchased some inexpensive banding at Michael's this weekend and am going to try to stitch up some nicer bookmarks before next Monday. I'll turn back the other banding.

On Friday night I stitched for about three hours while I watched (listened) to the U of M hockey game (vs Anchorage). I stitched the following Hardanger candy cane (pattern from Satin Stitches):



Then on Saturday night, while watching the same two teams again, I started the following Austrian looking ornament design:



Not too long ago, on Romy's blog I saw some beautiful Austrian designs. These designs intrigued me because my maternal grandparents immigrated from Austria/Hungary to the United States in 1906. I happened to be at one of my LNS a few weeks ago and found the following pattern from Thistle Threads:



These designs are perfect and very similar to the ones I saw on Romy's blog. The other rather significant achievement is that I am using silk for the very first time! I'm stitching this with an overdyed called "In the Burgundy" by The Thread Gatherer. It's about 2/3 complete, so stay tuned for updates.

I guess that's it for tonight. Looking forward to the week ahead...

Monday, Monday

Good Morning! I'm sad to report - that I don't have any new stitching updates. There were a million other things to do this past weekend.

I did have some fun on Saturday though - my sister-in-law and I went to a wool expo and then to a holiday boutique. I purchased a wool pincushion kit at the wool expo (a sunflower). I had to laugh - the ladies who stitch, weave, and knit with wool are just as crazy about their craft as the rest of us! It was fun to see the beautiful colors and the projects.

The holiday boutique was okay. We have a lot of these at this time of year; between now and Christmas you can find a handful to go to on any given weekend. Again, I didn't buy too much - when you go to these year after year sometimes everything starts looking the same. I think I may need to take a "year off"! Then next time I go there will be all kinds of new ideas and handmade crafts for purchase.

I'm going to set one stitching goal for myself this week: more bookmarks! I had committed to stitching a few more bookmarks for EGA and I need to get them done. They need to be turned in at this month's meeting on Nov 21. The darning pattern bookmarks had really turned out nice and were quick and easy to finish, so more than likely I will do more of those.

I want to share with you one other activity I participated in this weekend. We dedicated a "peace pole" at our church this weekend. The ceremony was quite moving - many school age children were there and midway through the ceremony about twelve of us said the phrase "May Peace Prevail in Earth" in other languages: Hebrew, Tagalong, Spanish, Korean, Lithuanian, Sioux Indian, American Sign Language, etc. I contributed by saying the phrase in German. Our peace pole has the phrase engraved on it in several languages too. The moment was an opportunity to stop and think about this wonderful world we live in and reflect on what we can do to help promote peace.

I just want you to know that I appreciate the worldwide friendships I have made through my stitching blog. Take care and have a great stitching week.

Zeta

Okay, my daughter said I had to post a picture of Zeta too! (I think that was an excuse for her to play with the camera some more!) Can you see the resemblance between the dog and the pillow? :)