A little progress

Here is an update on LHN's Stitcher's Prayer. The wording is finished, now to get to the good stuff!

And after an unbelieveable amount of procrastination on my part, I finally decided on my colours for the Quaker Friendship Round Robin. I'm really not this bad normally but I sure had a mental block or a colour block when it came to deciding what to use. And what fabric to use. I made a mess of my stash, pulling out different pieces and trying different floss on them. So I finally settled on antique white...a little boring I know.
And I really wanted to use one of the DMC variegated threads since stash money is tight these days. I went with the deep purple/blue tone and picked out plain colours that went along with it when I stopped by Michael's. I'm going to ask each person in the RR to stitch their section in one colour and then I'll be able to see each person's section more clearly but hopefully it will all mesh together very nicely. I need a kick in the behind to get me moving on this since our first mail-out is April 1st!

Finally, here is a picture of Nick and JF taken on Good Friday. Can you guess where they might be?

If you said on the roof of our cottage, then you are 100% right!

They went to the cottage for the day to shovel snow off the roof, in anticipation of the Great Melt.


Thanks for stopping by!

Love with a Capital L

This was my update picture as of Friday...but I've stitched quite a bit since then and have some of the wording done and border along the right hand side. Its coming along so nicely and I am loving working on this. I'm almost through my first skein of Gloriana silk. Let's see, that's 4 yards of 12 stranded silk, using 1 strand over 2 fabric threads, so that makes 48 yards of silk so far. Well, when you put it like that, my needle has been flying!

I have fabric ready to start LHN's Stitcher's Prayer as I would like to get this one going too.
We had rain yesterday and dark gloomy skies today which means more rain...and our snow is quickly disappearing. It was hard to imagine these great mounds of snow everywhere can so quickly be reduced to little piles of darkened yuckiness. Come on rain!

I am so stoked to hear about the new cross stitch shop opening in Whitby, Hedgehog Stitchery! Thanks Vickie for stopping by and letting me know. I'll be sure to pass the word along to our fellow stitchers who I am sure will be just as enthusiastic about having a real live shop to visit. There is nothing like seeing fabric and floss in real life to be re-inspired. And that its opening on the second floor of the Kniterary is a nice little treat to us knitters too!

Thanks for dropping by!

My Town

After reading about Carol's (iStitchaholic) town and seeing the beautiful pictures, I thought I would copy her idea and do one of my own. I have to warn you though, I love history so this little insight to where I live is more geared to local town history than what's going on today.

Whitby is located on Lake Ontario, about 30 km from Toronto. We now have a population of 110,000 people. Although settlers arrived in Whitby in the 1700's, most settlement took place after the American Revolution, as a British resettlement for the Loyalists, with the development of the downtown area starting in 1836.

A view of Lake Ontario from Whitby shores, one of my favourite places to head for an evening walk or bike ride, as we have km's of finished trails along the shoreline.


We have a castle in downtown Whitby ~ Trafalgar Castle. These are the best pictures, I'm afraid! I nabbed them off the web and as you can tell we're not in the midst of winter.

Trafalgar Castle was built in Elizabethan style in 1859 by Nelson Reynolds, Sheriff of Ontario County. It has 15 towers, a receiving hall that is 108 feet long, secret passageways and a tunnel to Lake Ontario (which is actually quite far from the castle - I can't imagine the state of it now!). The castle is currently home to an all-girls boarding and day school for 240 students.

My friend Marj attended Trafalgar Castle school for 2 years and gave me this cool info:
The stories of the tunnel is true. And it was one of the stops on the Underground Railroad and there are even "pits" for the slaves to hide out in , in case of people coming to the castle. I know that much is true as we were taken down by our history teacher and shown them for a fact.
It is a really cool place to check out and every May they have their May Day festivities and Open house, which is really nice to go and see the school. Some of the residents from the Whitby Psych would work there in the kitchens and do the groundskeeping, supervised of course by the saner members of society.
We have an award winning, state of the art, new library which opened in 2005 and is huge at 54,000 square feet. This is also where we now hold our Embroidery Guild meetings, since being given the heave-ho from the church around the corner.

However I confess to appreciating the original town library much more... the Carnegie Library which was built in 1913 with a grant from American industrialist Andrew Carnegie. Its a law office today.
I have to mention the Whitby Psychiatric Hospital, located on the shores of Lake Ontario, just because it has always been the butt of too many jokes. It was originally built in 1913 and called the Ontario Hospital for the Insane (gruesome!). However once it was finished, it was taken over by the federal government as a hospital for convalescing soldiers returning from World War I before reverting back to its true purpose. At its prime there were 1650 patients living in this facility, which consisted of numerous 'cottages' to house the patients and treatment areas, in all over 40 buildings. It finally closed in 1995, and became quite an interesting locale for movie sites, and of course local teens. Most of the cottages are demolished now with a couple remaining for posterity, once the new hospital took over.
One of the buildings, now empty. There are tons of stories of the various hauntings of this place, as you can imagine. I, ahem, steered clear of them! All of the buildings were painted yellow, with red roofs, so easy to spot through the trees. I have to admit though it was sad that they had to go, although most were falling down anyways.

We have had a few famous residents ~ Leslie McFarlane lived in Whitby with his family from 1936 on. He was quite a famous writer, and wrote the Hardy Boys novels under the penname Franklin W. Dixon. His son, Brian McFarlane, went on to become a CBC sports broadcaster for the NHL. And you all know how we love our hockey!

And the one of the most interesting history bytes for last~

Is there anyone cooler than Bond? ...that's James Bond. Take the401 Hwy east from Toronto for 30 minutes to Whitby, and you can find street signs relating to the James Bond character, such as Ian Fleming Cres. During WWII there was a secret agent training camp here called 'Camp X'. It was located right on the shore of Lake Ontario where it could be reached discreetly at night by water from the USA.
One of the spy trainees was Bond author Ian Fleming, who went on to create the famous James Bond '007' character using knowledge he aquired here. Camp X was also influencial in the development of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); five future heads of the CIA were trained there. Today the camp's location is marked by a small memorial in the 17-acre, watefront Intrepid Park, on the Whitby/Oshawa border. 'Inside Camp X'author Lynn Philip Hodgson leads occasional guided walks of the site. There's also a 'Camp X' exhibit at the Oshawa Municipal Airport (see original lipstick-container dagger and posion gas pen).

I hope you enjoyed my little tour. Have a great weekend!

Two Finishes

I'm behind getting updates posted on my blog. I actually worked on these this past weekend while at the cottage. Should I mention how wonderful it is to sit by the water's edge and stitch? Silly me, part of me was in the sun and I had a not so nice sunburn to show for it, but how nice it was to get some work done on my 40 ct fabric for a change. I stitched 'F is for Farm' on my Carriage House Samplings Alphabet.

Kelly and Chris are coming for a 10 day visit and are arriving June 27th. So to take advantage of the cheaper shipping costs, I ordered myself a Dazor task lamp with a magnifier and had it sent to Kelly's address. She has already received it - wow US postal service is amazing - 4 days - and she'll bring it with her when she comes since they are driving here. No more complaining from me about not being able to stitch on 40 ct fabrics. And I dare not, with all these Neighbourhood RR's arriving at my door on 36 and 40 ct linens!

And my piece de resistance ~ my finished Z is for Zinnias!

That makes 26......yes, you read correctly, 26 finished Prairie Schooler alphabet blocks! I started these in June 2004 and finished in June 2007! I hate to say it, but I'm actually kind of sad to be finished these.....but I still have to make them into a quilt. Its going to be one enormous quilt!

And yet another meeting yesterday with the Children's Aid. We are now a probationary foster care home and read over our 14 page long report and signed it off. Whew! Work is progressing on Kristy's bedroom. Rick and Jean-Francois have painted - 4 coats of white, to cover what once was blue, and have taped it off for pink stripes to go on next. Yes, she is definitely a pink girl! I'm not too sure how Monte (the snake) feels about stripes though.

Garden Exchange from Chris

I opened up my mail box to get a huge bulging package from Chris .

She was my partner for the Garden theme exchange for the SBEBB and she stitched Just Nan's Charm garden and made it into this lovely little pillow. For some reason the camera has decided to turn the linen pinkish, its really a lovely natural linen, and she used the cutest charms that look like garden tools.
.


And look at the lovely goodies she included with the beautiful pillow she made! I neglected to include the beautiful box of note cards that were also included in her package. I felt thoroughly spoiled by her generosity!!!

We're off to the cottage this afternoon, once Nick is home from school, and provided I get through my work.

We have been given an official move-in date for Kristy - June 22! That's the last day of school for the kids and only 2 weeks away. Hubby has been packing up his 'office' in earnest now to clean up the bedroom that we will be giving to Kris. We have to take her out next week to pick out a paint colour. She will be bringing a bed and dresser from her old home and we have a computer and desk for her here. Everything else I guess we'll see what she needs once she has moved in.

Did I mention she has a snake? A 4 foot long python, named Monte. I didn't realize that fostering a snake was part of the deal?!?! Hmmm, as long as he stays in his cage and doesn't take to snacking on small dogs.

Its our Anniversary!

Here we are ~ 27 years ago today! Ohmigosh, we look like such babies. Of course I was, although I didn't think so at the time. Isn't it amazing how we think we know so much at the time and on looking back, realize we really don't know much at all. I really think life is much kinder to us in that way. Probably we would never leave the comfort of our Mum & Dad's at all if we knew what was waiting for us out there!

Thank you, dear blogging friends for visiting and reading my blog. And thank you even more for taking the time to leave a kind comment. You will never know how much your comments touch my heart and leave a smile on my face. The blogging world is full of such wonderful kind people, it has really opened up such a rewarding world for me, and even when I'm not posting, I'm eagerly looking for new posts to catch up on what is going on in your worlds.

I know I sound a little pensive, its looking through old photo albums that does that to me. I wanted to find just the right photo to put on my blog, and realized how much I was missing the people who are no longer here, and wanting the ones who are to know how much I love and cherish them....so bear with me!

Z is for Zinnias

I finished up my Hello Neighbour RR piece, I really didn't add too much more, so I didn't re-scan it. Its all ready to be mailed out to Carissa. And I also finished up my Garden themed exchange for the SBEBB which is ready to be mailed out too!

So for my weekend stitching, I started on my very last Prairie Schooler block, Z is for Zinnias:




This is on 28 ct evenweaver, I think its a 28 ct Ivory Lugana, I really needed something nice and easy on the eyes after working last week on the 40 ct linen.

I'm feeling a bit sorry for myself since Friday. I had blood work taken last week and then went in for my physical on Friday morning and it turns out my blood sugars are in the diabetic range. The doctor says this probably explains why I've been having so many funny troubles with my eyes recently. I ended up stitching my RR with my glasses off most of the time! So more blood work is in store - a 2 hour glucose tolerance test anyways. Meanwhile I'm trying to stick to hubby's diet - he is also a diabetic but with amazing willpower - and hopefully these blood sugars will come down enough that I won't need medications.

We are having weekly home assessments with Toronto Children's Aid for our fostering program. Two more interviews are scheduled for this week. How do you spell stressful? I will be so glad when its over! But things are looking good for us.