And a RR makes its way home

What a great mail week! Look what found its way to my door, after making its way across Canada, the U.S. and Australia. My neighbourhood RR is finished!!




I love the houses that everyone chose for their areas and all the little extra's make it so fun to look at. I think I'll add a border around the neighbourhood and stitch in all the names of each person beside their home. Huge huge thanks to (starting at the top going left to right) Glenna, Carol, Nicole, Deb, (centre house is mine) Bine, Carissa, Karen and Leslie!

And now just a peek at some sewing/quilting I've been working on ~

Deb's RR

I finished my house section on Deb's RR last night and got started on my tombstone. I can't quite decide what gruesome saying to stitch on it...hopefully some inspiration will come to me. Unfortunately the colours in my section don't show up too well on this beautiful fabric. Then I have to put my little X-S figure in 'Heaven' and I'm done! Early this time too!!

Its the Labour Day holiday weekend, the last big hurrah of summer and we have some great weather forecasted. We are off to enjoy the last bit of summer weather at the cottage. Which means I better get my stitching bag packed like now!

And Tuesday morning, the kids are back to school. That always means a special dance about the house once they leave! I don't even want to tell you how much $$ I have spent on clothes in the past week. No new stash for quite a while .....

WIP update

Thank you for all the kind comments on my Blackbird Designs finish! I haven't decided how to finish this one yet, framed or wallhanging or even pillow?

Here is a WIP update ~ the 2008 Prairie Schooler Christmas kit. Its working up quickly and I love using the variegated Crescent Colours with this.
And last night I picked up Deb's (Lavender Rose Ramblings) Neighbourhood RR. She sent along the charts she wanted us to use and all the flossies - silks, GAST and DMC! I picked out the chart I wanted to use, one of the Morbid Pithies from The Workbasket and got a start on it. Once I get this done, I'll decide which figure to put in 'Heaven' and my tombstone for the cemetery! Its quite a detailed RR!

My arms have been getting a work-out at night time which is when I do my reading - in bed! I have almost finished reading World Without End by Ken Follett, the sequel to Pillars of the Earth.
What a great book, it is as good as Pillars, and one of those books that you hate to see end. The characters are amazing and following their life in the shadow of this cathedral has been so interesting. But while I hate to see it end, the next time I pick up a 1000+ page book, its going to be a softcover!

I will get a WIP pic of Deb's RR as soon as I make a little more headway with it!

Sunflower House and a small finish

Thank you all for your wonderful comments on the Love Sampler! Its so heartwarming to read what everyone has said. I was so anxious to put my last few stitches on this - I just don't do well with deadlines. We are off to the framer's later today to pick out a frame and get that organized, as well as few other small pieces that have been waiting to be framed and displayed.

Sunflower House update - but I'm not happy with how the colours look in the pictures! Really they are much nicer than how they look here. Yuko has put me to shame with how quickly she is getting through this one! I think she's going leave me far behind and finish ahead of me.

And another little finish - this is Bine's Neighbourhood RR. I love the set-up she chose, with a long row of houses. And doesn't it look sweet!

I finished up Karen's RR and its ready to get into the mail. I decided to add a turkey and pumpkins to the right hand side and another tree. Her theme is country so I didn't want to get too many farm critters in there. But since I love Autumn, I couldn't resist adding a touch of fall-ish colour to this one. I hope Karen likes it. Her neighbourhood is really taking shape with 6 houses now on it!


Tomorrow is hubby and my 28th wedding anniversary. We are planning to celebrate with dinner in Toronto and a movie. Yup, that's about our speed these days. And we each bought ourselves our own anniversary gifts - he got a new 'walking' lawnmower and I bought a new sewing machine. So it looks like we'll both be studying manuals to figure out how to put these things together and make them work.

Have a great weekend!

A cold holiday weekend

It was a holiday weekend for us with Victoria Day yesterday and as usual, our first weekend at the cottage....and as usual it was cold cold cold.....and rainy! It doesn't make for the most fun, although we did get in a lovely walk through the woods on Sunday morning. And hubby's Aunt's birthday party was a great time. There must have been 80 people who attended. It was wonderful to catch up with people we hadn't seen for quite a while.

It seems most of my stitching projects are on 40 ct linens and I can't stitch on these any more without a magnifier, so I took along LHN's Watermelon and got a nice start on that. Poor little blackbird - he is beakless at the moment!

Yesterday afternoon I got back to working on my latest RR, this one is Karen's and she requested a country feel for her neighbourhood. I decided to use The Prairie Schooler's A Farmer's Almanac. Its may be a little more woodsy looking but I thought this fit for me.
I'm in the process of stitching in some hens and chicks at the bottom before I fill in the grassy bits, but I'm still undecided what to do with the right hand side. Some more trees maybe?

Thanks for stopping by!

A Finish and almost finished

I finished my section on Carol's RR! I did the little cottage on the upper left side. Sorry I don't have a picture of the full piece ~ there are now 5 homes that have been built in this neighbourhood, but I don't have my camera at hand. This section of the RR is getting quite a forestry-feel to it, I hope Carol likes it.

I've also slowly been working at LHN's Sampler Lady in the past month. I've just picked it up randomly and put in some stitching here and there when I don't feel like working on the smaller counts of fabric, which so many of my WIP's seem to be in these days. I think its a good idea for me to have these smaller projects on the go, so I can see some real progress being made on them. I've used a mixture of DMC and GAST threads on her and she has come along so nicely.

I ordered Love with a Capital L from Papillon Creations, directly from their website. Its pretty cool that you can order directly from a designer, pay through Paypal, and then receive an e-mail with the pattern attached. So its done, all printed out and ready to go. We decided on Gloriana silk in Cranberry for the fibre and the only thing left to decide is the fabric. I have 2 different fat 1/4's in my stash: one is a 40 ct Lambswool Linen and the other a 36 ct Raw Linen. I drift from one to the other and can't decide which one to use!

And we have yet more snow this morning, cleaning off the car this morning to take the kids to school was not fun because there was a layer of ice under the 10 cm of snow. The streets have yet been plowed so that meant I got stuck once I backed out of our driveway, which was a challenge, and another challenge when I got stuck again, trying to get onto the main road. Winter...enough already....yuck! Spring can't come soon enough for me!

Carol's RR

I've been making good progress on my section on Carol's RR. You can see her house to the right of mine and below mine is Nicole's lovely addition. I'm using Elizabeth's Design Gardener's Cottage. Its a little larger than I would have liked, but I like the lighter colour, I thought it would be a good contrast to the 2 red/darker houses. I'll have some room to add some trees, flowers, etc. too, I'll have to decide which to add.

I finally got my Friendship Quaker chart in yesterday's mail. What is with the slow mail these days? I am still waiting for my partner to receive her Valentine's exchange. It has me worried that it is taking so long. I know it had to go overseas, but really by slow boat?

And for those of you who asked, no the doggies do not keep me company in bed with my potato chips. Now that hubby would definitely not tolerate. Although Kelsey has been known to take his place once he gets up in the morning, but no one is ever the wiser!

RR's, F&S's, and stash

I finished my section on Nicole's Round Robin! Another one is ready to put in the mail and send off to Carissa. I'm really happy with the way my section turned out. I used patterns from two different designs from Elizabeth's Garden and I managed to squeeze a couple more sheep in there because I thought they looked so cute! Here is a scan of most of Nicole's RR, not the entire piece, it didn't all fit in my scanner, so the last section with Leslie's house I had to leave off.
And yesterday's mail brought Ulla's squares for me from the Fair and Square exchange, all the way from Sweden. Look how sweet they are, hmm, she doesn't mention but looks like a Prairie Schooler house to me?!?
And here are the squares that I stitched for her (I remembered to take a picture this time around). She commented that she liked redwork and quaker designs so I chose this for her, which is actually part of one of The Workbasket tree freebies. I thought the red and white were a good choice, since they were the colours of the Canadian flag, which is a coincidence, since Ulla stitched the Swedish flag on her block.


And one more picture, bear with me! I got some long awaited stash in the mail yesterday, my birthday stash which only took 6 weeks to get here! Well we can all guess where I ordered from :-D

And for some reason this one particular design has absolutely caught my attention. Its called 'Of Female Arts' by The Primitive Needle. I'm in love with it and its just one of those that I'm dying to start.

Of course there are only like 9 or so Christmas things I really really want to do in the meanwhile....but I just really have to do this too. If only I didn't have to work for a living! And the kids didn't have to eat!! Meanwhile I'm envisioning fabric choices and floss choices....and getting myself started to work.....

Stitching Update

Its been almost a week since I've updated and I don't know where the time has gone! Its time for some long overdue stitching updates and since the camera isn't cooperating with me today, its scanner time:

Here is my Paradigm Lost start from November 1st, not much to see but its a beginning :-D
Paradigm Lost by Long Dog Samplers, on 40 count tea-dyed linen, using Gloriana silks

Here is a link to the SAL to see all the other lovely starts on PL and Cirque-des-Cercles: Snowbirds SAL. Its not too late to join us if you want to get in on the fun!

My JBW Stocking is moving right along, what a nice little design this has been to work on.

JBW Stocking, on 28 ct Graziano white/celery linen, using DMC


And finally I started Nicole's Neighbourhood RR. I'm using an Elizabeth's Design cottage and I'll fill up the space with some other trees and flowers. So far, so good, I think. I love how the little sheep came out, I'm thinking about adding another one....


I've had 2 sickie kids, Nick's asthma is kicking up and Kristy had a very bad stomach. Something tells me working at McDonald's has its downside - eating too much food there, combined with Hallowe'en treats! Of course a 16 year old will never admit to that!!

Leslie's Neighbourhood

I finished my house in Leslie's neighbourhood...and a little early too! I hate deadlines, I hate the pressure, so I couldn't wait to get this one done before the October 1st mail-out date. The house came from a Jeremiah Junction special edition magazine and I loved the picture of it. I was merrily stitching away when I suddenly realized that it was starting to not look like the picture at all. It was much more orange than the red that I remembered the picture looking like. I guess it was originally stitched in Anchor floss and I used the DMC conversion so it really drastically changed what I working with. So quite a bit of brick frogging later, I reworked the colours and came up with something that suited me much better. I hope Leslie likes it!



My poor Nick has been suffering with his third day of headaches. I really have no idea what to do for him at this point. We have his new glasses on order and Advil do not seem to be working for him. It doesn't seem to be his allergies and he is cringing at the thought of going to the walk-in clinic, but I'm at a loss as to what to do next. And hubby and I have tickets for the Blue Jay ball game in Toronto tonight. I hate the thought of leaving him and Kris on their own tonight when he's like this. Ah, the joys of motherhood!

G is for Goose

G is for Goose is finished - and he had to get outlined because he didn't show up on my fabric, which is I think an antique white or off-white. I can never remember the names of these colours once the label comes off.

I got a nice start on Leslie's Neighbourhood RR but not enough to show yet, that will come soon I hope. My house so far looks quite a bit different than the houses she and Glenna have stitched on her piece, I hope she doesn't mind.

And I had such an exciting e-mail from Sue (Redwitch's Stitch and Bitch) that I won her blog-aversary contest and she is sending me a prize! Wow - I am totally bowled over by her generosity!!! And I will be stalking the mailman next week for my package :-D

And we're off!

For 2 weeks vacation! I was going to try to find a picture of a sunbather, lazying about on a beach, with a drink in bed, and pretend it was me, but honestly I'm too tired. Why is it when you're about to start a vacation, that you get dumped with work? Combine that house renovations, inside and out, and trying to organize my new sewing room, which has really been neglected and I am definitely ready to head out of here tomorrow!

Hubby and I did manage to get our kitchen ready last night however as our new kitchen appliances arrive today - new fridge, stove, microwave and dishwasher! No more cursing the size of my fridge (and of course now the family has downsized) and no more whining about the dirty dishes coming out of the dishwasher. And wouldn't you know, I won't get to enjoy them as I'll be washing dishes at the cottage for the next 2 weeks! May be I'll buy paper plates, the kind we can put in the compost bin.

And of course I did manage to pack my stitching bag :-D I haven't packed my clothes yet, in fact I still have to do laundry! Yes, I am a true stitcher!

And here is Glenna's RR, all finished and in fact in the mail, winging its way on to Carissa, early as I won't be back until after August 1st, and I didn't want to send it off late.


Have a wonderful couple of weeks and 'see' you all when I get back!

I'm in love!

I'm in love......with my new Dazor lamp! And it was well worth the wait. I bought it from an Ebay shop and had it mailed to Kelly (always wanting to save those few $$) and she brought it home with her when she came back for her visit. Lucky I did, man it was a heavy box! Its the Dazor task table lamp with the magnifier and wow, is it sweet! Its perfect for stitching on the 40 ct fabrics, the light is great and the magnification is amazing. Best of it, it adjusts like magic to wherever I want it! I'm back in business!!

Of course I thought I would be ripping through the Houses of Hawk Run Hollow now......but I forgot how many stitches there are each and every one of these blocks! Each block in itself is a huge accomplishment. So I'm back to just enjoying the stitching itself and the somewhat strange colour combinations, especially since I'm using the DMC, and not the NPI silks. I have swapped a couple out when I thought they were a little too freaky for even my taste.

And I have a start on Glenna's Neighbour RR:


I left the top of Glenna's house peeking out from the bottom. There will be a fence, trees, grass and hopefully some room for some potted plants in my area still to come!

Thank you for the comments on Joanie's pincushion bag! I wish I could take credit for the pattern but no, it was a pattern that I used for it, that I had picked up at a local quilt shop. If anyone is interested in trying their hand at it, let me know and I can pass along the info.

I'm so excited that Kathy (Kathy's Sit and Stitch) asked me to join her and a couple of other bloggers in a Paradigm Lost SAL starting later this fall. So my startitis will have to wait until then. Meanwhile may be I can work on some of my WIP's or may be even a poor UFO or two....or may be I can start something small ;-D

Some catching up

I was stitching up a frenzy over this Victoria Day Holiday weekend! After realizing I didn't have any suitable 40 ct fabric for my Hello Neighbour Round Robin, I had to scurry about trying to find a place that could ship some to me quickly and Drema from Needlecraft Corner came through for me. Wednesday my fabric came and I quickly started sectioning off my areas. I settled on blocks of 80x80 and after 2 nights of going cross-eyed, finally got all my threads to line up. Its amazing how many times I miscounted by just one fabric thread. So 4 days later, I'm well on my way to getting my block finished. And I realize a bird is just missing his head! I'm still undecided about where to put my initials/country.....

So we were off to the cottage for our first long weekend of the season. Its was wonderfully sunny all weekend, if a little on the chilly side, even though the kids braved the water and went swimming - well quick dips was more like it!



The forest is usually awash with our provincial flower - trilliums - and they were still a few left. Hubby managed to get a picture of this brilliant looking one.

Neighbourhood RR

I put the last few stitches into Anita's RR last night and here is my offering. Its a Homespun Elegance design called Summer House Sampler. I accommodated it slightly and it fit in perfectly with the 70x50 block.

And after that I was in a baking mood, so I made up a batch of Everything But the Kitchen Sink cookies. These cookies have, well, a little bit of everything in them: chocolate chips, raisins, walnuts, coconut, oats, and so on. 6 dozen were made and I think there are still 3 dozen today. I have a hungry family!

Today is bright and sunny but cold and Nick has plans for snowboarding today, his second time this week. Luckily the ski hills are only a 20 minute drive away but I am hoping to get there with the camera to take some pictures of him. Its such a pretty area and the only place that is completely snow-covered. Although our backyard was looking nice until the dogs hit it this morning.

Oh and one more pic:

These are one we made at the guild meeting on Wednesday night - the first one is a scissor point fob ~ the blue thingy is what will go on the pointed ends of scissors and the lobster claw clips on the scissor handles. The smaller one is a needle threader fob. I think I'll look for a few larger, prettier beads to put on and redo the top one, especially since I messed up a little with the end. Cute things though and its nice to play around with beads too.