Hello everyone! Long time, no blog. I swear, I've have had all these Christmas photos uploaded on blogger for at least three months now, but I finally got some time to write a couple of words while DH is entertaining the girls.
I managed to finish up all the stockings on Christmas Eve and I was really pretty pleased with how they turned out, even though a lot of people can't really see the reindeer in the deer stocking. Oh well... The finishing was super easy (sewing machine), but I do confess that I did not use the instructions that came with the patterns. I opted to use an on-line tutorial instead. It is so much more easy to follow photos than words, don't you agree?
The stockings were stitched the called for Caron Collection's Watercolors hand-dyed perle cotton (on 20-ct linen), which was a true joy to stitch with. It is fun to experiment with large fields of the same color over-dyed too; you never know how it'll turn out until you are done. If you have less patience with cross-stitching and are more skilled with sewing than I am, the designs are also available as applique patterns (check out this link).
I really like SamSarah and if I had more time, I would probably tackle
the perpetual calendar that she is designing. I am not a big fan of
stitching on perforated paper though. I like to crumple my linen while I
stitch. :-)
Back to the stockings: I love stockings! We didn't use them in Sweden, so it is one more American tradition that I am embracing in the fullest! I love all the BOAF stockings and I will find out a reason to stitch them sooner or later as well (Special Delivery and Snow Day can be checked out here and here are Angel of Peace and Wish Upon a Star.
And one can always dream.... Mary Beale's stockings (insert dreamy sigh here):
Over "Christmas break", I did also work some more on trying to finish up my Blackwork Angels and Starry Night ornies. I got this idea for a new way of finishing in my head that took a while for me to get up the courage to test out. I am doing the classic rectangle using cardboard, but I am doing two "backing" pieces that are slightly larger than the stitched design., The thought is that the "front backing" will frame the design. I think that it'll end up looking great, but it takes a lot of cardboard, backing fabric, batting and thread to finish all of them.
After I am done with these, I'll try to start stitching PS' Redwork Santas and maybe even Cranberry Christmas. I love the simplicity and elegance of the sparse coloring that PS uses, even though I am a little less in love with the green/red combination of the Santas than I am with the black/blue/gold of the angels.
One set of ornaments that I did not have time to finish was the baby Christmas name plaques. I really like how they turned out and I have even been thinking about making a few more from the other PS alphabets. (I wish that I had picked a khaki linen instead of a white one, since I had to switch the white details, such as the angel's wings and Santa's beard to grey in order for it to show up. Next time, I guess...)
If you haven't seen it yet, you have to check out the little banner that Amy stitched for her grand daughter. How adorable is this!? She even has some finishing tips on her blog, here!
So, since this is a Christmas themed post, here is a photo of Scrappy, enjoying the Christmas decorations.
I also have to show off these small and totally adorable boxes that I picked up at Michaels. I use them to keep ornaments and finishing supplies organized. One of them contains the PS Xmas ornies and the other one is packed full of the CEC Thanksgiving acorns. One of these days I will finish them all! :-)
Before I log off, I just have to post a couple of photos of my baby girls. As you can see, they like bath time! They are 4 months and 1 week old today and I am still in heaven (and still exhausted!). I started working again a few weeks back and I promise that I have never found work as relaxing as I do now. When Monday rolls around, I am ready for a break! LOL
Well, take care everyone and I hope that you get a lot more stitching in than I do!
Happy Spring!
Happy Monday to everyone! I hope that your weekend was just as cozy and relaxing as mine was. DH is back on night shift again, so that gives me a really good excuse to take looong naps in the middle of the day during the weekends. It is so nice just to sleep next to each other - it is surprising how many of the things that we would probably label "smaller" that I find out I miss once they are not there. Yesterday was really wonderful, with a nice lunch out at the local "luxury fish place", a stroll through the book-store, and some mending of torn and worn clothes in front of the adventures at Downtown Abbey in the evening. Add to that that DH and I found a new British TV series that I am in love with - The Midsummer Murders. Wow, oh wow - they are great!!!! I am thrilled. I have already worked myself through three mysteries and I can't wait to get back from work so that I can continue. Life is good - doesn't take a whole lot to keep me content...
I did also do some limited shopping at Silverneedle during their Superbowl sale. Very, very minor! Is it bad when you feel like you already have everything that you want!? LOL
Anyway... I have had these pictures uploaded on the blogger page for ages now, but finding the time to actually write a bit to go with all the photos has been trickier. Too many things to do! You know the feeling, I am sure! LOL
Here is the first sampler that accidentally got added to the list of 2012 projects after I had constructed my WIPoclaypse list. This is the Ellen Maurer-Stroh sampler that I mentioned in a previous post or two, stitched on a antique white 40-st linen over two with one strand of DMC. Since I am one of the most impatient people in the world, I decided to stitch on the pretty bluebell border as far as I could. It was easy to memorize, which makes it a quick stitch. I did switch out a couple of the blues to darker shades and I like how it is turning out. I am thinking that I may switch out the colors completely on the right-hand side border and stitch pink blue-bells there instead. Thoughts?
The February part has already been posted, so I have it printed and ready to go. Right now, I am devoted to the upper flower border and I have stitched 5 of the 10 repeats that make up the full border. This one is not a border that you can really memorize, but it is lovely! She has a unique way to play with colors and the light pink flowers look almost transparent, like really fine china! Very skillfully done. The February assignment contains a rose sprig and half of a very pretty fruit basket. Can't wait to get working on them!!! (Still not too late to jump over to her site and download these pretty charts - they are in color and very easy to read. And let me tell you, they stitch up much quicker than you would ever believe!)
This is the current state of the Scarlet Letter EH sampler. My favorite part is stitched up, even though many areas are meant to be filled in with trellis stitch. Since the instructions in the pattern are pitiful, I will have to root around in my stitch-room and to to get out the Proper Stitch book by Darlene O-Steen. I really hope that trellis stitch is in there (I am pretty sure that it is...). On to a more narrow border where a lot is going on - carnations and knot-work - very pretty! I think after that boder is done, the half-point is met...
Excuse the wrinkles - I only iron when my life depends on it! ;-)
I pulled Snapperville back out last week too. Only one more square to go, plus the border around the little scenes. This is an easy stitch, but somewhat boring and surprisingly slow, I think. I guess that I am not thrilled because I have a hard time imagining that I will actually hang it somewhere. The colors are pretty though - I am not following the colors at all, since I am too cheap to expand my already pretty significant overdyed thread collection. I just pick colors from the existing bundle and go with that. Don't you like my blond horse? :-)
I am currently thinking about some alternate verse for the bottom border, since I am not thrilled about the original; "Teach us that we may learn the importance of every day. . .of every hour as it passes". I found Kim's very pretty finished SV for inspiration: "North or South, East or West, Farm or Town, Home is Best" here. I like how she made her "swirlies" in the lighter color too! I am shamelessly copying that, once I get there!!!
Here is another oldie that has been lying on the "almost finished" pile for ages now. I only needed to add the text and then do the actual finishing work... The chart is from a vintage German Burda magazine, so I needed to translate Frohe Weihnachten to Swedish and English. To fit in the text, I had to stitch it over one. Isn't is just amazing how you (as in I) can count something 100 times and still have it end up off-center!? Rather than ripping up the entire Merry Christmas row, I decided to add a little sprig of something... I think that it worked out all right, so next up is tracking down a backing fabric and some time to sit down and sew it all up. I think that I will finish it as a wall-pocket that I can collect Xmas cards in (I should be ashamed of that though, since I don't send out Xmas cards myself). Or I could have some pretty branches of seasonal plants. We'll see - maybe even this Christmas! (Yeah, right!)
There is a Valentine heart from the same (two-part) series that would be fun to stitch. We'll see - maybe in 2013?
I went through a serious finishing kick a week ago and got a few projects completely finished.
Here is my Christmas Tree from Fremme. The little picture is based on the pretty sad story by the Danish author H. C. Andersen; The fir Tree. I love the little bunny jumping over the tree in the upper corner!
On display with the Swedish flag!
I did finally manage to do right by the nephew. Nephew's "First Xmas" ornament and birth sampler in progress:
The ornament is a sweet little freebie by Brookes Books Designs. I switched some of the colors to make it less pink and I tried to place the beads in the border on the side to create a lace effect. That didn't really work out as well as I had hoped, but it is finished!
The birth sampler got framed. I got the matting and frame from Michales general framing area. No specialty materials or measures needed - don't you love when that happens!? DH helped me pick out the frame. It's a lot of fun - he had planned to run over to the pet-store right next-doors to Michaels, but decided to come with me instead. I think that he knows that he is really good at helping me pick out stuff, so he enjoys it - as do I . (No worries, we did hit the pet-store afterwards, so all our critters got fed this week too....)
My parents are coming to visit in May, so my mom offered to bring everything back to Sweden in their luggage. That will work out really well! Last time I shipped a framed piece over to Sweden, the glass shattered on the way over. Not so good.... I am really glad that Littlest Sis didn't get hurt when she unwrapped that package!
And finally, here is my "just for fun" project (it was not on any of my start-of-the-year lists...): Jenny Bean's Pin Tuffet from Shakespeare's Peddler. Quick and fun and finished with the Sudberry House Shaker Round Pincushion.
I switched out every single color for this piece, I think. I went for purples instead of rusts and I am really pretty delighted with how it turned out. My inspiration was the checkered flower in the bottom right. It is black and white in the original, but it still reminded me about the Snakes Head lily, a very pretty Fritillary that is the landscape flower of Uppland, Sweden. Since that is the landscape I come from, I felt that it was a fitting change and I switched the rest of the colors to go with the lily.
If I would change anything with this project, it would be the foam that came with the Sudberry piece. It is a polymer foam that has high friction, so it is hard to stick your pins into the cushion. I should probably have switched out the foam for several layers of batting or maybe made an inner cushion filled with some other type of material. Oh well, now I know for next time.
I am finishing this post with some amusing craft. This Princess Leia hat from Bleu Arts at Etsy reminds me of a favorite scene from 30 Rock.
Liz Lemon is trying to get out of jury-duty by pretending that she is more than less peculiar - this video is a shout out to my buddy Hip^Hip^Happy, who is on call for jury duty right now.... you go get'em girl! :-)
Take care and Happy Stitching! I will try my best to swing by all your blogs out there. it's been a while.
PS We had a mega-frost over night here - hope that all my spring-bulbs made it... :-(
Brrrr - it turned freezing as soon as I came back from Sweden. From being in the 80s, I hear, we went down to below 32 in just a few days.
Spring did a belly-flop this weekend. The ground was covered with a thin layer of snow on Sunday morning and the outdoor birds were complaining loudly and repeatedly about the lack of seed in the bird-feeders. My hyacinths looked accusingly up at me - almost double-bent in the chilly air. Even the daffodils looked less than amused. The snow melted away pretty quickly though and the spring bubs stretched back out again.
Note the seriously impatient clematis and peony plants in the last garden pic below... Boy, I thought that I had issues with patience.. ;-)
This last pic show "the big birds" haning out in my kitchen. See the blue stuff on the right in the door-way? That is a drape, hung there specifically to keep the little monsters out... they like to hang in the kitchen, isnce the sliding glass door makes this room so bright and since there is a hot air vent right below them. They are so cute that it is hard to get really mad. And they know it! Oh, and yes, my ironing and sewing machine stations are placed smack on the kitchen table.... I guess that I ought to feel bad about that... :-(
Well, what better excuse to stay in and stitch than freezing weather? I got time to stitch up a storm this weekend! I started off on Friday evening with finishing up as much as I can on the PS Birth Sampler. Now the baby boy needs his full name to be decided and we are ready to get this sampler on the road!
Saturday got interrupted with taking care of the fuzz-balls. I was left as the single parrot parent on Saturday, since DH had to work (I keep forgetting - I think that I am married, but I am not sure if we actually live together anymore...) and to be nice to him and the birds I had fun leaning over the bath-tub for a couple of hours. I have probably mentioned it in the past - 6 large bird cages take time to clean...
Anyway, it's definitely worth it - as you can see below, Rocky and Hugin are quite pleased. Rocky is munching away on a large chunk of apple. I remember that I thought that it was absolutely fascinating the first time I saw a bird eat like this!
Rocky and Hugin have had 19 babies together and they are out only mating couple (thank goodness!!!). Rocky (Rock) is the female and is quite a little overachiever, laying up to 10 eggs per clutch. There is not a chance in the world that she can sit on all 10, so generally about 4 of the eggs hatch. That keeps mom and dad quite busy as it is... The first time Rocky sat on her eggs, she was so devoted that she refused to come out of her nest-box to eat. Hugin did actually have to go in to the box, chase her out and guard the entrance until she had eaten some food and drunk a bit of water. She was really skinny when the eggs finally hatched and I am sure that she would not have survived without him taking care of her.
After the babies hatch, she is generally not too interested in family time anymore. See, she loves DH and probably wishes that she could have married him instead of Hugin. She does not even bother trying to keep it a secret. :-) She will sit and kiss DH on the forehead and tell him "Hi baby!" for hours. Luckily neither Hugin nor I are the jealous type!
Hugin is a great dad! It is pretty cool to see how birds are taught how to fly in your own living-room. He will line up all the babies beside him on the top of a cage, look them all over to make sure that he has the undivided attention of all babies and then he will fly over to another cage or object close to where he started from. Then he turns around and all the babies fly after, one by one. Then he makes sure that they are all lined up, paying attention, and it is off back to the point of origin. It is quite a sight and he has the patience of a saint. And I must say that the concentration and discipline of the babies are simply awesome!
Well, after bathing birdcages for a while, I thought that it would only be logical to finish up the final stitches on Just Nan's "Birdcage"/ I had some beading, back-stitch and charting to do, so I opted to do that at home instead of at work. I switched out the text on the outside back for my initials and a large egg. I like the egg, but I am not certain about the letters just yet. (They are taken from the PS Birth Sampler book btw.) After that, I read that finishing instructions about three times and fell asleep... Snore!
I did also finish up a small stitch for Littelest Sister. I always used to call her my little piglet, since she is very blond, has a beautiful rosy complexion and has the cutest little button nose (oh, how I wish that I had gotten that nose...)! I think that it is only fitting that I could be called a chicken, so this design is dedicated to her as a symbol of the two of us. If you surf the on-line stitch stores as often as I am, you probably know that this little square is only the part of this design. I am sorry that I can't show all of it to you, but LS, "Herr Slusk", follows my blog regularly. I promise to show you as soon as I have handed it over to her.
I was a tad tired on Sunday, but managed to start on a brand new kit; the LH 1818 Quaker Pocket, which is an old kit from The Goode Huswife. This was the very first kit that I bough by contacting the desiner directly. I got two kits - one to sticth for my Mom and one for me. I have been thinking that I'd better stitch on these ni parallel, or I have a feeling that only one will be done... Supposedly, the pre-finished pockets that came with these kits werer accidentally made with the wrong count linen, so I feel a bit like I am living on the edge... It will be very pretty when it is done and I think that it will stitch up a lot quicker than I originally thought.
So, since I can't stick to just one new beginning, I started on yet another kit tonight. I have the opportunity to take the Hare Pyns finishing class with Sherri Jones of Patrick's Woods through the QCSG in October. I took this class at CON back in 2007 and never even opened the kit. I even missed the class! I do have a good excuse; I took Forget-Me-Nots-in-Stitches "A Victorian Melon Bag" that year too and the classes were scheduled during the same time slot. Well, Sherri's class was jam packed and there were only three students in Lauren Sauer's class, so it was an easy pick of which class-room to sit in! I think that Lauren is the sweetest person, by the way! Oh, and Sherri is also a lovely lady.
Anyway, I have told myself that I am not registring for the finishing class unless the stitching is done. Basta! It is a lovely design, but the vast majority of the stitching is over-one I think, so nothing that I will whip up over a weekend... ;-) Here is the beginning of the needle book. Herringbone stitch and over-one.....
Before I say Good Night, I guess I'd better post a picture of the Melon Bag! It was a fun prooject and the first one that I ran amok and redesigned a big part to be more personal. I will have to go back and change out all the rings that the drawstring goes through. The keep snagging the string and it drives me batty!!!!
The secon pic shows my monogram - that was the panel that I redesigned.
