A Christmas finish and a Halloween WIP

Happy Days!  I have my first Christmas present finished!  I'm sooo on top of it this year ......  not.

Anyway, here it is, Home with Jane Austen by The Sampler Girl:

I used Valdani threads for this pattern, my first experience with this brand.  I like them.  The threads laid (correct word here?) nice for me and didn't tangle much.  The only problem I had was that the linen fabric was a little hard on the threads -- the ends would soften up and fray more than other brands.  This won't keep me from using Valdani, just using shorter lengths of thread and/or clipping the tails more often. 



I pulled out La-D-Da's Something Wicked and started back on it.  I lost the original Needle Necessities thread I was using for the boot -- sigh -- how that happened, I have no idea.  Anyway, I bought the corresponding ThreadWorx thread to try to save myself some frogging.  The thread is beautiful but, of course, not an exact match.  However, since I had only put half the cross down before losing the thread, I thought it would be okay.  And I think I'm right -- yay!  Can you tell where the NN ends and the TW begins (look at only the completed cross stitches)? 

hehe -- good luck with that comparison -- I guess you'll just have to take my word for it.  The pic's not that great.

I probably won't get much stitching done this weekend -- the dogs and I are headed to a Teacup agility trial.  Should be fun!  I hope everyone has a nice stitchy weekend!

For the long, hot, holiday weekend

I had planned on doing lots of stitching -- mostly on See the Stars.  Unfortunately, I had a nasty sinus headache by Friday after work.  Soooo, I wanted something simple to stitch (heaven forbid I should just lay down until my headache went away).  I chose this La D Da WIP that had a little bit of the shoe done.  Thinks I -- this is perfect, I can stitch the shoe easily -- only one thread and not much bouncing around.  Good choice .....

NOT!

After finishing up the partial thread hanging on from the last time I stitched this one, I went searching in the bag that held all the other threads I picked for this piece.  No shoe thread!  I looked all over the house that evening and the following morning ... still no shoe thread.  Of course, it was a Needle Necessities thread that was in my stash (luckily I had written down the number - for the record, it's 1421).

Sigh!  Oh well.  So I stitched the stocking and the words instead.  And put everything back into the project bag.  Hopefully, the shoe thread will show up some day, if not .... well, I'll have to decide later.

Still having a headache, I decided to work on the Solo Brode piece and am happy with the finished result.  I plan on making it into a cover for my magnifying glass.  Well, that is, I plan on having someone else finish it as a cover.   I don't sew. 

1. Because sewing machines hate me and

2. Because I hate them back

Finally, on Monday, my headache was mostly gone so I decided to tackle the frogged area on See the Star.

It would be done except I kept making mistakes that had to be frogged.  And of course the dogs (especially the puppy) were being particularly helpful. 

It seemed that at least one of them needed to go outside into the sweltering heat every hour.  So this is how the day went.  Stitch, rip, potty-time!, Now were did I leave off?,  oh yes, stitch, stitch, rip, potty-time!, Hmmm, where was I again?, stitch, damn!rip ..... well, you get the idea. 

The only good thing was that my headache finally went away during the afternoon.

Keep cool!

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!