All Set for Summer Reading

Not cross stitch related, but definitely hobby related. Our local hospital's Auxiliary holds an annual book sale every June and it's huge! On the last day of the sale, the price is a flat rate of $5 for a yard of books. It's one of my favorite events of the year. Here's my haul from this year, books for both myself and the kids.

Last Month's Stitching

I've been working on the same project for the past month or so, a new start for my boss at work, who is currently out on maternity leave after having her third child. The theme of the baby's room is elephants and I found this perfect Dimensions kit - Baby Elephant ABC. The design is so cute and I swapped out the Aida for a cream evenweave. It's been a pretty quick stitch so far. Most of the elephant is complete and I'm getting ready to start the ABCs next. I think I'm going to leave out the stripes in the background from the original design - I don't think they really add anything and it will save me some time.

I love the color palette in this design, especially the turquoise and tan! It has a more modern feel than some other kits. I also love the presorted floss card. I wish Mill Hill would do that for their kits.

2015 Finish - Wedding Gift

Here's a finish from September 2015 - Heart in Hand's "Mr. & Mrs." - a gift for my cousin's wedding. It's stitched on 28 ct. tea-dyed Monaco with the called for overdyed threads. I finished it by mounting it to a regular artist's canvas from Michael's. You can't see it in the pictures, but I trimmed the edges with a burlap ribbon, the same ribbon I attached at the bottom of the framed piece (to offset my off center mounting, but I think it worked). It really matched her rustic/country-themed wedding. I actually took these pictures at the wedding since I forgot to take any before we left! It's sitting on the gift table in front of the burlap-covered box they used as their card box.

Christmas Ornament Finish

This ornament - "Christmas Morning" from the 2012 JCS Christmas Ornament issue - is deceptively simple looking and yet, it kicked my butt not once, but twice. I started this ornament over a year ago and there was a major mistake in the border, which I started to tear out, but set aside. I picked it up this past Saturday and decided to try again. So I tore out most of the border and started stitching it again. But when I got to the bottom of the border, it didn't match up and there was another mistake in there somewhere. It took me forever to find it, but when I finally did, I thought, "There is no way I am tearing this border out again!" So I purposely made the same mistake on the bottom of the border that was messing up the top and all is well. I don't think anyone would notice it unless I point it out, so I went on to finish the rest of the ornament on Sunday.

Fast Finish

I think this is the fastest amount of time I have ever started and finished a single cross stitch project, especially one that's a bit larger than just an ornament or a Mill Hill kit. On Friday evening, January 29, I started "Alsatian Redwork Heart" from the February 2016 issue of Just Cross Stitch. I worked on it quite a bit over the weekend and just a little bit during the week, and then again the following weekend. By Super Bowl Sunday, I was very close to finishing it and was able to complete it on Thursday, February 11. While it's not framed yet, I never thought I would finish it before Valentine's Day and I have a red wooden frame waiting for it. This project was relatively frog-free for me and I liked the variegated DMC floss. Not having to change colors really made for some speedy stitching! Stitched on 28 count evenweave with DMC 115 variegated garnet floss.

Blizzard Stitching

Wow! I can't believe I didn't post AT ALL in 2015! Well, what better time to get back on the horse than during a historic blizzard and being snowed in for four days? This is Mill Hill/Sticks "Cherish Family." I started it last year and I think I kept setting it aside because there are so many color changes and the chart was too hard for my now bi-focaled eyes to read. So after struggling with it on Saturday night, I finally had the brilliant and obvious idea to blow up the chart. Things progressed much faster after that! I spent Saturday, Sunday and Monday working on the sun in the upper left corner.

Football Stitching Week #1

The NFL season started last Sunday and that means football stitching did, too! An afternoon of mostly uninterrupted stitching. I got off to a slow start, but picked up steam into the evening. My before and after photos include Monday night football stitching, too. I don't know how much I'll get done this week. We had a soccer game for Little H at 2pm, right in the middle of the afternoon, so I haven't even started yet and I wanted to get week #1's pictures posted, too. This is Mill Hill's "Tree Farm" from the Christmas Village collection.

Before:

After:

Year Long Update

Where does the time go? It's been over a year since my last post and I really don't have that much to show you. I spent most of 2014 working on this:

This was a kit from Dimensions called "Savannah Birth Record" - 14ct. white Aida and lots of backstitching. I can't even tell you the last time I stitched a project from a "commercial" kit and this made me remember why. First step, I swapped out the Aida for 18 ct. cream evenweave. Then, I left out a lot of the backstitching that I thought was unnecessary and didn't really contribute to or take away from the design. That said, I did appreciate the pre-sorted, carded and labeled floss that came with the kit. That was definitely new from the last time I purchased one of these kits and there was plenty of it, too.

I worked on this all of last summer with plans of finishing this for the baby's baptism in early December. I was close to finishing, but didn't quite make it, and then it didn't matter because we never made it to the baptism because it was one of the many awful weather days we had this past winter. So, for some reason, mostly the dread of doing the backstitching and the fact that I went back to work in November after five years of being at home, I set it aside. I picked it back up this summer, spurred on my the fact that my cousin bought a new house and was having a housewarming party earlier this month. I had it finished and framed in time for the party and it really didn't take me that long to do the backstitching after all.

Other than that, I'm not really sure if I had any other finishes in 2013 or the first half of 2014. I think I put a few final stitches in a small JBW Christmas design that was left over from 2012, but that's it. I've been reading a lot more than I have been stitching - I find it hard to balance the two - plus growing kids who are involved in more and more activities and work have cut into my leisure time. But I'm feeling inspired as fall is approaching and I have some Christmas ornaments I want to stitch for my co-workers this year, so I hope to have more to show soon.

May Update

I hardly did any stitching in May. I've been in more of a reading mode lately, reading 9 books in May compared to one in April and one in March. I love my public library's OverDrive app for my Kindle Fire! I did manage to stitch one quick finish - Lizzie Kate's "Bacon Bits." It was for Big H's homeroom teacher as the end of year/teacher appreciation gift. She painted the frame herself. I merged two of the designs together to make the bacon more prominent, but used the called for colors on 28ct. Tea Dyed Monaco.

Duct Tape Clipboard

We love duct tape crafts at our house! I've been searching for NFL Ravens duct tape for awhile - it was completely sold out right before and after the Super Bowl. I finally found a roll in Walmart, in a different section from where they usually keep the duct tape (I'll have to remember to continue to look there). I wanted the Ravens duct tape specifically because I had this project in mind: an old clipboard from my medical publishing days, now transformed. The black square in the center is one of the duct tape sheets, which were great to work with, even if they do leave behind a few bubbles. And the tip I read on Pinterest about using baby wipes on your scissors before cutting the duct tape was a godsend. (Excuse the flash in the second picture, but I needed it or else the purple looked very blue.)

Not a Traditional Craft, But...

Here is a sweet crafty creation that my sisters and I made as an entry for the annual PEEPshow at the Carroll County Arts Center in Westminster, MD. I took the girls to the show on Good Friday to see all of the terrific entries and today is the last day of the show, then the winners will be announced. I'll let you know how we do!

Easter Crafts

Not a whole lotta stitching going on here, but I have been busy with other crafts. I went scrapbooking on Saturday for 12 hours and then for another five on Tuesday. I spent Sunday making sample Easter crafts for our Junior Girl Scout meeting last night, all with some help from Pinterest.

Left:
Puffy paint designs on plastic eggs (scroll down about halfway)

Center:
Chalkboard paint on papier mache/cardboard eggs (#13 on the slideshow)

Right:
Paper scraps Mod Podged onto plastic eggs (#19 on the slideshow)

Also, I forgot to include it in the picture, but we also made these Easter eggs out of paint chip samples. The original post suggested putting small candies in the egg, which I thought was a little difficult, but I think they would be perfect as a gift card holder.

Thoughts on New Releases

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this should read either "After the rain...the sun shines" or "After the rain...the sunshine" (all one word).

World's scariest birth sampler:

I'm very excited for this new sampler from Silver Creek Samplers. I can't wait to see what the rest of it looks like.

Others Just Don't Understand

I've been plugging away on "Tree Farm," but over the weekend, I needed a break and decided to work on a small ornament that's a WIP. My youngest daughter, who's 6, saw me working on it and asked me if I finished the house (referring to Tree Farm). When I said no, she asked, "Then why are you working on something else?"

Well, January got off to a good start until I came down with the flu the day after my last post. I was completely down for a week and even after that, I didn't feel like doing a lot of stitching. Then, I was preparing for my annual scrapbooking weekend at the end of January, so that cut into my stitching time. But I'm back on track now, continuing with "Tree Farm." You can see my progress below (some of the yellow stitches in the windows are hard to see in the photo).

Also, just before the scrapbook weekend, I got together for lunch with friends and received these lovely goodies from my bestie as my birthday present. I love them all and can't wait to get started on them!

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.

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

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.

Two Finishes

After stitching two of them for holiday gifts, I finally finished the "Friendship" pattern for myself. I made the letters on mine purple instead of blue and now I can't wait to get it framed and hang it in the hallway.

I also finished this birth announcement for my cousin, who is currently living in Germany - Samsarah's "Sweet, Sweet Babe." A couple of changes - I changed "babe" to "baby" and stitched the date in the European style, otherwise, stitched with the called for GAST and WDW flosses on 28 ct. fabric. I'm debating whether or not to buy the button pack that goes with the design - I have until June to decide, when my cousin and the new baby are coming to the US for a visit.

Presents

I can finally show you the presents I made for my two best friends, since we were able to exchange gifts this past weekend - The Trilogy's Friendship:

There is the slightest difference between the two - the sunflowers on the right are different colors. I thought it was a little too dark in the first version, so I made it a bit brighter in the second version. I still have one more of these to finish for myself.

I also received these lovelies as a birthday gift:

They include Christmas Tea and My Pretties by Plum Street Samplers, French Country Snowglobe by JBW Designs, Tribal Crab by White Willow Stitching, The Hamster Did It by Stitchy Kitty and Blackbird Sampler by Blackbird Designs.