Bats and butterflies

I love this little witch's hat with it's bat tassel and glitter.  The designer is The Stitchworks.  It's my March's witch for the Halloween ornie SAL.

In my last post, I mentioned the Friendship Sampler my EGA chapter is doing this year.  We are to stitch a top for the sampler to set the 'topic' of it.  Since I'm partial to butterflies, I decided to start my sampler with one.  I found this butterfly in an old leaflet called Butterflies and Flowers from Carolina Cross Stitch.

 

Next month, I'll pass my sampler on to the next stitcher and won't see it again until everyone has stitched their band.  It'll be a year before the mystery is unveiled.  I don't know if I can stand the wait.

"Meow" says the beagle

I have a finish but first you need to see what I saw the other afternoon.  Imagine my surprise when I turned around and saw a beagle on my window sill.  And it's my lazy, least agile beagle, Shasta, to boot.  There hasn't been a critter on my window sill since my last cat died.

I wish I could have seen her get there.  I can't imagine what prompted her to give it a try.  There was no food involved, so I don't know what her motivation was.  She must have stretched from the couch arm over to the window sill.  I'm just happy she got stuck there long enough for me to get a picture of it.   Though I would love to see what she looked like from outside the house.   Can you imagine the comments from passerby?  "Say lady, that's an odd kitty you've got in your window."

And no, I didn't have to rescue her.  She got down on her own.  Clever beagle.

Okay, on to the stitching.  I finished The Way to Happiness over the weekend.  I love it and hope my friend does too. 

I will be starting one for myself soon but first I have to prepare the fabric for a Friendship Sampler that the members of my EGA group is doing.  There are about a dozen of us participating in this project.  It's going to be a band sampler with everyone stitching a band.  The fabric is 40" long and will definitely be the longest thing I've ever stitched on.  I need to mark the middle and the 2 edges and I need to stitch the top band.  Since I just bought the fabric last week, I don't have anything done yet.  Though I did wash the fabric and iron it over the weekend.  Our meeting is the 17th so I need to get my rear in gear here.  Once we begin, I won't see my sampler again until it's been stitched by everyone involved.  

I've never done anything like this before and am really looking forward to it.  Though I don't know if I can stand the year-long suspense before seeing it again.

I've been stitching . . .

but haven't been doing much online recently.   I'm still trying to get the hang of my new computer.  Nothing is where it used to be.  The whole thing gets a little frustrating at times so I've been avoiding it.

I started a new sampler, The Way to Happiness, a SAL from Jardin Prive.  It's going to be a birthday present for a friend of mine.  Since her birthday is coming up in a couple months I've been working on it exclusively for 2 or 3 weeks and enjoying it very much.  Once hers is finished, I want to do another for myself.

Autumn Log Cabin is coming along nicely also, though I haven't touched it since I began my friend's gift.

And finally, I finished a little bat ornament for the Halloween Ornie SAL (my apologies, I can't get the link working for this one -- I give up, problems with the new computer, grrrrr!  One of these days I'll have it figured out.)

Have a good stitch day