TUSAL and some other progress

Good morning everyone!  I'm overdue for my first ort report of 2013.  I slipped outside early on this foggy morning and took a quick photo of my freshly emptied ort jar.  The threads from this month are all from Coraggio:

If you'd like to learn more about the TUSAL, or maybe even join in yourself, check it out here on Daffycat's blog.

As I mentioned, the only thing I've worked on so far this year has been "Coraggio" by Scarlet Letter.  I've been plugging away at the top band and the over one alphabet... that over one is S L O W.  Still no word on the back ordered threads.  I'll have to put this down soon if I don't get them.  But anyway, here's where I am as of this morning:

When I went out to get the paper this morning, I noticed that the crocuses (crocii?) have started popping up in the front yard:

I love these fresh, pretty little flowers.  And I'm happy to see that the bulbs seem to have divided quite nicely since last spring.  BUT, I know that a nasty freeze will come along before too long and I will probably not see the daffodils or many of the other crocuses this year.  Sigh.  That's the life of a garden, I suppose.

I think that on Monday morning I will set to work on the Christmas ornament I mentioned in my last post.  Turns out there is a little more work to do on it than I realized.  There are supposed to be lots of eyelets in varying threads all over it.  I'm trying to convince myself to add them.  But part of me doesn't really want to.  Who will win?  Lazy robin or perfectionist robin?  Tune it later to find out!

Everything but the Kitchen Sink (August WIPocalypse #!)

I've got a little of everything to share in this post, but I'll start with my WIPocalypse update.  What's the WIPocalypse you ask?  Read about it here. 

This month I have not one, but TWO finishes to share.  Hooray!  First up, Sous le Soleil de la Lune is done. As a reminder, here is where I was at the start of 2012:

And here she is all stitched up:

I stitched this piece with the called for silks on 40 count "Linen" linen from Weeks Dye Works.  I love the little cherubs at the top and the middle vase!

My second finish was not on my original WIPocalypse list.  I pulled it out in June when Mom and I were sorting through my stuff to do some framing.  I started Janet Gibson shortly after she was released (2006, maybe?  I'm not sure).  I finished her up this week:

I love everything about this sampler, from the house, to the color pallette.  My two favorite bits are the swan:

and Adam and Eve.  It was Adam and Eve that took me so long to finish.  Look at the hair in this last photo. It's a bit of braided cording and it totally intimidated me!  I finally took the plunge last week, and it only took about an hour to finish the whole thing off.  I can't wait to get this one framed and on the wall.

Speaking of framing, Sarah Hatton McPhail is all framed up:

That's it for the stitchy updates.  I'm working on a model for mom for the next week or two, and then I'll probably turn back to the giraffe sampler.  

I also finished one scrapbook project this week.  This is a wall hanging that came from a project kit I bought a couple of years ago.  Eventually, I will put this up in our bonus room/my craft room.

And finally, I leave you with three more images.  Lucky being his usual adorable self:

 Spike chilling in the window (while Lucky supervises):

And a surprise visitor in our backyard near sunset last week.  I was trying to feed the squirrels in order to keep them away from my garden and instead attracted this:

And by the way, my plan to distract the animals failed miserably.  They have taken all the cantaloupes.  : (  There's another batch of tomatoes growing away right now, but I don't think it's very likely that we'll be the ones eating them.  Sigh.  I don't know how to stop them.

That's all for now.  Hope everyone is enjoying the Olympics and has a great week!

June Ort Report (and some other stitching stuff)

Here's my June TUSAL update:

I think the jar is a bit out of focus, but it's hot outside today, I'm late with this update, and I just didn't feel like taking the time to get it better.  The jar is filling up and I'm having to shake/tamp down the threads so that's there is room to add more.  I may have to empty this jar before the end of the year.  Maybe.  If you want to learn what the TUSAL is all about, click on the link up above.

The reason that my update is late this month is that Mom and I took off for Cherokee earlier this week.  We had a great time.  We each had a bit of free play at the casino, and I had a good time with the Blackjack video machines that I discovered on this trip.  Wish I had found them before this, because Cherokee's tables are too expensive for me, and I ALWAYS have lousy luck at them.  Disproportionately lousy luck.  Maybe that will change when they switch to a live card system, but I may never find out.  In addition to playing at the casino, we visited the Museum of the Cherokee Indian.  It was a really good museum, with a well laid out telling of the story of the Cherokee.  I would strongly encourage anyone heading to that area of NC to take the time to check it out.

On our way home from Cherokee yesterday, we stopped at a really nice quilt store in Maggie Valley.  I got a few pieces of fabric for backing some of my little pin pillows and ornaments.  Guess which one of these is NOT for backing a Halloween piece?

See that little white paw in the upper corner?  Scout was 'helping' me with the fabrics by pointing out a loose bit of thread coming off one of the pieces.  Little rascal.

In other stitchy news, I have another oldie that finally made its way into a frame.  This piece is from a kit by Maureen Appleton.  It's a reproduction of an antique sampler, and it is stitched over one.

I finished Sarah Bateman in 2005.   I like her, but if I were stitching this piece today, I would have substituted a darker, more noticable color for that pale white one that you can barely see (and in which her name is stitched).  In '05, I was not yet ready to think outside the box and use anything other than the called for colors of thread.  These days, I don't hesitate to change things around to suit my tastes.  What a difference a few years can make!

I pinned another sampler in preparation for framing.  I am a bit ashamed to say that I forgot to date this one, so I'm not sure exactly how long ago I finished it.  The piece is a Scottish reproduction sampler from The Essamplaire, and I got it in the very first class that I took at Jeanine's .  I finished it about a year and a half later.  Here's a photo of Elisabeth Ramsay propped in the frame, but she's not quite ready to be locked in place.  It seems that she's sagging a bit in the upper left hand corner, so I shall have to pull some of the pins free and re-stretch her.  Sigh.

I will leave you with two more photos.  The first is a snap of the three patriotic pieces I've been working on this past week.  I'll share more details about them as I finish them off.

The second photo is of another patriotic piece.  I don't know who the designer is, or what the name of the pattern was.  This is a piece that I sought out and stitched in the aftermath of 9/11.  Although I certainly did not finish it on that day, it was the only date that I cared to put on the piece, because, for me, the emotions and anguish of that day were what this piece was all about.  The text is the pledge of allegiance, and there are flags from different eras of the American government marching down the banner.  I love the fabric on this piece.

Until next time, I hope everyone stays safe and enjoys some creative time on these long, hot summer days!

More framed stitching!

Is everyone ready for the weekend?  I know I am!  My sweetie has been on a business trip all week and I'm so happy to have back home.  So, so happy!

I spent the last two days with my mom, working on closing my grandmother's estate.  It's sad work, and I am relieved to finally be done.  While I was at her house, I picked up a couple of framed pieces and pinned one more.  Along with the pieces I shared in my last post, I brought two more home.

This first one is La-D-Da's "Spot the Cat."  It was a quick stitch, and fits into a standard 5x7 frame.  Please ignore the reflections off the glass:

He doesn't really look like any of my cats, but I think he's quite cute.  This is the first stitched piece on which I have placed my new, married initials.  It gave me a little thrill to put that little "P" on there instead of the old "H".

This second piece is Carriage House Samplings "Shores of Hawk Run Hollow."   I chose to stitch this piece back in 2008 when Mom and I and two other friends took a road trip to Massachusetts to attend a needlework symposium at the New Bedford Whaling Museum.  I finished it in early 2009, and finally got it framed today!  Again, please ignore the slight reflections and glares off the glass.  My dad was so anxious to get it framed that he didn't give me time to take a photo before he put the glass in.  What a nice problem to have, huh?

I've been stitching away on Soleil this week.  I don't have a photo for this post, but I will soon.  Lots of progress has been made, although there is still so much to be done!  It's amazing how a piece can look so full of stitches and yet have so much yet to be put into it.

In non-stitchy news, I got a beautiful bouquet of flowers from the farmers' market this afternoon.  The cats thought they were pretty too, especially Spike:

And finally, finally I harvested our first zucchini from the garden.  We had this little guy for dinner tonight:

There may not be any more after this.  But our one zucchini sure was good!

That's all for this evening.  Til next time, I hope everyone has a wonderful, not-too-hot weekend!

Progress and plants

Good morning everyone!  I had intended to have this post up Friday night, but just as I sat down to turn the computer on, the power went out.  For the second time in two weeks.  Ugh.  I hope this isn't going to be a common thing this summer.

Anyhow, the power is back on and I can now share all the silly things I wanted to share two days ago (um, the power has been on since late, late Friday night.  I have just been busy since then).  I had mentioned in my last post that I was going to give Sous le Soleil another week's worth of work because I felt like I'd made almost no progress during the first week.  Then, early Monday morning, I damaged my foot by kicking a stepladder.  Not on purpose, I didn't realize it was in the hallway and I ran into it on the way to the bonus room.  So I spent most of this week lamed up, which is a bad thing for housekeeping and physical comfort, but a great thing for stitching.  So here's Soleil when I last posted:

 And here she is after one slow week and one turbo week:

 Most of the plant motifs you see are unfinished.  I decided to push through with the green and save specialty stitches til closer to the end of the piece.  Then I changed my mind about waiting:

 I am tempted to keep at her for another week and see how close I can come to finishing, but I am also thinking about finishing a pyn pillow from Thistle Threads in the coming week.   My lessons for "A Cabinet of Curiosities" began earlier this month, and I'm somewhat motivated to work on something intimidating as a warm up for this class.  Plus, the pillow is also on my WIPocalypse list.  Hmm, guess we'll see what kind of mood I'm in tomorrow morning when it's time to officially decide how the stitching week will go!

My vegetable garden seems to be doing well.  The zucchini plant has leaves the size of my hand (or larger) and is now sprouting this giant yellow flowers.  And yesterday I saw a few little flowers on my tomato plant. Hopefully, the flowers are a sign that vegetables are soon to follow.  Nothing to do but wait and see!

 I can't remember whether I mentioned on this blog that one of the ferns that I bought to use in our wedding ceremony was taken over by purple finches when I left the plant at my sister's house for safe-keeping.  Well, her fern is now the home of 5 baby finches.  I bought a new fern, which remained bird free, and brought it back to my new home after the wedding.  We hung them on our front porch, and for a month they were just pretty ferns decorating our house.  But earlier this past week, I noticed that there were many purple finches circling around it, and that there seemed to be a battle for control of one of my ferns.  And then we noticed that there were often two purple finches perched in our fern.  Yesterday we took the fern down to water it (and to be sure we didn't water anything that shouldn't be watered) and sure enough, there's a little nest growing in our fern!

One of the eggs is quite a bit larger than the others, and it's speckled.  The others are not speckled.  What could be the reason for this?  Has some other bird snuck an egg into our poor finches' nest, or is it normal for the eggs to different sizes?  Only time will tell, I suppose.

Til next time, I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday weekend (or just a great weekend if you're not in the US).

As boring as watching grass grow

I know the real phrase actually talks about watching paint dry, but I'm struggling through a massive amount of green grass on my Soleil project. It just goes on and on and on. It's pretty, but not all that interesting to me. The only drama is whether I can make it all the way through that lawn without running out of silk. The chart didn't say I would need more than one skein, but I strongly suspect that I will. Which wouldn't be a big deal if this weren't an overdyed silk. I know I have another piece of a skein in my stash, but I don't know how similar the dye lot will be. And I'm not gonna look til I have to. So here's what I've accomplished since last week's post:

I've also finished all of the darker green in the border. My sides met, although there are two stitching errors. They were so far behind me by the time I realized it that I'm not going to frog back to them. I don't think they will be too obvious. I hope it's not too obvious.

On Saturday, several of my family members, stitching friends, and childhood friends gathered at my mom's house for my first wedding shower. It was so wonderful to get to spend a little time with those who could make it, and I think everyone had a blast. I know I did. I don't have any photos at this point to share, but I will say this: the shower had a Hawaiian theme. My dear, sweet sister tricked me into eating a Spam sandwich (Spam is very popular in Hawaii), and they spiked my tiki drink without telling me. Then they put me in a grass skirt, etc, etc. It was silly, but fun. My mom, sister, and sister in law really knocked it out of the park. And I made them each a little something to thank them for taking the time to celebrate with me:

Each piece is finished with some vintage lace and some Blueberry Crumbcake fabric. Here's the view from the back:

In other news, I am truly having a great time watching the yard at my future home bloom and grow. Alton and I had planted some daffodils and crocus under one of the Bradford pears in the front yard. And hooray, they came up! I have never tried to plant crocuses before, so I was glad those weren't a total bust. And I love daffodils. I planted some at my childhood home, and that first planting is still going mad at the house, all these years later. I'm hoping that these newly planted daffodils will also divide and multiply in the years to come.


I have never had much success growing pansies in pots. Which is ridiculous, because they are supposed to be a super easy plant. I won a yellow pansy at a stitching event last fall. I am pleased (and a little surprised) to see that it is still going strong.


The previous owner must have also been quite fond of flowers. There are a few daffodils blooming that I did not plant, as well as a handful of hyacinth.

I think there are tulips growing in several spots in the yard. The Bradfords are working their way into a full bloom as well.

Gus the cat was able to spend a little time outside on Sunday. I think he was a little jealous earlier in the day when he was stuck inside looking out:

I am on the road to recovery from my throat/cough thingy. Hooray! Now it's on to a busy week of work, and hopefully a good little bit of stitching. Til next time, I hope everyone has lots of creative time on their hands.