December

It's officially the holiday season, isn't it? I don't have anything new to share on the stitching front, but I thought it would be fun to share my holiday stockings again.

They're both designed by Donna Kooler, and they were part of the heirloom stockings featured in Cross Stitch and Country Crafts magazine. I love these patterns, and have all of them in my stitching stash.

I originally wanted to stitch up one for each of our family members, but I've only had the chance to stitch two of them. I doubt I will ever take the time to stitch another one! They were so much fun to stitch, but each one took years. I seem to have even less time to stitch now, so if I were to stitch one I envision that it would take a decade per stocking, and that's just too long to wait! What do you think? I guess I can wait until I retire, but that is years away. It's still something to ponder, however.


I have hung the stockings this year, but here is how they looked during a previous Christmas season:


The Holiday Kitchen Stocking :



Holiday Workshop, before finishing:






Thanks for looking at my stockings,and thanks for stopping by today.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was wonderful! We went to my brother and sister-in-law's house and had a great time visiting, eating, and playing games.

This weekend also marked the start of Christmas shopping for me. I wouldn't dream of going out on "Black Friday". I can't stand crowds and too much madness! Instead we went out for a bit yesterday. I was able to purchase the gifts I buy for co-workers, and for my students. I also had to buy more costume pieces for our upcoming Christmas program. It's fun to be able to buy them instead of having to construct them.

Today will be spent wrapping the 39 gifts we bought yesterday, decorating for Christmas, and getting ready for the upcoming work week. It will be busy and my days will be very long.

I haven't shopped at all for any family members or friends, but I am thankful to be done with the work gifts. It always gets so busy this time of year that it's easy to feel overwhelmed with getting everything done!

I hope to get in some stitch time today, too. I think I'll have to do it soon or else the day will pass quickly without any sort of hobby time.

Here are some photos from Thanksgiving:

Luscious desserts:


Dishing up our meal:


My niece and nephew:


Toasting the Season--My Brother:


My Husband and I with our Grandson:


My Great Niece and my Son's Girl:


My Nephew, Son, and His Girl:


Thanks for stopping by today!

Our New Bundle of Joy!

I haven't been stitching much lately, nor have I even had much time lately for blogging. The reason there's been little action with the needle is that our little bundle of joy has arrived! It's hard to describe the joy he has brought into our lives.

Just a bit over two weeks ago our first grandchild was born. We are so excited to welcome him into the world! Little Robert weighed 7 lbs, 9 ozs and was 19 inches long. He's a calm, satisfied little baby. Our daughter is doing fine, and she and her husband are enjoying their new life as parents.

Here are some photos of the little one:

This one was taken in the nursery, shortly after he was born and before he had his first bath. His daddy took it.


A few more from the first day:





At home, taken within the past week or so:







Happy Thanksgiving to all of you who celebrate that holiday this Thursday. Thanks for stopping by today, and for sharing in our joy in welcoming our new little grandson.

More Inspiration Stitching

 

This beautiful piece is called "Mermaids of the Deep Blue" and it's from Mirabilia. My daughter loves it, so I think it's in our stitching future! We have taken turns on pieces in the past, so maybe this large piece would be a good candidate for that approach to stitching.

Not sure whether we'll stitch it on the recommended fabric, or if we'll use a different type completely. What do you think?

Thanks for stopping by today!

Stitching, Finally!

I finally stitched today--for the first time in two and a half months. It was good to break out my projects again. I decided to work on Oberlin's Minnesota Sampler, and will post a photo soon.

I noticed that the last time I posted here I was home with a sore throat. Believe it or not, I was at home again today with a sore throat and virus. I work with small children and sadly I don't seem to fight off their germs very well. Someone is always sick in my classroom, it seems. Any suggestions on building up immunity? Vitamins don't seem to do the trick.

A few weeks ago we went to a beautiful wedding. Our daughter's sister-in-law got married, and our daughter was the matron of honor. Her baby is due in a few weeks, and that is something we're really so excited about! Here are some photos of that beautiful day. Enjoy!

Our daughter with her sister-in-law:


Our daughter and her husband:


Enjoying the reception:



The Happy Newly Married Couple:






Thanks for stopping by today!

An Old Piece

It's great to be here and post today.

I still haven't had the chance to stitch in weeks and weeks. Right now I'm home with a horrible cold and sore throat. I seem to get these way more often than I should!

While we were in Minnesota last summer, I took a photo of a piece I stitched for my in-laws about 24 years ago. It is on Aida since it is from my beginning cross stitch phase. I don't recall the name of the leaflet from which I got the pattern. Here it is:





Aren't the colors bright? They are a bit unusual together, but I like the overall effect.

Thanks for stopping by today!

A New Arrival .....Soon

 

This is a sampler that I need to order and stitch soon. It's Beatrix Potter's Jeremy Fisher Birth Sampler. You see, I'm going to be a grandma in less than two months. Our daughter is expecting a baby in mid-November! I need to get moving on purchasing this pattern, and stitching it up as soon as possible. I haven't talked about the upcoming arrival much here, but just had to tell you today!

I still haven't had time to stitch, so for the time being I can enjoy reading all of your blogs and seeing your gorgeous stitching and other creative endeavors.

Take care, and thanks for stopping by today.

Embroidered Houses by Others

I wish I had more time to stitch, but lately it's just been far too busy. I haven't stitched in almost a month at this point.

Earlier today I did enjoy putting together something called a Flickr "Gallery". It's a collection of photos that I've gathered from my fellow Flickr users. It's titled "Embroidered Houses". I wish I could publish the gallery here, but I can't. I can share the link, so here you are:

Embroidered Houses Gallery by Loves2Stitch2

It's amazing to see the variety of different needlework techniques used to create such a wide variety of cozy homes.

Thanks for stopping by today!

A Picture is Worth How Many Words?

I wish I had some stitching news, but I don't! Instead, I would like to share some photos we took recently.

First of all, it's been so HOT that we were fortunate enough to capture with our camera a hawk standing on our driveway. He was drinking water from our neighbor's sprinklers, and also reaching out to enjoy the sprinkler mist.

We live in an urban area, so we're always a bit surprised to see hawks near us.






The other evening we drove to a park near my mother's house and took some photos of the sunset. I really love the colors in these! Sadly there is smoke in the air with fires burning some 25 miles away from where we took the photos, so that makes the sunset's colors especially orange.








I love this one:




Before sunset, and the smoke is visible:



One more with smoky clouds:



Thanks for stopping by today!

Framed Sampler!

Life has gotten extremely busy. After a fairly lazy summer, I'm preparing for another school year. I had to move to a different classroom this year, so it has meant a bit more work in getting ready. School does not start for a few weeks yet, but there is much to do before it can be a smooth start.

On a happy note, I got my sampler back from the framer! I took it to my most local needlework shop, and I am so thrilled with the results. I chose to not mat the piece, and I also chose a wood color that was a bit lighter than I'd anticipated but seemed to go best with the tones of the piece.

Here it is:



A close-up of one side:



I hung it on the wall between or kitchen and family room, and it seems to look all right there.

Thanks for stopping by today!

It's Great to Be Home

We're back from another trip to visit my husband and also my aunt in the midwest.

It was a great trip, but it's good to be home.

I have some old stitching and fun stuff about the trip to share, but I'll have to do that later.


Again, it's great to be back! I've missed reading all your blogs, haven't been online in a week.

Until Later... a photo of another beautiful Minnesota sunset-

Wedding Ring Bouquet WIP

I've been working on a project I started about six years ago. I actually started it 'on a whim'. I had the 22 count hardanger in a drawer, and I'd bought Paula Vaughan's pattern at a close-out sale somewhere. It's her "Wedding Ring Bouquet".

 

It looks like I'm close to being done, but the work goes slowly since it's being done on 22 count fabric and in parts there are lots of color changes.

I apologize for the color quality of the fabric. It's an ecru color and not green as it appears in the photo.

Here it is with some small scissors, so you can see the size of the entire design:


A few more views:





I wish I had more time to work on this one, and get it done.

Thanks for stopping by today!

Beauty

I stitched a bit on Paula Vaughan's Wedding Ring Bouquet. I'll post some pictures in a few days. The ones I have now are far too green tinged, for some reason.

Vonna, I am sorry about the sweatshirt statement I made in the last post. I wasn't very clear! I meant there was a time that they were enormously popular here in our very warm area. It was at the time everyone was painting on them, and adding appliques. We wear them still, of course, but not like we did in the 90s. I have a few but I rarely wear them as it's just never cold enough here to warrant one.

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I really love the photo sharing site called Flickr. If you haven't looked at it ever, take a peek. My photos were moved there automatically when Yahoo Photos shut down a few years ago, and I've been posting our photos there ever since.

I love to choose favorite photos on Flickr. Tonight I made this collage at a site called Big Huge Labs. The collage is made up of just a few of my hundreds of favorite photos. These are pictures of places I'd like to go or see, places I've been, or just beautiful places. The young lady is also from one of my favorite Flickr photos, and I just love how she's making a wish. If you wish to see more about the photo, click on the collage and you'll get the link to the page it came from as it's shown right below the photo. (Wow, that was way too wordy.
I 'm sorry.) Thanks to all who took these photos!





One more collage to share:
This is a small pile of photos I've taken of stitching I've done over the years, and also some of the threads I use.



Thanks for coming by today.

Lost and Found Stitching

Don't you just love finding a lost treasure? Well, to me it's a treasure although I'm sure to many it wouldn't qualify as such.

When I don't have to trudge off to work every day, I like to spend some time organizing our house a tiny bit. I started the other day in some different rooms, but today I tackled our very old dresser. I've had this dresser for a very long time, so you can imagine how things just kind of find their way in there so easily.

So today I was very happy to find an old finished crosstitched piece in one of the larger drawers. It was tucked away and quite hidden under lots of other old things.

I'd stitched a Frankie Buckley design on the sweatshirt, and it was a design I got from the old "For the Love of Crosstitch" magazine. This was when sweatshirts were popular, and especially ones that were crafted up with some sort of homespun touch. I made it around 1993, I think, for my Mother-in-law. She passed away a long time ago just after I stitched it, and the sweatshirt was passed back to me. I'd hidden it away so carefully that I couldn't even find it! It was my first waste canvas project, and I've done very few since then.

Here are some photos of it:











I really don't know what to do with the sweatshirt, so I think I'll tuck it away again for more long term safekeeping. If it fit me, I'd wear it on Valentine's Day. Maybe.

A Bit of Enjoyment

 

I am happy to say that today I completed three weeks of classes. Now it's time to relax a bit before I start getting ready for the new school year. After school begins I'll have one more class to take, and then I'll be done with this master's program. It's taken me a long time to get close to reaching this goal, so it does feel good.

Awhile ago someone asked me how I made the banner for the top of this blog. I'm sure there are far easier ways to make a banner, but here's what I did. Through the Picasa program we downloaded for our computer, I made a collage of various stitching photos. I love making collages on Picasa, in fact. I then saved the collage into my main Microsoft Photo program. While using that program I cropped it to make it fit in a better way, and I added the caption. It was fun to do, and easy! I am not adept at doing tasks on the computer, but this way worked for me.

So it's off now to get some stiching done. Thanks for stopping by today, and I hope you get a chance to relax a bit too.