IHSW, TUSAL and Hail!!

Thank you all for your lovely comments on my last post.  I had a wonderful time eating blini and drinking tea with my Nana.  Great way to spend a Sunday.  Today is the first day of Lent and I am going to prepare a big batch of borscht this evening.  It will be yummy!!

I have to make this post in a hurry...hubby is antsy to get down to the beach to fly his kite in this glorious sunshine and wind.  The other night, we attempted yet another bike ride and we got caught in a torrential hail storm!! Just our luck!

This weekend was not so successful in the stitching department, but that's okay.  I did manage to throw in some stitches onto Hannah and Knotgarden.  I plan to stitch up a storm this week along with more finishing. 

I finished the basket but forgot to take a photo of it.  It's such a pleasure to stitch Hannah and all her little motifs.

Knotgarden so far.  I'm hoping to fill in the knot this week.

I've also worked a lot on the little BBD I was gifted from Carolyn.  I'm enjoying the satin stitching part and looking forward to trying out the buttonhole stitches for the flowers.  

Pretty isn't it?!

My Tusal threads hanging out with my little Irish figurines my Nana brought back from Ireland when I was a girl.  

Some gorgeous daffodils I bought at the Winter Farmer's Market.  They are all abloom!

I've also been blessed with more generous gifts from fellow bloggers.  I received quite the selection of buttons from Mouse, two issues of SANQ magazines from Nicola, and some lovely charts from Maggee.  I can't wait to start some of those charts and I've used one of the buttons already.  The magazines are so wonderful to read! Thank you all for your kindness.  I cherish everyone of my gifts!

Oooh, hubby just said "You better not be blogging! I hope you're ready to go!"


Okay, so I am blogging...I lied and said I wasn't...heheeeee.  I will add the links to the blogs later.


PS....half way done through commenting!!

Much love and hugs to you ALL!!!!!

IHSW and Lovely Gifts!

Be prepared to look at a lot of photos! Get yourself a cup of tea, or coffee or whatever your choice of drink is because I will bombard you with loads of photos!!

First signs of spring:

A delightful evening at the symphony with my hubby:

IHSW Stitching:

I had to add some motifs on Hannah since stitching borders makes me restless.  I love that little basket of fruit!!

A quick freebie stitch from the Primitive Hare that I started and finished in one evening. I used HDF's Barnyard green silk.. an utterly delicious green! (Click on the link and it will take you to the freebie chart)

Found a better fabric choice for Baked Goods:

Picked up another thrifty treat to match our other orange 40's glass bowls:

My RAK I sent to Angela was received, so here it is:

Stitched on Navy Blue 32ct. lugana with Kodak Blue HDF silk

I'm glad she liked the package! I found this lovely freebie pattern from Whispered by the Wind website.

I received another order I made in January and was told by my hubby that I have ENOUGH FABRIC AND STRINGS TO LAST ME A LIFE TIME! DO NOT BUY ANYTHING MORE   :(  So now I can't....

40 ct. Newcastle linen in Mirage and Sand

Trying out Crescent Colours Threads

My first ever SANQ magazine...love it!!

And finally....the mailman/woman has been very good lately delivering me all sorts of gifties.  I received my beautiful giveaway wins from Angela and Lynn.  Thank you so much ladies! Your finishing skills are exquisite and both pieces I cherish so much and have displayed already in my living room.  Dear Lynn sent me a few little extras and threw in some crinkle toys for Titus to play with! There are two crinkle toys but one has disappeared somewhere! He loves them and sends you a big purr Lynn!!

Angela's box is so amazing! I will be trying out her tutorial one day and try to make one of my own!! Thank you again dear Angela!!

Lynn's pillow is so pretty and I love the little buttons and threads she added to the package.

 Hugs to you both!! 

Blessings to you all!!

Titus the Stashaholic and TUSAL

Thank you all for your lovely comments on my last post.  I have been horribly behind on catching up with blogs, and I feel as though I will never catch up.  I'm looking into purchasing a Samsung Galaxy which I can use while I'm traveling and I hope I can use my long commute to catch up on emails, blogs and reading!! I think it will be a useful tool and it's a lot cheaper than an ipad!! 

Last week I received my giveaway win from Pat, the Southpaw Stitcher, and I am amazed at what she sent! She was so generous and sent me an assortment of ornie fabrics, a cute little ort catcher and of course the PSS chart with the threads and linen.  Thank you again Pat for the beautiful stash!

I had to include the photo of Titus on top of my giveaway wins.  When I opened the package the other night, he sauntered in and laid on top of everything!! He sniffed everything very gently. I had to take some photos to show his love of stash.  He's really addicted!!

Luckily he is a gentle cat and doesn't dare to use his claws on my stitching! As you can see I had fun with the collage feature! 

On the weekend, I stitched a bit on Knotgarden, Hannah and I finally finished Baked Goods.  I looked for some fabric to match Baked Goods and I found one, but I'm not overly sold on the match.  I may have to take a trip to Fabricland to see what other fabric would work.

I also started the lovely BBD chart that Carolyn gifted me.  I decided to work with the 40 ct. Vintage Light Exemplar.  It's slightly peachy in colour and I think it works well with the threads.  The photo shows it as grey which isn't the case.  I need to find some pretty vintage buttons to go along the side there.  Just where I can find some, who knows.  This city is lacking in the vintage button department!

Here's my collection of orts for February's TUSAL.  I took the photo on a beautiful silver salmon platter that my Nana gave to me.  There's lots of orts this month from all the stitching I managed to do!

Now that one of my RAK's was received, I can show you what I stitched for Mouse. I chose Nancy's Christmas freebie to stitch.  I used a mulberry Silk thread and ribbon from HDF.  I'm glad Mouse loves her RAK/Bday gift.  

So there's just a few more things to share.  I finally received my birthday order from Needlecraft Corner.  It was a gift from my mom and I'm so excited to stitch some of the designs I chose!! I feel a wee bit overwhelmed now with all the stash I have acquired! I think I'll lay off from getting anymore until I've used what I have!! Thank you Mom!!

Charts from BBD, Carriage House, and PS

Beautiful threads from CC, GAST and Dinky Dyes Silk

I hope you enjoyed this post.  I'll leave you with a photo of some pretty tulips I bought.  I can hardly wait for more flowers to bloom here.  It's been rather cold out and I only see the snowdrops poking out.  Very late for Vancouver!

Happy Stitching!

Anne

Feeling Blessed and Grateful

Hello everyone!

I have been one lucky gal as of late.  Last week I won not one, but three giveaways!! I couldn't believe it!! I feel very grateful and blessed to have been bestowed such lovely gifts.  The first giveaway I won is from Pat, the Southpaw Stitcher.  Her darling black lab Molly, sniffed my name out of the bowl!! So thank you Pat and Molly for picking me.  She is sending me the Plum Street Samplers' Hares' Christmas chart complete with linen and threads! So generous of her.

 Then, a couple days later, I received emails from Lynn of Kearnel's Korner, and Angela of Hooked on Stitches, telling me that I won their Grow a Blog Party giveaway! Okay.  By this point I was really blown away!!  Angela made one of her famous boxes for the giveaway and Lynn stitched the prettiest little design with flowers and birds to make into a pin pillow! It's always so nice to receive stitching from others.  I will cherish each piece.  So thank you again ladies!! Big Hugs!! 

I was RAK'd a lovely chart with threads from Carolyn, Taking One Stitch At A Time.  Also a sweetie! Big thank you to Carolyn too for making my week!!

Here's the chart and floss.  I want to start stitching the pattern but can't decide on the fabric.  I think I'm leaning more towards the vintage light exemplar (the peachy coloured linen).  

Hmm.  I really like the lambswool linen too.  I suppose I could start stitch a bit on both and see which one I like best. 

Since it's the month of love, I thought I would share with you some of the many musicians I have been obsessed with/infatuated/drooled over when I was a teen and young adult. I may reveal a few of the others later on...hehe.  

I did manage to stitch a bit over the weekend, until I got REALLY distracted by traveling down nostalgia lane listening to one of my favourite bands, Suede.  It's funny how I almost forgot about them! All my CD's are buried in a box in our storage locker and it's a pain to get into it.  I used to be quite infatuated with the lead singer, Brett Anderson.  It was fun looking at old photos of him and seeing him now. He's actually aged quite nicely.  Still a handsome man to me!!

Back in the 90's

Twenty years later

I really adored Suede's music and am excited they are reuniting and will be releasing a new album in March.  They were the original trailblazers of Brit Pop music in the 90's although other bands, such as Blur and Oasis, received more recognition than Suede.  They were very talented and I really enjoyed listening to their music again.  

Oh right, stitching.... I stitched a wee bit on a few things, so instead of posting individual photos, I played around with Picasa's collage button and came up with one photo.  Picasa has so many great features to play with your photos!

 No Titus for now.  He's resting with the hubby since he's so hard at work laying around all day!!

Hugs to you all!

Stitching and Finishes While Sick

Hello everyone!

Thanks for all your well wishes and hugs! I'm feeling a bit better today and am not using the kleenex by the boxful...although I've gone through quite a bit.  While I was sick, I did stitch on quite a few of my projects.  I sort of had stitching ADHD and would pick up one, put it down then pick up another. I took photos today while it was brighter out, however, during my importing session, my computer froze and all the photos were deleted.  

The stitching photos I'm not too upset about those photos but there were some videos of a man playing some beautiful guitar music at my Uncle's house on Friday night, and now I have lost the videos of him playing.  Luckily, my Uncle and Aunt got the impromptu concert on their iphones and will send me their version of the concert.  This man, known as Jan de Chloe, wrote a biography on Boris Perrot, who was the guitar teacher of the famous classical guitarist Julian Bream.  My grandfather also studied under Dr. Perrot and our family contributed many photos, anecdotes and historical papers to the book.  There are a couple of parts about my grandfather in the book which was fascinating to read about. Here's the link to the book if anyone is interested. Boris Perrot: A Life with a Guitar.

My Grandpa is on the left with his hand on his chin

Onto my sick stitching.  Please pardon the horrible photos.  My camera's flash is not working very well and the daylight disappeared for me when I had to retake the photos.  I did finish a really old stitch for Valentine's Day...finally.  I think I stitched this two years ago!!

 

The pillow looks lumpy but it's really not that bad.  I think I needed to add some of the new stuffing I bought to have made it more full.  Well, it's finished and I'm happy about it!! It's a freebie pattern from The Sampler Girl. 

I finished the RAK's too and thankfully, they turned out WAY better than my finishes.  Phew!!!

I finished Tweet today too although I may replace the bow on top.  It's not really how I wanted it to turn out.  I think I should've waited until I was completely better to finish some of my stitches!!

I stitched more on Hannah and was a wee bit concerned about the right side coming to close to the edge.  Luckily it's got about 3-4 inches leeway however, I thought I measured the fabric perfectly and figured out exactly where to start.  I obviously counted incorrectly because there is a lot more fabric on the left than the right.  Thankfully, there's just enough on the right to get it framed! I hope!!

I stitched some of the outlines for the cup handle on TeaBathFairy.  I enjoy making outlines on HAED's and not stitch them in 10 by 10 parts.  That's just too confusing for me to do!!

Some wee progress on Baked Goods.

And a blurry photo of Titus sleeping by the heat register.  He really loves his heat!!

That's all for now! I need to go rest now after all the energy I spent finishing.
Hugs to all!!

(Edited some of the photos)

First ISHW of the Year and A Hot Dwarf

Hello everyone!

I think I forgot to thank all of you for your birthday wishes....so THANK YOU!! I've been trying to get into the groove again with blogging, commenting, etc and I've made some progress this weekend in that department! Also I would like to welcome my new followers! 

The first hermitting weekend was sort of successful for me.  I finished stitching two Rak designs and found the fabric to match, just need to pull out the sewing machine and finish them up! I also spent a good portion of Friday night frogging Hannah's first bloom I stitched.  I should know that when working with 40 count, 1 thread is more than enough coverage! I did start the pattern with 2 threads of silk but found it to be rough going so I frogged the flower, salvaged most of the silk (YAY!) and made some progress on Hannah.  Here's the first 2 over 2 bloom that I frogged.

Looks pretty but the threads were too bulky.  So here's the second attempt. Also the colour of the fabric in the first photo is much closer to what it really looks like.

The stitching went a lot faster and I'm really enjoying working with AVAS silks.  I've worked with a number of silks before, but AVAS is by far the best! Loving this design!!

I also managed to finally fill in Tea Bath Fairy's massive kreinik block.  I worked on this for over a month in the evenings since filling in stitches is easy work.  No need to look at the pattern...just stitch away!

I liked working on TBF every so often because it's amazing to see all the shading and details those tiny little stitches make.  Quite fascinating isn't it?!

I almost forgot to take a photo of my finished Tweet!! I used an assortment of sillks and DMC's stitched on 40 ct. R & R Reproduction's Creme Brulee, the same linen Baked Goods is being stitched on.  I need to find the perfect fabric for this one.  I think I'll do a simple pillow finish because it's faster and I won't procrastinate with that kind of finish!!

Funny thing about the post system, I received many Christmas cards WAY after the fact and just received Vickie's Christmas card on Friday! It must have got lost in the US because it didn't leave the States until January 13th but she posted it almost a month before!! Well, I'm glad I got it and thanks so much Vickie for the sweet little counting pins! My first counting pins ever! They are so delightful.

Can't show you the two RAK's I finished because I want them to be a surprise! I really liked the patterns and colour schemes I chose. Being a part of the Random Act of Kindness Blog has really pushed me to stitch more smalls and finish them!

Onto hot dwarves!! Finally saw the Hobbit! Wow! It was amazing and I looove Thorin! 

Yup...sigh

 Joyce also did a post about Richard Armitage if you'd like to go pop over there and ogle him a bit!!
 I think it's his eyes right?!!



Oh, almost forgot to show you all something I put together.  My finishes of 2012!! I had a pile of others but the "mosaic" would've been too massive and there were a number of pieces I actually didn't finish completely.  I hope to get to them this year!! Putting the finishes together was neat to see how much I actually accomplished!!

Okay, that's all for now!


I hope you all had a wonderful stitchy weekend and sorry for no Titus photos today.  He needs his beauty rest for the next photo session!!


Hugs!!