Spring House Exchange

I received a package from Joan with my Spring House exchange. And what a great package it was, filled with goodies, several of which she made. For the spring house theme, Joan stitched a design from Cottage Country Needleworks called Rose Cottage and made this into a lovely pinkeep. Her finishing skills are awesome!

She also made the lovely gift card, a project bag, a wee chicken pin cushion, and thread drop floss holders. And if that wasn't all enough, Joan included a design from LHN called 'ABC 123', fabric, DMC floss, fat 1/4 of finishing fabric, pins, and a tin of York mints. Wow - a truly incredible package! I feel thoroughly spoiled by Joan!!!
Thanks for stopping by!

Family Time

Sorry, no stitching pics to show. It was family time the past few days. My daughter Kelly surprised me by flying into Toronto for a few days. We had a wonderful time, lots of shopping and the weather graced us with gorgeous spring days...actually even a little too hot!

Here are some pictures from Sunday when we enjoyed a wonderful long walk along Lake Ontario. Below are Nick and J-F with Kelsey.

And here is Kelly, me and Nick together. Hubby had gone to the cottage for the morning to start the huge amount of ground work that needs to be done every year. Carrie was off to visit her bridesmaid, who also was in for the weekend from North Carolina. And Kristy was out of town with friends for the weekend.
And Miss Diva, reclining in the car after her long walk.

The time went by too quickly and Kelly is already back home in North Carolina this morning. I'm back to work and today I start at Curves, which as you can see in my picture above, is much much needed! Why doesn't stitching burn more calories?

A prize package

Look at the amazing haul I received from Monique (Inside Number Twenty). She held a blog contest for her 3rd anniversary of My Mark Designs, and I was one of the lucky winners. I opened up a wonderful package from her yesterday, filled with goodies~ 3 of her designs, 2 pieces of linen, finishing forms, and at the back is a cute crafting tote, with lots of zippered compartment to hold all our treasures. Wow ~ Monique, thank you so much for your generosity!

I really do need some lessons in picture taking - this one is so dark :-(

I finished off my second bookmark ~ it really does look so much better with the B/S'ing .... and its right side up this time!

So last night I pulled out my Love Sampler and I was excited to get back to work on it. I am really enjoying working on this. There is something about pulling out a length of silk and working it through to the end. Endless colour changes can be for the birds sometimes!

And I better not forget to add the 'e' to 'Rud'! I left the centre of the motif on the right open (there is a matching one on the left side of the piece that I didn't scan) because the designer mentions you can add the couple's initials in this spot and I'm not sure if Carrie and JF want theirs to be stitched in.

Have a great weekend and thanks for stopping by!

One down, one to go

I found some stitching time on Saturday night and finished up my first bookmark. Yesterday I started the second one.....which I just realized as I uploaded the photo, appears to be upside down. Rather an indication of how my morning is going.....

These designs really look awful until the backstitching goes in and then it seems to spring to life! Funny how that works and yet other designs don't need any backstitching at all. I'm kind of thinking I prefer designs that don't require backstitching, its has to be one of my least favourite things about stitching. That and realizing that I am missing just that one particular DMC colour that I need. How is it that I have 3 or 4 bobbins of 501, but none of 502?

Ah yes, Monday morning blues....

Thanks for stopping by!

TGIF

Do you ever have those weeks where you are insanely busy but don't feel like you are getting anything accomplished? It must be spring fever!

I finished up stitching for the SBEBB House & Garden exchange, hopefully this weekend I can get it finished-finished and mailed off. And I received 2 RR pieces in the mail this week, one for the Hello Neighbour RR and Donna's piece for the Quaker Friendship RR.

Meanwhile I made a start on the first of 2 bookmarks that I am making for the teachers in the study group I have been attending since last September. These are from the book Tokens of Affection and there is a series of monthly bookmarks. I decided to rechart the names in place of the month. Here is a scan of my first one....its a design that isn't going to look like much until all the backstitching is in place. Yikes, the dreaded backstitching!
Have a great weekend!

Fair and Square

I received my squares from Paula today! How pretty this sweet little design is!! And I love the blue silk she used for the stitching.

And below is a picture of the squares I sent to her. This was a freebie design that I found online from Windy Willows. The size was perfect for the 50x50 squares and I loved how sweet it was.


I haven't been able to commit to any more F&S exchanges right now, too much on the go, with my Love Sampler having taken a backseat in the last week as I'm working on a SBEBB exchange.

Have a great week and thanks for stopping by!

p.s. Here is a link to the Windy Willows chart:

A wee update

Do you mind seeing yet another picture of my Stitcher's Prayer? Stitching hours have turned into just a few minutes these past days. So I don't feel like I have to show.I did get to meet my new great-niece, Georgia, who was born on Leap Day, February 29th, just missing my Dad's birthday by 46 minutes! I actually saw her for the first time on the Toronto news as my niece and her family were interviewed for having the first Leap Day baby in Toronto, quite an accomplishment. She is such a precious little bundle and slept right through our visit. Big sister Scarlett, who is 20 months old, kept us entertained.

Its another day full of sunshine and warm temps, although rainy weather is predicted for the week ahead. All I can say is I'm glad to see the end those mountains of snow!

Thanks for stopping by!

It finally arrived!

My Valentine's Exchange for the SBEBB that it. Poor Chris had to wait 9 long weeks to receive this parcel. In fact we had come to the conclusion that it was lost so I spent last week stitching another piece to send to her. So of course as things go, I finished it off Sunday morning and received her e-mail yesterday that the real package had finally arrived. I can show a picture finally.
This was a freebie design from Elizabeth's Designs and I finished into my very first tin topper. I was so pleased with how it had come out. I don't know why I hesitated on trying one of these.

And here is picture of some of the goodies that went with it.

Of course Valentine's Day was so long ago now, c'est la vie!

Thanks for stopping by on this rainy spring day!

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!

Happy Easter!

I'm WIP'ing along with the Love Sampler. I actually finished the first 3 pages! Only 9 left to go. I know its creased and crumpled looking but isn't it beautiful? I'm so proud of how its coming along.

And I managed a wee start on LHN's Stitcher's Prayer. I needed something to do for the Guild embroidery meeting, and I can't very well drag the magnifier with me ~ a Tim's coffee and my goodie bag are about it.

And look who I found dozing away on the couch, exactly where she is not allowed to be ~ Miss Kelsey. She is obviously called Princess for a good reason.

Happy Easter and thanks for dropping 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!

Sampler Lady...and Stash

Sampler Lady by Little House Needleworks, stitched on 32 ct Lakeside Linen remnant, with DMC and GAST threads. Started Feb 10/08 ~ Finished Mar 10/08

She's done...she's done! I love how quickly these little designs come out! And isn't she so sweet! Now I have the Stitcher's Prayer to do and I would love to get these framed (with Home of a Needleworker) to hang on my sewing room wall.

I finally received my long-awaited package from Needlecraft Corner. I had re-signed with the Loose Feathers Club and couldn't wait for the newest Where My Heart Blooms to arrive. But then I went ahead and ordered a couple of other Nashville designs so I had to wait for all before it was sent out to me. So when I saw the box in my mailbox, I danced my way home, well actually more like slip/sliding on the ice (I hope none of the neighbours were watching).

I guess most of you have seen the Blackbird Designs piece, but have you seen this absolutely wonderful Quaker Turtles design by With My Needle? It came fully kitted and how much better to love fondling such loveliness?
I wish my pictures could do these things better justice. Aren't those Putford scissors so cute!
I wish I didn't have to work today...so I could start one of these wonderful new things...but I guess I have to pay for them somehow.

Thanks for dropping by today!

Snow...Snow...and more Snow

It started on Friday and came with a vengeance on Saturday which was lucky really for all the commuters. The weather forecasters were telling everyone to stay inside and not to venture out. But did we listen? Of course not, we had to go wedding dress shopping! And the stores were empty so it was a great time to go! Carrie made her final decision and ended up back at the store that is 5 minutes from our house LOL! So the dress is on order, veil and headpiece too!!

Here are a couple of pictures of the aftermath~

Hubby measured snowfall on Saturday to be about 10" or 27 cm in our back yard. Poor doggies had a hard time as every time they went outside, they had to create new pathways for themselves. We are only 17 cm short of a new record snowfall this winter for the Greater Toronto region...yeah, whoopee....Its pretty until you have to start shovelling it!

On the stitching front, I started Love with a Capital L! And I love working on it. I decided on using the 40 ct lambswool linen, the colour worked a little better with the Gloriana Cranberry silk floss we decided to use, and the 40 ct gave me slightly more room for edging since I only had a fat1/4 of the 40 ct and 36 ct fabric. This is a picture after about 10 hours on it.
Thanks so much to everyone who drops by and reads my blog! Staci, I'm so happy you have joined the blogging world, I've tried tracking your blog numerous times and I was so grateful to find it! Here is the link everyone: Snippets and Stash. She's a new blogger and has some gorgeous pictures of her wonderful work.