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Wednesday, January 09, 2013

New Year, New Start

Since I finished "Raven Bewitched" at the end of the year, I was looking for a new project to start. I have had "Kringle's Christmas Tree Farm" by Praiseworthy Stitches kitted up and ready to go for two years. "Raven" was one of the larger projects I have tackled recently, so I felt ready to start "Tree Farm." The section you see below is page 1 out of 8. I started this on Thursday, Jan. 3, so I feel like I'm already making progress and would like to have it finished and framed for Christmas 2013.





Friday, January 04, 2013

2012 Reading List

Time to post my annual reading list. I wanted to read 50 books this year and I finished #50 on Sunday, Dec. 30 - just in time! This is the most books I've read in one year since my youngest daughter was born in 2006. I discovered some new authors this year - the crime fiction of Michael Robotham, the world of Nantucket as told by Elin Hilderbrand and right now, I'm working my way through Sarah Addison Allen's magical books set in North Carolina. I also read two of the three books by Heather Gudenkauf. Her third book, which was just released in June, is about a shooting at an elementary school, so I think I'm going to skip that one; I don't think it's something I can handle right now, if ever.


  1. Hardly Knew Her by Laura Lippman
  2. Mommywood by Tori Spelling
  3. Recalculating by Jennifer Weiner (short story)
  4. The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian
  5. Cut, Paste, Kill by Marshall Karp
  6. A Grown Up Kind of Pretty by Joshilyn Jackson
  7. Long Gone by Alafair Burke
  8. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
  9. Trick of the Dark by Val McDermid
  10. Creep by Jennifer Hillier
  11. Mrs. Kimble by Jennifer Haigh
  12. Barefoot by Elin Hilderbrand
  13. Yankee Doodle Dixie by Lisa Patton
  14. Swim by Jennifer Weiner (short story)
  15. The Sunday Wife by Cassandra King
  16. The Castaways by Elin Hilderbrand
  17. Whistlin’ Dixie in a Nor’easter by Lisa Patton
  18. Bossypants by Tina Fey
  19. The Blue Bistro by Elin Hilderbrand
  20. The Summer of Skinny Dipping by Amanda Howells
  21. Iron House by John Hart
  22. The Shoemaker’s Wife by Adriana Trigiani
  23. Then Came You by Jennifer Weiner
  24. The Most Dangerous Thing by Laura Lippman
  25. The Rope by Nevada Barr
  26. Hold Tight by Harlan Coben
  27. Ghost on Black Mountain by Ann Hite
  28. The Bone House by Brian Freeman
  29. Blue Heaven by C.J. Box
  30. Pretty Little Things by Jillianne Hoffman
  31. Ransom River by Meg Gardiner
  32. Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson
  33. Broken Harbor by Tana French
  34. Border Crossing by Pat Barker
  35. The Island by Elin Hilderbrand
  36. A Summer Affair by Elin Hilderbrand
  37. Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
  38. Dark River Road by Virginia Brown
  39. The River Witch by Kimberly Brock
  40. The Cutting Season by Attica Locke
  41. A Killing in the Hills by Julia Keller
  42. These Hidden Things by Heather Gudenkauf
  43. Falling Together by Marisa de los Santos
  44. Life After Death by Damien Echols
  45. Say You’re Sorry by Michael Robotham
  46. Shatter by Michael Robotham
  47. Bleed for Me by Michael Robotham
  48. The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg
  49. The Weight of Silence by Heather Gudenkauf
  50. The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen

Thursday, January 03, 2013

2012 Finishes

Well, I didn't post very much in 2012, but I was stitching. I previously posted about finishing SamSarah's "Sweet, Sweet Babe," but here it is framed. The frame is a dark brown, although it looks almost black in these photos.




I worked on Blackbird Designs' "Raven Bewitched" for most of the summer (each one of those Quaker stars took me close to an hour to stitch!), then caught the Halloween bug when the JCS Halloween issue came out. Here are a few small ornaments I finished from different issues. I recently bought a variety pack of Halloween fabric so I can finish-finish them.



I only made two small ornaments as Christmas gifts this year: Imaginating's "German Nutcracker" and Mill Hill's "Tropical Santa - Tahiti."






Technically, I finished "Raven Bewitched" on New Year's Day, but I'm going to count it as a 2012 finish since I only had to stitch the "er" in October and the "2" in the date at the bottom.



Hopefully, there will be lots more to come in 2013.