IHSW report for August

Most of my stitching time was spent on an ornament called "When Santa Got Stuck In The Chimney" or something along that line.  It's from the 2010 JCS Christmas Ornament issue.

I changed the words from the designer's because the entire time I was stitching this one, the song "Up On The Rooftop" kept running through my head.  I adjusted them to fit Mr. Claus' current predicament:

I suspect the reindeer are out of the picture because they're rolling around on the snow covered ground giggling their antlers off  :D

The other project I worked on was a finishing job that I cannot show just yet.  It's a surprise.

And that's about it for my IHSW report.  Have a good week everyone!

A finish and some surprises

 I finally put the finishing touches on Night Owl this past week -- hooray! -- another ornie ready to go.  I adore the colors in the cording on this one -- so warm and fall-ish.  Making the cording is my favorite part of finishing.  I love seeing how the different yarns work (or sometimes don't work) together.  It isn't obvious in the picture but one of the rust yarns has some glitter in it, giving this ornie a little bling.

Next up is the latest Stitched with Love Exchange.  The topic for this one was Bees, Butterflies and Birds.  I stitched some birds for Lisa who is a bird watcher.  I'm so glad she liked  it.  The owl is from JMD Designs and the little blue bird is from the BBD booklet With Needle and Thread.

I received a wonderful package from Deb in this exchange.  The pillow she stitched for me is so beautiful, I love it!    I think I'm getting a little goofy about buttons, trim and fabric -- can't seem to get enough, how weird  is that?  So I love that she included some here.  The needles, of course, will be put to good use and I have admired the Hot Cocoa pattern being stitched by other bloggers so I'm looking forward to stitching it.  And check out the Canada tote -- isn't it adorable? I love that moose!  My dad and I got a good chuckle out of it :-) 

Last summer, I trimmed my pussy willow bush/tree/monstrosity to within an inch of it's life (from which it has bounced back wonderfully this year, I'm almost sorry to say -- this thing is out of control!).  I kept some of the straighter branches from this trimming and let them season outside over the winter.  So now I've got myself some really pretty, rustic-looking rods from which to hang stuff.   Deb's gift is the first to benefit from the willow's sacrifice.  Thank you Deb for such a great exchange!

Yesterday I received another package in the mail from MiiStitch (who is also the host of another exchange called the Summer Holiday Exchange).  Check out the lovely stitched pieces I received from her:

Can you believe it?? A beagle with a heart on her arse!!  How cute is that!?  I love it!!!  How do I know it's a she beagle and not a he beagle, you ask?  No winkie ;-)    ROTFLMAO!  This is particularly funny to me right now because my little girl beagle Meadow just came out of season about a week ago.  And my boy beagle Spider (who is also her goofy brother) has been driving me crazy with his amorous advances on his sister (not that she has objected, mind you) -- and he's neutered!  I am so terribly glad that's all over now.  But I digress ....

Back to the exchange.  I love the little sheep pouch.  I can't wait to show it to a friend of mine who adores anything with sheep on it -- she will be so jealous.  But that's not all .... inside the little bag were more little goodies:

How wonderful is that!?!  Thank you Ingrid for this super exchange!

I'm stitching something for Heather in this exchange but it isn't actually finished yet, so no pics.  I've run into some technical difficulties with a new (to me) finishing technique.  I hope to have this ironed out over the weekend -- cross those fingers please and wish me luck. 

And here's wishing a good weekend to you!  After all it's IHSW!!

And the winner is . . . . .

Don't you just hate it when they drag this out on tv shows then break for a commercial?  Very annoying.

Here's one of the Halloween ornaments finished that I want to show you.  I think it turned out kinda cute:

I have another one almost done but it needs a couple little finishing touches before the unveiling.  Plus I finished stitching the Summer Holiday Exchange piece but I can't show that one until the exchange is over. It was an interesting piece to stitch.  The blended threads were fun to do.  I'm still thinking about the actual finishing of it.  I like the pattern so much that I started stitching one for myself.  I was going to wait and do it later but I figured it would never get done if I waited.

And that's the end of our commercial break, now back to the program in progress . . . . .

I wasn't sure how to go about picking the winner at first but after some thought, here's what I did. There were 23 people interested in Quaker Moon.  I gave them each a number 1 through 23.  Then using some old Dungeon's and Dragon's dice back from my college days, I took a 20-sided and 6-sided dice, rolled them together, totaled the roll (6+5=11) and subtracted 3 to give me 8.  Can you tell I work with numbers all day??

Anyway, the winner of the Quaker Moon traveling pattern is Giovanna.  Congratulations!  I will email you for your address after I finish here.

This was fun and brought back some memories.  First, digging out my old dice reminded me of all the good times I had playing D&D with my friends in college.  We would get together almost every weekend, drink beer, eat junk food and have a blast killing orcs and other nasty imaginary creatures in our pursuit of wonderful imaginary wealth.  Second, the bowling case I keep my dice in is OLD.  My grandmother gave it to me when I was probably in 2nd or 3rd grade, making it about 45 years old.  She used to belong to a bowling league and either won or bought the little leather case and gave it to me.  It came filled with some of the nastiest smelling hard candy, which I promptly threw away.  I can still smell it - yuck! - being made of leather, that scent lingered with the case forever.  It was the perfect size for my jacks and ball (do they still make jacks??) and stored them until I needed something for my D&D dice.  And then, of course, the jacks remind me of the summer my brother broke his leg playing baseball.  He couldn't do much that summer but he became a super jack player sitting on our kitchen floor.

Isn't it funny how memories are triggered?

And how odd am I for keeping a little leather case?

I'm glad I did -- this was fun :)