A Finish and Catching Up

I put the final stitches in "Give" by Plum Street Samplers during the first half of the Super Bowl game. I have thoroughly enjoyed stitching this piece. I just love everything about it, the design, the colors, the fibers...everything!


Give by Plum Street Samplers
Stitched on 32 ct. Chalice linen from Picture This Plus
Fibers: Belle Soie silks from Crescent Colours

Conversions, for those of you who've asked~
Attic Tea~vines
Fawn~bodies on birds, lg. nut on top left, sm. nut on bottom right
Mudpie~cluster of nuts on top right, nut on bottom left
Pumpkin Carriage~light wings on birds, crown motif
Lasagna~flowers, heart motif, flowers on vine in center
Tortoise Shell~words, initials, date, eyes on birds, inside and outside borders

Now then, the captions for the pics from Wordless Wednesday.
Sedum "Autumn Joy" starting to stick its nose out from the ground. This goes dormant during the winter but is usually one of the first things to show life in late winter/early spring.

Hannah Grace enjoying the clean afghan on the back of the couch. It's unusual for her to be up here, so I couldn't resist the photo op.

A woodpecker on the telephone pole!

My pound cake. Looks lovely, doesn't it?

After I turned it out onto the plate. Not so lovely, is it? You'll be glad to know it was absolutely delicious, though! I might have to make another one!

It's the Start of a New Week!

And I'm feeling immensely better! It's amazing what cough syrup with codeine can do for a good night's sleep! LOL I'm sure the antibiotic my doctor prescribed for my sinus infection is helping some, too. Now, if the mountain cedar would just go away, I'd be able to truly get well. I hate that stuff!

So, the Saints are going to the Super Bowl! Woohoo! So proud to see a team that's never been in the Super Bowl advance to that all important game. I hope the beat the tar out of the Colts! Honestly, the Colts have a GREAT team and Peyton Manning will no doubt be in the Hall of Fame someday, but really, it's time for some new faces in the Super Bowl. Geaux Saints!!!!

This past week was a stressful one, plus I didn't feel well, so my stitching time was minimal. I started my January ornie, "Joy", a complimentary design from Lilybet Designs. I've been working on this during my lunch/dinner time at work.


I'm stitching this on a scrap of 28 ct. Vintage Autumn Fields linen, using DMC, CCs, and GAST.

On Saturday, I worked on my SNS project, LHN's Seasonal Saltbox series. Got the main body of my house "painted" and started on the flowers in the border.


Yesterday, during the Saints v. Vikings game, I stitched on my incentive piece, "Give". My plan is to work on this at home during the evenings. I'm so close to a finish, that I've got to get it done!


In other news, my potatoes have been taken out of the box and are getting ready to plant. I've only got about 2 more weeks!! They're starting to grow eyes. The Kennebecs seem to be growing the slowest, but they're also the biggest potatoes, so maybe that's why. We have also added onion sets. I absolutely LOVE onions! We have 3 sets of 1015Y ("THE" Texas sweet yellow onion) and 2 sets of Red Burgundy, a red onion. I'm thinking of going back and getting a bunch of the white onions they had.

These are the Kennebecs. Come on babies, you can sprout!

The Reds and Purple Vikings are doing great!

The Banana Fingerlings are going like gangbusters. I even have one that reminds me of a walrus! LOL

The onions awaiting their permanent home in the garden. I've put them in a pan of dirt and then I water them about every other day.

Wordless Wednesday Follow-Up

Salsa anyone? Homemade from the remainder of our slicing tomatoes harvested before our first freeze in December. This was pretty much all I got of the batch. DH ate most of the rest of it while I was napping. I think I'm going to get a lock for the fridge and hide the key on my body! Wait! Might not be such a good hiding place! LOL

This is my Callie-love in the husband's lap. Ten years ago, you'd never have seen this. DH wasn't a cat person and Callie wasn't much of a human cat, especially humans of the male persuasion. Over the years, the two have come to a mutual understanding and Callie frequently jumps in his lap for a little love.

Part of my stash that I've weeded out. One of these days, this stuff will be for sale.

More stash that wouldn't fit in the bin. Need to organize, scan, price, and get everything uploaded to sell.

My progress on "Give" this week. I've pretty much reached the bottom on both sides. Inching ever closer to a finish!

First Wordless Wednesday of 2010

Last Stitches of 2009, First Stitches of 2010

I hope everyone's had a wonderful Christmas and New Year season. It's amazing how busy we allow ourselves to get and the unrealistic expectations we put on ourselves, not to mention the expectations put on us by others. I pray this new year is a very blessed and peaceful year for you all.

As I rang out 2009, I stitched on Plum Street Sampler's "Give". The birds now have wings, but still no eyes. I'm planning on working on this again today while watching the Cowboys try to clinch their division against the Philadelphia Eagles. I'm contemplating what part to stitch on today. Should I work on the outside border on the right? Do I work on the twining vines on both sides? Do I continue in the middle and stitch the other motifs and stuff under the bird? Decisions, decisions, decisions!



My non-blogging friend, Robin, always encourages me to start a small project on January 1st. She's so organized, she knows well in advance what she's going to stitch. Of course, she's got her whole stitching year mapped out! She's got lists of all the projects she wants to stitch, which ones are gifts, which are just for fun. She's got an itemized list of ornies to choose from for the year! (Love you, Robin!!) Me? I decide a couple of days before January 1st what I'm going to stitch and then spend an hour and a half the morning of January 1st gathering supplies! LOL Have I gotten together a list of ornaments to stitch for the year?? No! (Will I stitch from the list anyway?? Probably not. LOL) Do I have a clue what projects I want to stitch this year?? No! I'm not spontaneous in any other area of my life, except stitching! I don't know if that's a good thing or not.

Moving on.

I chose Val's Stitching Stuff's "Have a Heart" for my January 1st project. It's been sitting in my "to do" box for a couple of years. I saw it. I grabbed it. I spent the first hour of the Rose Bowl parade pulling fibers and finding fabric. Impulsive, I know, but sometimes that's just the way I roll.


I knew I wanted to stitch this on something other than the neutral color of fabric the design calls for, so I went digging through my vast stash of fabrics. (I've battling a devastating addiction to fabric, especially the hand dyed variety. Having an unemployed husband helps curb that addiction.) I have TONS of colors to choose from in both 28 ct. and 32 ct. I decided to go with an old Silkweaver fabric called "Rainkissed" in 32 ct. It's a wonderful color fabric, but I don't think they produce it anymore. :(

Now I must return to my list making. I need to write my stitching resolutions, my ornie list, and I need to dig in my WIPs basket and see what's in there that I need to finish this year. I've only been working on that basket for 2 years now! LOL I also need to weed out stash and put it up for sale. Stay tuned for that!

:o)

Let There Be Birds!

I've been stitching on PSS's "Give" the past 2 days. Here's an update of my progress.


In real life, the birds aren't as dark as they appear in the picture. Okay, the whole piece isn't as dark as in the pic! The birds aren't as big as I thought they were going to be either. For some reason, by looking at the pic on the chart, the birds appear huge, but they're not too stitching intensive and they really stitch up fairly quickly. They don't take a ton of floss either, another good thing. I'm going to start working on the wings, which are a lighter orange. I need to figure out what color to do the eyes, too. I'm thinking either the darkest part of the Tortoiseshell, which is what the border is done in, or even the darkest part of whatever that color is that the smaller nuts are stitched in. Can you tell my mind is going?!? Maybe I'll stitch one in each color and leave it just to see if anyone notices! LOL

We're expecting more SNOW today. Blech! I'm really not happy about that since I have to go to work and possibly drive home in the slop. Texas just isn't prepared for snow. We don't have snow plows and we don't have the equipment to keep the roadways clear and safe. I really would like to stay home today if it's going to snow. It's so much prettier to watch it from the inside while sipping on my mug of hot chocolate than it is to be out in it.

Until next time...keep stitching!

:o)

Give Progress

This is going to become known as my bent needle project! I somehow managed to bend one of my high-dollar My Favorite Needle needles somewhere along the way of my short time stitching on this beauty. The only thing I can thing that happened was that the needle was stuck into one of the corners of my fabric while it was still in the q-snaps. When I took the snaps off, I must've pulled the needle out or something. Who knows?!? All I know is that I'm stitching with a bent needle and y'all aren't any the wiser! LOL Here she is in all her glory, as of the end of the Cowboys vs. Eagles game where my Boyz whooped up on the birds 20-14.

How 'bout dem Cowboys?!? They're now 6-2 for the season (6 wins, 2 losses for all you non-football folks) and in sole possession of their division. Nice to see Tony smiling again and having fun playing.

Who Sent the Frog Back to Me???

Last night as I was finishing up my stitching for the evening on Emmanuel, I noticed a mistake in my stitching. Now, I want to know just who sent that frog back to me?!? I haven't decided whether or not to frog it or to just work around the mistake, yet. I'm going to put this away for the week and work on my exchange piece and then I'll turn my attention back to this monster.

Here's where I started last night for Saturday Night Stitch:


And here's where I finished:



You're not imagining things if you look at the wing in the upper right part. The bird is right side up, but I've been stitching it upside down (turn my fabric and my chart upside down). Everyone take cover, I've sent that little frog packing!!

Closing with some views from my flower and veggie beds today.


Blue Bedder Sage & Rudbeckia

Mr. Lumpy Pumpkin getting his color on.

Garlic getting its stalk and leaves.

A view of the lettuce bed (& weeds--mixed greens!)

Baby spinach plants

It Was Bound to Happen

My first garlic pod has sprouted!! We now have 2 sprouts with more on the way.



This is my luscious Pumpkin Pound Cake and two small pumpkins from my garden. The cake is absolutely delish! I think I'll post the recipe over on my recipe blog in the near future.



On to the title of my post...

This is my progress as of Monday night on my Emmanuel ornie from Plum Street Samplers. It's a fairly straight-forward, easy to stitch design.



Here's my "progress" picture of Emmanuel after FROGGING on Tuesday night. It was bound to happen; that blasted frog came for a visit. *sigh* A most unwelcome guest! I didn't even have the welcome mat out for him!!



I am back on the right track now, though, and should have a true progress pic to show in a few days.

"Give" is Coming Along

I have been working on Plum Street Samplers' "Give" this week. This is my piece for the incentive round on the Only One Ewe message board group. I know that some of you have requested a conversion. I'm working on a complete conversion and will post it soon, so stay tuned! I played around with the settings on this scan and the colors are much truer to the colors in real life, at least on my monitor!

In the garden, things are enjoying the cooler temps we've been having. We have 3 baby pumpkins. These aren't big carving pumpkins, but smaller baking pumpkins. My hope was to get enough to make canned pumpkin to use in baking and for our kitties. Callie, my older cat, has kidney problems. As a result, she also gets constipated and the pumpkin keeps her regular. We give it to Hannah just because she likes it.



DH transplanted the lettuce and spinach seedlings into his new garden plot. They took a beating a couple of days ago in a rain storm, but they're looking good. We're expecting more rain this weekend, so we'll have to wait and see how they fare. He also transplanted some of his cantaloupe seedlings. Don't think they'll do anything, but he's so proud the seeds sprouted at all, so into the ground they went!



Until next time...!

A New Start & Other Mindless Wanderings

Seeing as how August's almost over, I thought I should start stitching on my August ornie. Don't want to fall further behind on my ornie endeavor! LOL I decided to stitch the complimentary ornie "Emmanuel" by Plum Street Samplers. It's stitched on 28 ct. Myrtle fabric using DMC fibers. I worked on this last night while watching the Dallas Cowboys whoop up on the Tennessee Titans. (Go Cowboys!!)

The design is available on Paulette's blog, http://plumstreetsamplers.typepad.com/plum_street_samplers/freebie/page/2/ . Just scroll down a little bit and you'll find it. Click on the download Emmanuel link and it'll take you to the .pdf file to either print out or save or save and then print it out. Whatever floats your boat!

In other news, it's still hot in Texas, but a "cool" front blew through yesterday and dropped 3/4" of rain on us and dropped the temps to 95º (big whoop!). The dear husband has started expanding our garden for the fall and future spring gardening. Our pumpkins are being overrun by cucumber beetles, but we'll be spraying them tonight in hopes of eradicating them from our garden. I told the husband yesterday that at this point in the game, I was ready to use chemicals. Considering I'm a die-hard organic grower, this is major! LOL


Looks like a freshly dug grave, doesn't it? First we had veggie coffins, now we have graves! LOL A bit morbid, don't you think?



The pumpkins have started blooming, male flowers only, just about 6 weeks after planting. As with all my other veggies that have produced male & female flowers, the males are over anxious and have arrived to the party early to strut their stuff.

The cucumber beetles were all over this flower this morning. :(

Some of my late-blooming flowers are starting to pop out. This is exciting as most of these were just planted this spring! I've been waiting ever so patiently for them all summer.

Milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa)


Cowpen Daisy (Figure out how this plant got its name!)

Some of the Blanket Flowers that I winter sowed (were winter sown?) have gone to seed and already produced babies! We found these when out inspecting the flower bed this morning.


The Turk's Cap that I rooted from a cutting taken from my dad's neighbors in San Antonio is very happy in its new home in the back flower bed. It's starting to fill out and produce flowers almost daily.


Here are our backyard neighbors' dogs, Winston and Sophie. They're actually littermates and are about 18 months old now. Winston, the bigger one, is on the left and Sophie, the smaller one is on the right. Winston has to be the center of attention and Sophie usually hangs out in the background, carefully watching everything. They greet us when we're out in the yard and will bark like crazy until they're acknowledged.