I hate fleas .....

with a passion.  Unfortunately, my dogs have come down with them.  It's been 10 years since I had to battle this plague and, quite frankly, I'm beat!  I have been vaccuuming, bathing dogs, washing, bleaching and drying the devil out of the dog's bedding and whatever else will fit into the clothes washer.  The devil has left the building but the fleas remain.  --Sigh--  I finally had to break down and get one of those nasty insecticide things to put on each of my pups (except the pregnant one of course).  This seems to be working but I'm beginning to suspect the fleas are living in my yard and coming in with the dogs.  I'm hoping it freezes soon so I don't have to spray the yard.   --Heavy Sigh--

And speaking of the yard, it was such a lovely day Sunday that I spent some of it outdoors (fleas notwithstanding) working in my garden.  Mainly, I spread the leaves out in my garden.  Fallen leaves are wonderful things.  Garden mulch extraordinaire.  You just put them where ever you want and  -- POOF! -- like magic -- they will turn into black gold.  Call me crazy but I'm thinking of planting more trees in my back yard to get more leaves for my garden.

All that aside, I did manage to stitch a  couple little fall projects this past week .... ones that I have been wanting to do for some time.  And being in an autumnal kind of mood, I decided to put everything else aside to finish them.

This first one I just LOVE.  One of my favorite things about the Fall holidays is Pumpkin Pie -- yum -- yummy!  This is a pattern from the Cross-Eyed Cricket.   Isn't it scrumptious?  It's on white congress cloth that I painted with acrylic paint to a nice orange/brownish color.  Using mostly DMC threads, I changed most of the cross stitches to other stitches.   I'm thinking I'll either put it in a little frame or make an ornament out of it.

I'm happy with it .....  It makes me smile.

This second one is from the Plum Street Samplers.  It's a nice little turkey sampler.  The oringinal pattern has a border around it but I opted to not stitch it.  This one is stitched on a misc. piece of 28 ct overdyed  evenweave I had from a previous project.  It is all DMC threads and, again, I changed some of the cross stitches to something else.

I just love this turkey.  He is way cool.  I plan to turn him into a little wall or door knob hanging.




Even though I'm still in a Fall stitching mood, I'm going to switch to some Christmas stitching this week .....   presents don't stitch themselves and I recently found out I need one more.  I best be crackin'!

Happy Thanksgiving! 

(You can probably guess what I'll be eating this holiday)

Progress on Mary Wigham

Here she is as of November 13, 2009.  It may look like I'm jumping around but the plan is to do the two sides and make sure they meet at the bottom.  This is the first I've stitched on Mary since Sept.  She's coming along .... slowly .... but surely.

Here are the newly stitched areas up close and personal:

Finally .......

A relaxing evening at home stitching!  Just me and the lil dawgs.  It's been awhile.

I stitched more of Harvest Angel.  I decided to cross stitch the pumpkins then cover that with satin stitches to make the pumpkins plump.  Ususally I just  stitch a couple layers of the satin stitches but I wanted the pumpkins to be exactly the pattern's size.  Soooo, since I recently read somewhere about covering XS with satin, I decided to give it a go.  The results are not too bad.  I even like that the plumped areas are a little rough -- just like on a real pumpkin.  It makes me smile.

In case you have noticed, this pattern is originally done all in XS but since I tend to get bored with just one stitch, I have adapted it using other stitches.  I also plan to put some beads on this once all the stitching is completed -- gotta love the way beads add something to a piece.

"Unfortunately" I need to get to my LNS if I plan to finish this piece.  I am almost completely out of the plum thread.  Of course, I could always work on something else until I get there.  I hear Mary Wigham whispering .....

Stitching tragedy narrowly missed .....

Whew!

Last Friday on my way home from work I stopped at JoAnn's to pick up a couple DMC threads for my Harvest Angel.  I was running low and feared there wouldn't be enough of the 2 main colors.  The 3777 was easily found, hooray!  The 977 (or 779 or whatever) was not -- GASP!  There wasn't even a slot for that color!  I double checked, figured I was remembering the wrong number, walked back out to the car (because I left the slip with the numbers on it out there and since it was such a nice day, parked a good distance away from the store's entry), grabbed said paper and returned to the store.  Unfortunately, I had remembered the number correctly and there was no such number there.  I purchased the 3777 and in a state of mild panic, rushed home, called my LNS owner (which is not on my way home but rather a 40 min. drive away) and was told not to panic.  She carries that particular thread and has lots in stock -- horray!  A happy ending!

Even though I was very busy over the weekend doing doggie stuff and mowing grass, I did manage to squeeze a little stitching into my schedule: 

I'm really liking the way Harvest Angel is coming along.  The other piece is from the Mary Wigham sampler.  I started it awhile back and decided it will be my 'in the morning before going to work' stitching.

Good news -- Stormy is feeling much better.  He's not 100% and is still on R&R but he's getting there.

Poor Stormy

Yesterday was just awful!  My little brown dog was in pain.

At breakfast he didn't bounce for his meal, at lunchtime he was trembling and obviously hurting, at dinner time he wasn't any better.  So off we sped to see our favorite doggie chiropractor, Dr Dave, only an hour drive away, in the dark, with lots of really BIG! trucks going really FAST!!, deer waiting at every corner to JUMP! out at our unsuspecting selves .... what speed limit?!? ..... it was white knuckle driving all the way.  But we made it.  Whew! 

Nothing wrong with his knees and his back is okay. Turns out the little dude has a badly bruised or pulled rib or something.  Probably the result of slamming onto the a-frame at the agility trial last weekend.  He and I are getting too old for this crap!

Needless to say, my planned evening of grocery shopping and stitching went down the interstate.  Here's what I was planning on stitching:

Isn't she pretty?  She's from La-D-Da and though her title is Harvest Angel, her original dress of black and brown made me want to call her Cemetary Angel .... so I decided to change her dress to more cheerful colors.

Unfortunately, I have a Beagle Club meeting tonight and groceries that still need buying, so Miss Harvest Angel will be alone again this evening.  Bummer!