February update

Today is my second snow day off work inside of a week, very unusual for this neck of the woods. So, I'm taking the opportunity to update my blog which has been sorely neglected over the past few weeks.
First is my progress on Day & Night, the end is in sight!  Most of what is left are small motifs and shouldn't take long.

Tree of Stitches -- Parts 1 and 2

The other stitching I'm doing is a design called Tree of Stitches by Abi Gurden.  This is a tree that is done in different specialty stitches, the threads and fabric are of the stitcher's choice.  It's an SAL on The Stitch Specialists Yahoo Group and we'll be doing one stitch every couple of weeks.  So far we've done the trunk in cross stitch, then some of the foliage in Symrna stitches with French knots. The fabric is some blue cloud hand dyed, although it doesn't really show up on the photo.  Can't remember the names/colors of the threads, I'm just pulling them out of my stash as they strike my fancy!

Tree of Stitches -- Part 3

Returned from England

We've just returned from a very lovely Christmas in England, first one on that side of the pond in 36 years!  We were joined at my mother's by my brother and our son and daughter-in-law and had a very nice Christmas Day with a few fresh snow sprinkles to make it officially a white Christmas!

We had a nervous journey out because the snow was forecast but we got lucky and the slight bit of snow and ice we encountered in Amsterdam only delayed us by about 40 mins.  We don't fly into London airports and Humberside airport is only 20 mins. from Mum's house.  The roads had been cleared since the "big" snow (15" for Grimsby is a BIG snow!).  We even managed to make a trip down south to Luton and the Ipswich area without too much trouble, so overall we were lucky.  Our journey back was uneventful, thankfully and we arrived home late on New Year's Day.

While in England I managed to knit myself a scarf but that is the only needlework I took with me, I'll post a picture when I dig it out! 

I'm also happy to report that the framed wedding sampler for Michael and Julie made it to England safely!  It fit (just) into the one very large suitcase I have, that I haven't taken over there for a few years.  It had to go in diagonally, on it's end and I wrapped it in multiple layers of bubble wrap. They went back to London on the train and carried it, that journey was also successful!  The wooden box for my mother (see previous post) also made it intact and she liked it.

Happy New Year everyone!

Progress on Day & Night by Long Dog

I've been working quite a bit on Day & Night and coming to the end of the most time consuming section.  There is only one large motif to do now (on the left next to the house) and then it's just the border and smaller motifs.  I'm on a mission to finish it!
Further down this blog there is a picture of what this will look like when finished, you can see not much farther to go!

Framed in a box

The box was custom made at my LNS and I love the way it turned out!  The design is Sweet Violets by Heirloom Embroideries which I finished in 2009.  This is to be a Christmas present for my mother.

Wedding Sampler finished

On October 23 I finally finished Michael and Julie's wedding sampler.  They were married on September 4, 2009, and it had been a while in the making!  The heart at the top was a challenge with bullion stitches and ribbon embroidery that I'd not done before.  The poem is a custom, I didn't include the words as charted.  It is now framed but it was difficult to get a good picture and also because it is so long!  This is the best I could do to try and not get a reflection.

I now have the problem of getting this framed piece to England!  I've just tried fitting it in our suitcases and it's going to be a challenge to say the least! I don't think carrying it is an option (too big), and so if we can't get it in the case then may have to go with a special box but don't really want to do that.  So, fingers crossed that it makes it across the Atlantic in one piece!

Long time, no post!

Gosh!  Has it really been that long since I updated this blog.  How time flies as you get older!  I see that my last post also coincided with when my summer work hours started and my stitching, and computing, time got messed up.  My stitching time has been limited to weekends for 2-3 months, during the week I've just been too tired to sit down and do anything but read in the evening, and that makes me fall asleep :-)

Anyway,  I've FINALLY got a picture of my WIP.  This is Day & Night by Long Dog.  It's a very colorful design as you can see and easy to stitch.  The only problem is that the chart symbols are VERY tiny and I'm having to enlarge each section, not something I normally have to do. Other than that, so far so good!

You can see a picture of what it will look like finished further down this page.  We go back to regular 8-5 hours on August 16 and hopefully then I will get some time to stitch on weekday evenings.

Altengamme is finished!

As I said in my last post, I ripped out the bottom border and redid it.  Didn't take as long as I thought it would and I put the final stitches in this on Tuesday night.  So pleased to have this finished and now I need to get it mounted on foam core so I can have it framed.

Last night I pulled out another long time UFO, Day & Night from Long Dog Samplers.  I was very tempted to start on Quakers and Quilts but decided to give this UFO a try first.

This is what that one will look like and I'll post my progress when I've taken a picture. At the moment I've done the top border and 3 motifs down on the left border, and one on the right. Long way to go!

Good news and bad news

Well, I finally finished Altengamme last night, whooo hoooo!  That's the good news.  It's finished BUT I am going to rip out the bottom border and do it again.  I made a one row counting error on the left, fixed it (sort of) and figured I wouldn't notice and it would be OK.  Well, I got all the way over to the right hand side and decided that it does bother me.  No one else would probably care or notice but I decided it would always bug me and so I'm going to rip it out and do over.  It shouldn't take that long to do but it will delay taking a picture of the finished product. 

So, stay tuned......

Altengamme update

As you can see, not much further to go!  After tonight, I won't be able to stitch on this until the 18th, when I get back from the conference and convention I have to go to this week.  It's possible I could get something done Wednesday night, we'll see how tired I am! I should finish the started motif and perhaps do another one this evening.  Also, I think I'm going to run out of the green thread so I'll have to make a run to the LNS.  I thought when I picked up the last one I'd got enough but I can't see what I have left being enough to finish.

An interim update

I've been trying to find time to take a new picture because I've done quite a bit more since this picture was taken. Well, it's been a crazy week one way and another, although I have got a little bit of stitching time in.  I've now finished that last large diamond and have done 3 "satellite" small motifs since this picture was taken.  There's not much left to do now, relatively speaking, but I'm not going to be able to stitch on this for a whole week starting Sunday because of travel.  I think I'm definitely on track to finish this by the end of April....whoo hoo!