Monday, November 18, 2013

NOVEMBER ISHW

Hi everyone! Hope you had a stitchy weekend!
Essentially I had a stitching marathon on one WIP. That is my HAED SAL Mystic Garden. I am trying to finish my yearly page goal of the two top pages. Made a bit of progress.
Before
 
After.  will be stitching on this for the rest of the week to try to finish the rest of the top pages.
 Grab the hermit crab, on my right side bar, if you are interested in the sal for december. The more the merrier!


I also received my ornament from our BB Brooke's Books group. This beautiful ornament is stitched by Tara. She stitched the design over one thread and it is just gorgeous!
  The back is as pretty as the front. And Tara treated me with skeins of DMC floss.
Thanks for stopping by!
Deb

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

TURTLE TROT SAL UPDATE

Hi all!
Cooler weather is setting in. 55 degrees one day and 82 degrees the next. Garden doesn't know what to think. Although, with the cooler weather the blooms are lasting much longer.
Time for the monthly Turtle Trot sal update.
Here is the link if you would like to join!
BAP Attack: 2013 Turtle Trot
We would love to see what long term projects and quick projects you have been working on.
Here is my HAED 2013 sal Mystic Garden. The tigers are starting to make their apprearance. But I am going to have to step this one up, and have a stitching marathon, if I am to complete my page requirements on this one.

"A tisket a tasket I have a basket!" Brimming with biscornu's. (going to need a bigger basket...)My fixation with Kreinik metallics and biscornu, since I started using them for back stitching on my wizard,  is in full stitch mode. I am having a great time choosing Kreinik #4 braid colors and using them for just about everything. Really add sparkle!
 Newest addition finished last evening!
I have joined the Country Cottage Needleworks stitch blog and here is my continued work for the week. The tab is at the top of my blog if you would like to look in. Not sure how many places are left, but you can still look at very pretty stitching!
Stitched on 36 count hand dyed blue linen, with DMC variations and DMC floss. I was having problems with not finding the variations brown that I wanted. Too much of a bright copper color in parts of the thread. So I took one strand of the DMC #433 and one strand of the variations and came up with a better color. Then used one strand of DMC #304 and one strand DMC variations mixed berry and have the color I needed for the red. Blue and green are both DMC variations threads.

This ornament is also stitched with Krenik #4 braid(told ya I was having a great time with metallic's!)
Hobby Lobby has some very pretty rhinestone buttons and I have been taking full advantage of coupons and sales.
  They also had a package of pretty heart buttons with assorted pinks and a clear color.

I have a new feather tree to decorate!


Remember my TUSAL of gathered thread scraps?


This is what I ended up with! Filled 4 glass 3 inch ornaments.

The Krenik metallic's and my embroidery machine metallic's really added some nice sparkle. This one is my favorite! My new tree is way too small for these large ornaments. So I will be giving these to friends and family.

Thanks for looking in!
Happy stitiching!
Deb


Sunday, November 3, 2013

NOVEMBER YOTA SAL AND A NEW SAL! KITTENS, TOO!

Hey everyone! Hope all is well.
My YOTA sal UFO piece is coming along nicely. Have more of the back stitching done. Still working with the #4 Kreinik braid for the back stitching. Having fun on deciding which colors to use. The YOTA sal is open to anyone and the link is on my right side bar. Pull out some of those buried UFO and use the sal to get to work!    Joan Elliott's A Wizards View
 Before
     After. Have a lot of the back stitching done on his cloak. Using the couching method with the gold Kreinik on his gown. Seems to show up better than using a back stitch.
Having fun with biscornu's! 


 I have an assembly line going with 4 different colros of Kreinik #4 braid.
 I have joined a blog SAL with Country Cottage Needleworks. The tab is in my header if you wish to join or take a look through their blog. I joined due to the new Forest designs coming out and wanted to join the SAL for this series.This weekend was the WIP-IT SAL for any CCN design. I have several CCN patterns in my stash and I chose this one to work on. Changed the fabric color to 36 count, blue hand dyed fabric. Changed threads to DMC variations and regular DMC floss/threads.
 Here is my progress for the weekend.
 My Brooke's Books Spirit Angel WIP. 14 count plastic canvas, DMC threads and Kreinik silver ombre metallic. Have the skirt done.
 This is another UFO piece. Stitching this one in the BB Brooke's Books interactive group UFO SAL.
                                                           Before
                                                                      After.

Well. One of the reasons my stitching was limited this weekend was that my SIL and her husband came over, saturday and sunday, so my DH could repair their vehicle. SIL's husband helped so I was able to stay in and visit with SIL. She brought with her two abandoned kittens. The back story is that she has a kitty cat door for her cats to run in and out of the house. Saves on litter box cleaning. However, the full food dish also attracts cats that are not SIL's. Well, when they were moving a daybed, from one room to another, these two little guys popped their heads out from under the bed and said "hello, here we are!"
This is the second time kittens have been "dumped" in the house by a stray momma kitty.
 SIL bought kitten supplement formula and a tIny bottle for feeding the kittens. She has been feeding them for two weeks and they look like little butterballs! There eyes have not turned color yet and are still blue. We figure they are about 3 1/2 weeks old. So meet Big Bear and Ginger. They are still too small to tell if they are boys are girls. Another few weeks.
Happy stitching!
Deb

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

LATE INTERNATIONAL HERMITERS UPDATE

Its a mad house around here! In spite of that I manages to get some stitching in this past weekend. Made two snowflake biscornu. Even got them sewed into a finish.


Some of the pattern is parts of a freebie that was too big for a biscornu. Altered parts of pattern to fit what I needed and designed the small snow flakes to fill in the gaps. Used Kreinik metallic for the cross stitch.
Hope everyone is getting their holiday stitching done!
happy stitching
Deb

Monday, October 14, 2013

TURTLE TROT SAL FOR OCTOBER

Happy october! Hope everyone is well! Most of the stitching I have done was at the end of september. Our new grand daughter decided to make an early entrance! So it was a 1000 mile drive to see her.
Before I left for my long drive I saw these on a magazine cover. Bought some artificial pumpkins, cut some felt eyes, nosees, ears and voila! Pumpkin kitties!
Here are the projects I have been working on. Finished my page goals on this one.
 This is the precious moments butterfly fairy that is to be Penny's birth announcement which will have to be a christmas gift.
 One of Brooke's Books angels on 14 count perforated plastic canvas.
 And this... My TUSAL. I faithfully add my thread scraps and then forget to take pictures. Many pretty threads!
 My trip to TN had 2 highlights. One was seeing the kids and meeting our new grand daughter. I got to play grandma and had great fun! Please meet Penny Rose!
We also had a day at the park! Lily showed no fear and climbed the steps to the slide.
Another highlight was meeting designer Brooke Nolan of Brooke's Books. We met at the Chattanooga Choo Choo. Was wonderful meeting Brooke for lunch. In fact we spent the whole afternoon talking, laughing and having a great time. Brooke is so involved with her designing and it was fun to see her eyes light up when speaking about new patterns and great ideas for additions to her new lines. Thank you so much for lunch and an all too short of a visit. Think we could have talked for days.  I hope to be able to meet again.
Brooke has a number of downloadable charts,  on craftsy, for a very reasonable price. One is the Little Woman stitch a story line. Here is the link if you are interested!
Brooke Nolan's Pattern Store on Craftsy | Support Inspiration. Buy Indie.
I had a great time in TN. But, it was good to get home, clean house and get back to my daily routine. Thank you for stopping by and happy stitching!
Deb

Saturday, October 5, 2013

October YOTA, not....

This has not been a good month for my SAL  's... Many unusual things have diverted my stitching time. Nothing done on Joan Elliott's Wizard. The one bright spot, this month, is a new grand daughter. Lily has a new sister.  I am visiting with the kids and, as all grandmas think, the cutest grand baby on the planet!
Hope to get caught up with all my SAL' s next month.
Hope you are getting more stitching done than I am!
Deb

Monday, September 23, 2013

SEPTEMBER HERMIT SAL and some gardening!

Hi everyone!
I haven't had time to stitch the last two weeks. Have missed a few SAL's. But, I did get time to participate in the Hermiter's SAL this weekend. Grab the Hermit button next to this post and join in!
The cat and I pretty much had the house to our selves this past weekend. Only two road repair calls. One each on saturday and sunday. Simple and didn't cut into my weekend too  much.
Here is my progress on my HAED Mystery piece
Before. a lot of confetti.
 After. Confetti finished and 3 bottom pages done. They are 1/2 pages. So the bulk of the design is yet to be stitched. I will not pick this one up until next year. As much holiday stitching and more page goals to accomplish.
 QS Chocolate, before
 QS Chocolate, after. Got the confetti stitching done on the middle cookie. Switched to less confetti stitching for a break. Will continue to work on this one until the last bottom page is completed.

 Brooke's Books Santa from the 2013 Just Cross Stitch Christmas Magazine issue. 14 count antique brown perforated plastic canvas.
 I finished beading a Mill Hill Halloween Heart ornament on black 14 count perforated plastic canvas. I found a pretty Halloween feather tree at Hobby Lobby. LOVE their 40% off coupons! Decided to add Belinda The Bat Witch for a tree topper.
 Because the tree is a cardboard shaped cone I used a decorative straight pin to attach the ornament. Have one more heart to finish beading.
 On the garden front, we received a shipment of Shriners iris roots out of Brooke's, Oregon. These are packed in organic shredded materials, for shipping, so no molding.  2 year old roots. Very large and already getting new growth. I like that they have plastic tags to identify plants. Turn them over to keep the sun from bleaching out colors.

 Some tags are a little wonky as I didn't want to disturb the plant for a good tag picture.





 Remember Mr Pineapple? Well, we had a minor set back... After a month I figured we were safe from anything digging up the plant. All the original fruit materials from mother pineapple was gone and roots had formed. We were wrong... The raccoons decided to dig through the barrel and laid Mr Pineapple over. Not once, but four times in consecutive nights. We don't know if the plant will have any fruit(maybe that should be Mrs Pineapple) due to being dug out, but it is a pretty plant and the spikes are nearly the expanse of the barrel.
That's our progress so far. I haven't done much blog reading the last few weeks. I promise I will get to reading your blogs and all the wonderful projects everyone is stitching.
Thanks for stopping by!
Deb